Heartland Memories from David Lewis

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/DoortoDoor.mp3

I stopped by to visit the young woman I was dating and found her sitting on the couch with a dejected look on her face. She was just 20, fresh out of Medical Secretary School, and had moved to the city to take a job at a local doctor’s clinic. She looked at […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/TheGhostWhoWalks.mp3

He wore black horned-rimmed classes, a subtle smile, and a deeply bent sense of humor. His name was Dan Rhineholt, and he and I were cops on the same department. Dan had been a deputy sheriff in my county for over a year, but had transferred to our city department out of boredom with […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/Boom!.mp3

In the midst of exquisitely brutal training to become a Navy Seal, a young man was asked why he persisted in the face of such agony. His reply?

“Because I get to blow stuff up.”

Ah, the fascination with making things go “boom”. Even in my advanced years, I have still been known to […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/TheOffering.mp3

Sunup was over an hour away when I crawled out of the tent onto the dew-slick grass. Stretching my back, I slowly walked to the remnants of last night’s fire and poked at it with a stick, stirring some feeble coals to the surface on which to place some kindling, needing warmth and not […]

Invincibility Lost

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/SilverPigeon.mp3

Way back in 1962 when I was but a slip of a lad, I became the proud owner of a Rockford Holiday 76 Silver Pigeon motor scooter. The over-$200 price tag was a bit daunting, but I had been working since I was 8 or 9 years old, and acquired […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/ThePrincipalOfFighting.mp3

Theo Vitali was a wild man. Greek and Italian, his passions ran nearly as high as his blood pressure. He was a screamer, a thrower, a man so driven that, while he was the high school football coach in my hometown, we lost only two games in 6 years. In the noisy and crowded […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/MySoul.mp3

I must warn you that in the upcoming vocalization, I am going to use the term “God”. I use that term in the broadest possible sense – the power of the universe, the Force, Wakantanka, Earth Mother, whatever. I do not align with nor do I endorse any particular version of the concept. If […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/GreenBeret.mp3

I am a member of the Vietnam generation, a survivor of the draft, Johnson, Nixon, Bundy, and MacNamara’s band. I didn’t go to Vietnam. My service consisted of only one and a half days in the military – expelled from uniform because of a knee ailment common to growing young men – but I […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/WhenWorldsCollide.mp3

In spite of what you may have heard, I am not a genius, nor have I ever claimed to be (at least not since I was 17 and some young winner of the Nordic Combined was batting her eyelashes at me). I am not a physicist. I know nearly nothing of quantum mechanics, string […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/Blanche.mp3

In the 1950s, the southern portions of Illinois were often much farther south than a map might indicate. The pace of life in many of its parts was slower and more elemental than among the northern tribes, and a trip to that area could not only transport the traveler much farther south than he […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/Wildlife.mp3

I live in the country off a less than satisfactory gravel road. Those facts make it very foolish to open any windows on the north, south, or west side of the house during warm weather, unless I develop a cavalier attitude toward dust. On an average summer day, an open living room window coupled […]

http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/Dudley.mp3

His name was Dudley Babbit, and he was a real piece of work. In the 1960s and 70s, Dudley was at the top of his game. One of the premiere trainers of gaited horses on the planet, famous and coveted in song and story in an elite business driven by large sums of money […]

Hoofbeats in the Fog http://heartlandmemories.com/bits/OldJoe.mp3

It was damp, it was foggy, it was chilly, it was perfect. My wife and I crunched our way across the gravel parking lot of the Jock’s kitchen heading for the racetrack. It was barely dawn, and we’d just had breakfast with LaVette Drummond, a 40-year old Louisianan, who looked […]