Focused at Fifty

"Sports Antiques from our Collection"  A lot of you may be surprised to find this out but I like sports. After years of watching them on the couch with the Big Ragu, I have really come to enjoy watching them either on TV or live. Like the majority of folks, m ore than likely  it's gonna be on TV. Tickets to any major sporting event are so expensive. Sure you can get nose bleed seats but you always get a better view on your couch and there's no line for food or the head. However, nothing beats the camaraderie of sporting fans up in the nose bleed sections of ANY stadium or sports arena. You can get that live sporting-thrill by going to local little league, high school or college games without breaking the bank on tickets. There are even sporting clubs such as rugby or touch football leagues where you can see some rough action without spending a dime. Just bring your own lawn chair and favorite libation! Unfortunately due to the Novel Coronovirus, all that has ...

Photo by  Spencer Selover  from  Pexels The other week I visited the local Five and Dime to pick up some odds and ends; allergy meds, some batteries, a belated birthday card, and a granola bar to stave off that afternoon hunger. There she was at the register, the young cashier I often see, asking me once again for my rewards card. I smiled and said sure, give me a sec, as I fumbled through my wallet.  She had the eyes of a young spring doe, beautifully large and round, so expressive. She blinked slowly as she laughed, watching me continue to fumble. Oh here it is! I exclaimed, handing it to her. We smiled at each other in amusement.   She began to ring up my miscellaneous items, focusing on the register. My eyes wandered from the locks of hair framing her twenty something face to her funky earrings, to the colorful tattoos adorning her neck then peeking out from her ivory décolletage, continuing down her arms. She was hauntingly beau...

"Bittersweet" The smoke ring: wisping, ethereal, dreamily floating upwards like my drifting, wandering thoughts.  Smoking in the golden age of Hollywood was considered classy and elegant. Masculine and or feminine. Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, James Dean, Lauren Bacall, and so many others. I still find it so. Those movies, black and white, people staring each other down. Taking a drag while composing their next thought. A pause before the biting remark, wit or wisdom ... definitely was a different time. I grew up in a 70s household of wafting smoke clouds through the breakfast room, on the front porch, or the back deck. Mom never smoked anywhere else in the house though. Mom and her cigarettes. Dad and his cigars. It was a part of my upbringing. Ironically, we three kids never took it up besides a cigar or a joint here and there. Mom would sit at her head of the kitchen table, back towards the kitchen so that she could see the breakfast room in front ...