The Front Porch
This year I went to spring training in Florida with my son, which is corny. My son is 18 years old, lives on a ranch on the other side of the country and reads Wittgenstein, and comports himself very often like a grown man. At the same time, he’s not above bringing a baseball mitt to games or trying to catch home run balls during batting practice. Depending on the angle and the time of day, I can look at him and see the young man he might grow into being in his twenties, or I can see the young boy he was when his mother and I split up.
Having worked hard at being a good father, my reward is that I get to plan trips centered around some common subjects of interest, like the Alamo or spring training, to express the enormous love for him that I have carried with me from the day he was born. He was my first-born child, and as such a revelation that blew past any of my expectations about having children, which …
Feist Dogs
Squirrel-hunting phenoms are renowned for breaking wind
You won’t find them at the Kennel Club
America’s all-purpose farm dog, celebrated by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and William Faulkner, was made redundant by pesticides and a creepy urban preference for ‘pure’ bloodlines
Maude showed early that she was a smart dog. She learned that she got a treat when she peed outside. She started asking to go out and doing a fake pee squat. When I figured out what was going on, the treats ended. She stopped the fakery after realizing the jig was up.
I had no idea what kind of dog Maude was. Her very pregnant mother was abandoned near my brother-in-law Bobby’s house in middle Georgia. He was dying of cancer at the time, and there were lots of family, friends, and dogs around. That beagle-looking momma picked Bobby’s house and yard for her litter to enter the world. Maude was named by Bobby a few days before he died, so she was special from the start.
Maude is black, with some white on her nose and chest, and her brindle pattern getting stronger going down her legs. She has a tail curling over her back, which was full of sleek muscle, and a fine set of jaws. Her weight stays around …
Lonesome Townes
Smoking, drinking, and eating saltines on the trail of a Texas music legend
‘He loved his life. He just couldn’t live it.’
Austin wasn’t always a crash pad for tech bros
I knew just how the motel would be: “groovy” in that Austin way; retro but millennial in schemes of pink and orange; perhaps a neon sign that spelled in cursive, “Y’all Means All!” or “In Willie We Trust.” Nevertheless, I’d found a room for half the going rate, and I’m hardly in the business of turning down a deal. Upon my near-midnight arrival, the lobby’s yawning concierge handed me a key of the sort that has the mailing address printed on the keychain, and written on the flip side: “SO CLOSE YET SO FAR OUT.”
“And will you need to park your vehicle?” she asked.
“Yes — well, it’s not mine,” I witnessed myself ramble from a mortified remove. “I’m kind of borrowing my ex’s car. I mean, it’s a long story.”
“Oh... ” said the young lady, unenthused. “I just need the license plate.”
Lying supine on the queen bed with my shoes on moments later, it struck me that it must’ve been a year since I …
