Pug's Orchard
When business was good, they were generous with their apples
A legacy of giving includes sharing land with neighbors
A woman needs land just like a man does
Already, there are things I know I would change if I could. So much of it is just time. Then, there’s the weather.
For the better part of April and almost all of May, it rained. The trees swayed under cloudbursts like women washing their hair, tossing their heads back in the rinse. Pollen gathered in little pools and then dried yellow in halos on the blacktop. For weeks, I worried over the borrowed plot of land in the field across the road, but there was nothing to do about it — nothing to do but wait. “It’s ok,” Mike Shell reassured me, “it’s still early.” May was nearly spent by the time I got my vegetables in the ground.
Mike and his wife Sheila are my friends, the first I made when — a few years ago — I moved from my studio apartment in the northwest quadrant of Washington, DC, to a three-bedroom row home in Wise, the deep southwest Virginia town where I was raised. On a whim, I stopped into the …
From Mouseketeer to Easyrider
A tale of batshit motorcycle craziness; being one of the most famous kids on earth; meeting Buster Keaton; and finally, blessedly, becoming a hack
Lonely men of the road will inseminate anything with a vagina
‘We’re Americans. Fuck you, deal with it.’
I sat in the Easyriders editor/owner’s “office,” where a sign hanging from the ceiling proclaimed, “THIS IS NOT A SANCTUARY.” A lone employee, Izzy Petty, dressed nice with short coiffed hair and business-like glasses, had met me at the “office” door, the office being a sparse space at the end of a marooned strip mall that had a 7-11 and two abandoned adjoining offices. The third and last door opened to the Easyriders office, which was unidentified. All of this anemic industry on a short dirt road off the main highway that went through Agoura Hills, California, on the other side of a range of hills that separates Agoura and points oceanward from the populated glut of the San Fernando Valley. I immediately knew why Izzy had been hired as we ambled along together: So that “normal” visitors entering the Easyriders den would not be frightened.
There was a Harley in the hallway. That …
Rodeo Champs
Some say 20-year-old rookie bareback rider Rocker Steiner is a punk-ass bitch for cursing
‘screw ’em, they’re stuck with my ass’
My pink Stetson was the cheapest hat in the store
Rodeo has been described by Forbes as America’s “fastest-growing sport.” After a recent Yellowstone-driven burst of popularity, it now draws 43 million people a year, which is larger than what both golf and tennis attract, and is even practiced by supermodel Bella Hadid, who is currently dating a Mexican-American cowboy from Fort Worth, Texas. Rodeo competitions can be watched live or via subscription to the Cowboy Channel, which is essential, since most rodeo fans live in smaller farm and ranch towns, especially out west, where Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA)-sanctioned rodeos are a real-world fixture of local communities, offering cowboys the opportunity to show off their skills.
The sport’s popularity initially peaked back in the nineties, before experiencing a slow decline that paralleled the struggles of rural America. Small communities found it difficult to maintain …
