The farm revisited

 I've always enjoyed walking through fields of wildflowers. Letting the stems glide through my fingers and the scents filling my nose with a smell so slight but one that stays with me as I walk further into the meadow.

It's quiet here except for the concert of birds and the chirping of a happy frog on the edge of a hidden pond. My mind races back in time to when this beautiful place became a mecca of rock 'n' roll, and free spirits gathered in huge numbers, all a part of history now but never to be forgotten.

So many decades later, the farm has been reborn, with seemingly endless rows of crops and vast meadows I now walk through. The mud has dried up, and the huge stage is gone, and farmers' great-grandkids search with metal detectors for anything left behind and forgotten over time.

Those days of expression live on with others like me, as cars full of looky-loos stop to take pictures of the farm dressed in tie-died shirts bought at Walmart. One teen ran up to me and asked for a picture. Are you a real hippy? She asked. I removed a love bracelet and handed it to her as she placed it around her wrist and ran back to her group, claiming she had seen the real thing.

Soon, the light of the sun will say goodnight, and the people will go home. As for me, I'll hang around in the meadow and catch fireflies, putting them in mason jars that will give me light to read by as I write a song about longing to live right here in a meadow where my ashes will scatter across fields of wildflowers where birds sing the same soothing songs and fireflies guide me through the darkness.

Mike 2026                                                            

Moonshine express

 As a young boy, I was allowed to go exploring in the woods that surrounded our house. And in no way was I to go down the steep inclines where many a moonshiner crashed and left his car or truck to rust for all eternity.I followed the rules until I turned 16 and decided I was old enough to venture down the hillside, reaching the first car that seemed to be the remains of a 1932 Ford three-window coupe. The trunk was gone, but dozens of glass jars were left behind, some amazingly still intact, wrapped in heavy tarps that could have prevented them from breaking. I dared myself to open a jar and taste the moonshine that some say could fuel a car, as it was just that strong, but I wasn't sure if the shine was worth a potential bout of vomiting or worse. So I took one jar and put it in my backpack and continued on down the revine to find more treasure.

The next thing I came across was a police car that seemed to be from the same era as the Ford coupe. It was lying on its side with faded words I could barely make out, but my guess was that it said police, and that's it. I looked under the hood and found a rusty siren. I added to the jar, telling myself I'd get it working again and put it on my bicycle to scare everybody around me. I found an old wooden Billy club and wondered how many moonshiners felt its wrath after being stopped as the cops smashed their shine and carried them off to the county jail.

The day was wearing down when I abruptly stopped smelling burning wood and a sickening odor of corn mash, and god knows what else. I heard men's voices laughing and took shelter a few yards away, where I could see what was going on. I saw a copper vat with lines running through it. A gruffy-looking man stirred the concoction, tasted it, then jumped up and down as the shine burned its way down his throat. Yes, sir, I believe it's another good batch," he said. Let's get to bottling it and get it to town.

I'd always heard a good moonshiner would come up with secret ways to transport the shine, like taking out the floorboards of a truck and filling the truck with hay or straw or filling a false gas tank with shine. But let's face it, everything depended on the driver. Someone who started driving about ten years old, learning the curves and slopes of the mountain roads that he would eventually master, driving at speeds that would be deadly if he crashed. I watched from afar as they loaded the truck and the teenage boy sped off to make the deadline in town, where a buyer waited to receive his cases of shine.

It was now 1989, and most counties had lifted the dry county label long ago, allowing hard liquor to be sold but not shine. That had to be snuck in with souped-up cars and drivers with some extra-large balls. Unlike the 1930s, when shine cost two dollars a jar, the going price today for a single jar is twenty-five dollars a good reason to keep on shining.And to this day, bar owners keep a supply of shine behind the counter for those country boys to prove their manhood or a city slicker trying to win a bet with his buddies, which usually ended with projectile vomiting. Shine is not for everybody, but for many, it's etched into their heritage, with memories of rusted old cars and trucks scattered along the mountain roads and a ten-year-old behind the wheel.

Mike 2026                                                         

Tabletops to laptops

 He sat at the bar,  first stool from the left, just like he's done for fifty-some years. His old man owned the place up until his death at sixty-seven from a bad stroke. He can still remember the exact spot he fell to the floor, and every time he goes behind the bar, he steps over nothing but sees his old man lying there plain as day. He had left the joint to his wife, who ran things the best she could but hated every minute, so he took the place over, and the decades that followed became a place of a thousand stories, each its own best seller and fuel for his own writing that one day would be published, or so he could only imagine.

There was a table in a corner where all the goings on could be seen, a perfect place to watch and listen as another story was told. The four men at that table came in every day unless one got sick or had to go out of town for one reason or another. They grew older together, at that table, a part of each other's lives, if you could call it a life. They all had notebooks where they'd write down a particularly good story, thinking one day they'd have enough material to put together a book. They even named their possible book The Tales of Four Drunks.
Life does go full circle; that was evident with a younger crowd coming in to have some drinks in the dimly lit old place, where craftsmanship could be seen everywhere you looked, and the chance to see the old timers sitting where they always sat before one died and then another until only two chairs were left. The once somewhat quiet bar now catered to the younger crowd, not because they were wanted there, but because their money was a good enough reason to put up with the noise that drowned out the old jukebox playing songs their grandparents listened to. Taking a break, he would sit at the corner table with his two lifelong friends, trying to hear a story, but there were no stories, just noise and power drinking that often found two banty roosters pretending they could fight, which ended when he intervened and broke it up.
Then one day, he hung a closed sign on the old bar for reasons of his own. He had had enough noise, rudeness, and disrespect that repeated itself daily. He spent the next few weeks restoring the bar to its original state while adding several tables. There were a few bottles of his best booze and a keg of beer poured with the same tap his dad and he used. But the biggest change was the availability of desktop computers for anyone to use to write their stories. Little did he know at the time that he had opened a place where old-timers, along with some younger writers, began telling life stories and memories that spanned almost a hundred years. The click of fingers on keys replaced the old jukebox, but it remained where it had always been, only silent and unplugged.
The place was renamed to A Place to Write. And writers came from everywhere to capture the look and smells of a dimly lit bar transformed into a place where every table was full, as was the bartop, where, not long ago, mugs of beer were slid across to a waiting customer. He did write his book, and it sold a million copies. The title, Tabletops to laptops with respect.

Mike 2026                                         

Getting results

 I took my son fishing when he was old enough to hold a pole. Down by the river in a spot I've been fishing for a long time. There were good-sized rocks all around us, and being a kid, he liked to explore everything around him. I noticed him getting bored with just standing there in one spot and tuning out whatever it was I was talking to him about, so I turned him loose, and off he went. A little while later, he came up to me holding a stick he had found and asked if he could make his own fishing pole. Why not, I thought to myself, he didn't know I spent a small fortune buying him the best rod and reel available. He took a spool of fishing line and wrapped it around his stick, then tied on a hook and a bobber. He baited the hook and tossed his line about ten feet offshore, then jammed the stick between two rocks, and once satisfied, he wandered off again.

Alone with my thoughts, I glanced beside me and noticed I didn't see his bobber, and the line was taught. I yelled for him to come check his line, and as he unwedged the stick and gave it a good tug, a good-sized trout showed itself. He held on tight as he walked backward until the fish was on shore, and he wore a smile that's forever etched in my mind and my heart. I suppose there is a moral to this story that it doesn't matter what you use to get results as long as you have fun getting them.

Mike 2026                                                            

Waiting for Mom

 We waited for our mom to get home from the city, but she didn't come. The snow was falling, and the cold seeped through us as we watched the school bus driver try to keep the bus on the slippery road. She asked us if we'd be okay, and we assured her our mom would be here soon. My sister was just a couple of years older than me, and I looked to her to get us inside, away from the now-blizzard conditions. But the doors were locked, and we didn't have a key. I guessed that Mom knew she'd be home in time to meet the school bus, but we thought she'd been stranded in the city as the snow kept coming.

There was a corner store named Ben's Grocery just under the railroad bridge, and my sister said we should walk there and ask to use the phone to call our dad. She produced a small piece of paper with his work number, which she kept tucked into her boots as we trudged through what felt like an eternity before reaching the store.

The frozen bell on the door clanked rather than rang as we entered the store, as Ben got off his stool behind the counter and hurried over to us, grabbing a couple of blankets off the shelf, giving each of us some welcome warmth. Ben's wife came downstairs and, seeing us, sprang into action, climbing the steps to her kitchen and putting the kettle on to make us some hot cocoa. We told them that our mom hadn't come back from the city, and the school bus dropped us off in front of our house, leaving us stranded. My sister remembered the piece of paper and asked to use their phone to call our dad, but Ben told us the lines were down and the phone didn't work. He said we were better off to just wait there until the blizzard was over, and we could only hope our mom would turn up.

Then the bell clanked, and the door opened, and my sister and I stared at the tall man with a long coat covered in snow. He had to duck down to get inside and introduced himself as our uncle Larry. Our mom's brother, whom we'd heard about over the years but never met. He told us our mom called him from the city where the phones worked and asked him to go to our house and get us until she could get home. It seemed that Uncle Larry was just passing through for a couple of days, and she knew he'd be at the neighborhood bar he had always frequented when he was passing through. Thankfully, he was there.

Our parents had always told us to never go anywhere with a stranger, and he was just that, a stranger. Ben and his wife didn't know what to do or say to the tall stranger, except maybe that the kids could stay there and wait for their mom. Uncle Larry agreed and offered us some candy, but our parents always told us to never take candy from a stranger. He tried to make conversation, but we remained silent because our parents had taught us never to talk to strangers. Then, after what felt like a lifetime, our mom came through the door, hugging both of us so tightly we could barely breathe. She hugged Uncle Larry, and when he told her he had tried to get us to go with him, they refused because of everything they had been taught.

Later on, back in our warm home, Dad finally made it home, and we all had dinner together, including Uncle Larry, who, it was said, never grew tired of telling the story about my sister and me and a frigid day waiting for our mom.

Mike 2026                                                           

Missing Mom

 My mom would soothe me back to sleep after a nightmare. She would stroke my hair and sing a lullaby, softly, the one her mom sang to her. I remember how her face looked and imagined she was wishing it was her and not me with the nightmares.

I remember her telling me my school drawing of our family was as good as she had ever seen and sticking it to the fridge with a magnet from someplace we went on vacation.
I remember standing on my tiptoes, looking over the counter as she made bread, and she surprised me by putting some flour on the tip of my nose. Then there was the special treat she made for me with leftover dough. She would roll a ball, then flatten the middle, fill it with grape jelly, and bake it to a golden brown.
I remember her chasing me around the house with the vacuum cleaner, laughing all the while as I desperately tried to outrun her. I remember sitting on the front porch as she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and all I could think of was being her son.
She's been gone six years now, and all I have left are some pictures and a heart full of memories. But she's close by, and I relive as many moments as I can to see me through another day without her.

Mike 2026                                                            

Laughter and tears

 I feel her presence almost daily. I see her smile and hear her endless bouts of laughter. I picture how she must look as I fight time and wonder if she will look the same as I remember. My memories have brought me back to forgotten times and places we once shared when we were young and so much in love. And for that I'm grateful.

I feel her presence when a soft wind blows, and her perfume fills the moment, if only briefly. I feel her with me as I say goodnight to an empty space beside me, and I shed tears until sleep eventually comes.
I feel her presence in simple things like a monarch butterfly resting on a branch of the tree I planted for her on her 30th birthday. Or a songbird singing a song when she hushed me so she didn't miss a note. She would clap at the end of its song, laughing that laugh I grew to love and cherish.
I feel her presence everywhere I look, every place we ever went, and every second spent with her for the time we had together. There is such a thing as falling in love at first sight because we did just that. Two hearts beating as one until two became one, along with the memories of laughter and tears.

Mike 2026