Ladder to the attic

 He slowly made his way to the room where the magic of his life and memories became stored in a cloud. For over fifty years, that room was his sanctuary, filled with mementos he'd picked up along the way. A snow globe of a small-town Christmas, pictures tacked to the wall that gave him inspiration to write, and a family rocking horse that goes back one hundred years and was eventually passed down to him. His son would take the reins one day and lug it around from house to house, like he had done, because that's what you do with anything handed down to you.

It was a small room in the attic with exposed beams and a pull-down ladder in the laundry room that led up there. He referred to it as his stairway to heaven. He also knew it wouldn't be too long before climbing the steep ladder would be forbidden by his wife of sixty-some years. But for the time being, he made his way up the ladder to his writing room, where rays of daylight poked through the rafters and beams, welcoming him.
The attic held many memories for him. In a corner were a couple of bicycles his now-grown kids had ridden, their laughter ringing in his ears and putting a smile on his face. A red flyer snow sled, a push cart, and snow skis. There were boxes too many to count, mostly labeled with the names of those who had passed on from this life. But also boxes that held Christmas lights, Christmas decorations, grade-school homework, Halloween decorations, and more than one diploma.  He remembers the day he got a railroad set with all the cars and an engine, you put a pill-looking thing in the smokestack, and it blew out white smoke, and a whistle that never grew silent. He closed that box, hoping one day his grandson would find it and cherish it as he had so long ago. There were boxes postmarked between 1941 and 1945, letters of love and promises to come home soon.
Generations of forgotten or misplaced memories he tried to capture with written words. Some boxed up and labeled with his name, hopefully to be found and read when the rays of light sifting through the rafters and beams grow dim, and his stairway to heaven can only be reached with a red rope swinging in a summer breeze, just out of his reach.

Mike 2026                                                                          

Love remembered

 He didn't care if he fell asleep in his chair; the bed they shared for so long was half empty now, and all he could hold onto were memories. His days were just movements he'd learned over time, nothing of any importance, or so he kept telling himself.

He didn't take notice when his neighbor saw him dancing through an open window, his slippers gliding across the parlor floor to music only they could hear.
He didn't care when people said he had lost touch with reality, because when he lost her, reality became etched in stone. A constant reminder of a love that had a beginning but never an end.
He would still watch sunsets from the porch, slowly rocking in the swing he built for her decades ago, with memories of her bare feet rubbing against his work boots, her hand in his as the night creatures woke in harmony.
He didn't care that he was old as each passing second brought him one minute closer to holding her again in his empty arms, dancing to their favorite songs, in slippered feet, and mending his broken heart.

Mike 2026                                                                

Picture perfect

 She sat alone, a look of anticipation on her beautiful face. She checked her watch every few minutes, looking at every opening and closing of the door. A fleeting moment of joy, scanning the crowd for someone she only knew from a picture he sent to her from the front lines. It all began when she answered an ad on the chalkboard at the USO asking for pen pals to write letters to scared and lonely servicemen who wanted desperately to hear from home. Most wanted a picture to keep in the lining of their helmets to look at when the battles grew quiet, so she had one taken last summer with her in a bathing suit, smiling a million-dollar smile. She found out later that the picture was shown to war buddies everywhere, and her face became the face of the United States Army sweethearts.

He knew it was her at first sight as her image was scorched into his head, and although it was wrinkled and mud-stained and had survived countless battles, the lady in that picture was sitting just a few feet away. He watched as she held his picture tightly to her heart as more military came and went, but not the man in the picture. He couldn't wait another second, so he slowly made his way to her table and asked her for a dance. Words wouldn't come to her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and he handed her the picture he'd carried with him for such a long time." " It's really you," she whispered through flowing tears as he held her closer than any picture could ever do.

Mike 2026                                                    

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