Coming soon…

That’s right, I have another book coming out soon.

This one is a collection of essays that I wrote about growing up in a small Midwest town in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you like authors like Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, Bob Greene or if you remember the TV show, The Wonder Years, you are going to like this collection.

Here is a sample of what awaits you:

The Cherry Coke comes in a tall, plastic glass that is scratched from months of use; the fries are served in this red and white checked cardboard tray. The fries are greasier than usual, but he doesn’t mind. Soon, they’ll be swimming in a pool of ketchup.

Why is ketchup sometimes spelled catsup? He ponders this as he squeezes out the red sauce from a red bottle. He’s been doing that a lot these days: questioning everything.

He likes the simple things in life, like these red and yellow bottles: red for catsup, yellow for mustard.

He hears the door open and a group of seventh and eighth graders come in. They’ll take over a corner of the room before the nosier L-P freshmen and sophomores arrive. Louie Bianchi, one of the eighth graders walks by his table and steals some of the boy’s French fries. Bianchi’s friends laugh.

Bonnie intervenes before Bianchi can take some more of his fries; she used to baby-sit Louie but he probably doesn’t remember or is embarrassed to admit it. He plops down on a padded chair. The same kind of chair made at Spiller & Spiller where the boy’s mom works the dayshift from 8-5

“You kids want something?” she asks, snapping her gum to punctuate the sentence.

The way she says “kids” puts them in their place, at least for now. She snaps her gum again. Loud enough to sound threatening.

A round of Cokes is ordered. Three orders of fries.

“Hey Jude” ends. There is a grating sound emitting from inside the jukebox as a mechanical arm is lowered to retrieve another record and place it on the turntable.