Have stories, will travel

At first, I thought they were hulls of sailboats, gleaming white and smooth in the morning sun.  But that couldn’t be right; I was in landlocked northern Alberta.  What were they?  Giant pieces of sculpture? They were laid end-to-end on flat deck railroad cars, just...

‘Act natural’: Hey, isn’t that an oxymoron?

“Just relax and act natural,” she said as she pushed my legs to one side and adjusted my glasses. Relax?  My lips turned up as naturally as that of a plastic mannequin in a store window.   Relax when I’m on the wrong side of the camera?  Relax in the same room with...

The typewriter

It was an Underwood.  Manual.  Gun-metal grey, bulky and probably so heavy that I wouldn’t be able to lift it myself.  It had a ribbon still in place, red on top, black on the bottom.  The keys were black, and something about the curve of their metal supports just...