My new novel NO CHOICE coming soon!

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NO CHOICE

Just as her medical career is reaching its zenith, superstitious janitor Harriet Spilman is losing everything. Her common law husband is cheating with her boss’s wife. Her boss is losing his esteemed surgical clinic to a witch’s brew of drugs and alcohol, while his nymphomaniacal wife is on a mission to achieve her very first orgasm with Harriet’s Mandingo. As a Ken-and-Barbie pair of con artists attempt to extort the boss and his wife out of their life insurance payouts, a self-loathing intersex Native American repo man interferes with Harriet’s plans, inadvertently fulfilling his father’s prophecy when he falls in love with her. Will Harriet’s voodoo save the day? Or is it just a bunch of bullshit?

Taylor E-2 Cub

Taylor E-2 Cub

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My dad and his best friend (who became my Uncle JB) “borrowed” (kinda stole) this airplane when they were around 15 years old. It was owned by Wes Hillman, who kept it in a barn in Vinton, Virginia that is now the Southampton neighborhood. They had taken a few “lessons” (glorified rides) from Wes and knew Wes was going to be away for the day. They decided to sneak it out of the barn and just taxi it around on the ground but not fly it. They jumped out of the hayloft a few times to get their nerve up. Then one of them got into the plane while the other spun the prop to start it. Then the prop man jumped into the plane once it was started. The taxiing around plan was dropped when they taxied it too fast and had no choice but to take off. People saw the plane flying around (an unusual occurrence circa 1941) and mentioned to Wes that they had seen him flying. Wes put two and two together and confronted my dad and JB, who confessed. Then Wes forgave them and taught them both to fly. 

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Here is the entry, backdated in my dad’s first log book, written after Wes had confronted them and forgiven them. June 6, 1941. My dad had turned 15 one month before. He had logged 8 hours and 48 minutes riding in planes. It took about a month for Wes to get over it and let the two boys hang out with him again.

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This is the first page of my dad’s log book. He was 13 years old when he took his first airplane ride in 1939.

The Dixie Drive-In Movie Theater in Vinton, Virginia

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I remember sneaking into the back of the Dixie one night when I was around 14 years old. A few of us boys slept out in sleeping bags in the back yard and snuck away in the dead of night (probably around 10 p.m.) a few minutes after our parents turned out the lights. There was a double feature playing, and we knew the second movie was rated R, which meant nudity. The movie starred Richard Thomas, the dude who played John Boy Walton on tv, which was really weird, because John Boy was such a pure and innocent lad. It was an absolutely horrible movie, but we were determined to sweat it out. We sat back in the bushes, hiding from the old dude that owned the drive-in. He would patrol the perimeter and raise hell when he found kids sneaking in. It took forever for the scene that made the movie into an R to show up, but finally near the end, there were about three seconds of titty projected on that old screen in the climactic scene. Actually I don’t remember if it was the dramatic climax, but it was the visual climax for sure.