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illustration Inktober memories television

Festering Boil

I remember watching the Addams Family as a kid but found myself preferring the Munsters. I never thought about why I found the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky Addamses less appealing but I think it boiled down to context. The Munsters main characters were caricatured versions of familiar monsters – frankenstein, his bride and dracula – where the Addamses were […]

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fall Halloween holidays illustration Inktober memories

Trick or… Treat?

I remember trick-or-treating as a kid and hoping like heck that I wouldn’t get peanut butter taffy. It was the Tootsie Roll of 1981.

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illustration Inktober memories

Grandpa

Al Lewis’ Grandpa was one of the most beloved characters from the Munsters. To really play up that elderly look the makeup artists really exaggerated the runaway eyebrows and sideburns/ear hair and seldom had grandpa’s fangs in.

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illustration Inktober memories

American Gothic

I remember the first time I read The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. It was one of the only times I can recall reading poetry that was so macabre. I can still hear Mr. Theilen’s voice reading Annabel Lee emphatically to our seventh grade English class. As a freshman, I uncovered The Cask of Amantillado […]

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illustration Inktober inspiration memories teaching

Magister

Once in a while I reminisce about my school days and think about those teachers in my life who most inspired me to learn. Ed Axtmann was one such teacher. His deep baritone, rumbled along with a hint of old country German as he recited countless verb conjugations in Latin. He was an animated presence, often […]

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illustration Inktober memories

Citizens Band

Long before we had to worry about drivers texting, there were a few trading trucker slang via the ‘CB’. Growing up, we had an old Chevy Sheyenne equipped with this trendy technology but the novelty didn’t seem to last very long. Movies and shows like ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ made this way of being able to communicate while driving […]

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memories money

Paper Route

One of my first paying gigs as a kid was delivering the local paper. For maybe a year or two I shared this responsibility with my older sister and younger brother. I still remember the delivery truck dropping our route’s stack of newspapers at our doorstep before sunrise. From there we rapidly tuck-rolled each paper […]

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memories summer travel vacation

Leaving Cali

Our last day in California was relatively light with activity. In the morning we visited Ocean World where we learned about some of the creatures that inhabit the waters of Crescent Beach. Suddenly the idea of picking up a sea star or touching a sea anemone didn’t seem so scary to the boys. In fact, […]

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birthdays celebrations memories

Birthday Cake

Today my beautiful wife celebrates her sometieth birthday! At her request (and her health) she asked me not to bake her a cake, so I thought I would render her one that she would remember from her golden birthday! With three girls in her family the ingenious girl cake made frequent appearances. The mechanics are […]

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memories observations

Garage Sales

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Such is the premise behind the garage or rummage sale. It’s not a mystery that most sales occur in the spring or fall which happens to coincide with the thorough cleansing of households everywhere. In some cases, you could slip a ‘b’ into the middle of the word […]