Daddy’s nachos
In the early 1970s—even in San Antonio, where I lived—Mexican restaurants were not yet to be found on every corner or in every…
Read MoreCategory: Memoir
My day in Haiti
In 1976 my grandmother took me on a cruise aboard M/S Starward of the Norwegian Caribbean Lines. The vessel seems a dinghy compared…
Read More
There was that time when…
…Barbra Streisand asked me to tell her husband she was ready to go. …I noticed Danny De Vito in my living room, and…
Read More
Scarred for life
I’ve heard it said that a scar adds character to a man, perhaps because it implies adventure, danger, a past. I don’t think…
Read More
Two unpleasant Canadians
In 1987, while living in Chicago, I fell in love with Toronto. The first time I visited, my plan was to spend a…
Read More
Mama the Cook
Mama was not a very good cook. She was an inspirational schoolteacher, the kind to whom people sent tear-wrinkled letters of gratitude, years after they left her classroom. She pulled…
Read More
Mississippi eatin’
When I moved to rural Mississippi from downtown Los Angeles, I knew I was in for environmental shifts beyond just the absence of…
Read More