Author: Tom Darby

Grief is a strange teacher. It makes the ordinary sound extraordinary—the slam of a cupboard feels like an earthquake, the hum of a refrigerator sounds like thunder, and the silence of an empty house can feel heavier than a hundred voices. Loss strips away what doesn’t matter, leaving you with only one question: What am I standing on?

For one widow, the answer comes clear and steady, even through her tears: I am standing by the cross. I am standing near Jesus. I am standing on His promises.

That kind of faith doesn’t happen by accident. It’s forged in fire, built in quiet moments of prayer, and tested in the nights when sleep won’t come. Grief tries to knock you flat, but faith lifts you to your feet—even if your knees still shake.

The world will always try to create labels, movements, distractions, and noise. But none of those can hold the weight of a broken heart.

Only Jesus can.

Politics won’t comfort you in the middle of the night. Slogans won’t whisper peace when the tears start falling.

Only the promises of God can do that.

And that’s the lesson tucked inside this moment: faith is the Rock beneath our feet. Everything else—money, success, recognition, opinions—is sand. When the storms hit, only the cross stands unshaken.

There’s a quiet beauty in realizing that legacies are not headlines or achievements but in faith lived out, day after day. A person may leave this earth, but their faith points the way forward for those still here. Their trust in Jesus becomes the anchor for a family, a reminder that peace ain’t found in what we build but in who we believe.

If you haven’t called out to your Heavenly Father yet, consider this your sign. Not a neon billboard, not a thunderclap from the sky—just the clear, steady testimony of one who has walked through loss and still says: My hope is in Jesus, and He is enough.

And maybe that’s the invitation you need today. To step back from the noise. To take a breath. To remember that what we stand on matters most when the ground shakes.

Because one day, for all of us, the noise will fade and the silence will come. And when it does, may we be found standing firm—not on our own strength, not on shifting sands, but on the Rock that never moves.

Jesus.

That’s the legacy. That’s the promise. That’s the peace.

Can I tell you what a blessing it is to have a friend like Dave Angell? And before you think I’m being cute about his last name—no, it’s not a radio gimmick.

It’s the real deal. Angell.

The first time I heard Dave’s voice float out of a speaker, it was sometime around 1970 or ’71 on KPOD in Crescent City. He had just come home from serving in South Korea, fresh out of the Army, and slid right behind a microphone as if he had been born there. He had that smoothness that made you believe in radio again, the kind of sound that could convince you a foggy morning was something to look forward to.

Fast forward half a century. These days, Dave lives in Washington state, which is already proof that the man is living right. The other evening, I asked him if he had any of his old “airchecks”—those scoped tape recordings radio folks used to make to prove they weren’t just babbling into the void. He said he’d have to dig around and see.

The next day, I got a message from him. Not with a dusty old tape, but with an offer, “Hey, how about I cut you a few one-line promos for your show?”

Now, let me tell you—after nearly fifty years in this racket, I’ve never had anyone do that for me. Never.

Not one personalized intro, not a single “Ladies and gentlemen, here’s Tom Darby!” Nothing.

Just me, a microphone, and the faint hope that someone was listening between their toast and coffee. So when Dave offered, I said yes faster than a hungry kid grabbing the last donut hole.

The following day, eleven—count ’em, eleven—fresh, professional promos from Dave Angel land in my lap. And friends, he didn’t just do them.

He delivered. They are sharp, funny, smooth, and just the right mix of polish and warmth.

Now, I don’t mind telling you: the elder statesman that I am, I suddenly felt like a little boy on Christmas morning. There I was, sitting at my desk, grinning like a fool, playing them over and over again.

“This is Tom Darby, and you’re listening to…” click, rewind, play again. Each time, it was like hearing my name sung by a brass band with just a touch of swing.

Silly? Sure. But you know what? Joy doesn’t need a permission slip. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, carried in the voice of an old friend.

It got me thinking about how rare it is to find people who not only remember you but also go out of their way to add a little shine to your day. Dave didn’t have to do that.

He could’ve sat outside looking up at the trees, watching the the clouds, sipping something cold. Instead, he gave me a gift I didn’t even know I’d been missing all these years: the feeling that what I do matters enough to deserve an introduction.

And maybe that’s the whole point. We spend so much of our lives trying to sound important, trying to prove our worth, when sometimes all it takes is a friend with the right words at the right time to remind us we already are.

So yes, it’s a blessing to have a friend named Dave Angell. Not because of the last name, though it’s fitting. But because he’s proof that kindness never goes out of style, that generosity is louder than ego, and that sometimes the simplest gesture—like saying your name with care—can make you feel ten feet tall.

If you’ve got a friend like that, hang on tight, and if you don’t, keep your ears open. You never know when an Angell might be on the air.

I just spent three days at a multi-class reunion, which, for the record, is about two days too long for any sane person, so I was well within my element. Don’t get me wrong—there’s something sweet about gathering with folks you’ve known since your hair had color and your knees and back bent without complaint.

But there’s also something sobering about it. You find yourself walking into the banquet hall with one set of memories and walking out with an entirely different reality.

Some of the faces I knew, some I had forgotten, and some—well, let’s say they’d forgotten me on purpose years ago, which is fair enough. We all carry our own little lists.

What I saw was a mix of broken spirits and lost souls, people who had that fire in their eyes but now stare at the floor tiles as if they’re trying to remember if they paid the electric bill. It was a strange sight, like watching kids you grew up with trying to squeeze back into their letterman jackets while the jackets had other plans.

We came of age under the long shadows of the Great Depression. Our parents and grandparents carried lean times in their bones, and they passed down those lessons whether we wanted them or not.

Waste nothing. Save everything. Mend what you can, pray for the rest.

We grew up that way, and it shaped us—made us tough, sometimes too tough. We plowed forward, built families, worked hard, and built little kingdoms of brick, sweat, and hope.

Now, standing in that reunion hall, it hit me like the smell of Aqua Net at a high school dance—we’re slowly watching those kingdoms crack. Health problems, broken marriages, estranged kids, and bank accounts that don’t stretch like they used to.

We’re still here, but some of us are just hanging on by a frayed shoelace. A lot of the people I spoke to were trying to resurrect their younger selves—laughing too loudly, bragging about old touchdowns, or wearing outfits that must’ve gotten rescued from 1979.

But the fatigue of spirit showed in their eyes, couldn’t be hidden. Behind every forced smile was the whisper of, “What in the hell went wrong?”

And let me tell you, I understand that whisper. Some of us turn to God, some to the bottle, some to silence.

Even the faithful—those who praise Jesus every morning—sometimes feel like they’re sitting too close to the flames of Hell anyway. It’s not a lack of belief, but the weight of years pressing down like a stack of unpaid bills.

The hardest part? Many of the old friends I spoke with already seemed to be rehearsing their final lines.

They know they’ve got fewer years ahead than behind, and they wear that truth like a heavy coat in July. No one said it outright, but I could feel it in the way conversations trailed off, or how people lingered in goodbyes a little too long.

There’s no tidy bow to wrap this up. No grand life lesson to tack on the end like a Hallmark card.

Sometimes the truth sits there—raw, stubborn, and undeniable. These are the closing chapters of our lives, and no amount of hair dye, laughter, or karaoke is going to turn back the pages.

If we can’t change the ending, maybe we can change how we play out our last scenes. We can choose to be kind when sarcasm would be easier, reach for gratitude, even if it feels like trying to hug a cactus, laugh at our own brokenness—because honestly, if you can’t laugh at yourself when you’re standing in a room full of bifocals and hip replacements, when can you?

So yes, I saw broken people at that reunion, but I also saw survivors. People who’ve carried scars, shouldered burdens, and still showed up for three days of awkward small talk and questionable prime rib and buffet chicken, and maybe that’s enough.

Because sometimes survival itself is the victory, even if it doesn’t look pretty.

It seems the Del Norte Triplicate is about to become just another ghost along Highway 101, like the abandoned motels with their faded neon and the gas stations where weeds push up through cracked pavement. The Wednesday, September 17 edition will be the last, and with it goes a voice that has been chattering in Crescent City kitchens, coffee shops, and barbershops for as long as anyone can remember.

I can already hear someone saying, “Well, I get my news online now anyway.”

Sure, you do. You can tap your phone and scroll endlessly, your thumb flicking faster than your brain can keep up.

But that’s not the same thing as reaching into your mailbox, pulling out a folded-up paper still smelling faintly of ink, and spreading it across the table with your toast and coffee. There’s a ritual to it, and rituals are how communities hold themselves together.

The Del Norte Triplicate wasn’t just newsprint—it was a scrapbook for the county. It was the Little League scores, the city council bickering, the high school honor roll, and the obituary for old Mr. So-and-So, who fixed shoes downtown for forty years.

You might not have liked the editorials, and you might’ve muttered something unrepeatable when your neighbor’s kid got his picture on the front page for catching a fish while yours got squat. But you read it. And reading it meant you were part of something.

When a paper folds, it’s not just a business decision—though the folks at Country Media Inc. will remind you that it very much is one.

They bought the Triplicate out of bankruptcy in 2019, tried to make a go of it, and now they’re moving on, like so many others. They’ll keep publishing the Curry Coastal Pilot across the border in Brookings, and I suppose that’s something.

But Crescent City, Del Norte County—this is home turf. Losing a paper here feels personal.

My mother used to clip out recipes from the Triplicate. My father read the classifieds like they were scripture, just in case someone was selling an old boat he didn’t need but absolutely had to look at.

I even made it into the sports section once or twice in high school. These are silly little things, maybe, but silly little things add up to a life, and to a community.

A refund for your unused subscription is nice—if you had more than ten bucks’ worth left, that is—but nobody ever subscribed to the Triplicate for the math. They subscribed because they wanted to know if the county fair was still happening, or when the tide would be low enough for clamming, or which teenager had just signed with the Marines. And the truth is, we need those connections more than ever, not less.

So what now? Well, maybe we can tell more stories ourselves.

Perhaps we should take the time to actually sit down with our neighbors, hear what’s happening in their lives, instead of waiting for it to appear in print. Maybe some enterprising soul will start a scrappy online newsletter or a one-page gazette. The end of a paper doesn’t mean the end of community—it just means the work of keeping it alive gets handed back to us.

Still, I’ll miss the Triplicate. I’ll miss the way it showed up online like clockwork, even when the world didn’t make sense. I’ll miss the odd comfort of knowing that someone, somewhere, was paying attention and trying to get the story down before it slipped away.

Because in the end, a local newspaper isn’t just about news. It’s about memory, and memory, once lost, is hard to get back.

So here’s to the Triplicate—may its pages yellow slowly, and may its stories linger longer than the ink.

Mary and I took Buddy, our four-legged shadow, to the south end of DeMartin Beach in Klamath the other day. She found her perch on a bleached-out driftwood log.

She settled in with that air of calm patience women often have when watching their husbands try something foolish. I, of course, was the fool.

I wanted to introduce Buddy to the waves. He’s never been a beach dog. He likes grass, fences, and squirrels with poor survival instincts, but the ocean? That’s another beast.

He trotted behind me with ears forward and tail cautiously wagging—until the waves started their pounding. That sound stopped him cold.

The ocean thundered against the gray sand, rolled back with a hiss, then came in harder. Buddy planted his feet, gave me a look that said, “Nope, you’re on your own, Pops,” and retreated to stand closer to Mary.

So much for our “brave explorer.”

I went on by myself, wandering around the point toward False Klamath Beach. That familiar walk—one I’d made countless times as a boy—was different now.

There was no rock-hopping, no time wasted pretending to discover some wild new land. Instead, I trudged, measured, and slowly. While my knees complained, and my back had its say, I found myself looking at things I once ignored.

That’s when I came across what remained of a sea lion, long gone to time and tide. It lay half-buried among the rocks, reduced to hide and bone.

A somber sight, really—a reminder that the ocean can give life, and just as easily take it back. Not far away, the bleached bones of a couple of birds lay scattered between driftwood pieces.

The shoreline told of endings. It seemed mine, too.

I bent down, stiffly, to pick up two small rocks from the point. A habit from childhood, back when every walk along these shores was a treasure hunt. One rock was smooth and round, the other jagged and rough—like the ocean was telling me, “Take your pick, son, life comes both ways.”

By the time I shuffled back to Mary and Buddy, the sadness had settled in. Not the sharp kind, but the slow, weighty kind that sneaks up when you realize you’ve outlived the boy who once ran across these same sands without a thought of time.

Mary gave me that look—soft, steady—like she already knew what was on my mind. Buddy wagged his tail as if to say, “Glad you’re back, we were worried you’d try something heroic.”

This morning, writing it all down, I can admit it–age has caught me flat-footed. My body doesn’t keep up with my memories anymore, and that’s hard.

The beach I once conquered now humbles me. The child who once lived in my skin is still shouting “Let’s go!” but the old man in me has learned to whisper “Not so fast.”

Still, I don’t want to leave this sounding like a funeral for adventure. There’s humor in it, too. Watching Buddy—the mighty protector—tremble at the sight of foamy surf was worth the price of admission.

And Mary, sitting there as if she were watching a live play titled Old Fool Versus the Pacific, reminded me that growing old doesn’t mean losing your audience. I heard her laugh over the roar of the waves as I quickly high-stepped sideways to avoid getting my sneakers wet, as a rogue wave made haste beyond the darker, damp gray sand I was hugging.

Maybe I’ll never walk around that point again, but at least the shoreline isn’t only out there anymore, it’s inside me. Every walk I ever took, every stone I ever pocketed, every tide I ever raced live on in memory, even if the legs are less willing.

The trick, I think, is learning to enjoy the driftwood seat as much as the scramble over rocks. To laugh when your dog refuses to budge.

To take the small rocks home, place them on your desk, and let them remind you that though the body ages, the adventures don’t vanish—they change pace. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, it allows you to sit beside someone you love, with a cowardly dog and an ocean, and call it a good day.

I’ve lost a little more faith in humanity. That seems to happen in tiny spoonfuls, like someone sneaking up behind me with a teaspoon and dipping into my heart when I’m not looking. It doesn’t make a big hole all at once, but soon you notice the pile of teaspoons missing.

It was nothing dramatic—no wars, no scandals, no lightning bolt from the heavens, just people. Regular people forgetting they were regular. You know the type—walking around as if the sun comes up in the morning only because they signed off on it.

Now, my mom and dad raised me on some simple truths. The kind you can stitch on a pillow if you’re crafty. “We all put our pants on the same way, one leg at a time.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried it the other way—both legs at once—and it doesn’t work. You fall flat on your face and feel silly, which is, come to think of it, a good reminder of what pride usually does to people.

Mom and Dad also told me something else: “More money doesn’t make you a better person.”

And if you’ve lived long enough, you know how right they were. I’ve seen a man with a shiny new car honk his horn at a little old lady in a crosswalk. I’ve also seen a fellow with a beat-up pickup truck stop to help a stranger push a stalled vehicle off the road.

The trouble is, somewhere along the line, folks forget that a title or a bank account doesn’t mean squat. You can be a CEO or a janitor, but when you cut your finger, the blood looks the same shade of red.

When your time is up, no amount of zeroes in your ledger buys you another day. Death has no discrimination, and life shouldn’t either.

That’s the part that gets me. We’re all just travelers passing through.

None of us gets to stay. And yet, some people act as if they own the road and everyone else is just in the way.

Here’s how I see it: we are all here to serve. Not to serve ourselves, but each other.

And it doesn’t have to be grand. Holding a door, listening without interrupting, giving someone the benefit of the doubt—these are little kindnesses, but they stack up taller than the grandest house money can build.

So why the power trips? Why the swollen egos, the puffed-out chests, the insistence that my title makes me better than you?

Friend, your oversized ego won’t fit in a coffin, and your job title won’t be on your tombstone. All that survives you is the way you treated people.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather get remembered as kind than as rich, humble than significant. And I think deep down, even the ones riding high on their own fumes want that too, but they forget.

So, I’ll try not to lose all my faith in humanity. Maybe just a teaspoon here and there. Because for every arrogant soul who thinks the world revolves around them, I’ve met ten quiet, ordinary folks who remind me why it doesn’t.

And tomorrow morning, we’ll all do the same thing—stick one leg, then the other, into our pants. Same as always. And perhaps that thought will bring us all back down to where we belong.

Being kind and humble is the only uniform we all look good in.

Well, it finally happened. At this weekend’s Del Norte High multi-class reunion, after years of working hard at being a professional underachiever with a flair for comic timing, I was handed a most singular honor a human being can receive–The Golden Banana Slug Award.

Now, I know what you’re thinking—why me? Why not the kid who actually went on to cure something, or the one who became mayor of a small town, or even the gal who can still fit into her cheerleading uniform without threatening public safety?

I’ll tell you why–persistence. The banana slug doesn’t sprint.

It doesn’t soar. It doesn’t even crawl with any real sense of urgency.

But it never quits. And apparently, that’s been my life story in one gooey nutshell.

When they called my name, I thought it was a joke. Surely, they’d meant to say “Best Hair,” or maybe “Most Likely to Still Owe Someone a Pencil from 1978.”

But no, they meant me, and as they handed me this golden, glistening slug—paint still tacky in a few spots—I realized something important. It wasn’t just a gag award; it was recognition. Recognition for the trail I’ve left behind–the naps taken during algebra, the questionable fire hazard during chemistry lab, the infamous detention conga line that’s still whispered about in certain circles of the faculty lounge.

Let’s face it–some folks race through life, collecting trophies and promotions. Me? I oozed along, occasionally sideways, often sticky, but always moving forward. And here’s the kicker–I had fun doing it.

The award itself is a sight to behold. Imagine a garden slug dressed for the Oscars, dipped in metallic spray paint from Ace Hardware, and mounted on a block of wood that once served as shop class scrap. I held it up high like it was the Stanley Cup, though I admit I was careful—didn’t want to smear my reunion program with that suspicious shine.

And the crowd? They cheered, clapped, and even whistled. One guy sneezed, but I’ll take it as enthusiasm. For a brief, shining moment, I wasn’t just Tom from the class of whenever—I was The Slug.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but I may have leaned into the role a bit. I gave an acceptance speech about slow progress being better than no progress at all. About how leaving a trail isn’t always about where you’re going, but about what you leave behind.

“Who needs to be inducted into the Del Norte High School Hall of Fame, when I have this?” And yes, I ended with, “The slug life chose me.”

The applause was louder than I deserved, but I’ll take it.

The truth is, these reunions aren’t really about who became what. They’re about seeing old friends, remembering who we were, and laughing at the fact that we somehow survived the haircuts, the homework, and the heartbreaks of our teenage years. And if a golden slug helps us laugh together, well, so much the better.

I’ll tell you this much–I’d display that award proudly. Not on a table—it’d clash with Mary’s décor—but maybe on my desk, next to my computer, because at the end of the day, the Golden Banana Slug isn’t just about me.

It’s about all of us who’ve moved through life at our own pace, sometimes slow, sometimes messy, but always leaving a little something behind that sticks. So here’s to the class reunion, to old friends and new laughs, and to the humble slug who reminds us that speed isn’t everything.

Sometimes, it’s the slow, steady, and slightly slimy path that leads to the best stories. And if you don’t believe me—well, I’ve got the picture to prove it, because in the end, there is only one award, and it needs recycling the next time it gets handed out.

Mary and I drove into the Klamath Glen on what I called a “sightseeing tour,” but she would later describe it as a white-knuckle expedition sponsored by yours truly. Now, if you’ve ever driven over the old levee, you know it rises just enough to give you a sense that gravity has gone on holiday, and then it drops off the other side like the chute on a carnival ride.

Mary does not do carnival rides. The rise alone had her pressing her hands flat on the dashboard like she was about to hold the car together through sheer willpower.

But when we crested and started our descent, she sucked in a breath so hard it came out as a squeak. Not a scream, not a gasp, but a squeak.

Imagine a mouse caught in a church pew, trying not to be noticed. That was Mary.

I laughed, which, judging by the glare I received, was not the correct response.

“Don’t laugh,” she scolded, which only made me laugh harder, which made her squeak again, which set us both off like a pair of mismatched accordions.

Once gravity returned to its regularly scheduled duties and Mary unclenched her fingers from the dashboard, I confessed the purpose of my little detour. I wanted to show her the Gingerbread House, or what folks sometimes called the Swiss Chalet.

A storybook kind of place, with gingerbread trim and more charm than a Hallmark movie marathon. Only, as it turned out, I couldn’t find it.

We cruised slowly down the narrow roads, scanning for that little chalet, but it was nowhere in sight. It may be gone, swallowed up by time, weather, or the bulldozer—none of which ask permission before taking what they want.

That thought hit me harder than I expected. A place once so full of character, now possibly vanished without a trace.

But then came the oddest sight. Andy McBeth’s barn, big as life, still standing tall, looking as though it had just shrugged off the years like a stubborn mule. Ageless, defiant, and refusing to sag even an inch.

And right across the way, Crivelli’s Bar told the opposite story. The roof slumped like a tired man resting his head in his hands. And yet—the lights in the windows were still on.

Someone, it seemed, was inside keeping vigil, while the building, broken in its bones, still whispered, “I’m here, don’t count me out.”

Mary and I drove by quietly, taking it in. We didn’t speak, because some sights don’t call for words.

Driving away, I thought about how some things endure long past their expected time, while others disappear suddenly, without explanation. A barn can outlast a business.

A sagging roof can still glow with life. And sometimes, the best you can do is notice, remember, and keep telling the story.

Mary finally broke the silence. “Next time,” she said, “you can just show me pictures.”

I chuckled as she continued, “And if we do go sightseeing again, no more roller-coaster levees. I can only squeak so many times in one afternoon.”

Fair enough. Marriage is, after all, a long ride across many dikes—some up, some down—and the trick is to laugh together when gravity gets playful.

We may never find the Gingerbread House again, but we’ll always remember our half hour in the Glen—barns, sagging roofs, squeaks and all.

More than once, I’ve been told that I should just “let people be wrong.” That’s good advice—wise even—but I confess I don’t always have the discipline to sit quietly when foolishness puts on a crown and calls itself wisdom.

After the murder of Charlie Kirk, people everywhere were grieving, angry, and trying to make sense of what felt senseless, including me. Then along came one man who decided the whole tragedy was about slavery and reparations.

Now, I’m not afraid of hard conversations. I’ve been in talk radio, and I’ve been married long enough to know that disagreements don’t end the world. So, I tried to reason with the man.

A baggage handler at Reno-Tahoe International, his name is Tiger, and he came roaring in as his name suggested.

“People just have not learned a lesson,” he typed. “Karma don’t give a damn about who you are or what you look like. Should have been preaching peace and fellowship instead of barking racist ideology and bullshit.”

Well, that’s one way to enter a room. I quoted Charles Spurgeon about bold-hearted men mistaken for mean-spirited ones, hoping to steer him toward reflection. But instead of reflection, I got deflection.

He called me a racist and said my heart was nasty. Now, if you’ve ever been on Facebook, you know the temptation in that moment: to wind up, cock your rhetorical fist, and let it fly.

But I paused, and I tried gentleness. “You don’t know me,” I said. “And yet you condemn me. Shame on you.”

He came back wanting to talk. Promising sign, right?

We even circled back to accountability, agreeing at least that all of us could stand to do a little more of it. But then Tiger veered back into the ditch, insisting the entire country must confess and repent, while I pointed out that individuals are the ones who make choices and bear responsibility.

It was like we were building a house with two hammers and no nails. Sparks, yes. Structure, no.

Finally, I said, “Okay. We are at a stalemate. I’ve never owned a slave and you’ve never been a slave. Therefore, we owe nothing to each other.”

That’s when he pulled the trump card—my skin. He told me my race couldn’t possibly understand, and he warned me that my family might have been guilty back in the day.

Now, here’s the funny part. My family came to this country as slaves. Indentured. A different skin tone and history book, but the same chain.

I don’t wear it today, and I don’t want anyone else to pay me for it. I broke it by living free.

So I told him plainly: “My family came here as slaves. I ask nothing of anyone. You just want money.”

Silence. Hours passed. No response. Conversation over.

And that, my friends, is why I no longer waste much energy trying to teach common sense on the internet. Not because common sense has disappeared, but because people confuse critical thinking with clever ways of defending their own prejudices.

Tiger doesn’t want the truth; he wants victory.

But truth doesn’t need victory. Truth doesn’t need applause or compensation.

It stands, steady and unbending, like a fencepost in a high desert wind. Lies are the things that require invention, dressing up, and constant patchwork.

In the end, I let Tiger have the final word, or rather, the last silence, because the last word is always the hardest—and sometimes the best last word is no word at all. Either way, I’ll keep speaking truth where I can, and leaving the mud to those who prefer rolling in it.

I should have known Tiger wasn’t done. The silence I mistook for surrender turned out to be him catching his breath. Sure enough, he popped back up in the thread like a jack-in-the-box you forgot you wound too tightly.

“Lmao,” he wrote.

Two syllables. No punctuation. The universal way of saying, I win because I laughed.

Then came the kicker: “I served this country and work for my money… This country owe people that built this land that had money, land and life seized.”

Now, I’ll pause here for a moment. Let’s give Tiger his due.

Serving your country is honorable. Working for your money is respectable.

And feeling people got wronged—that’s human. But dragging all of that into the murder of Charlie Kirk felt like trying to repair a leaky roof with a shoehorn.

Wrong tool. Wrong problem.

So I answered in kind.

“I served my country too—twice,” I told him. “My family came from Ireland as indentured servants, and remained as such until the 1890s. So please don’t obfuscate the message by saying Charlie Kirk’s murder is about the original sin of the U.S., because that was paid in full between 1861 and 1865. And if you are a Democrat, look to that history. It was that party that held the black man down. History.”

Now, I know some folks will want to fact-check me. And that’s fine—history loves an argument. But the larger point is suffering isn’t a monopoly.

My people bled, sweated, and served, too. And yet, I’m not sending a bill to my neighbor for something his great-granddaddy may or may not have done.

Tiger wasn’t ready for that kind of plain talk. He wanted to keep the focus on collective blame, while I insisted on individual responsibility.

And in that tension lies the heart of most arguments these days. Some people prefer to assign their anger to history and politics, rather than confronting it themselves in the present moment.

It would’ve been easier for me to quit right there, but I kept typing, because sometimes you plant seeds knowing you won’t be around to see them grow. Maybe Tiger will never agree with me.

Maybe he’ll never believe that truth stands on its own without applause or reparations. But maybe, a year from now, Tiger will remember the Irish servants, or the Civil War graves, or the simple fact that two veterans stood on opposite sides of a Facebook thread but still saluted the same flag.

That’s my hope, anyway.

In the end, he gave me a “Lmao” and a shrug. And maybe that’s all he had left without feeling like a sellout. Wait till Tiger learns that “Uncle Tom” was the hero of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and not the mistaken pejorative it’s become.

But here’s what I know–conversations like this remind me that truth doesn’t need to shout. It just needs to show up, patiently, steadily, and without apology.

People will laugh at it, dismiss it, twist it, and stomp on it. But truth is stubborn, as it will survive long after the comments section has gone quiet.

And if you ever doubt that, remember—history has the last word. Always has. Always will.

It was my twentieth birthday the last time I slept in the town of Klamath. I didn’t know it then, but life was about to give me one of those abrupt shoves that send you skidding across the gravel of adulthood, skinning your knees and pride in the process.

I had just gotten the boot from the Air Force—a fine institution, but apparently, they’d decided I wasn’t quite the poster boy they were after. I needed time to decompress, so I pitched camp in the redwoods, the way a tired soul might slip between the pews of a cathedral when nobody’s looking.

The forest was kind. The silence was thick, only broken by the occasional Steller’s jay with a beak as sharp as its gossip. I built myself a small camp on a hillside, lived off beans and whatever I could cook over the fire, and let the sap and soil work on my restless spirit.

But birthdays make you restless, too. So I hiked out of the woods to the family home, thinking maybe Mom would bake a cake, or at least roll her eyes at me the way only mothers can. Instead, I found the house abandoned—Mom and the kids had moved on without so much as a forwarding address taped to the door.

Still, I knew where the spare key was, as some secrets never die, so I let myself in. The electricity was still running, humming like a stubborn old mule, so I took a hot bath—the first one in weeks.

I built a fire in the fireplace, the kind that snaps and hisses like it knows all your secrets but won’t tell. In the kitchen, I found a dusty can of beans, which I heated as if it were a five-course meal.

Then I discovered a forgotten half-bottle of wine under the sink. It was cheap, but I drank it anyway.

To me, it tasted like proof of how quickly life can scatter—half-eaten meals, half-finished stories, half-full bottles left behind. That night, belly warm with beans and old wine, I slept by the fire.

It was a strange peace—lonely, but not cruel. The next morning, I packed my things, climbed the fence into Camp Marigold, and headed back to my hillside camp in the redwoods, and that was the last time I slept in Klamath.

Until now.

Forty-five years later, my wife and I found ourselves unpacking our luggage at my friend Lori Collins’ Airbnb in Hunter Creek, which she co-owns with her dad, Tom, and brother Mike, Lori had left the cabin with small kindnesses—fresh eggs and jam, bagels, smoked salmon from the Klamath River, plush folded towels, and coffee for the morning.

It wasn’t the same as my abandoned family home, of course. This time, there was no scavenged wine, no dust settling where laughter used to live; this time, there was intention—care stitched into every detail.

I lay there, thinking how life circles back in ways you don’t expect. I’d once slept in Klamath as a runaway from my life, eating beans and burning fallen branches.

Now I was here as a guest, a man with a life’s worth of scratches and stories. The town had changed, I had changed, but the peace that settled on me that night was real, the kind that doesn’t depend on beans or forgotten wine or even electricity.

Sometimes we spend decades trying to return to a place we didn’t know we needed. For me, it wasn’t the house, or the fire, or even the redwoods—it was the simple act of lying down in Klamath, breathing easy, and knowing that for the first time since 1980, I was at peace.