We were jus’ sitting down to dinner when Adam recited a then-popular commercial tag line. Only he changed the ending to something less than proper. “How do you spell relief,” he said, “F-A-R-T.” Everyone but Deirdre and Marcy laughed. Marcy was too young to really understand what we were laughing about at the time. Deirdre…

The three of us were on our way to Tulsa to drop Tim Robbins off with his mom and step-dad. Tim is Kyle’s step-brother and had been in Reno, visiting for the summer. We were starting to feel the need for food as we hit the city limits. And so the search began to find…

“Click” was the sound that the handcuff made as it dropped across Dad’s wrist.  He didn’t appear to mind as he wasn’t paying attention to me and was in the middle of a telephone conversation. I had found the handcuffs on Dad’s nightstand. They were in the little black pouch made of leather webbing.  To…

Across the street, on Azalea Drive, from the Wright’s home was a small cluster of pine trees. We kids loved to play in those trees much to the outrage of Mrs. Evelyn Wright. She and her husband Custer, had lived across from the pines for years and she had watched them grow from saplings into…

The smell of smoke was in the air, so I stepped outside the house to have a quick look. I saw a large plume rising in the south and it appeared to be getting bigger. I walked down the street a few steps in order to see if I could tell where it was coming…

There some mysteries that seem to simply linger; one of those for me is the strange disappearance of Star Polumbo. I was on the air at KOZZ when she was reported missing. Star grew up in the Tucson, Arizona area. She had a job and was living with her grandmother here, when she simply vanished.…

It was my last night on the air at KEKA as I was being transferred back to Reno. It had been difficult and somewhat sad two-weeks of goodbyes from staff and new friends until that time. One staff member in particular was the hardest person to say goodbye to: Elizabeth Erdman. She was fresh out…

Night after night I look at news articles that are supposed to be written for radio-broadcasting. And night after night, I find myself editing and re-editing these stories to bring them to the point, without all the extra words. For example, here’s a story written by the Associated Press:        “Doctors, nurses and parents of…

At one point I supplemented my income by writing jokes for the radio trade publication, “One-on-One” as well as Big Dog Productions, the company owned by comedian Jay Leno. I made fairly good money at this. However it all came to screeching end one early evening when I received a call that proved I was not very…

Andy Macbeth always seemed grumpy anytime I saw him and for a couple of years I saw him a lot. Mr. Macbeth, as he was known to me, had pulled from his barn in the Klamath Glen an antique fire engine. I believe it was a 1912 Ford. It had been stored away for years and needed…