My Grandpa Hofer passed away in 1999, when I was 29 years old. He died of pancreatic cancer. At the time of his diagnosis the doctor said he had 3 months to live. The doctor was about right. My grandpa was a retired music teacher. I never met any of his students, so sometimes I [...]

I never saw him until I moved into that place on 13th Avenue Southwest, and then I began seeing him regularly. He would appear in the dim light before dawn or after dusk. Unsure if my momentary glimpses of him were just my eyes playing tricks on me, I would quickly look away and then [...]

When I was 5 years old my family lived in Oakland, California. We didn’t live in Oakland anymore when I was 6, so I only have a few memories of that place, some random, disjointed mental pictures. A scary German Shepherd loose on the street. A teacher pinning a strip of green construction paper onto [...]

I pull into a no-name truck stop north of Sacramento. I step out of the car, flick the door shut, and pause to soak up the sun’s warm rays. I know from experience the locals see the bright sun as a harbinger of the oppressive heat that will begin stifling the Valley in a few [...]

A couple weeks ago I went in for a haircut. The barber, not my usual one, smelled like he had just recently emerged from a pool of that aftershave favored by elderly terminal alcoholics, the kind of aftershave their own dads wore, whether their own dads were alcoholics or not, the kind they must think [...]