Meat Me in Houston   About 2.3 million people live in Houston, most of them willingly. I wanted to know why. But I would have little time there – just the bookends of a two-day conference. So, I decided to do a small thing well. I would eat barbeque.   ...

Write Take this advice from someone old enough to have regrets. Write.    Write early and often.    Write late and dream of what you will write tomorrow.    Write about friends: the ones who make you laugh, the ones who make you think, and the ones who...

What’s New at NuNu’s? NuNu’s is a throwback bar – same booths (newer Naugahyde skin notwithstanding), same bar configuration, same mirror, same cheap colored-glass pool-hall light fixtures, same dark film-noir ambience as it had in the 1960s. A look at the old photos...

Act 1 – Gonnections Scene 5 – The Writer Escapes   In the last episode, our intrepid 23-year-old protagonist was writing contracts for about a million dollars worth of construction work with barely a clue…   But it looked like I was going to get through it. Then,...

Act 1 – Gonnections Scene 4 – Building a Future   So things went well enough at McMillin through 1978. I was in Marketing at the end of that year, setting up model-home sales offices, writing ad copy, and taking photos of houses. My boss was just 10 years older...

Act 1 – Gonnections Scene 3 – Career Day   My dad was a real estate loan officer with a major bank. He knew a number of local builders, including a fellow named Corky McMillin who had enjoyed some success since starting with one house in the mid-1960s. My dad got...

Act 1 – Gonnections Scene 2 – Poverty is Transferrable   The revolution died in Lakeside in June 1973. All of the momentum from the late 1960s – the music, the protests, the optimism – seemed to disintegrate after McGovern got clobbered in November 1972. On a...

Act 1 – Gonnections Scene 1 – Love on a Budget   First, let’s establish some context. I was a senior at U.C. Berkeley in January 1977. I had spent my junior year and the first quarter of my senior year in a dorm. Much silliness and a little studying later, I...

My Typewriter is in the Smithsonian. My Words Are Not.   My typewriter is in the Smithsonian. Well not my actual typewriter. But I had the same model as this one. The venerable Olivetti Lettera 32. Mine was stolen, taken from my locked truck in Balboa Park...

Train Ride Home   The train whistles as it approaches the intersection. It’s dark – and seems even more so because the rail car is so well lit. But I can make out the industrial yards with their cobra-headed security lamps, the yellow of sodium here, the...