(re-run) When I was sixteen, I saved my babysitting money and went downtown to Cottage Grove Avenue in Des Moines, where there was a head shop filled with incense, hanging beads, roach clips, black light posters and tie dye. Although I wasn’t a pothead (I didn’t smoke cigarettes either), I enjoyed the ambience of the… Continue reading Pennies from Heaven
Category: firsts
Moon Over Lafayette
Trudy worked at an engineering firm. Joe was the visiting copy machine repair man, or as her office mates called him, the Xerox guy. One day Trudy had to make copies. Joe was at the machine, repairing away. “Oh,” she said. “No copies for me!” “Hey there,” Joe said. “We should catch dinner sometime.” “Okay.”… Continue reading Moon Over Lafayette
Blind Date in a Castle
(re-run) Lynn was studying abroad at a university in Sweden. One of her friends convinced her plus another young woman to be blind dates. The friend’s boyfriend’s military school was hosting a fancy dinner and ball at a castle in Stockholm. The Swedish school was inviting guys from Denmark and Norway for the event, and… Continue reading Blind Date in a Castle
Drive-in Movie Blues
(re-run) Linda was a freshman that summer and and would start high school in the fall. She was doing summer stock at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa. The play was Bye Bye Birdie, and she was playing the part of a show girl. Jeff, one of the good-looking stage hands, drove a blue ’66… Continue reading Drive-in Movie Blues
The Day I Found my Voice
(re-run) When you’re in the dog house, you are in trouble. You’ve done something bad. As a child, I was never in the dog house because we didn’t have one. We didn’t even have a dog. My mother had her own strain of weird expressions that she said to us kids on a regular basis,… Continue reading The Day I Found my Voice
Sorry About That
(re-run) Aileen, in her early 50s, had a date that neither she, nor the guy, will ever forget. They met online. He suggested a hike out to the Black Diamond Mines in Antioch. She agreed, although she wasn’t much of a hiker. During the hike and while climbing in and out of the mine tunnels,… Continue reading Sorry About That
We Need a Lemon Law, Mr. Trump
(re-run from 2018) When a person buys a new or used car, and it gives the new owner nothing but problems in its first year, in many states, after three attempts to repair it, the owner can return the vehicle. Consumers everywhere are protected by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, the Federal Lemon Law which applies… Continue reading We Need a Lemon Law, Mr. Trump
The Contractor and the Jet Setter
(re-run) Tom, the contractor, set up his umpteenth date on Match.com. The woman he matched with was from the same affluent town, was the same height as he was, and was ready to meet him at Bridges, the hot spot downtown with the best happy hour. But when Ellen walked in, she had on three… Continue reading The Contractor and the Jet Setter
Total Eclipse of the Date
(re-run) The last solar eclipse over the continental U.S. was on Monday, February 26, 1979. Claudette worked in the x-ray department at Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. She and her co-workers took some x-ray film and went outside to look at the sun through the film. They were not in the path of totality… Continue reading Total Eclipse of the Date
Escape
(re-run) Long before dating sites and the personal computer were invented, Scott answered a personal ad in the Contra Costa Times. Remember newspapers? They were ink-on-paper affairs that folded in half, but not shiny like a magazine (a magazine was a booklet of ads, stories, and photographs with a theme that was published weekly or… Continue reading Escape
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 