It was late April 1955 and spring had finally come to the high plains. I was suffering from a serious case of spring fever. Baseball season was already underway, my Brooklyn Dodgers were 10 and 0, and I was stuck in my seventh-grade English class conjugating verbs. I had lots of plans for the summer…

I’ve been ranting (pissing and moaning is more like it) about our priorities or lack thereof for years. I wrote a rant about how the U.S. comes out in the middle of the pack in whatever survey they conduct: life expectancy, education, infant mortality, etc. It seems like we’re always portrayed as, or actually are,…

  Is it just me or have you noticed that everyone you talk to is only interested in talking about themselves. All conversations are verbal memoirs full of I, I, I, me, me dialog. This kind of conversation used to be the property of Hollywood and other not too bright egoists. Now everybody’s doing it,…

Still Faithful                       The Marine Corps’ motto “Semper Fidelis” still echoes through my head after all of these years. It’s the Latin phrase for “always faithful”, and totally appropriate to the lifelong brotherhood that is the United States Marine Corps. It was just over fifty-eight years ago that Semper Fi and…

Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen   Bob demonstrates his storytelling skills in this collection of seventeen of his best short stories. Bob set his story Three for Dinner in Boston, where he lived for many years, because he couldn’t find a five-star French restaurant within hundreds miles of the Chihuahuan desert where he now…

On the River with the Army of the Tennessee          On the River with the Army of the Tennessee is an edited and annotated copy of the diary penned by my great-great grandfather, Dr William J. Rockwell as he tended the sick and wounded of 11th Indiana Regiment on board various boats as they steamed…

  We hadn’t found anything to do that blustery Sunday afternoon in March, so we were doing what we usually did, hanging out at the front. The front is what we called Thornton’s new strip-mall with its half dozen businesses including a Millers supermarket, an Italian restaurant, and The Creamery, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor.…

I started at Astrodata three years earlier as a second-shift electronic tech while I was a full-time college student. I had been promoted four times and was now a junior doobie in the sales department assisting with proposal writing and other customer related activities. They gave me a big office over in executive row and…

Edda, short for Expert Disease Diagnosis Assistant, is an artificial intelligence  system with the most extensive medical knowledge data base ever assembled. Her (Edda refers to herself as female) knowledge-based expert system brings the wisdom and experiences of the world’s leading-edge clinicians to the offices of local physicians, assisting them in making correct and timely…

This last Sunday was set to be a great TV football day. The big rivalry between Green Bay and Minnesota was to play out at 11:00, followed by the Steelers and the Chiefs at Arrowhead at 2:00, and the Giants were in Denver for the 6 o’clock game. It doesn’t get any better than that.…