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2009
Contests Open Through August 31
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Freedom Smells Like A Peach Karen Ferrick-Roman |
Holy Desire Patrick Hewitt |
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| The Great Depression
Mary McIntosh
© 2009 by Mary McIntosh
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The country was in the middle of a depression. The stock market crash of ’29 had hurt many people, and things were only getting worse; businesses closed, factories shut down, banks failed. One in every four Americans was unemployed. It was so bad it was referred to in capital letters. The Great Depression....
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An Obligation in Kalamazoo Piper Davenport
© Copyright
2009 by Piper Davenport
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“Where are you headed, sir?” That’s what the train conductor said to the man. He turned and looked away. The day was turning into night, but still there was just enough daylight that he could see his reflection in the spit-shined windowpane. With his hair combed back, with a slight part down the middle, he asked himself, Will she like my undulating nose and small mouth? He wore his best trousers, with a bow tie and button-down cotton shirt and moccasin shoes that he had ordered through Woolworth’s....
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Night Time Babies Piper Davenport
© Copyright
2009 by Piper Davenport
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"Moral filth is such a problem with this country, and to celebrate on such a night," said the television evangelist. Josiah shut off the television and rolled his eyes but then he thought about what the man said. He hadn't had a night off on Sundays in a very, very long time and couldn't understand the big deal about a couple of high school kids. Other than greeting tourists, lost travelers, moving mannequins and nighttime babies, Josiah sat at his plastic Formica counter, listening to music such as Brahms' Hungarian Dance No.6, reading National Geographic and watching everyone else celebrating the local high school's BIG football win. Something else was bothering Josiah. He though to himself, 'Why is our town always being singled out?' Detroit was a two-hour drive up I-75 cutting through I-24 and down toward Toledo. That was miles away from where he was at and Josiah said to himself, "Oh, I wish someone would push me away from boredom," he said. The town folks listening to him would just nod their heads....
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Thompson Q. C. Richard Ridley
© Copyright 2009 by Richard Ridley
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"'Habeas Corpus? I don't think so David! No, in order to gain a more permanent release we'd be better to go for senility. That approach was splendidly successful in the Guinness case and it's done absolute wonders for General Pinochet. Some people say you cannot get a better tonic for your metabolism than a certificate stating that you are suffering from premature senility. From a Harley Street specialist, of course." Thompson was in one of his creative moods. Jokes came easily to him when he was firing on all twelve cylinders. "Yes David, I know he's only seventeen, but there is such a thing as premature senility you know. You've only got to look at the popular music scene these days for evidence of that." In the end though, Thompson cut the joking and suggested that the mere threat of habeas corpus would probably be enough to secure the release of David's client. "Either that, or they'll be forced to charge him. Let me know this afternoon if there are any other problems with it.....
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My Childhood House: A Vivid Description Richard Ridley
© Copyright 2009 by Richard Ridley
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Although I haven’t seen it in almost thirty years, my childhood house is still fresh in my memory. From the early Sixties to the late seventies,I lived in Edgware, a suburb of London. I remember everything that was in that house, I can see it all right now in my mind’s eye. I’d like to give you a full description but first, let me set the scene let me put the building into its historical context. From what I’ve read in the history books it was a time of unparalleled social mobility. The Beatles were still together, Woodstock hadn’t happened, the Isle of Wight pop festival hadn’t even been thought of. Man hadn’t landed on the moon. The Vietnam War was raging. JFK was still alive, as was Martin Luther King. All these things changed while I lived at my childhood house....
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A Scattered, Smothered, and Covered Story
Jason Brooks
© Copyright
2009 by Jason Brooks
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Disheveled, discouraged, and desperately broke, I trudged into the Waffle House at Five Points in Athens, Georgia on a Friday night, hungry, frustrated and badly in need of a Biology Information transfusion. What I knew about biology wouldn't fit in a frog's spleen. With only a few days until the end of the semester, I plopped into a corner booth and laid out my torturous study materials, hoping for a miracle....
| Mission Trip Wanderlust
Pearl Watley Mitchell
© Copyright
2009 by Pearl Watley Mitchell
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My first trip to Venezuela sparked my wanderlust for foreign missions. In the summer of 1995, I went to Venezuela with a mission team from St. Mark United Methodist in Columbus, GA with a SIFAT group (Servants in Faith and Technology). SIFAT is an organization that teaches and uses “appropriate technology”. It is housed on a 150 acre campus in Lineville, AL, and has the support of Auburn University Agricultural School and the Wesley Foundation. They experiment with and develop many unique survival tools, including ways to purify water, compost and garden, build tanks and raise fish, cook, and instruments to use under specific conditions. Appropriate technology means taking the resources a person/group has and teaching them to use those available resources to full effectiveness - usually, in a third world country....
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Wampus Cat Adrien Stricklin
© Copyright
2009 by Adrien Stricklin
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The township of Pinhook lay just at the mouth of Possum Holler. Two large hills rose up to the north and to the south creating a low place in the land several miles long. The valley saw just a fraction of each day’s light and cast two sequential shadows upon Pinhook starting at midday. In the winter the shadow from the southern mass enveloped every building early in the day, swallowing even the top of the white steeple adorning the First Methodist Church before noon. The cooler air of town kept ice blocks solid and provided relief from the sweltering summer heat of the neighboring fields....
| Shoes
Pearl Watley Mitchell
© Copyright
2009 by Pearl Watley Mitchell
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Shoes have been a major thorn in my side all my life. I think it's been a problem since I emerged from my Mama’s womb. Actually, that’s the way things should be. Human beings need to and are expected to wear shoes. But, in my case, shoes just won’t stay on my feet. I remember when I was a little girl in the country, five or six years old. I only had one pair of shoes then. I used to hide my shoes so that I could go to church barefooted. It was very rare for me to even put on a pair of shoes....
Country? I guess. Read on...
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One Hundred Books And A Book
James D. Sanderson
© Copyright
2009 by James D. Sanderson
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This is the first chapter of a work in progress.
For some reason the notion that there was an itching sound inside the bomb as it rode along in the belly of the Enola Gay persists. It is mistaken of course. Who knows even where the notion came from? Perhaps the silence of the bomb in those moments before it was dropped on Hiroshima is just too immense to contemplate. The itching sound, then, is some sort of compensation for that end-of-the-world silence....
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Funeral Carina Allison
© Copyright
2009 by Carina Allison
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The day was colder than I thought it would be. The overcast was a silver-gray, and the wind blew just enough to bite cruelly through the long black trench coat I wore. I didn't want to be here. The building seemed more macabre than it had ever appeared before, and the doorway was a dark void that invited me with a numbing comfort, but I knew the darkness had teeth that were waiting to devour me....
| Pink
Seth Chambers
© Copyright
2009 by Seth Chambers
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We gather in front of the Thompson Center, we messengers, rolling in on racing machines, mountain bikes, and beaters pieced together in garages and basements. The elite among us ride fixed-gear bikes – fixies – with no brakes. I ride a fixie but, chickenshit that I am, still cling to a front brake. Just in case. A brakeless bike is cool but the cool don’t always survive on these streets. My fixie has a name: Pink....
Pink, eh? Let's learn a bit more...
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