Attribution: Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in lamenting the demise of yet one more sign of spring—the “cow party” which was the day the cows, after a winter of standing in cramped stalls, were turned loose in the cow yard or pasture for an exercise opportunity. …
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Category:History
Kickass and the Price of Gas
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, cautions the keeper about going so deep into his past that he mentions the price of gas at 5 gals for $1. Memory exercise of this kind tend to brand the keeper as either careless with the facts or performing for attention. His defense …
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Kickass and Johnny Appleseed
Attribution: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper impressed with a bit of research showing that Johnny Appleseed sometimes went barefoot in the snow, slept in the woods and once fell out of an apple tree and was caught by the neck between …
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Kickass and Trevor’s Eighth Birthday
Attribution: Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis heading out to Mazo for the 8th birthday party for Trevor one of the keeper’s great grandchildren, at which the keeper will bore Trevor and others by pointing out that he is old enough to have had eleven and …
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Kickass and Jesse Jackson
Attribution: Leffler, Warren K., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper’s getting-acquainted-with-Chicago days with his old Army friend Bob Shepherd, a Black Southsider who was the keeper’s personal MLK and then some. As an essential experience the keeper and Bob were in the back row of a …
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Kickass and Day of Infamy
Attribution: Photographer: UnknownUnknown Retouched by: Mmxx, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis on this “day that will live in infamy” to suggest that the country is under a sneak attack that is more debilitating than any Pearl Harbor, and the defense against it has …
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Revolution Redux
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter There have been instances when the sometimes all-too-thin lines between art and reality have intersected, crossed, and become blurred. The China Syndrome, a film about safety violations at a nuclear power plant, was released only twelve days before the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Wag the …
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Kickass and Native Peoples
Attribution: Grand Canyon National Park, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper remarking that celebrating the indigenous people and Columbus on the same day is such a fox-in-the-henhouse situation as to be beyond insulting. During his long journalistic meandering the keeper had many occasions of contact with …
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Kickass and Shutdowns
Attribution: Seattle Municipal Archives , CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, gives the floor—and the couch, to the keeper to recount his experience when the government shut down Camp Atterberry in Indiana where the keeper was impatiently riding out the post-Korea part of a three-year enlistment. At the request—order—of the …
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Kickass and Republican Party
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis in Ripon for a Phyllis family reunion that went off without a hitch—no fistfights or political shouting. Following enjoyable family affairs, the keeper and Phyllis struggled with tech navigation in trying to find the historic Ripon “Little Red Schoolhouse” …
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Kickass and Uncle Ralph
The Pen in Hand Blog featuring Bill Stokes
Attribution: Sheldon Dick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lancaster_Co.,_PA._Enos_and_Herbert_Royer_and_farm_hands_eat_dinner,_Royer_farm,_1938_by_Sheldon_Dick.jpg
Founding Fathers, Lost Sons
Attribution: John Trumbull, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter About a month ago, my brother, a historian himself, gave me a copy of Rick Atkinson’s The British are Coming, the first volume in his American Revolution trilogy. Mr. Atkinson is a renowned historian, having penned another series, The Liberation Trilogy, about the Allied Victory in …
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