Stories

The dog park Who knows what brings couples like Shelia and Jim Hasting stay together. Then the question, why do they stay together? I don’t get it and the answer is so what. Is that question at about the same level of complexity as why do you like bitter chocolate and...

Confirmation I can’t ask my brother Ernst whether many of my memories of our childhood are correct. If he were alive I would ask him “Wasn’t our phone number at home when we were little kids WA (wadsworth) 6-9027? There are so many other things I want to ask him about...

  Whose Home I was shocked, didn’t know what to expect but how could I know what I would see, remember, walking back, no sneaking back in time, lost, but here I am. Just stood there, paralyzed? Yes, but I continue to stand in front of what I think was my...

Eva          Rudi and I were colleagues stuck at a small elite college in the middle of nowhere Ohio. We didn’t quite make it at a high-powered university. He taught physics and I was an associate prof in the chemistry department. Were we friends? I guess so but not...

Whose panties are they? Mathilda, Oscar’s mom, asked him to go to the basement of their apartment building and put the washed clothes in the dryer. Oscar hated the basement. The roaches there were large and vicious and he saw them eyeing him always ready to pounce....

Bernd Barth catches a train Everything matters including how you deal with fear The rainbow of scents from the flower stand are gone, replaced by the odor of stale beer. The café Geiger, gone. Thaler’s luggage shop is no more.  The little shops in the central railroad...

3rd car of the D train Spring finished early.  It is now mid-May and someone had turned up the early morning heat in Brooklyn.  Many of the people filling the D subway train cars screeching towards Manhattan were dressed for summer and so the short skirts blew up and...

Today Larry did not go to his office at Global Financial. Today was a beautiful warm spring day. Today was the day he wouldn’t see Barbara the assistant manager at Global Financial. Today was the day he needed her not on the couch in her office but just to hold him in...

Keith’s voice was slurry but insistent. “I’m pretty sure I know where we are. Joan, make a left at the next intersection by the light.” Keith sat in the back seat next to Wendy, Ron’s wife while Ron sat up front with Joan. Joan insisted that Keith shouldn’t drive...

The ice storm spring Flehingen Observer L.K. Stern No new news. This disaster story continues and so it seems to be the end of the world around us, the land of Medina. Maybe somewhere else there is a spring but not here. Where? How did this happen? I wish I could...