A hot summer day spent climbing over ancient Athenian ruins in 1964 became more uncomfortable back in the air-conditioning of our hotel. After the five of us had dragged in, showered, washed the sweat out of our hair and put on pajamas, we ordered…

My grandson’s bus is late…or I’m early. He’s six and someone meets the school bus each day; today it’s me. I settle on the low curb in the shade of a dried-out bush to wait. It’s quiet, the sounds of rural nature only occasionally disturbed…

The young man stood on strong, tanned legs, a clipboard and pen poised in his hand. His feet in “sensible walking shoes” below athletic looking khaki shorts.  A whistle hung on a cord around his neck, his sun-bleached hair tousled. I thought “Lance, Scott, John,…

This is a brochure I recently created for the Corsicana Main Street Project.  Wolf Brand is part of our family history as well as a part of Corsicana history.  J. C. West was my grandfather, James West my dad.

Texas has always remained close to its Mexican heritage. Just how close that can be in some of the most southern of our 254 counties can at times bewilder even a fellow Texan from a more northern county. Dimmit county is one of the most…

             Parades in my Texas town were just about the most exciting happenings of childhood.  In old family albums are photos taken by my grandfather of the 1918 Armistice Day Celebration with streets jammed with men and women and an Uncle Sam-driven, mule-drawn…

A story by Lois Toone West (1920-1992), my mother, reprinted as written in the 1960s What’s so unbelievable about a dog’s being able to understand the human language?  “Nothing,” my family would be quick to reply. But what was unbelievable that day to one “member”…

I still flash on embarrassing memories that make me cringe inside, especially those that happened during the years from 12 to about 18 when we are most vulnerable to self-criticism. My sister and I, of course, had passing crushes on boys who we valued for…

It was bone cold, the wind sending chilly gusts around our legs and up loose backs of our jackets.  I pushed my muffler up to warm my nose. We were three American visitors steadily working our way through the quaint streets of Canterbury, one of…

This is the third and final part of the memoir of George Olsson Short, whose family love of baseball was a feature of his boyhood in the Texas of the 1920s and 1930s. After earning a living he went to Europe to fight for his country.…