Passages
12 July 1996, Corsicana, Texas My uncle Thomas came for lunch today. I hadn’t seen him since my mother, his sister’s funeral. Thomas is her baby brother, the youngest of three children, my mother being…
Author Archives: Dianne West Short
Funeral for a House
March, 1963, Corsicana, TexasI remember my Great-Grandmother’s Tinkle’s house. When I was little, I thought it had to be George Washington’s former home because, in my mind, it looked like his house ought to look.…
Barrel and the Chook, a Love Story
This is a true story…. Barrel is a pig. Not an ordinary pig, mind you, but a Kune-Kune, a funny word that means “round and fat” in the language of the Maori people of New…
Meeting with Fame
Written in response to my son asking what famous people had I ever met: After my dad and his brother sold Wolf Brand in 1957, he innocently became in some ways victim of many opportunists.…
Damn the Roaches, Full Speed Ahead
Roaches are ancient, likely older than dinosaurs. I read there are over 300 species of roaches out of about 4,600 types that associate with people, and each individual roach can live a year, during which…
Stories from a Friend
The world lost one of the great storytellers this week and many of us lost a friend. On one of Liz’s visits to me, I wrote down two of her stories. She said she didn’t…
What Happens in Mexico Stays in Mexico
My friend Debbye told me a story recently. In the early 1980s, she and her partner Birdie went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with 11 friends. They had rented a house that fit all of them…
Book now available
All the stories from my blog are now in book form, available here: to order, please cut/paste the address https://www.blurb.com/distribution?id=9781408/#/project/9781408/project-details
Thank You, Loretta Young
Another story, posted here, by my sister Joanne West Cornish: When I was 21, I finally became a teacher. I was assigned a school and anxiously awaited getting to my “future,” a future I had…
My Favorite Cereal
Breakfasts for kids in the 1950s meant cardboard cereal boxes on the table, full of cereals that were well advertised on our new 9″ screen television set. The Lone Ranger was sponsored by General Mills…
Borrowed Celebrity
In 1957 my family took the annual car trip, this time to California by way of the Grand Canyon and the Giant Redwood Forest. “Getting there” was the most miserable part of our trips, but…
My Brother Steve
(This story was written by my sister, Joanne) March 28, 1999, my “brother” Steve died. His half-brother René Lawrence, who grew up a self-described fatherless bastard and became a failed rock musician, called to tell…
Taken for a Ride
As my 75th birthday present, my sister-in-law gifted me airfare to join her in New York City. Her instructions, sent by email, were to take an Uber to the downtown hotel. I had heard often…
Secret of the Blind Wives
For many, so many years the women of the Tribe of Man had one purpose. It was to marry and produce offspring for their husbands. The wives had no riches of their own as…
The Window
She watched from the window, the view changing, just as she stayed unchanged. In the past, her clothing changed often but now she wore the same red dress day after day, the shoulders becoming sun-bleached,…
Neighborhood Safety
My neighbor Elaine told me a story. She and husband Steve lived in a big house across the street built by his grandparents. The large basement held a walk-in, steel-door safe. The safe’s door had…
Scandal
In a small town, gossip is an enthusiastic social activity. Topics surround, naturally enough, religious no-no’s. The forbidden. Whispers about who is having an affair, who is an alcoholic, who has a violent marriage, who…
Honesty
Honesty can be overrated. In the 1950s, our parents sent their daughters to a “fancy” girls camp in Kerrville, Texas, where campers swam in the Guadalupe River, sang songs around a campfire, lounged under the…
A Reminiscence
A story printed in 1920 in the Corsicana Daily Sun satirically recounting a trip made by local Hella Shrine families to Portland, Oregon. (My own great-grandparents, Bige and Molly Tinkle were among them. The photograph…
“Pale Death” by Lois Toone West
This is a bare partial manuscript of a story written by my mother while a journalism student at SMU in the 1970s. I have searched and have been unable to find more of the manuscript.…
