On Sonny Drake’s first day dead, the power of his words banged around in my head like outlaw biker ghosts brawling inside the gas tank of his vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle. “Live Pagan, die Pagan,” he said matter-of-factly in our last conversation. The day after Sonny’s death, a month short of his 72nd birthday, I watched […]
Maybe I did kill those chickens the summer of 1970, wiping out about 50 of the little cluckers on a Perry County back road when I was young, wild and free-range. I launched my murder most fowl by making Sonny Drake and the other two guys in the van laugh so hard and so loud […]
Shortly after federal immigration agents arrested Higinio Mendez-Salazar I tried tracking his whereabouts. I quickly lost the man millions of Americans want to disappear. Nobody will help me locate him, not his former federal public defender, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Pike County jailers where ICE holds many undocumented immigrants or the U.S. Marshals […]
A little frazzled but still in control the young bearded guy in front of the oven ladled tomato sauce on the dough with the ease of a Renaissance artist layering red paint on a priceless fresco. Looking up he quickly explained. “I just got an order for 30 pizzas,” he said. “It’ll take me 20, […]
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is Trump Town. This struggling provincial city needs all the evolution it can get. Low Cut Connie offered to help. At first Luzerne County government bosses in this county seat people once called “The Valley with a Heart” cut a deal with the band to play a fun summer concert called Rockin’ the […]
