★Where I Started

I was born in the upstairs bedroom of a narrow house on Mercer Street in Erie, in the spring of 1948. My father worked the docks and my mother took in sewing,…

THE HOUSE ON MERCER STREET · 0:41

My Brother Daniel

Daniel was two years older and braver at everything. He was the one who climbed the water tower, who talked back to the truant officer, who taught me to ride a…

THE HOUSE ON MERCER STREET · 0:40

The Last Ordinary Summer

The summer I turned seventeen I worked the docks beside my father for the first and only time. He did not say much. He never did. But on the last Friday he han…

THE HOUSE ON MERCER STREET · 0:32

The Letter

The letter came in November of 1966, a single page that decided the next three years of my life and very nearly all of it. My mother read it twice and then wen…

THE YEAR THEY SENT ME · 0:34

What I Carried

I will not put most of that year into words, not because I cannot find them but because some things are not improved by being said. We were tired in a way slee…

THE YEAR THEY SENT ME · 0:41

Coming Home

I came back to Erie in the spring of 1969. Nobody met the bus. That was how it was then, and I did not hold it against anyone, though it took some years to mea…

THE YEAR THEY SENT ME · 0:42

The Night I Met Ruth

I met Ruth that first autumn home, at a church social I had no business being at. She was a schoolteacher, and she corrected my grammar inside the first minute…

THE STEADY THING · 0:40

Opening the Shop

In 1973 I put everything we had, and a good deal we did not, into a two-bay garage three blocks from where I grew up. I painted the sign myself: HALE & SON AUT…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:41

Raising Them

Michael came in 1974 and Sarah in 1977, and the house we could finally afford was never quiet again. Ruth taught all day and somehow had more patience left at…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:41

The Car We Never Finished

When Michael was twelve we dragged home a 1968 Chevelle with no engine and more rust than steel, and we swore we would bring it back to life together. We worke…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:39

Summers at the Lake

For twenty summers we rented the same small place on Findley Lake for one week in August. It was nothing fancy, a dock and two bedrooms and a screen door that…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:40

Ruth's Kitchen

Ruth's kitchen ran the family the way the shop never ran the town. Every recipe she made came from her mother, and she taught each one to the grandkids the sam…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:39

Sunday Dinners

Sunday dinner was not optional in our house, and I am glad now that I made it a rule when the kids would have rather been anywhere else. You cannot see it whil…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:43

Christmas Mornings

We had one rule about the Christmas tree, which was that it had to be too big. Every year I would cut a foot off the bottom and it would still scrape the ceili…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:30

The Long Drives

After I sold the shop, Ruth and I finally took the drives we had been promising ourselves for thirty years. Maine, the Smokies, all the way out to the Badlands…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:38

The Porch

These days most evenings end on the porch. Ruth brings the tea, I bring whatever I have been thinking about, and we sit until the streetlights come on. My daug…

EVERYTHING AFTER · 0:31