My Yesterdays

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP31: I Play Center LinebackerIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! When I was twelve, we moved from California to Louisiana.In California, I played baseball. I lived baseball. But in Louisiana there was no baseball. Only football.It was August, the

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP30: I step off the top of a football stadiumIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! When I walk, my head is down, and I scour the ground for nickels, dimes and quarters. It’s a poor boy habit I developed when I was twelve, but that tendency to look down

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP28: The Curse of the FrogIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! When I was in high school, I knew a boy who went by the nickname “Bwana” because he loved outdoor critters. He used to keep a pet snake, and every morning some of us boys would watch when it

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP26: A Confession: My role in last century’s tulipomania If you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! This is, I guess, a confession of sorts about the role I played in last century’s video game fad. The years in question were 1978-1981.Everyone today still

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP24: The Tattle Tail PriestIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! Bleach. The smell of bleach and pine. A lot of what I do in the classroom, when it's not grammar, when it's not composition, is intuitive. For instance, when it's literature we're covering,

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP20: Thank You for Your ServiceIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes!The Federal Government reinstated its draft lottery during my senior year in college. It was based on the birth dates of young men born before 1950. And since the ping pong ball with my

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP14: My love for a free press and a mimeograph machine, part twoIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes!After college, I was drafted into the U.S. Army. This was during the Vietnam War.Instead of being sent to Vietnam, however, I ended up in Germany as an army

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP13: My love for a free press and a mimeograph machine, part oneIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes!I went to a Catholic seminary for high school. It was a boarding school, and there were only three times each year that we could go home -- Christmas, spring

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP11: The Bat in the HouseIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes!It is humbling when a man cannot protect his wife and home from an invading menace that’s smaller than a poodle.It was a hot August night when I learned I did not measure up to my “manly” gender

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP09: The Crop Circle SquirrelIf you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes!You have probably seen aerial pictures of crop circles, strange patterns in wheat fields that appear to be deliberately made.No one knows who or what made them, though many educated people,

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S01 EP05: The truth about the “Horoscope Heist” If you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! I suppose I should come clean about Dan Bitterman, the main character in my novel, And Lead Us Not. If you’ve read And Lead Us Not, you’ve already discovered that Dan is a

Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S01 EP04: The Cuckoo in the Cuckoo Clock If you enjoy the show, please review it on iTunes! Lots of people have asked me recently: What word or words would I use to describe myself? a writer? a southern writer? a humorist? a satirist? a social critic? Some who have read