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Asides

Dad’s Last Erection

Just before his eighty-ninth birthday, my father was watching a Viagra commercial on TV. It ends with the warning

My Father's Victory in the Pacific

In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals. My father sat at his table, silent. He did not wear his medals

Selma, secretly

 In 1930, when my father was an eight-year-old kid in Chicago, he asked his older brother why people were outside in the cold snow waiting in a long line. His brother Harold said, “It’s a bread line. They don’t have anything to eat

Oscar, We Know Where You Lunch

By the age of fifteen, Rick Rowley was doomed – born in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan, a wasteland of rust and snow so awful we let autoworkers have it