Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the seventh installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.” 

Story 12.  What’s in a name? It took me a while to shake my sheltered childhood, but news of the Holocaust did that to me in 1952. Concentration camps. I visited another one this past July called Mauthausen. I walked the steps, then saw the town. Thus, the question: What’s really in a name?

Story 13.  Noise: Oh, the burden it places on us all! It’s opposite is so delightful, that I wonder why we take such pains to fill up our waking minutes with one to the almost sinful ignorance of the other?

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and downloadable on iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).  See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the sixth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.” 

Story 10. An Inside View of Healthcare, from a proofreader’s perspective: Some of the things I saw and worked on during my last three-year stint at this normally mundane occupation brought me to tears of laughter. Sometimes there weren’t any tears either. But both were a welcome relief to the “plodding” that drives most men crazy.

Story 11. There oughtta be a fine: Here are some fine ideas on how cash-strapped cities can fill their coffers. We have to be creative in the broad sense if we expect the tax burdens to lessen. These fine-able offenses need to be targeted and the world put on notice that the “activity alert”, not just the homeland security flag, is on RED. Let’s go!

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and downloadable on iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the fifth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.”  

 Story 8.It can’t be as much fun as it looks: In truth, it isn’t, but when the marketers spin their web and dance their dance of the veils, it sure looks like it. You know anyone who goes for a FREE hearing examination, as they depict in the brochures, with smiles all around? You have to just get a grip and adjust. There are few advantages to getting old, you know. I count at least three.

Story 9. Marketing at its Best ---tongue-in-cheek. It happens to us all. A guy in Army fatigues comes to the door and asks you to write him a check for a particular charity and asks you to make it out to cash and put MADD in the comment line of the check. This example wasn’t as bad as that but …

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and downloadable on iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the fourth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.”  Story 7: It Was Much More Than The Money I Saved and Story 8: The Morning Routine.

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and on downloadable iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the second installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.”   Today we have two stories.

The Goudchaux’s reunion and the Interview: The reunion was fun, but the lead-up to it, the interview for posterity by a marketing company, was something I volunteered to do (others did, as well) and could not finish. Some interviewers have an agenda that’s masked at the beginning, and you just have to listen and react as you must.

The Joy/Pleasure of Sex--- is it the first thing that goes when you age? It IS an individual issue. Or does something else fail earlier? I don’t expect anyone to respond, but you could. Dear Abby did.

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and on downloadable iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. This is the second installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Plain and Simple.”  

Obituaries: There’s a whole science to what you say in one. To see what the difference was between the ones in our Baton Rouge Advocate and the New York Times, I compared for several weeks. I found some striking ones. Also I wrote my own ---No telling what Jackie will do with it. Told her what I wanted on my tombstone, too ---with my ashes buried beneath or slowly filtered into the Arno in Florence, Italy over a period of months. How painful that will be for her, he said, tongue-in-cheek. Oh, the tombstone: “He loved his family.”

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and on downloadable iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to Tales By Tom. We begin a new series that is titled Plain and Simple!  The first two stories have a holiday flavor!

The stories are:

The Spirit of Thanksgiving: If you reflect at this time of year on your blessings, I bet the list is long. Think of what we have, and be grateful in word and deed --- and maybe even say it out loud as you’re having a mimosa and trying to carve the turkey. It would be at that point, as in my reflections that I’d bring up what Cicero said. What about you?

Christmas Plain and Simple: This story, a gift from a friend of mine through the Internet (how did he know it was about my grandfather?), should strike home to many of you who remember more humble beginnings and how we reacted to them as a child. Christmas is magic --- if we let it be.

I encourage you to provide feedback on these stories or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Check out the podcast http://www.talesbytom.com and on downloadable iTunes at http://bit.ly/yk9BC 

The music is a song titled "Rhapsody" by Andy Guthrie and was supplied Music Alley from Mevio (www.musicalley.com).

See you in two weeks!

Welcome to the fifteenth installment of my short story collection I have titled, "A Man of Letters." The stories in this collection are all in the form of letters or about letters. We have a two stories this week that I think you will enjoy!

Story 21…My Last Supper. Actually this is story 100…. And it’s about a gift we were given, a book, that prompted me to look at my last supper. How about I plan my own last meal, the music, the wine ---everything? Then there’s the night after. See what you think, then think about your own. 

In the next group of stories, I will write about obituaries. I’ll write my own. Who knows when someone will need it?

I encourage you to provide feedback on this story or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of my short story collection I have titled, "A Man of Letters." The stories in this collection are all in the form of letters or about letters. We have a two stories this week that I think you will enjoy!

Story 19….Grape testing in Napa, Day minus one. We had a whole trip’s experience in one day ---and we hadn’t sampled one drop from the vineyards yet. Thinking that at my age I knew nothing about text messaging was the kicker.

Story 20…The road forked years later. We all come to forks in our roads from time to time. I made decisions “at the fork” three times early with my eyes tightly shut. Here are the results of those decisions and one I made with my eyes wide open many years later. Am I just lucky?

I encourage you to provide feedback on this story or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of my short story collection I have titled, "A Man of Letters." The stories in this collection are all in the form of letters or about letters. We have a two stories this week that I think you will enjoy!

Story 18… The bible led me astray. I was 10 years old and impressionable. What do you expect? The Sunday school teacher read it right out of the bible. What better authority did I want? Years later, I found out I wasn’t the only errant one in the universe ---and I still felt sad.

I encourage you to provide feedback on this story or any of the earlier shorts by email at [email protected] or by voicemail at 1 206 339 5456.