Tales By Tom - Weight and Balance Revisited!

I rewrote Weight and Balance for the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Contest.  I would like your feedback.  Listen to this version then listen to the first version .

The original description:           Cue:Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone is playing in the background…

You are one of four people ---two men, two women, four strangers ----who volunteer to get off an overcrowded flight in a small Midwestern city. The airline puts you all up at a nearby motel, gives each a voucher for dinner and a travel voucher for a future flight with them, boarding passes for the first plane out in the morning to your destination. You go to dinner together. The conversation is strained at first but after a drink you begin to talk freely. You each tell a story. No one’s life will ever be the same. Everyone’s will change --- not that night but soon.

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 Tales By Tom. We are revisiting the rewritten story called The Medal.

The Medal is not not a travelogue at all, the story that follows is about my first business trip overseas. To Rome. The first part that follows in less than a minute is about #1 a remarkable turn of events, #2, a very first of a kind, and #3, about the pope, NOT TO WORRY --- it has nothing to do with the DaVinci Codes or Angels and Demons.

Give this new version a listen then go back and listen first version from June 2009. 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 16 installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Epilogue: I know where I came from, and I know where I’ve been. I also know where I am, enough to say that the journey has been outstanding.

I know there’s more to come.

The first NEXT story will have something to do with bounty hunting, dog. (The title of the next set of stories is . . ."Stories I Tell On Myself."   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 fifteenth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Story 29: I had a dream. I know dreams can’t predict the future, but things happen when you’re asleep that must mean something. I mean, suddenly a guy you went to high school with appears to you in your sleep. You talk for the first time in 52 years, and he gives you some advice. In the morning you remember his words and yours, and the advice seems to solve a problem you’d been trying to solve for a while. You pass it on.

In four years, it turns out to be the best advice you could have ever had.

And you got it in a dream. Did it just happen?

Story 30: O’Hara I didn’t see Gone with the Wind until I’d remarried. As a result, Scarlett was never a significant influence in my life, but Maureen was. For those of you who don’t know who she is (she is still with us by the way), please look her up on the Internet. See if you can get a peek at her in Sinbad the Sailor. I saw that movie when I was 12 and fell in love with the beautiful and spirited redhead at once.

The fervor, although it relaxed to fit my life as it evolved, never left me. Before I went off to college, I saw The Quiet Man. I’d grown up and so had she. But nothing had changed between us.

Then it did --- and story 30 is about what happened.

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 fourteenth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Note the audio on this show has been updated (user error  . . . Tom Jr)

Story 27: Surprise: In the divorce, two of my five children went with my ex-wife to Houston. They came to visit four times a year, and we had a great time. I knew they hated to go home --- or, at the very least, would have preferred to stay longer. Suddenly, with their mother and her new husband they moved to New York. I was delighted because as often as I traveled there, I knew I’d be able to see them much more often.

We had a grand time that first January. And early in February. Then came the surprise. It wasn’t the Ides of March, and I wasn’t Caesar, but it felt like it. They were moving to Seattle. Now what? I wondered.

In God we trust.

Story 28: A Wardrobe Adjustment in Sonoma Valley Ah, the wine country! One of my favorite destinations in the world. My second son’s wife, Linda, had it all planned, and Mark was doing this for my 75th birthday. But there was one specific detail none of us had planned for. It exposed Mark and me when we least expected it, and it made us resort to a visit to a “final resting spot” before we were ready --- on one hand --- and just when we needed it on the other. We thanked whoever was listening as we left. I swore I heard a chorus of voices say, “You’re eternally welcome.”   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 thirteenth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Note:  Audio was updated on July 14, 2010

Story 23 is entitled Kinder More Consoling Words Were Never Spoken. The few kind words came early in the morning from a waiter serving breakfast in Milan. I had just spent a night in hotel hell --- because of a lost reservation --- and was freed from my three hour prison to face a very kind and welcome relief in this starched server. He was just doing what he did naturally but, oh My Lord, what a contrast from just a few hours before! HE had no idea.

Story 24 is entitled Remainders Can Be Lifelong Remainders. In other words, things left behind can remind you of lots of things long since gone and forgotten. I don’t mean remembering anxieties or angers ---good stuff like Champagne glasses a mother might leave her daughter, a cup, a saucer, a blanket, a statue. My father left me  nothing directly. But a very kind half-brother passed on to me two unusual things my father had left behind --- one was a saw, the other ---well, wait and see.

Yes . . . we these two stories are out of order! 

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 (if you haven't already) 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 ninth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Story 25: Alicante, Spain. I knew it wouldn’t be the garden spot of the universe, but I had to go there on business --- it is the center of the Spanish shoe industry--- and we had corporate meetings. On the surface it would be like any other trip of its kind, except I’d never been to Spain and that alone was exciting.

BUT --- and I say that loud and clear --- a glitch in our departing city of Baton Rouge took that away in short order. Only through a bribe, a lot of telephone time and some help from John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara did I keep my sanity and break out of Alicante after two more days.

Story 26: Five Stages: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the book on the subject --- the five stages people go through in dealing with a death or a tragedy. I had never heard of her or her book until a visit to our friends, the Ewalds, in Natchez, MS.

I read her book three years later, but by that time I had dealt with a death and a tragedy of my own. Golf had helped in the first case --- I was young and had a cause. Later, my ability to accept things for the way they were and move past them for my good and the good of my family was what saved me.

Then I read her book and remember saying, “I did that; I did that, too.”

It was a survival instinct I didn’t know I had.

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 eleventh installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Story 21 … 1951: A southern wind in April This is a poem in two voices. The first one is my father’s as I imagined him in his silence the night my mother died. It is what a sixteen-year-old boy imagined his father must have been thinking about --- why he might not have wanted to come sit on the edge of my bed and talk to me. The second voice is mine. It starts with, “It was a place the boy had needed to see.”

Story 22 …A proofreader at Christmas Proofreaders are real people, too. They have hearts, enjoy laughing, and they enjoy Christmas, too, like everyone else we know. If you know one of these guys who takes his job seriously, here are some great ideas to give him/her at Christmas. Now if you don’t know one single proofreader, I would be happy to share my address with you and I will be sure to send you a thank you note --- by mail. Please, no explosives.

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 tenth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short story collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Story 19. Round and round. In old-time baseball, pitchers threw “spitballs.” It has been illegal since before the Great Depression. But that’s when my father threw his spitballs with his sidearm delivery. Of course, he had to have his glove “adjusted” to be able to do that. I saw that glove in the early ‘50s, then it disappeared.

Story 20… I saw angels. A night out in Florence, Italy lead to what I thought was a heart attack the next morning. It’s the only killer in my family. That morning, remembering my history and having fainted twice without any explanation, I thought it was my time. But when I saw three angels at the foot of my bed, I knew the crisis had passed and that the church bells ringing in the distance were for me.

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 ninth installment of Tom Cagley Sr's short shory collections entitled, “Travel At Your Own Risk.”  

Story 17. What happened when we were away from our new home. Previously, I’d moved 8 times. This move from St. Pete back to our new house in Baton Rouge didn’t loom as an issue until I chose the wrong movers and ran into sickness with the packers, a total disregard for time on the part of the movers, an epileptic fit in my front hall, the smashing of a 70-year-old Waterford chandelier, and more. BUT toilet paper saved the day --- at least the next day.

Story 18. Not a dream at all. Simply put, when you go to alter something that God gave you physically, you could make the situation better or you could make it worse. I was hoping for better.

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 download  via 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!