The transition from elementary school to Junior High or Middle School as it is now called can be a difficult one.  But it can also open your eyes.  Help you to realize that you are not alone.  That discovery can make all the difference in a young persons life including mine as you are about to hear in this segment of the Tales from Auburn Creek entitled “At the Curb.”

Episode Copyright Rader Media & Marketing

There are many things from when I was growing up that don’t really seem to exist anymore. One of them is the old Pool Hall. One could learn a lot hanging around there. I sure did and oddly enough it wasn’t from a pool shark. It was from a German immigrant who made the place hum. To him and to me it was known simply as the Poodle Hall.

It took 45 years for Verla to talk about the time death knocked on the door of her rural Lexington, Nebraska farmhouse. It just so happens, that is where I grew up.

She was rescued that day and remains ever thankful for that.  Her visitor had already killed once and would kill again but she lived to tell me about it and I will share it with you.
Music “Highway Traveler" by Alanna Rader
Episode Copyright Rader Media and Marketing LLC.

If we are truly honest with ourselves I think we can all look back at our lives and remember someone who helped us along the way.  It certainly doesn’t have to be a human. Sometimes animals can play a surprising role as Kevin Rader shows us in the latest installment of the Tales from Auburn Creek.

In this episode, you begin to hear how things started to fall apart after my mother went away. Again the names are changed but this will give you a better idea of what was to come. This story is entitled ‘Saturday Morning’.

Growing up in the shadow of mental illness is never an easy thing. Award winning journalist Kevin Rader shares the toll it took on his family when he was growing up. It’s the second installment of the Tales from Auburn Creek.

He would grow up to be awarded a National Sigma Delta Chi for Journalism at the National Press Club in Washington DC, two National Edward R Murrow awards and 31 Regional Emmy’s but while that may be how his career ended, it certainly did not start that way.  One miracle after another led him out of poverty, out of neglect and into the unlikely world of broadcasting.  And yet in spite of everything it was those early years that prepared him for what was to come.  In episode one “The Beginning” you will hear why things started so badly and how far he would have to go.