you're listening to radio revel

Back when I was growing up, it wasn't too common that a kid attended his mother's wedding, that usually happened before the kid was a kid. And to be honest, I don't remember if I actually attended my mom's wedding with the man who would become my stepfather, Mike.

My family was not bothered by ghost stories, even having ghosts in the house. Episode 01 talks about the earliest of those family spook stories, Episode 42 of Season 01, the Haunting of Haight House is one of the best. This week’s ghost story, Episode 08, Fire in the closet, well, there’s a ghost, there’s a séance, there's even that recurring theme of fire.

There may even be a murder mystery! But well, you probably already know, but this is you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. We’ve moved into the second of those decades, the '70s. I think just about the only things that look like the '70s this early, though, is the wood paneling in homes and banana-seated bicycles. It’s just too early!

And as the little ditty at the end always suggests, listen, like, subscribe and share!

Everyone’s dad dies. Mine died when I was only ten years old. When I look back on this story, I wonder just how much of what happened was normal and how much of it came about because of the people involved. There are parts that seem weird, but are maybe just run-of-the-mill experience.

This is you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. In this episode, How I found out my father had died, I close out the first of those four decades, the ‘60s. The story is more about the surrounding events than my dad’s death itself. As I was just entering the age of reason, this event obviously not only marked me as a person, but became the catalyst for important changes in the paths my life would have otherwise taken.

Relatives’ deaths are not always easy stories to tell. Everyone deals with grief in their own way. My story is over 50 years old, yours may be more recent. If you have a story about a loved-one’s death and the circumstances surrounding it, feel free to share, death is an important aspect of the Everyman Biography Project, it is a main reason I began the project: with each death, our stories get diluted and finally lost. Sharing your story helps to keep humanity anchored in the people who otherwise fade in the shadows of the well-known.

Listen, like, subscribe and share. Next week we move into the ‘70s, get your bell-bottomed pants and polyester leisure suits out of that dusty old trunk. Things get stranger and the strange begins to become normal….

Kids often think they are way more clever than their parents. They think they are in the right and plot ways to get their way. Yet, parents do tend to have an upper hand. Kids may get away with some of their high jinks, but more often than not, mom or dad or both will see right through the ruse.

I welcome you back to you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. This week I’m retelling a story I told back in Season one, called The winter coat. This time around I was able to add a bit more detail of that time that I thought I had the perfect plan to foil both my parents’ and school rules, but let my surety in that plan cloud an important step in that plan.

Do you have a story about something you thought you’d get away with, but in the end got caught and punished? Do share with me for the Everyman Biography Project! Send me an email with your story and I’ll slip it onto the list for future satellite episodes.

Hope you liked The winter coat. To help you remember that there is a new episode of Four decades every Monday morning, you need only subscribe, and on the way, share with your friends. The more listeners we have the more our everyday stories will weave a history of you and I, the real Everyman.

No one expects to live through the destruction brought on by a fire. Fires just happen, well, there’s always an ignition point, bad wiring, carelessness with an ember, but something burning to the ground can mark a person. What was is reduced to ash and twisted charcoal, something may rise from that ash, but the fire that brought the ash will remain.

This is you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. In this week’s episode, Barn burning, I’m sharing a bit of family fire karma. You may have heard in Episode three that I was pretty fascinated by flames and things burning. Now you’ll get a chance to see how even those trying to teach me about fire were just as careless.

Have you had an experience with a major fire? A home, a car, maybe just a Christmas tree you forgot to leave water for? Share your story with me and I’ll slip it into the Everyman Biography Project and maybe even in a future satellite podcast episode.

And if you enjoyed Barn burning, do listen, like, subscribe and share. I appreciate the loyalty!

Hey there!

Update episode, a quick review of the HBO series Somebody Somewhere. I think you'll like it.

And remember:

Listen, like, subscribe and share.

What kinds of games did you play with your siblings? Did you have lots of toys as a kid, or did you let your imagination run wild? How did your play area encourage your play?

You’ve tuned in (again, I hope!) to you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. In this episode, Children’s games, I flip through the photo album of how my brother, Bob, and my sister, Kate, made up our own games and played them. We were isolated as kids, we lived in the middle of corn fields, we only had each other to spend time with. These are some of those imaginative things we did to fill long summer days, outdoors, almost totally unsupervised.

If you played make-believe or made-up games, I’d love to add them to the Everyman Biography Project, where I’m trying to collect stories from regular old folks about their lives, stories that so often get lost in the passing of time and generations. Send me an email with your story and I’ll put it on the list for a future satellite episode.

And do subscribe if you liked Children’s games, and tell your friends about our Monday morning episodes. Thanks!

Hey all. Just a quick update, stuff that didn't make it into the prerecorded episodes. It's timely!

Three blue-tipped matches. A bag of trash. A burning barrel. Everything a kid needs to ignite the fire of pyro-interest. Will he end up burning down houses?

Welcome back to you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. In this week’s episode, Playing with fire, you get some insight into how a boy turns a weekly chore into the life-long interest in having fire at his fingertips. How a father tries to curb both the dangerous fire play and the accompanying lies and breach of trust. No one is guilty, but no one is innocent either.

Do you have a story about earning or losing or earning and losing trust from one of your parents? I’d be happy to hear it and include it in the Everyman Biography Project for future satellite episodes on the podcast. Email me your story and I’ll put it on the list!

Remember to subscribe if you liked Playing with fire. Tell your friends that every Monday morning there is a new episode ready, with those little stories that would never make headlines, but which hang out in our memory banks well into adulthood.

Grandma Pearl raised four kids on a Midwestern farm, was widowed in her late 50s and dedicated the next 30 years of her life to being a grandma. With her curly gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses, pearl clip-on earrings, big black grandma pocketbook, and false dentures, she stays with me in quick snap-shots, some actual photographs, others just random memories.

Thanks for tuning in again to you’re listening to radio revel, Season three: Four decades. This week’s episode, Remembering Grandma Pearl, is a photo-album experience, that rainy afternoon that you’re sitting at your Aunt’s house and she pulls out all those thick family albums and explains pictures to you of things that were captured before you were around.

Remember that I’m collecting your stories as well, for that budding Everyman Biography Project. If you’ve got a memory, or memories of one of your grandparents you’d like to share, do drop me an email! I hope to have enough to work up a satellite episode.

And, as is currently the fashion, I ask you to subscribe and share the podcast, if you liked Remembering Grandma Pearl. Every Monday morning there’s a new episode from my own personal biography.