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Mike Handley's Blog – February 2010 Archive (4)

Seduced at age 12

'Twas Watergate summer when I was padding along the bulb-lit midway in Panama City Beach, drunk on the fumes of grilled Polish sausages, onions and green peppers and wincing to Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” blaring from the Tilt-a-Whirl. 1973 was my last year to ride a roller coaster and my first to be seduced by Africa.

Had it not been for that antelope with the sweeping horns, I'd have sauntered past the brightly colored kiosk loaded with picture frames. A day's wages from… Continue

Added by Mike Handley on February 28, 2010 at 12:31am — 9 Comments

Scared Spitless

I’d have left my beloved Africa, never to return, if there’d been a plane nearby. I can still hear the screams of my crew, urging me to run, how I spun in the taupe-colored sand and fell -- all the while holding a useless rifle so tightly my fingernails scarred the polished walnut.

Fitting that a black mamba’s head is coffin-shaped, since its kiss can scribble a man’s hard drive in mere minutes, depending on the amount of venom delivered. Never meant as a defensive gesture, the… Continue

Added by Mike Handley on February 22, 2010 at 9:29pm — 5 Comments

Dilating Pupils

The middle school kids listen with little o-shaped mouths as I tell them how I escaped the kiss of a black mamba, my way of baiting the hook before reeling them into a discussion about how they, too, can become writers. Sometimes I substitute Bigfoot, or add him if time allows.

Other teachers, even the principal, sometimes slip into the classroom to hear my stories. And none of them bat an eye when I mention the “sonofabitching armadillo” tale that earned my first-ever essay an A-plus… Continue

Added by Mike Handley on February 21, 2010 at 10:00pm — 7 Comments

“It’s our weekend, too”

Living in the Bible Belt’s buckle and starving for laughter, inspiration and dinner table conversation that didn’t begin with a mumbled amen, we were ecstatic over the Friday arrival of our guests from the big city.

She was a purple-haired, once-published writer who smoked like a foundry and delighted in calling me me “P.I.,” as in Magnum/comma ... for some reason only she knew. He was more of a professional reader whose whispered claim to fame was that he’d once been blown by a well… Continue

Added by Mike Handley on February 2, 2010 at 12:17am — 8 Comments

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