Abigail Shatten was losing patience with her brother Nathaniel. It was getting on for winter, and the old fool hadn’t begun to split fresh stovewood. “Cold snap comin’”, she said. “If you don’t get crackin’, we’re gonna freeze by Christmas.” “Quit your naggin’, Abby,” he grunted. “Plenty of time for that. We got enough for
The Land The dream companion, me, but more persuasive, whispered the cantrip on the first night I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth birthday when my final friends, all aging, all some way bereft, came down, a-down a-down-o mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same. “Come on,” he said, this voice from the
Casting Couch Back in the Sixties, when I was starting out as an actor, I’d certainly heard of this particular piece of compromising furniture. But as I made the rounds of auditions, I had never encountered it, even metaphorically. The producers and directors I met were thoroughly businesslike: a glance at my photo and résumé,
MORE BAD JOKES Dave Gardner, originally from Tennessee, was a comedian who specialized in southern vernacular humor, and enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1950s and early ‘60s, due to the recordings he made of his routines. Many of his stories haven’t worn very well, because he was a thoroughgoing racist, and eventually became a sort