Author Archives: Paul Pekin

Bullheaded By Paul Pekin The first fish I ever caught came out of McGinnis Slough. They were only bullheads, but I was already 16. Mine was a childhood of streets and sidewalks, of bricks and concrete, and of a father who played the piano. Never mind Huck and Tom and that Norman Rockwell kid who […]

Who was this woman, and what did she have in mind?

You can bring the world into sharper focus, but do you want to?

War Stories By Paul Pekin I was playing pinochle with my sister and her friend Eddie Peterson when news of Pearl Harbor came over the kitchen radio. War news had become so routine that we managed to finish several hands before we realized that this time the bombing was being done to us. I was […]

By Paul Pekin I was on the beach north of Ludington, and the lake was so blue and bright it hurt my heart. “They won’t be in today,” the man from Kalamazoo was saying. “This is too damn nice a day for steelhead. It’s got to be cold so you can’t stand it. It’s got […]

I can cry only if I let myself cry, which comes perilously close to saying I cry only if I make myself do it. So when I woke up in the dead of last night crying, I felt shame. My sleep had been going poorly already. It wasn’t a matter of disturbing dreams, simply a […]

Hugh Grant was arrested…for what? Oh, that. The older I get the more confusing this world seems. Not the arrest. Hell no. In my glory days as a forest-preserve copper I arrested plenty of people for that–or something like that. There are variations on variations. If you’re one of those people who spent your hormone […]

From the sublime to the ridiculous to the supermarket and back.