My grandma Molly “Cookie” Keating would cross the Pittston Bypass and walk down William Street from Cork Lane to meet me after I suffered a rough day in fourth grade at St. John the Evangelist Grade School. She had silvery white hair mostly worn in a pristine bun. She wore bright floral dresses and ornate hats like an Irish Carmen Miranda. She led me downtown to a retail boutique— the ABC Shoppe on Main Street. Its tall, wide storefront windows trapped omnipresent vapor trail

Until my oldest brother Mike moved out of our half of a double-block home, we had three bedrooms for four kids. Briefly, I squeezed in a...

On the walk down the hill he could hear the bell in the not-so-distant spire. The peal of it sounded in groups of three. That’s how many...

I couldn't let my friend Ray go without writing down a few things. I'm glad I got to tell him how I felt when we got together. I remember...

There was a bunk behind Greg Lynch’s house. It sat about a third of the way up from the ground in a giant maple, like the mythical...

I’d never have written a word if it wasn’t for Terry Shaw. Oh, I’d send emails. I’d text. But that would have been the sum of it. Now...

How do you thank someone who’s helped make your lifelong dream come true? How do you approach it when you’ve never met them? What do you...

My brother, Mike, and his wife, Lorraine Button Tracy, got the hell out of Dodge in 1978 after Lorraine found a note on her desk that...

I live down by the Susquehanna River. On the good side of the water. But that poses some problems. I can’t sit on my porch these summer...

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see." I think Edgar Allan Poe — if he had a chance to revise the thought — would...