WRITER'S SHOWCASE--Preserving the Extraordinary Works of Ordinary People--The Preservation Foundation, Inc., Book Publisher

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Preserving the extraordinary works of 'ordinary' people

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Slip-Sliding Away

Cynthia Close

Photo of an old woman driving a car.

It was a trip faced with a mix of trepidation and sadness. I managed to get a cheap flight out of Burlington through Reagan National on to Sarasota because the Burlington flight left at 6:00 a.m. requiring a trip to the kennel to drop off Ethel, my canine companion, the day before. I also booked a cab service that would make the hour long drive from Sarasota/Bradenton airport to her door for $50 less than the regular Limo drivers I’d used in the past....

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Good People

Dale Fehringer

Photo of Dale's father in his Marine uniform.

Nelson Mandela once said “the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” If that’s true, my father was a brave man.

My father loved the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He was proud of his overseas service during World War II; and, to him, the VFW stood for country, the flag, and a belief that the U.S. is great....

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Ghost Trilogy

Lisa Rehfuss

After narrowing down a lifetime of ghost stories to these three, I wasn't able to choose
which one to share with you. These are true stories with witnesses ready to confirm
events as reported....

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Seen From The Road

Ellie S. Thomas

If you're an outdoor person, and you're avid for nature, then it's hard to beat living in the country. We didn't exactly live in the country because our home was on a busy highway and when we were advised to walk for our health's sake, we felt it wouldn't be beneficial to walk along that particular route where our lives would be endangered by speeding vehicles and we'd be breathing noxious fumes. It so happened that there were other, more remote roads, all over the place and we took advantage of their isolation whenever we were able to for our constitutionals. Little did we realize how attached we'd become to these forays, the secret vistas, the wild, (and domestic,) life found along their reaches, and all the other things that make life meaningful for people such as ourselves....

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Helen

Robert Flournoy

It is a hard thing for people now to understand living in a 1000 square foot house in the middle of a sea of cotton and corn, with the nearest paved road 5 miles away. Or how a 4 and 1/2 foot 10 year old child could get lost in 11 foot tall corn. Only a call from the farm house porch kept him from walking in the wrong direction, the sound of his uncle's voice giving him saving orientation. And who was to know that the "cotton dust" used so liberally on that corn would not only kill all of the birds, but would eventually cause the leukemia that would take his grandmother's life before its dioxin was discovered to be deadly....

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Dispatches from the Trenches

Karen Radford Treanor

We have recently moved from Western Australia to Tasmania, which involved preparing our former home for sale. Murphy’s Law at once came into force and things went wrong in the plans to have a quick and smooth transition from one side of this big dry island to the other. August found us indulging in a pastime that goes back into the dim mists of our family’s history: plumbing the depths of the septic system and drain....

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Miles From Home

Jerry Vilhotti

Photo of facing (chest game) Knights--one black and one white.

"Perdón. Does the midnight train to Nuevo Laredo stop here? We just came a hundred miles busing from San Mig-”

Johnny was going to tell the man they had traveled hundreds of miles of back country with many many passengers carrying chickens with them....

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Toffee-Coated Dreams

Anusha Nachiappan

Photo of toffee being poured into a pot.

...I have always loved the rustle of chocolate wrappers. A myriad of colour, twists, slowly, revealing every facet of the gleaming silver wrapper, as it catches and dances in the sunlight. The little chocolate tumbles out, in all of its simple complexity, with its flawless curved surface. The aroma explodes into its surroundings, in a woven tapestry of the fantastical flavours that teleport every adult from their dark, barren workplace to paradisiacal green fields and sandy beaches, where the cool breeze once whipped through their hair as they flew down a hill in their youth....

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An Ending and a Beginning

Ellie S. Thomas

A loved one was gone--been gone the past six weeks, two months, it makes no difference because six months later, we would inform people 'he's been gone six months ago today' but not really believing that. It's been a total disruption of our lives but its still unreal...to us, to me. Good people and well-wishers tell us that 'its gonna fade and you will heal'. All true but they leave out the most vital issues of what it's like to lose your mate, your parent, your sibling....

Then, Too...

The Sequel to
An Endling and a Beginning

Ellie S. Thomas

After weeks, months, of harsh mourning and grieving I began to think that just maybe I was going to survive, that things were going to go all right, perhap I could cope but then, I really am naive. After the first month's grace period, I was introduced to reality with the news that I'd lost $1,000 a month with pension and social security re-apportionment. That was a blow but I thought I could handle it because I had no desire to go anywhere anyway, had plenty of clothing, and my needs were very small but I congratulated myself too soon because that wasn't the last of the bad news. Within a month, I received notice that I must find another group health insurance plan by the end of the year!...

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Blue-eyed Soul

Richard Bishop

Photo of Michael Bolton's Soul Provider album cover.

Wikipedia has identified this music as primarily Afro-American “rhythm and blues” but performed by white performers. The music itself was in the genre of Motown and Stax record labels. It was performed heavily in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The British used the name more than we did in the Americas but now, apparently, it has become a generic classification of music, i.e., it has generated a List Of Blue-eyed Soul performers in Wikipedia. ...

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2014 contest winning stories

General Nonfiction

Home Page Winner

Grandpa's Time Machine

Nancy Loera