My Portfolio

Very few people of my age express themselves about such things and I will not purport to speak for them, but only for myself. Old age from day to day, sometimes hour by hour, is a kaleidoscope of feelings. These sentiments may be common to us, or they may be uniquely...

All life is nothing but a connected series of “passages.”   We may stay in some places longer than others, but in the end, we always find we must leave and go through a passage to another place; we must make a transition into something we were not before.  Some are joyful,...

It is somewhat difficult for me to avoid tasting a certain amount of sadness while savoring the sights, sounds and feasts of “The Holidays” these days.  Unlike Dicken’s “Ghost of Christmas Past,” I have many memories of delightful Christmas celebrations.  As a school band director (in the middle years of the...

I don’t recall for sure where I met her, but, since she lived in a nearby town, Coffeyville (KS) and we belonged to the same small church, it was probably at a church Christmas party in the very early `50’s.  I was about 18 years old and attending the Municipal University...

What Can I Give Him? Christmas Eve: Circa 1934A Country Church           Jack and Shug Carriker, their six kids packed into their old 1928 Star Car, pulled into the bare dirt parking lot of a little church located in the countryside about halfway between Drumright and Oilton, Oklahoma.  Had they been flying a...

Passages: Large families: Thanksgivings. Many years of lots of noise, Lots of family around - conversations solving world's problems - crowded house - seated cheek to cheek around a large table with a "children's" table off to the side. Years pass. Those children who were seated off to one side or...

Thirty-nine years old, long-married, father of five children and there I stood, tears welling up in my eyes.  No, it wasn’t a family tragedy.  My wife loved me, our children were all healthy, our parents were still alive and doing well.  But not me.   My world was crashing around me. I had...

It was the trip of a lifetime, the fulfillment of a long-held dream  I was flying from St. Louis to California in my small plane exulting as I watched the West Texas pastureland unfold below me.  I had a chart across my lap to keep track of my progress but I’d been so enthralled with...

Life is made up of achievement, failure, frustration, fulfillment, ecstasy and agony: and in my 84 years I have both sampled and sometimes dwelled too long in every one of them.  That is as it should be. I would find it impossible to say which among the thousands of joyful moments,...

    Why is it that some people, when the conversation turns to flying, enter into an almost rapturous state, their eyes a’gleam like an Old Testament prophet?   Why will they spend fifty dollars to fly a hundred miles or more to eat a hamburger served in a little café alongside...

In the fall of 1971, dewy-eyed and puffed-up from gazing at the diploma on the wall which certified that I was a Ph.D, I was eager to take my place in front of a classroom somewhere in an ivy-covered temple of higher education.  But a few months before my adviser threw...

There have been Carrikers in America since before the American Revolution.  The roots of the Carriker family tree are rooted in soil that is solidly German and they reach all the way back to the Black Forest region of Germany, which was once called “The Palatinate.”  The original American Carriker was...

April 1, 1944 14,900 feet over the English Channel and climbing                Sunlight suddenly brightened the interior of the bomber. After what seemed like hours of climbing through the wet murky clouds of springtime England they had broken out into scattered sunshine. There were still wisps, patches, and sometimes full-blown clouds...

409th Bomb Squadron 93rd Bomb Group Hardwick Army Air Base Somewhere in England   April 1, 1944             Lieutenant Ed Robbins sat with his head cocked to one side listening intently to the thunder of the two big Pratt & Whitney radial engines out on the wing to his left. The...

    SO BRIEFLY AN EAGLE     PREFACE               Since I was only ten years old when he gave his life for his country my memories of my brother Rudy during his early years are part reality, part myth, and part stories I was told about him by my...

“There’s spalling on one of the camshaft lobes,” the mechanic said matter-of-factly.  He understood that he was dealing with a buyer-seller situation and what he was saying was a huge stumbling block in the path of closing the deal and that a poker face was in order.   The owner of the...

Cornflowers blooming, field corn tasseling, crisp evenings.  A time of year to be relished.  I was an Educator . . .   September . . . the beginning of another school year, a fresh start, a rebirth of hope.  A panoply of young people and children, some eager to learn, some...

Do you want to know why some people,when the conversation turns to flying,enter into an almost rapturous state;their eyes a’gleam like an Old Testament prophet and begin saying such things as “Reached out my hand and touched the face of God?   Why will they spend fifty dollars to fly a hundred...

Richard Bach, an avid aviator and writer, once wrote of fear.  He had halfway completed flying a loop when his plane for some inexplicable reason instead of completing the maneuver, began falling from the sky.   He described the fear that welled up and bubbled forth in the question, “What am I...

Travel, we are told, is a broadening experience.  Exposing ourselves to exotic foods, exciting or calming new landscapes, dipping our toes into both pleasant and dangerous waters, ascending the heights and plumbing the depths of our world exalts us above the mundane and breathes life into what would otherwise be mere...