philcline – Page 2

Farmersville Tales, Part 8-The Line

April 23, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

Farmersville Tales – Part 8 – Nickel’s (episode two) – The Line During my high school years there was a labor dispute at the store. The store was union, but negotiations on a new contract between the union (Retail Clerks #1288) and the owners of the store chain floundered. There was a strike. It lasted for many months. […]

Farmersville Tales – Nickel’s

April 16, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

Farmersville Tales-Part Seven Nickel’s (episode one of two) At age 11, I became employed. Sweeping the parking lot of Nickel’s Pay-Less Food Market, was not my first job. Like most kids from Farmersville, I had worked in the fields alongside my parents, grandparents, and siblings. Childcare in the modern sense didn’t exist. You went where your folks […]

Farmersville Tales – Part Six

April 9, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

Church Farmersville had a reputation, in the early 1950s, of having the most bars for a town its size in the State. And the most churches. As the Sixties approached, Hollywood movies, TV, and popular novels often portrayed churches and people of faith, especially if from the South or Midwest, as stiff, uncompromising, puritan, imbued […]

Farmersville Tales – Part Five

April 2, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

Baseball Farmersville had a professional baseball team before any of the surrounding communities. The team’s baseball park originally stood on the west side of town, where the junior high is now. The team moved elsewhere and by the late fifties and early sixties, the park was increasingly falling into disrepair. The stands were splintered wood […]

Farmersville Tales – Part Four

March 26, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

“Ain’t Talkin’ To No Law” The drunk was staggering around the parking lot of the old Frontier Club, yelling, cussing, waving a knife. His outfit was dapper enough. Saturday night “going to town” clothes. Clean, almost new Levis, white shirt, open collar, clean shaven, hair pomaded and combed although right then it was sticking out on one side. […]

Farmersville Tales – Part 3

March 19, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Literary Writings

Mrs. Beaver’s Store She was a tiny lady of indeterminate age, but to a kid of six or seven, she was an old lady. She was thin, stringy, her skin loose like the old dress that hung on her frame, its color like her complexion, washed away years ago. She was the proprietor of a […]

Farmersville Tales-Part 2

March 12, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays

Old Men Walking Every morning there was a parade across town. This parade had no floats, no marching bands, no banners, no cheerleaders, no clowns tossing candy from miniature cars. The parade was of old men walking. Sometimes the old men walked alone, other times they marched in twos and threes. You could see them gesturing with […]

Farmersville Tales

March 6, 2023 by philcline in Blog / Essays / Uncategorized

Farmersville Tales Introduction I grew up in Farmersville. This series of essays, largely memories and impressions of my youth, span, roughly, the years 1950 to 1965 a period during which I, and Farmersville (finally incorporated in 1960) came of age. These are my stories. And the stories of a special people. My people. Many were migrants who moved west […]

When is a Judge not a Judge?

August 28, 2022 by philcline in Blog / Cline on the Constitution / Judiciary

Like, most Americans, I’ve followed the controversy attendant to the F.B.I.’s Raid on former President Trump’s home. Adult responsible conduct seems to be lacking on all sides. Both before the execution of the Search Warrant and afterwards. However, from the first reports, I’ve questioned why on Earth was the warrant issued by a Magistrate rather than a […]

Cline on the Constitution

June 13, 2022 by philcline in Blog / Cline on the Constitution / Judiciary / Presidency

Evidence As the Supreme Court withstands an unprecedented intimidation campaign as it prepares to issue an (official) opinion concerning the continued viability, if you will, of Roe v Wade it would be well to keep in mind what is real and what is not. As people like New York Senator Charles Schumer, who has never met […]

Author: philcline