http://www.tribstar.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:29:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_265223203.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_265223203.html One sticky day this past summer, I left my wife, by her request, in our car while I ran into a hardware store to pick up a few things. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:40:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_251214301.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_251214301.html It was about a month ago that I just happened to be standing in my driveway working on a balky lawnmower when a long, white delivery truck pulled into my place. Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:12:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_237201344.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_237201344.html When my friend Joe called last Sunday with an offer to go fishing, I jumped at the chance like a bluegill going after spinner bait in clear shallow water. Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:05:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_223220631.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_223220631.html Not everything you read in this newspaper is about human nature at its worst, but I know that on any given day most of the news is pretty ghastly stuff: suicide bombings, raging wildfires, gas price hikes, church shootings… Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:43:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_209224434.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_209224434.html When I was a boy I used to explore a swampy marsh not far from my house. It all reminds me today of the place where Tom Walker meets up with the devil in Washington Irving’s classic tale of soul-selling. It was low and wet, and the water there was black and covered in a foreboding carpet of green scum. Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:40:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_195204205.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_195204205.html Denton True Young came home to stay in 1912; I know that because I found him a few weeks ago near a tiny red brick church in the Ohio countryside. Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:18:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_181201915.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_181201915.html For years now, folks who know a lot more about it than I do keep telling us that newspapers are going to die off soon. They say that the rise of the Internet, like Chicxulub, the meteor that helped wipe the dinosaurs off the planet millions of years ago, eventually will kill the desire for the newsprint that many of us still crave. Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:18:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_167231541.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_167231541.html I realize that on a scale of 1 to 10 my concern over a line of Robert Frost’s poetry rates in negative numbers, but, to paraphrase the wise New England poet, I am taking the road “less traveled by.” Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:40:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_153234211.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_153234211.html In each of the last few years, I’ve gotten a letter or two in the mail from Jim Eslinger, my high school economics and psychology teacher. Mr. Eslinger — I just can’t call him “Jim” — was one of my favorite high school instructors, but I’ve come to respect him even more now for another reason altogether. Sun, 18 May 2008 21:18:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_139211926.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_139211926.html I’ve been working in my garden and yard these past few cool, wet weeks, and along with the progress I’ve made with the tilling and raking and mulching has been the satisfaction of seeing my hands toughen, not unlike an old catcher’s mitt that’s been neglected of oil and sweat and spit. Sun, 04 May 2008 23:38:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_125233902.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_125233902.html My wife, God bless her, is always finding ways to make my family happy. Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:19:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_111231950.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_111231950.html With weekend yard work and house cleaning and reasonable household budgeting all considered, my wife and I don’t have nearly as much time and money as we’d like to wander the aisles of local antique stores and second-hand shops. Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:49:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_097234921.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_097234921.html I have a long list of favorite places to be, and ranked just below being at home on a Saturday morning — where I can wear an old T-shirt and blue jeans and not shave until Sunday — is the dollar aisle of an Indianapolis discount bookstore that I visit as often as I can. Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:13:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_083231356.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_083231356.html Despite the windy and wooly winter we’ve just had, the brown leaves of a scarlet pin oak I planted in my front yard years ago stubbornly hang in defiance of a spring that is now on our doorstep. Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:37:00 +0000 http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_069233824.html http://www.tribstar.com/mike_lunsford/local_story_069233824.html When John Olsen called me late last spring, I politely tried to end our conversation.