Read "Dispatch: A Story of My Parents" from The Nebraska Dispatches by Christopher Cartmill:

"I remember when I was a kid thinking that the house we lived in was on top of an enormous hill. At the time we lived in a part of Kansas where there are no hills. That’s what memory does.

While other kids’ houses smelled of beef barley soup, our house glowed with the scent of whiskey and Miss Dior. My father was a handsome self-made man from the southern great plains who had been something of a ne’er-do-well in school—caring more for golf than education. That is, until he married my mother. She was a part-time model and self-made woman of great energy and beauty and education. Her passions were for the theater, for teaching, and for my father.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: The Nebraska Dispatches by Christopher Cartmill”