Boyhood Empire
24. Father Knows Best: Marcia
My tiff with Pussy Galore and Mrs. Conte came not long after Samantha’s tomboy reassurances had seemed to defang the advance of female trouble. [...]
25. Father Knows Best: Home and General
Though my mother was gone and my switchboard heartbreak was still raw, home remained a sweet place, mostly because its nooks, crannies, and trees [...]
26. Father Knows Best: The “Californian” in the Dark
As a lover of old magazines and illustrated books, I found subjects of interest my father never discussed. In a nutshell, I fell in [...]
27. Father Knows Best: Walter Lord
To get to New York we retraced our off-to-Spain steps of four years before. Only this time, without my mother present, we were allowed [...]
28. Father Knows Best: Mrs. Margaret
My much-anticipated VC-10 adventure did not go quite as planned, and yet again, it was my father’s uncanny sense of my mood that had [...]
29. Father Knows Best: The End, or One End
If books end, so do phases of life, though they refuse to stop blending, one with another. The London excursion to see Mr. Foyle, [...]
30. Beach Dreams: Wilmington Avenue
There is no knowing why they picked that house, little more than a shy yellow cottage recessed from Wilmington Avenue — not an avenue [...]
31. Beach Dreams: Trailways
To get to the little yellow cottage by the big Atlantic sea required a bus that made many stops and was operated by a [...]
32. Beach Dreams: Castle Strategies
Our yellow cottage was possessive of its rooms. It had but three: a large bedroom, a smaller one, a cupboard-sized study, as well as [...]
33. Beach Dreams: The Sway of the Toe
Beach life came with pleasures and admonishments, the latter (including the widespread failure to venerate my castle projects) I simply disregard — in exchange [...]
34. Beach Dreams: Jane Be Good
In June of 1959 my favorite beach car was made by a company called Nash. I came upon my favorite Nash, vintage 1947, parked [...]
35. Beach Dreams: Axis
The place where the boardwalk ended, a carpet of stitched-together matchsticks surrendering to endless, disinterred sand, seemed to me like the end of the [...]
Author
Christopher P. Winner is a veteran American journalist and essayist who was born in Paris in 1953 and has lived in Europe for more than 30 years.