It was the summer of 1977. I was fresh out of high school, living on my own, generally disinterested in the church but not yet an atheist. Once a month I attended the church I…
Posts published by “Doug Holland”
My dad's motto was, "If you're going to do something, do it right." He had a thousand inspirational clichés, but that was the one that stuck with me the most. "If you're painting the wall,"…
I was about twelve years old when Harold and Maude came out, in 1971. At that age I only went to the movies if my parents took us kids to see G-rated dreck. I wasn't…
A youngish white guy comes into the diner. He's clean-cut and wearing a suit and tie, and he sits a few stools away from an ancient bald man who sometimes has oxygen tubes in his…
I've known a lot of nuts in my life. What's the polite term? "Mentally ill"? "Emotionally disturbed"? "Has issues"? Nah, nuts. That's the catch-all word for malfunctions between the ears. You're probably nuts, and I'm absolutely…
Once a week I treat myself to breakfast at a diner. It used to be breakfast with my wife, but she died, damn it, so now it's just breakfast alone at the diner. Same diner…
In the summer of 1992, a gun dealer named David Koresh sent a message to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). He asked several questions about the regulations which cover modifying certain guns,…