While cleaning out the basement recently, my wife Kris and I came across a very old and storied knife.

My Aunt Bess was a true old school nurse.

When I turned 7, my dad took me to the Kankakee Book Store…

In 1959, I sent my hero, the NY Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, a letter…

My dad came to the US before WWI…

My father loved to gamble…

Every summer in the ‘50s we would head to Brainerd, Minnesota…

I learned to read in school…

I have saved this plastic robot since I was about 7...

As I pick out a blue pastel stick from the wooden box ...

Movies have always felt very real and personal to me…

This simple cup, saucer and plate matching set is quite ordinary…

April 1961, Far Rockaway High School baseball field, Queens, NY...

He hasn’t seen the light of day for years...

Do you know what you did every day in 1958?…

At nineteen, I, who did not read music...

The Reina Victoria Hotel in Madrid sits at one end of the Plaza del Angels…

She was my favorite Aunt...

The yellow house I grew up in had a cellar…

I was at Forbes Field, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, on October 13, 1960...