Creative Nonfiction
Everyone has a unique story to tell. Our share tales of love and loss, growth and heartbreak make us who we are. They can build bridges between people and bring the intimate moments of daily life or events making news to a deeply personal level.
Officer Down
Bryson Alexander Howard was the first person I knew that died. He was only 19 years old. We weren’t really close friends, but he was someone I could always share a good conversation over a cigarette with. I’d always know Bryson as the kid who could laugh anything off, the kid who would come to school in jerry curls with a pimp cane, and the kid who had my back at alternative school and saved me from getting my ass kicked on more than one occasion. It felt strange when a friend called to tell me that Bryson had been shot by the Dallas police last fall. I felt as if I should have been a closer friend, or have said something more when I jokingly said “I feel that,” when he told me he dropped out of school because the white man was bringing him down.
It happened around 5:30 in the evening on February 13th, 2012 in the Timberglen Apartment complex that sits just west of George W. Bush freeway in North Dallas. Timberglen is an average looking apartment complex, far from the crime ridden neighborhoods like Oakcliff and Fair Park in South Dallas. A black metal fence surrounds a relatively well taken care of property. The tan buildings with red brick trim offer no indication that such a tragic and violent crime could occur here. However, after a fight with his aunt, Bryson took her phone and walked out of the apartment with a .38 revolver tucked in the waistband of his khaki shorts and hidden by his gray hooded sweatshirt. He walked around the corner and dialed 911, saying “there’s a guy walking around my apartments in a gray hoodie with a gun. I think he may hurt someone.” (Read more)
Driving to Lubbock/Lost in the Desert
It was about a hundred miles north of San Angelo that I lost my way.
The rolling hills of Central Texas had given way to the unrelenting weight of the Western sky, and jutting out in defiance of the rest of the landscape, the plateau of the high plains cut the horizon in two. Out in the distance, the wiry frames of a few trees clinging to the hard-packed clay marked the places where people still sought to scratch a living from their family farm. Though, from the looks of the houses, the land had relinquished the last of its rewards a number of years ago, leaving behind the scars of agriculture and irrigation to tell the stories of the seasons changing from life to loss. (Read more)
Todd - Memorial Day 2012
"You know a veteran can't even buy a cup of coffee on Memorial Day," a southern sounding voice asked from across the street at the Main Street Garden Park in downtown Dallas. The man had on a pair of thick-lensed glasses that contrasted his weak frame, and made his eyes look large and wild in the warm Dallas morning. "I served in Desert Storm, man," he said as I noticed a fading military tattoo on his forearm, half hidden by his rolled up sleeves, "and I can't even get a hot cup of coffee." (Read more)
War Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was an organization founded in June of 1967 by six veterans of the Vietnam War. At its peak, the organization had upwards of 20,000 members. The group was started as part of the antiwar movement that was going on at the time, and was meant to be for veterans of the war to band together in solidarity and express their opposition to the war. The group was able to make such an impact because of the fact that for one of the first times in America’s history, veterans of the war were speaking out against a war that was still going on, offering firsthand accounts and reasons why they believed that the war should end. Some of the major demonstrations they are known for are the Winter Soldier Investigation, where veterans publicly accounted for the atrocities and war crimes that they saw while they were doing their tours of duty in Vietnam; and a massive march on Washington D.C., where they joined with thousands of other protesters opposing the war. During these demonstrations, some of the members threw the medals they had received while in Vietnam on the steps of Congress as a symbol of the “worthlessness” of the war. (Read more)
Hallucinogens on the High Plains
Just on the other side of the highway from Texas Tech University sits the Sierra Crossing apartment complex, situated between the financial failure of the Raider Park Garage and endless rows of low income housing. It’s a quite community comprised mostly of Tech students and a few small families. For the most part the gated complex goes through the day uneventfully; a few people smoking cigarettes on their patios, or walking to and from their apartments. In late May of 2012, however, one of the apartments was swarmed with local police and DEA agents.
On the morning of May 2nd, Jonathan Nolan, dressed in his usual tie-dyed shirt and cut off shorts was riding his longboard to class when he was stopped by a campus police officer. The officer verified his name while an unmarked car pulled up behind him. “I knew I was in trouble when a second cop showed up in plain clothes and a ski mask,” Jonathan said. The second officer was a DEA agent who handcuffed Jonathan, and put him in the back of the unmarked squad car. (Read more)
Meaning Among the Madness
The sun was setting on the other side of the hill, and the last of its light made the shadows grow long on the surface of the pond. We had driven out there, to this tiny body of water clinging onto its life in the Texas summer heat, behind the old Catholic church, St. Something or Another, on Custer Road. The place always seemed right for chain smoking through good conversation; it was far enough back where I couldn’t see the endless rows of uniform houses, or even really hear the road filled with people I didn’t know going place I’d never heard of. It was our last night in town before Anthony and I left for college. He was going to Baylor, and I was going out into the wasteland of West Texas.
I had met Anthony a few years ago in one of my math classes, and after showing him how to make a proper Molotov Cocktail in the creek near my house, smoking a few Lucky Strikes, and going to a punk show down in Dallas, he moved in with me. He lived with me at my parents’ house for two years due to his family situation, and became more like a brother than a friend to me. There were very few times when we were apart, and now we were both leaving. Neither of us intended to come back. (Read more)