Here is a sixth excerpt from my book:

“It was about a month later, again on a Friday night, that I got a phone call at the store just like the previous one. Once again, there was no reply from the other side. Once again, I knew it had to be Lynn. Sure enough, a few minutes later, she drove into the parking lot. She was wearing a t-shirt and blue jean shorts, and looked great. She hadn’t been in the store very long when my parents pulled in to buy some gasoline. My two-year-old niece was with them, and they had been to the home football game. Lynn and I went out to talk to them, and mom and dad told her they were glad to see her. After they left, once again, there was just the two of us in the store, and no customers for an extended period of time. She sat down on a stack of pop cases, and I took my place behind the counter.

She started to say, “I came here . . .to apologize . . .” She began to cry, and I walked quickly around the counter and said, “Oh, Lynn.” I knelt in front of her, and tried to wipe her tears away with my hand, but they were coming too fast. I hated to see her so upset and wounded. She said that one of our mutual friends had pointed out to her, “Now you know how Silver felt when you left him last year.” I told her that I never wanted to get hurt like this. I could tell that the full force of what she had done the year before had come down on her in a similar fashion, but I had never wished it upon her. I consoled her as best I could, and even got her to smile and laugh some. By the time we were finished talking, I think we both were happy again in that moment. When she walked out of the store to go to her car, she looked back at me with the same beaming smile she had in the early days of our relationship.

I don’t really know for certain if her motivation was for us to get back together, or just her remorse for the pain she’d caused me by experiencing something similar herself. I never asked. At the time, even when the thought did cross my mind that she might want us back together, I probably would have declined the opportunity. I had been in the process of putting myself back together for a year, and, though I still wasn’t where I wanted to be, if she were to break my heart again, I probably couldn’t have taken it.”

Here is a fifth excerpt from my book:

“After another sleepless night, I decided that showing up to work, if for no other reason that to see what was going to happen, was what I needed to do. I had never been much of a quitter, even though quitting at everything in my life in which I had been involved was always a constant. It would have been even better if they fired me than if I were to quit; that way I would have no alternative but to leave town and return to the Ozarks.

I dove into completely unfamiliar waters in the dark of night and began to swim. The company decided to put a finance manager, whose hands were clean of the bad procedures of the prior managers, in charge on a temporary basis. He was roughly my age, with a wife and young son, and was a very approachable and likeable guy. He seemed like he was willing to help me and the other salesmen out, but he was only here as a transitional figure, and that was in an assistant role. The dealership was planning to move one of its best finance managers to our location to clean up the mess left behind.

We also began to piece together what exactly had led to the investigation. It seems that Brig had photocopied some incriminating paperwork before she quit and had approached upper management about taking her story to the local news media. The dealership had worked with local law enforcement to do a private investigation, fired the managers who were responsible, and quietly sweep the whole matter under the rug.

As part of the agreement, Brig would be given her job back. When she walked into the building that Wednesday night, exactly forty-eight hours after the previous bosses were fired, my face went white. This was quite a conundrum: on one hand the unethical practices of my former bosses was their downfall, and had created a bad environment for all of us in which to work. On the other hand, Brig had essentially blackmailed the company into firing two people and giving her back her former position, a job in which she had quit, as opposed to getting fired. Oh, for the simple days of working for the school as a tele-counselor for minimum wage!”

Now, an excerpt for the guys:

“The teams cleared the field. After an hour or so, the electricity of the 62,000 fans in attendance began to be felt throughout the stadium. The Oakland Raiders took the field to the AC/DC theme of “Hells Bells.” The ravenous crowd exploded in a frenzy. Clad in silver hoods and black jerseys, the Raiders looked like vicious colossal monsters ravenous for sustenance. The Chiefs, on the other hand, simply looked like victims this day, with their red helmets, white jerseys and red football pants. They were prey, covered in blood, awaiting a vicious attack from heartless marauders.

I had tears in my eyes as the Silver and Black stormed the field. When I was a kid, Oakland, California might as well have been Oz. Poor people from the Ozarks don’t get to go to California, only rich movie stars and great athletes. And yet, here I was, in the Oakland Coliseum, about to watch the Raiders play in their hometown.

I understand that not everyone is an Oakland Raider fan. In fact, the Raiders are a team people either love or hate, and the emotions overflow on whatever side one comes down upon. All the same, every guy out there knows what it’s like to see his favorite team come out prepared for battle, swaggering along with confidence and conviction that the game has already been won. Only the contest remains to be played.

The Raiders took a 28-10 lead into halftime. The third quarter ended with Oakland on top 35-14. However, the Chiefs managed a brief comeback in the fourth quarter, closing the score to 35-24. Although I knew that this game belonged to the Raiders, I was still a little gun shy about celebrating too quickly. On scores occasions, I had seen a win dissolve against the Chiefs in the remaining minutes of the fourth quarter. 1990, 1991, 1995, 1997, 1999. So many games that hinged on just one play here or there, and somehow the Chiefs managed to prevail in games in which they lost every other statistical aspect. Was I now going to see one first hand, face to face? I calibrated the distance from the top of the stadium to the concrete, just in case I would have to make the jump. I wanted to make certain that death would be swift and sure.

Oakland scored again on a two yard pass from Gannon to Ricky Dudley to make it 42-24. At that point, Greg Papa announced, “This one is over!” I wasn’t so convinced. Kansas City marched right back down the field and Grbac scored on a three yard bootleg. Grbac extended the ball just across the goal line, and had some friendly words with the Raider’s free safety, who was too slow in stopping the Chief’s quarterback. I tapped my hand nervously on the railing near me, and refused to sit down. “It’s not over yet,” I muttered to myself.

The Raiders took the kickoff back to the Kansas City forty-three yard line. On the first play from scrimmage, Gannon handed the ball to little-used running back Randy Jordan and he sprinted the distance to the end zone for a touchdown. The joint was off the hook by now! The Chiefs made one last drive, but the Raiders piled on top of Grbac for a sack on the game’s final play. Final score, 49-31. Triumph!”

Ok, this one’s for the girls. This is the third excerpt from my book, tentatively titled “SILVER 6IX: CONFESSIONS OF A GENTLEMAN FARMER:”

“The night before our group was to leave Ukraine and return home, Stassiya and I stayed out until 3 AM. We spent our time in the nearby city park, talking well into the night on one of the park benches. It started to get cool that evening, so put my jacket on her shoulders. It didn’t seem like we had any shortage of topics to discuss, and on many of the themes we disagreed, but it was clear that our mutual attraction overrode any differences of opinion we had. As I walked her back to her apartment, I had determined that I was going to find a way for us to continue this relationship, regardless of the incredible distance. When we arrived at the door, she handed my jacket back to me. I acted like I was going to walk away, but instead I spun around. Approaching her again, kissed her slowly and softly underneath a dim street lamp.”

Here is a second excerpt from my forthcoming book, tentatively titled,. “SILVER 6IX: CONFESSIONS OF A GENTLEMAN FARMER,” two days from the fourteenth anniversary of the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City:

“The rumbling sounded like thunder. I wouldn’t have thought much about it, but I had taken Erin to work that morning in Edmond, and knew that the skies had been clear with no hint of a storm approaching. I was back in bed, not needing to be up until chapel at 11 AM. I decided to open my eyes and look out the bedroom window. The sun shone brightly into the room. My first thought was that it was the grain elevator which was about one mile west of the college campus. Although I had never heard nor seen it happen, I knew that it was possible for dust in a grain elevator to catch fire and combust. However, I didn’t give the rumbling much thought and I dozed back off.

I awakened a few minutes later and began to prepare for chapel. I had turned on the radio to listen to music as I prepared, and heard instead someone saying something about some sort of explosion somewhere in town. I continued on to the shower, and when I finished, the words coming from the radio began to get my attention. I turned on the television to witness the scene at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The front of the building was completely destroyed. I would later learn that the person responsible, Timothy McVeigh, was driving north on Interstate 35 in a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis
with no valid license plates, less than three miles east of where I was at that very moment.

There was a somber tone in chapel that morning. All of the scheduled activities for chapel were scrapped for a prayer service for the victims and workers that morning. For the next few weeks, there was a brotherhood of kindness around the city, now the focus of the entire world. Most cars did not have running lights at this time. Almost everyone on the road during the next month had his headlights on in support of our fellow Oklahomans.”