Blog

Me and Horses

August 4, 2026 | Remembrances | Comments

My history with horses is checkered. I stopped riding at field trials soon after waking up riding in Ray Warren’s pickup truck one Thanksgiving weekend, not knowing where or why I was there or who Ray was (or who I was). I had fallen off a runaway borrowed horse at the Quail Championship Invitational at Paducah, Kentucky where I was reporting. Ray was taking me to an emergency room. Fortunately, I suffered only a mild concussion that day. The spot where I dishonorably dismounted is marked by a sign, “Tom Word’s Oak.” Read more

The Lucky Trade

July 26, 2026 | Booty Blevins, Short Stories | Comments

Truck tires were still rationed and mostly unavailable. The War was over in Europe but not yet in the Pacific. The first breakaway was at seven tomorrow morning at Pinehurst. Jess and Booty figured they could just make it if they drove all night. They did not know if they had a dog in the first brace but with six entered of a draw of about thirty Jess figured there was a pretty good chance they did. Read more

A Haunting Story

July 18, 2026 | Fiction, Remembrances | Comments

This story has haunted me many years. I do not recall where I first read or heard it. I do not know whether it is true or fiction or who wrote it. They lived in a small frame house, unpainted, close beside the railroad track. They were black. The father was a feed-mill hand in the nearest town. He unloaded sacks of unground grain from farmers’ mule-drawn wagons and trucks, loaded sacks of ground and mixed feed back on them, and did whatever else the mill owner asked him to do. He walked along the track to and from work six days a week, three miles each way. Neither the father nor the mother could read or write but the son could. He was a diligent student. Read more

An Interesting Fellow

July 13, 2026 | Remembrances | Comments

In the summer of 2015, I received a poignant hand-written message from a granddaughter of a former head dog trainer-quail hunt manager of a large quail plantation in the “Quail Belt” between Albany, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida. She and the grandfather were unknown to me. In her message, she explained that her grandfather, my age, had a bucket-list wish to attend the Florida Open All-Age Championship and observe it from atop the dog truck with me. She explained the grandfather had in the 1960s held his plantation post ten years, then when the plantation owner died returned to his home county in Northern Virginia where he spent the rest of his working years in the employ of an electric utility supervising a right-of-way maintenance crew. Read more

Illegal

July 7, 2026 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach had warned Pete-Bob Dix from the start not to embark on his quest to make money from “portability,” a feature of the federal estate and gift tax law since 2011. Under portability, a spouse could give to a surviving spouse on death his or her unused gift and estate tax exemption. When Pete-Bob repeatedly asked Ben supposedly hypothetical questions about the portability rules, Ben said, “Do not ask me for advice about “portability.” Ben knew how Pete-Bob’s mind worked and thus the opportunities Pete-Bob saw in “portability” from reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. Read more

Minerva’s Rescue

June 26, 2026 | Short Stories | Comments

Minerva was a pointer, seven years old. She was handled by Arch Reams, age seventy-five, and the last of a breed of handlers of the old school, who rode the pace set by the judges and mostly in sight of them and let a dog hunt ahead and make its pattern, hopefully to the front. He was quiet, sang with a voice Minerva heard but did not shout or ride frantically to turn her or see where she coursed over a hill ahead. Read more

A Good Bird Dog

June 19, 2026 | Poetry | Comments

A good bird dog Is a gift from God If you get one You owe it care You owe it time When young to learn To stay with you And search the front Read more

A Run-Off

June 8, 2026 | Poetry | Comments

Two handlers wake before dawn And roll from their lumpy beds In a field trial motel near the grounds Their tasks for the day are a run-off Then a two-hundred-mile-haul in their duallys pulling trailers They wish the judges had flipped a coin Given one the Championship, the other R-U Champ But no, they must instead have this Waste a day And throw everyone’s plans in a mess They grab Read more

A Pup From Kentucky, Part I

June 1, 2026 | Booty Blevins, Short Stories | Comments

There is a long tradition of father-son apprenticeship in the pointing dog trainer-handler trade. Jake and Bobby were part of that tradition. Jake had been a for-the-public trainer-handler four decades, taught his son Bobby who scouted for him. Jake had turned his string and owners over to Bobby five years ago. Now Jake, age seventy, assisted Bobby with puppies and derbies, gave advice occasionally, sometimes welcomed, more often not. Read more

Amazon and Me

May 27, 2026 | Tom Word Books | Comments

For many years, I engaged Amazon as print-on-demand (POD) printer, publisher and internet sales distributor of my books. It began when Amazon acquired CreateSpace, a small privately-owned pioneer in the POD business I patronized. Amazon changed the brand name to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). How I ceased to be represented by Amazon and was banned from its vast retail internet distribution network is a bizarre tale of what can happen to a small fry in the digital age. Fortunately, my writings are a second job for me and not depended on for my daily bread. Read more