Author: Brad Zellar

  • From the Scrap Heap: Richard Kunkel's Christmas Pageant

    A lot of folks around town thought there was something special about Richard Kunkel. Big things were expected of that poor fellow. Certainly no one believed that such a fine, bright boy as Richard Kunkel would stick around a tiny little jerkwater village like ours for the rest of his life. Many assumed Kunkel would…

  • Stop The Presses!

    What the hell? This is what we’ve been waiting twenty months for? Here’s the lead from CNN: "Illegal steroids have been in widespread use in Major League Baseball for more than a decade and used by some of the game’s top stars, former Sen. George Mitchell said in releasing a report Thursday." Excuse me while…

  • Great Joy

    It was an old, quiet horse, the color of gray corduroy, or child’s clay, those elephant slabs wrapped in wax paper that Reston remembered from classrooms in his childhood. Six months earlier the horse had been delivered to the pasture out back of Reston’s trailer, and it had taken four men to coax her from…

  • The Unfortunate Fate of Our Local Giant

    I don’t recall if the local giant ever actually claimed to have special powers. It did, however, seem to me that he conducted himself as if he had sprung from the pages of mythology. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that this didn’t appear to be just another ordinary, run-of-the-mill giant. For one…

  • Beauteous Munch, Popular Show Dog

    One night long ago in a once-upon-a-time world there was a little lost dog in a faraway forest. The dog was alone and hungry, and it was a bitter winter in the forest. The little dog was settling into the cold den he had burrowed for himself in the snow around the roots of a…

  • What Do I Know?

    Here’s what I’d like to know: Since when are the New York Yankees in any position to play hardball with the Twins? Given the pitching situation in New York, and given the fact that this is a team that is now in the (for them) desperate position of playing second-fiddle to the Red Sox, would…