Author Archives: jimmcgarrah

“Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” This is a line from a famous country and western song by Waylon Jennings. It’s pretty good career advice for a lot of reasons, some of which I will mention shortly. But the mythology of the Old West is the only mythology that is trulyContinue reading “Mamas, Please Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys”

Roughly twenty years ago, I lived in a small, southern Indiana town called Princeton while teaching at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville. My two children, both in their early twenties lived somewhere else and had for a considerable amount of time. My wife and I had the two-story home on State Street toContinue reading “To Protect and Serve”

(This essay first appeared in Southern Indiana Review in 1998 and subsequently was published by the Indiana Historical Society Press as the first chapter of the book “A Temporary Sort of Peace” in 2007. I’m sharing it here in honor of National Vietnam Veterans Day which is March 29.) Back in Evansville, Indiana, I’m lockingContinue reading “A Treaty in the Mind”

The only way remotely possible to avoid drowning is to never go near water, unless you happen to join the Marine Corps. Marines do things mere humans can’t, or so I was told by my drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina in the spring of 1967. Part of my training to prepare for jungleContinue reading “The Little Engine That Couldn’t”

Shelagh Shapiro did an interview with me not long ago on her radio show Write the Book. One of the subjects we discussed was the significance of the title for one of my books of poetry, The Truth about Mangoes, an odd one to be sure. Like most writers of poetry and fiction and creativeContinue reading “The Truth about Mangoes”

(first published by Ink Brush Press) Chester, New York, spills off of the Palisades Parkway about seventy miles northwest of New York City. It rests, like Rip Van Winkle, in the foothills of the Catskill Mountain Range. When I first moved there after returning from the Vietnam War, the town and surrounding countryside was inContinue reading “Worthy”

I was watching an old movie made from an older novel last night called The Last Temptation of Christ. The last temptation, of course, had to be sex with Mary Magdeline. In movies and books written within the Judeo/Christian tradition sex is always a temptation, never a pleasure or a lucky break, but rather aContinue reading “Gimme That Old Time Religion”

I heard an ancient tale during my travels in Southeast Asia. I may have been sober when I heard it, which is why the details have stuck with me all these years. Or, maybe the reason has more to do with the fact that human nature remains unchanged. What was an astute observation two thousandContinue reading “The Elephant in the Room”

Update, February 2021: In November of 2016 my wife, my daughter, and one of our close friends drove our SUV over a thousand miles to Standing Rock reservation in the Dakotas. We were loaded with canned goods and medical supplies donated by friends to help support the Native American water protectors peacefully protesting a newContinue reading “Oil and Water”

As children, we often see the world literally and believe what our parents tell us the same way. Leaving my home in Princeton, Indiana, travelling south toward Evansville along State Highway 41 in the late 1950’s and through the 1960’s a cornucopia of strange sights unfurled along both sides of the asphalt. Rows and rowsContinue reading “Of Flamingos and Jesus”