Part 70: Sugar Swings
We arrived at a sweet cottage. It was our new place, with two enormous trees in the back yard, one avocado, one fig tree. I didn't fully...
Part 69: Jan & Riley Separate, Riley Hides The Encyclopedia of Folk Music
Below is a single page from Riley's journal with only two things written on it. The scribbled circle and arrows are mine, trying to...
Part 68: Riley's Brother Victor, The Brown Derby, Riley's Bonanza Girlfriend.
Riley made reservations at The Brown Derby, a restaurant where he hung out in the bar with famous people like Gene Autry, and where...
Part 67: Mae West, Riley and Jan's Early Years
Below, my mother, Jan as a teenager. My parents first met in Reading, Pennsylvania at a get together with mutual friends when she was...
Part 66: My Father, Riley Shepard
I grew up in a cloud of my father’s cigar smoke, listening to the tapping sounds from his Corona typewriter, the loud zipping from the...