Scott Douglas Vaughan

In 2014, I had finished my book, Brookwood Road . It was being edited for the last time. I  happened to be with my daddy during a round of his chemotherapy, and we were telling stories. He told me his three favorite stories from when we three boys were younger. Oops. I had included two of the stories in the book but had completely overlooked the story he absolutely loved to tell each year at Christmas. So, at the last minute, I wrote a new chapter, rushed to have it edited, and included it in the book. Whew. Though he's been gone now for three years, in his honor and for your Merry Christmas, I give you the abridged version of Chapter 37 titled Christmas Voltage . For those who haven't read my books, the character Frank is based on me. Jack is based on my brother Tim. Wayne is based on my brother Russ. ***** The Vaughan (Wilcox) Brothers Tim (Jack), Russ (Wayne), Scott (Frank) A Christmas on Brookwood Road Frank lay still. The sun was just coming up and filling t...

There's something special about typing that last period - that last little dot of a punctuation mark. Done. This past Sunday afternoon, I put the period in the last sentence of the first draft of my new book, Hickory Trail . This won't be the last book I write, but it's the final book in this three-book journey that began in 2014 with Brookwood Road and bridged over Elm Street in 2016. Oh, it's just the first draft. Over the next 10 months, this manuscript will be carved up, kicked around, rewritten more than once, and professionally edited - twice - before it's ready for public view in Octoberish 2018. It's just the first draft, but it sure feels good to have electronically sent it to a printer for spiral-binding and hard-copy reading. For those interested in a back-story, I started Hickory Trail on Thursday, Sept. 7 of this year. It took three months and 10 days to pound out - mostly at night and on Saturday mornings - 95,323 words. I suspect it wi...

It was Christmas 1973. I was in the ninth grade. I got a new 10-speed bicycle that year for Christmas. Every Christmas up until that one in 1973, my brothers and I received a bounty of Christmas gifts from Santa. In retrospect, I don't think my parents were lavish in their Santa-playing. We certainly weren't spoiled, but we generally got most of everything we asked for from the Sears Christmas Wish Book. None of it was that expensive, but it was a pretty good haul. We shared with one another and so it was like Christmas times three. That's why the Christmas of 1973 was a shock to the system. We came down the stairs on Christmas morning to find . . . that Santa had given each of us just one gift - a 10-speed bicycle. We were not mature enough to understand that the value of this one gift equaled or surpassed the bounty from the previous years. Through a greedy and Grinchy lens, we saw the reduction in volume. Several gifts down to just one gift. It was also raining ou...

I'm going to start this Christmas post by looking back at Easter 2017. This past spring, I wanted to capture the Easter spirit - that spirit of peaceful, spiritual revival under the shadow of the cross and resurrection of my savior, Jesus. I desperately wanted to seek Jesus during Holy Week to prepare my heart for worship on Easter Sunday. And, if I know one thing is absolute for me and you, it's this: If you seek Jesus . . . . . .  you will always find Him . If you cry out, "I need you, Jesus," He will always respond with, "I am right here." And, He will cut through all the religious ambiguity and confusing questions and Christian dysfunction that gets in the way of you finding Him. None of that will matter once you seek and find Him. After experiencing Him, you will be left in peace and in wonder. Your life won't - can't - be the same. Ever. Around Easter, I was restless. I had wandered from Jesus, which can mean avoiding a spirit of lov...

The "old house" as we called it, on Brookwood Road , was a whopping 1,350 square feet with an unfinished basement big enough for my brothers and me to play around in. That house was built in 1958, the year my parents were married. It was a nice brick home with central air conditioning, which was kind of a luxury. Central air was a trendy post World War suburban thing, but we lived on my grandfather's hog farm - 20 two-lane roundtrip miles from the county seat of only about 2,000 people. The Brookwood Road house Drawing by Christy Jeffcoat We had a big yard - so big my brother Tim and I had to cut it in pushmower shifts over the course of an entire Saturday. Small house and big yard because most of a family's time was not spent indoors. In 2014, the average US home was built at about 2,600 square feet. The average size of a home built in 1973 was 1,600. But, the real difference in homes "then" and homes "now" tells us a lot about...