Scott Douglas Vaughan

Vicki and I went out to dinner last night, Monday night. We went early - at 5:30 p.m. - because we had not eaten much since breakfast and we were starving. We didn't want fast food. We wanted table service - something prepared fresh - and we wanted peace and quiet. As expected at 5:30, the restaurant was pretty empty. On the way to our table, we passed six young couples all with babies. We figured them for neighborhood friends or friends through work or church. Reaching our square little table, I chose to sit to Vicki's right rather than across from her. Sitting this way gave us both a view of the restaurant including a table right in our line of sight - about 6 feet away. At the table was a boy we guessed to be about 18 and a girl about the age of 10. Hearing them refer to their mutual parents, we deduced they were brother and sister. We weren't really eavesdropping, but it was just too precious to ignore. He removed his mobile telephone, called a number, and sai...

(This is an abridged version of Chapter 34 (Valentine's Candy) in my 2014 book, Brookwood Road . If you are unfamiliar with my books, each chapter is a story from my childhood written as fiction. The stories weave together under a larger story arc within each book. This particular story, Valentine's Candy, is important because it shows how my daddy stepped into his son's crisis and saved the day. It also demonstrates how kindness leads to kindness. Happy Valentine's Day!) *** Frank always had a girlfriend, it seemed. The girls, however, rarely called Frank their boyfriend. It wasn’t until he was in junior high school, in conversation with an older and wiser high school girl, that Frank understood his one-sided relationships were in fact called crushes. He loved the girls, but they really didn’t know he was alive. In the fourth grade, when he was assigned to the desk in front of the beautiful Denise, Frank considered it the luckiest thing that had ever happene...

This post is about a man on a train. While our son William was living in DC, my Vicki and I went up to visit about 3-4 times every year. Mostly, we drove from South Carolina, but occasionally we took the Amtrak Palmetto line from Florence to Alexandria, VA, and then used Uber or Lyft to get around the city. We enjoyed the train travel because going up to DC and coming home were both daytime trips. We had free wi-fi, free Diet Coke and water in the Cafe Car, and regarding space, the seats in Business Class are similar to First Class on Delta. It's a relaxing way to spend a day. We read a lot. Last fall, I sat at a table in the Cafe Car and knocked out four chapters of my new book, Hickory Trail . On one of our Amtrak trips home, I was reading a first-edition of Larry McMurtry's 890-page epic, Lonesome Dove. Across the center aisle from me was a senior adult man riding alone. I later learned he was 84 years old. He got on the train with us in DC, and I had helped him lift...