Timmy at two in Belmont, Mass. Origin of “The Thunder Song,” begun circa 1950 in Belmont, Massachusetts I am two years old, standing at the back door of our kitchen, formerly the laundry room of the big old farm house that we rented half of, watching the rain pour down and the lightening flash beyond the […]
The “Thunder Song” Read More »
Three Memories of Mom from 1954-1956 [Letter from Tim to Charlotte on October 11, 2016, five days prior to her 96th birthday] Happy birthday!! Dear Mom, About sixty years ago you were a young mother and I was one of your two young sons, living at 10299 South West Eastridge Street, Portland, Oregon. Our home
Piano, Soap and Walnuts / circa 1954 Read More »
Timmy Tompkins at 2 with Suzy Abbott at 3 (his Eve?) holding apple. Photo by Charlotte Tompkins, 1950. Earliest Memories Watertown, Mass., near Harvard, 1948-1949 Electrical Introduction My first memory was seeded by my parents telling me in later years about running round and round the dining room table in our little apartment in
Jack Capps (friend, AKA Joseph Weatherbottom) pumps the shutter bulb to take Frances family shot, 1981 Jack Capps, going by his chosen alias, Joseph Weatherbottom, spent thirty years in a state asylum for the insane after he freaked out as a young man during battle in World War II. He dresses meticulously in an open-collared
Joseph Weatherbottom Read More »
A Play in One Scene by Frances Gallopaway Cast of Characters HARVEY DILL: Crackpot psychiatrist. Very tall.WILBUR: A patient. Younger. Short.KATY: Friend of both. Scene KATY’S living room in a Bohemian beach apartment somewhere in California. Time The present.
Suzanne and Tim performing, mid-1970’s (Written 2018July12, about a songwriting event in the dwindling months of 1973, on Seattle’s north side, as Providence slid quietly toward disbanding.) It’s an autumn evening and my girlfriend, Suzanne, is serving one of her big wonderful salads for supper. Baked sweet potatoes too. Perhaps we had already been tripping
Watsonville, California, June-Jul 1998 Tom called from Boise to say that Dad was in Saint Luke’s hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU) following a heart attack. It was a shock, given the apparent cardiac fitness that he had maintained for years through the upper body exertion of hand-splitting firewood, particularly during the previous autumn. On
May 25, 1991 Tim and I are living on a farm in a cute little wooden house. The whole dream has vegetables and fruit and farm products throughout; we all were always handling home grown food. Gramma lives with us. It’s the real Gramma Gallaway, younger then when she died, but still old. Short black
My Gramma Came Back Read More »
1979, Soquel, CA From an old Victorian with the roofkindled down lightDeep smoke puffs up and outof the chimney He stands at the hearthwarmed by the fireand by what he is thinking “The bananas, they must almostbe done,” and he relaxes into the feelingof eating them “Jesus it’s hotNo rainNo sun” In the turret, Jennifer
Soquel, CA, 1992 Woke from this dream… I was standing “at ease” in my Air Force khakis, in a loose formation of men, in a room bedecked with exhibits of fancy new aircraft navigation and communications equipment, wondering why I let myself be inducted back into The Service, among all these other guys, without so much as a