“Let Me Tell You a Story”
A Collection of Ninety-Six Stories
and Some Poems
Cliff Williams
Introduction
Linda
First Encounter
Engagement Day
Daily Parting (poem)
I Gave You My Heart (poem)
Old Love (poem)
A Squeeze of the Hand
A Report from One Who Has Been Grieving
Transformations
Learning to Listen
A Conversion
Becoming a Kitchen Person
Teaching PHIL 105 Race and Justice
Becoming a Teacher
Learning to Teach
“To Prepare You for Dying”
Remembering Twenty-Five Years of Extracurricular
Teaching (poem)
Sayings of an Old Professor
Classroom Anecdotes
Dragged Along the Hallway
A Loose Squirrel
The Two Stools
Through the Window
Plato’s Cave
A Birthday Faux Pas
Fire!
A Little Stuffed Bear
Adventures
Some Bubbling Stories
Bubbles, Not Bombs
Coffee Shop Expeditions
Sandwiching
Caving
Taped to a Wall
Dancing
Traveling
To the Mountains
Pilgrimage
Some Bear Stories
Terror
On a Mountain Peak (poem)
Eating Grasshoppers (poem)
All Night in a Country Cemetery (poem)
Deaths
Killed in a Fiery Crash
Murdered
A Tragic Yet Beautiful Life
Mourning
Some of This, Some of That 1
“Thanks for Being Here”
Sobbing
Weddings
Social Lies
Becoming a Poetry Person
Coincidences
A Story in a Tree
The Secret Fort
Hit by a Goose
Thirty-Five Minutes of Nonstop Listening
Signed Up for Facebook
“That’s the Only Thing Keeping Me Alive”
Embarrassed at a Wedding
The Flying Belt
Painting Faces
A Forgotten Lunch
Holding My Hand
Watching Anne of Green Gables
Staying in Touch with Former Students as They Age
Some of This, Some of That 2
“Just Clifford”
Nearly Killed
Bill Konrad (poem)
Laudromat Soap Suds
The Firefighter’s Carry
Almost Arrested
“I’m Dying”
The Swollen Eye
Anthropologist in Church (poem)
On Praying (poem)
Five Hundred Geese, One Deer, and a Dog
A Physically Challenged Squirrel
Buffy (poem)
Doing a Sledding Train
Close Encounter with a Wayward Tree
Looking for Trees to Climb While Out Walking
Writing Books
After Sixty-Four and a Half Years
An Introvert Goes Barn Dancing
On Turning Eighty a Month and a Half Ago
Walking 800 Miles While 80 Years Old
Trains
A Professor Takes to the Rails
Train Whistle (poem)
Riding in a Boxcar (poem)
Two Friendly Yard Workers
Along the Mississippi River
Kicked Off
A Quick Transfer
In the Weeds
Will (poem)
Rough Tracks
Almost Stranded
Sleeping on a Moving Train
Slow Train (poem)
Wrong Train
A Death
Encounter with Police in a Parking Lot
Stopped by Local Police
Cinderbox Cindy’s Ashes (poem)
Index of Persons and Places
Index of Pictures
If you would like a free PDF file of the whole collection, write to Cliff Williams at cliffwilliams150 at gmail dot com with Stories in the subject line.
252 pages
Version 2a
December 31, 2024
© 2024 by Cliff Williams