Millard Don Carriker
Millard Don Carriker

Twenty-Nine Crosses and One Dead Cow

This is a greatly expanded chronicle of a road trip I took several years ago in a disreputable-looking old Oldsmobile.  It is probably the lengthiest story I have published on Legacy Stories.  It was simply such a grand, adventurous, "fun" trip for me that I want to preserve it in its...
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Millard Don Carriker

A Birthday to Remember

The 21 st birthday of a man’s oldest son begs for significant celebration.  This story relates how my oldest son and I celbrated his "coming of age" birthday. He didn’t enjoy flying and water sports had never appealed to him, so in a magnificent display of non sequitur thinking I decided...
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Millard Don Carriker

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Whether my memory matches reality or is tainted by the slings and arrows of a long, rough-roaded lifetime, I do not have a lot of “good” memories of childhood Christmases.    I recollect a rather peculiar one and I painfully remember an extremely stressful one, both of which are stories already on...
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Millard Don Carriker

Oskie Wow Wow, Burma Shave, and Other Artifacts

Oskie Wow Wow, Burma Shave, and Other Artifacts
While driving my jaunty  Explorer Sportrac, which my wife has named “Sassy Red,”  to the dealer some thirty miles away for its scheduled  maintenance, I passed some long-familiar scenes.  My mind began drifting, conjuring an image of life as it was sixty to seventy years ago.  God, how I long for...
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Millard Don Carriker

From the Plains to the Mountains

From the Plains to the Mountains
PREFACE:  This is the second memoir of a multi-year experience that had a definite impact on my later life.  I want to stress that I am sharing these experiences in an effort to give some testimony to the way God has worked in my life and not in any sort of...
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Millard Don Carriker

Tree Houses `R Us

In rummaging through my bookshelf recently selecting books I could donate to our church’s garage sale I came across a collection of stories my next oldest brother, Gene, had written as a columnist for the weekly newspaper in the town in which he grew up  He grew up living in and...
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Millard Don Carriker

From The . . . (plains) . . . Of Montezuma

From The . . . (plains) . . . Of Montezuma
Preface:  This is the first "chapter" of what will be a "quadrilogy" chronicling a part of my teen years that had a profound effect on my later life.  I do not offer these in any kind of "I'm proud of this" boasting way.  If I have any motive other than simply...
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Millard Don Carriker

An Unlikely Survival

An Unlikely Survival
  Although I no longer fly airplanes my passion for it still runs hot in my blood.  I spent a little over 2,000 hours of my life piloting small airplanes and they are among the most precious hours of my life.  During those hours I had many occasions to learn the...
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Millard Don Carriker

They're Not Making The Sky As Blue (this year) July 4, 1952

 July 4 th , or more properly “Independence Day.”  Outside my window dads with little kids close beside them are lighting fuses, sending rockets aloft to burst high in the air raining varicolored bits of incendiary material down onto the streets, roofs and lawns.  Most I suspect are giving little if...
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Millard Don Carriker

My Epitaph

Some time ago Tom Cormier suggested that we might write our epitaphs - in twenty words.  I have thought about that off and on.  For the last year or so I've been keeping a "Spiritual Journal" containing some meditations and thoughts that come after reading a passage in The Bible, reflecting on...
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Millard Don Carriker

His Name Was Samson

A True Samson   He was the first-born to Arthur Benton and Leva Mae Carriker in 1898. I never knew who named him or why they chose such a peculiar middle name, for it was truly a curious choice. I have never known or heard of any person outside of the...
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Millard Don Carriker

Christmas in Chicago

It truly was another time in a place that no longer exists. Oh, the buildings and streets are still there and the snow still falls deep and wet on them but yet – it is all different than it was when I was a young band director in a small school...
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Millard Don Carriker

Willard, My Meticulous Brother

Willard, My Meticulous Brother
The gene pool from which American families draw is a wondrous palette onto which our “Artist-Creator dips his brush.  The genes floating in that pool are as countless as the stars, making it possible for Him to send several children to the same parents:  Children who, while sharing some commonalities, are...
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Millard Don Carriker

TRICK OR. . . . Trick

Trick or . . . . trick Halloween in the late 20 th, Early 21 st Century is a "holiday" that has completely metamorphosed from the form it had at mid-20 th Century. If a teen-aged boy of those days were somehow magically time-traveled to Halloween night 2014 and saw little...
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Millard Don Carriker

The Pirate and The Poet

    The Pirate and The Poet He was twelve years older than me and cut from an entirely different cloth. He was my brother, and although we both felt fraternal love we had little in common other than genes and parents. He was first-born. I was last. He was born...
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Millard Don Carriker

The Summer of Lefty

  NOTE: This is a "Coming of Age" story. It isn’t pretty nor is it pleasant for me to recall. But life consists of pleasure, pain, success, failure, ugliness and beauty. If my legacy consists of memories of significant events in my life and if it is to be complete and honest, it...
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Millard Don Carriker

A Dust Bowl Baptism

In Oklahoma in the 1930's the twin devils of "Dust" and "Depression" were dancing wildly across the land trampling anything in their path underfoot.   History has shown us that in times of adversity and danger such as this, there will be an increase in spiritual fervor and intensity.  This was certainly...
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Millard Don Carriker

The Great Tom-Tom Caper

NOTE: This is a story that had to be held "secret" for many years; certainly until most of the people involved in the activity described were old enough to not care or gone from this world. It took place in Midwinter, 1952. To this day I prefer not to name the...
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Millard Don Carriker

FOUR SCORE AND ONE

Four Score and One Written October 3, 2013             Four Score and One years ago last night a young boy was sent by his father out into the night to go fetch a doctor.  It was a cold October night, the clock was nearing midnight and the still sparsely settled countryside...
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Millard Don Carriker

Floating Down the River

Floating Down the River
Ask any Missourian south of I70 what a “float trip” is and unless he is one of our more taciturn Ozarkers he will tell you.  However as a boy living in Kansas where rivers flow muddy and sluggish I’d never heard of a float trip and 30 years later when we...
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