Alan Linda

The other day in church, the minister was explaining The Trinity: The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. Myself, I think I grew up with one of these three being The Holy Ghost. Well, bringing a ghost, especially a capital-lettered Ghost, into my thinking as a child caused...

“You know,” said the young lady sweeping my groceries across the bar code reader, “these strawberries? You buy one, you get one free.” Oh, um, what? My mind was busy, contemplating how young she was, wondering what it was like to be that young, and short. She wasn’t...

Mothers are teachers. Mothers are disciplinarians. Mothers are cleaning ladies, and some mothers are gardeners and mowers of lawns. Mothers drive trucks, and own chain saws, both of which they can put to good use. And most mothers understand that baking cookies is more important than...

I have my age-old fondness for where our English language comes from. In the process, I myself have become age-old. Our language is old, so the fact that I am older too seems to be a sort of comfort. It’s not, then, that I have become too old to cut the mustard. The only...

“The Prairie Spy: Who Shot the Dryer? And Other Stories from the Home Front,” by New York Mills author Alan Linda, is a finalist for the Midwest Book Awards in the Humor category. The awards are sponsored by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, made up of publishers...

Back in the mid-1950s, when I was first becoming aware of girls and muscles, I figured the likelihood that I was going to get some of either was highly questionable. Then I found the Charles Atlas advertisements. In his ads, there was always a three-segment cartoon. In the first frame,...

As the controversy rages over whether or not the U.S. mail should or should not deliver mail on Saturday in order to cut operating costs, I have yet another opinion. This opinion is based on two letters which I have received in the near past. Based on those letters, how about if we...

Annual maintenance of home heating appliances mostly applies to gas and oil forced air furnaces, so that’s what we’re going to talk about here. This maintenance varies from some simple tasks to some much more difficult ones. Mostly, though, bear with this. You’ll likely learn...