Chico News & Review
A Remembrance of “Old Hutch” (PDF)
Published March 29, 1990
The last time I saw W.H. Hutchinson, he was shopping for groceries at Safeway, and I was with my father, who was also shopping for groceries.
Not so many years ago, if anyone had told me this encounter would occur, or that my father would shop for groceries at Safeway, or anywhere else for that matter, I would have dismissed the notion as impossible.
The Death of Innocence (PDF)
Published December 27, 1990
The family gathered in Chico for Thanksgiving again this year, at our parents’ longtime home near Bidwell Park. The news this Thanksgiving was about a young man afflicted with cerebral palsy who was found by a park worker lying in a pool of blood in the frigid cold. The young man had been beaten to death.
Sacramento News & Review
She’ll Work For Food And Diapers (PDF)
Published November 29, 1990
I drove past her on the way to the grocery store, and again on the way out. I saw her again when I went to get gas, and again when I stopped at the cleaners. Ordinary middle-class errands performed, presumably, by people with jobs.
Mom On Skis (PDF)
Published December 26, 1991
It started innocently enough, a slight turn to the left instead of the right, down a wide sweep of white powder lined by pines.
Then the gentle incline abruptly reopened, extending ahead — and, more to the point, precipitously DOWN — to a part of the mountain clearly not intended for the faint of heart.
