#jerry wick

Jenny Mae Leffel 1968-2017

Jenny Mae (Leffel) 1968-2017. “Why are you so angry?” She asked me that, repeatedly over and over through the years. Perhaps it was some of the unease that grew up around me when I was near her, as the jungle of her life, crowded everything out, grew wild around her and eventually choking the life out of her, but I would challenge her on this statement, in the end though—there was no agreement.…

A green cover that had the look of a well-played record, the ring of the round discs on the outside of it looked like the small scars of age,  the two enclosed vinyl records sounded as if they had been stored in a coal mine, the songs crackly, skippy and almost faded from too many plays, a sound version of Black Lung disease. The songs sounded different from what was usually on our turntable; Jim…

March 2023. For Steve. Light. Everything was light  that wasn’t coming from anywhere it was just everywhere, nothing could be seen except the light. Nothing could be felt except the light. She felt him there in the light, not physically she had nothing to physically touch him with, only the sense that he was there with her, behind her. She had waited for him, here wandering in the light as if…

A memory of my mother, the Columbus Lazarus Building and Christmases past Written for Jon Solomon's 25 Holiday Marathon on WPRB https://wprb.com/jon-solomons-25-hour-holiday-radio-show

(written for Jon Solomon’s 25-Hour Holiday Show on WPRB https://wprb.com/jon-solomons-25-hour-holiday-radio-show/) For many years, the downtown skyline of Columbus, Ohio had one lone solitary skyscraper, the Leveque Tower stood high and bold and a sort of middle finger to the rest of the Midwest, announcing that Columbus indeed had a skyline, damnit. When my immigrant uncles arrived from…

Uncle Peter (Pedro Koe-Krompecher) 1945-2021

When I lived on Chittenden and, later Summit Street, near The Ohio State University campus with Jenny Mae—our life filled with the sort of invisible desperation of poor college students who don’t realize that they are poor except we weren’t college students we were just poor and happened to live near campus. I was working two or three jobs, at least two record store jobs and an overnight shift at…