During the summertime, my house gets quiet only very late at night, when my three children are finally dozing and the television has gone dark until the morning. Thats where Im at as I formulate this column on a Sunday eve, though technically its Monday morning and this years Fathers Day has officially passed.

I spent the summer of 1991 working in the Municipal Services Yard of Garden City, NY, my home town. My days working for the incorporated village came to mind often as I was working on this weeks cover story [The garbage equation; page 16],...

From out in the parking lot the gunshots barely even sound like explosions, more like muffled slams, like a sledgehammer hitting a tree. There is no sharpness to the report, no crack or boom. Three kittens frolic in a grassy area in the parking lot of the shooting range, unperturbed by the sudden bangs.

Phil Town paces like a panther on the squared platform at the center of the coliseum by Brian floor. His back is broad Clarey under the jacket of his fabulous dark suit; his thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair holds a soft wave; his jawline makes a perfect square.

Embedded dead-center in the walkway to my front door is a flattened and blackened wad of yellow chewing gum. This bothers me on many levels. I know, for example, that one day soon I will step squarely on this piece of gum and it will create a stringy, gooey mess.

Because Im always trying to superimpose my own childhood over the one my children are living, I DVRed the film The Incredible Shrinking Woman when it aired in the middle of the night a few weeks ago.

They hired the team of Rhett and Link, who have been making short films for the internet for the past two years. They call themselves internetainers. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal both hail from Buies Creek, just outside Fuquay Varina, and have been friends since first grade.

I love a good, clean hustle, the kind where you dont even know youve just been fleeced, and when you finally do figure it out, its too damn late. The Trojan Horse was a good hustle: Oh look someones given us this big, beautiful wooden horse for no apparent reason! Lets wheel this sucker on in here and then go to sleep.

I remember excruciating cravings back then that would begin even before I opened my eyes in the morning, tug at my nervous system all day and hound me until I fell asleep each night..

On my recent trip to New Orleans I became confronted with the changes that have happened in my life in the nine years since I left. It was an odd sensation to stand on the same streetcorners I was introduced to as a teenager, except now Im a nearly 40-year-old man.