Ask friends if they have an extra set of crutches and everybody has one, if not two. Crutches, sock jockeys, foot-long shoe horns and portable toilets. It’s almost funny and if it isn’t, it probably should be.
A Catholic monk is no longer keeping silent about what he claims were sexual improprieties with minors by Monsignor Craig Harrison of St. Francis of Assisi Church.
As rock bands go, the Aviators are seriously lacking in at least one vital area. They are entirely too responsible.
Herbie got a cat. This wasn’t an automatic, and the choice was between a three-legged cat and one with the traditional number of limbs.
JOSE GASPAR: Internal investigation may yield greater sanctions against priests accused of sex abuse
While separate criminal investigations are carried out by police in Firebaugh and Merced into allegations that Monsignor Craig Harrison sexually molested minors, there's another internal investigation being done by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno. This one is based on a set of rules ado…
Editor's note: Cop Tales are true stories as told by law enforcement officers from all over the country. The stories are told in the first person.
Jaclyn Allen's cute little vegan restaurant has some things working against it.
Reader: Your column about handicapped parking tickets ("We're the state's hotbed of disabled parking violations," May 15) was very interesting and informative. I have similar feelings about the issue. I have disabled license plates on my personal vehicle because my wife has physical walking …
A few weeks ago I received my monthly magazine from the National Skeet Shooting Association. There was a terrific article in it, written by a California shooter by the name of Chris Baker, about the Kern County Gun Club. Boy, did that bring back memories.
I’m signing up for Medicare. It’s hard to believe. Someone so young and who looks as good as I do signing up for old people’s insurance. This is akin to Bruce Springsteen making the cover of AARP Magazine.
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Admit it. This has happened to you.
Sometimes driving is as satisfying as a peppermint stick ice cream cone from Dewar’s. In “American Graffiti,” one of two must-see movies if you want to understand Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley (the other being “Best of Times”), the characters cruise and while they do, they observe, …
This is the story of two fathers and the son they, in a sense, raised together.
The word "‘mother" denotes a biological relationship, a maternal branch on the family tree. Everybody has one, and everyone’s is unique. The word itself comes in many languages — mother, mater, madre, mère, mutter, mzazi — and breaks down into many nicknames — ma, mama, mom, mum, mami, marme…
Reader: I read your column on convicted murderer Bobby Mistriel, released from prison last month after serving 38 years ("Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teenage boys. Murder. Justice. And now, for newly freed Bobby Mistriel, a measure of vindication," May 5). I thought your article was complet…
Its 19th campus opens three years from now, and the Kern High School District needs to come up with a name for it. A number of factors must be taken into consideration in the decision-making process, but the most important one is this:
The Lords of Bakersfield.
Editor's note: Cop Tales are true stories as told by law enforcement officers from all over the country. The stories are told in the first person.
My wife, who battled cancer for two years, was at the end of her journey in the hospital. I explained to my children that God would cure their mother. It would either be here with us or there in heaven, where she would be in perfect peace. The doctors came in to explain there was nothing mor…
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It took a few ding-ding-dings, but the seat-belt-scold alarm finally got Bobby Mistriel's attention. "All right, all right!" he sputtered, annoyed that a 35-year-old federal law, new to him, had interrupted his story midsentence.
I hit the royal wall when I uncovered a purple tea tin commemorating “The Marriage of Prince William of Wales & Miss Catherine Middleton 29th April 2011.”
Reader: "The victim told police he was alone with (Monsignor Craig) Harrison when it happened. The victim, now an adult, was 16 or 17 years old at the time. A date when the incident happened was not given."
During the past two years writing columns, I've always looked forward to feedback from readers. Many times they tell me how much they enjoyed a particular story, and asked if I could run it again sometime so that one of their friends who missed it might read it.
I thought Bird was gone. The electric scooters that charmed some and bewildered others, as in “You’ll never get me on one of those things.”
The natives are getting restless.
Editor's note: Cop Tales are true stories as told by law enforcement officers from all over the country. The stories are told in the first person.
Suddenly, everybody is going to the dump. It’s in the air, water and trucks, which are starting up themselves and honking their horns for their owners to get in.
Some neighborhoods are working class. Some are white-collar professional. Some are retirement, some are historic, some are Bohemian.
In June 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in San Jose and suggested that if Latino immigrants were to learn English, they should just say no to novelas. It appears immigrants may have taken his suggestion too seriously. There's sort o…
I don’t want his job. Not writing poetry on demand. Writing poetry is hard enough but deadline poetry makes my head spin, burn and hurt.
I hope it isn’t true. For his sake but mostly for ours.
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way?” (Luke 24:32)
Spring doesn’t start without visiting the nursery and recently it was Bolles for me.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on the Trump administration's mission to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Court watchers say, based on the discussion, things appear promising for the president's side.
That was quick or seems to have been. Six months and it seemed like Bird had flown the coop.
Editor's note: Cop Tales are true stories as told by law enforcement officers from all over the country. The stories are told in the first person.
Originally published Feb. 23, 1997
There is nothing like a doctor’s waiting room to make you feel good about yourself. There is always somebody older, more bent over or more infirm.
Reader: This month, TBC ran an editorial hit piece on President Trump ("Our View: Trump ‘tilts at windmills’ with bogus cancer claim," April 7). He had made a speech about wind power causing cancer, which frankly was ridiculous. I love him but would be the first to admit that he sometimes is…
Notre Dame is the daily intelligence test for the newly arrived in Paris. Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. No matter how lost you get or how poor your sense of direction, locate either one and you’re probably not going to die of starvation or be eaten by the Parisian wolves.
It's been almost 25 years since I took my first trip to Canada to film waterfowl hunts.
Contact The Californian's Robert Price at 661-395-7399, rprice@bakersfield.com or on Twitter: @stubblebuzz. The views expressed here are his own.
I still like books. The real ones. Long, short or two fingers thick.
Editor's note: Cop Tales are true stories as told by law enforcement officers from all over the country. The stories are told in the first person.
What do Andre the Giant, Tito Santana, King Kong Bundy and the Junkyard Dog have in common? Well, I'll tell you.
It was dusk when Gary Moore, his wife Petrina and their 4-year-old daughter jumped into the family's little red Honda for a short jaunt down Highway 99, from Delano to McFarland, for a Sunday-evening visit with another couple.
Easter is a time of renewal, joy and love or at least I thought so until Sue and I got into it over a pound of jelly beans I’d bought from Smart & Final. I’d put them in a bowl and when I came home one afternoon she had removed the black ones and the white ones from the mix.
As the annual observation of Earth Day approaches, it seems things are heating up. Literally. The oceans and the atmosphere, as well as the debates and the rhetoric, are hotter than ever. In the face of impending crisis and even doom, however, our elected leaders are doing little to address,…
Reader: The bar that TBC sets for those reporters that contribute to its op-ed, national and world news pages is not set very high. As a matter of fact anyone who is a Trump hater is always welcomed with open arms. Case in point was "Trump struggles with border issues," published April 7, ab…
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