William Lobb's Blog

Hi, for several good reasons we’ve moved the blog to SubStack.com. Managing web site and email security has become a part time job. Substack does all that for me so I have time to write, or work on my cars. All of the old blogs can be found there too! Please join us at our […]

I can’t figure out what to write about today. I’m told consistency is important, so I try to put out something I consider at least not a complete embarrassment every Wednesday and Saturday. I can’t stand some newsletters and blogs I see that are essentially ‘buy my book.’ I get genuinely happy when one of […]

Thomas Paine wrote The Age Of Reason in 1794. Paine was a Diest. He believed in a creator of the universe, but he didn’t subscribe to a God who manages every aspect of a person’s day to day life. I’m not going to get into religion here. I firmly believe in John Lennon’s words: “Whatever […]

There’s a mirror on the wall of my office. It’s at least eighty years old, maybe more. It has stood watch over my life, a silent sentinel. It was at my mother and father’s little stone house by the swamp. In its reflection has been every significant person and event of my life. My father’s […]

Writing is a bizarre process. I think, though I’m not sure, that I admire the outliners, the writers who know precisely every step of their story before they type the first word. That ain’t me. I’m told Kurt Vonnegut was not an outliner, but a seat of the pants writer. James Patterson spends more time […]

That’s all he ever dreamed, really. To climb up in the big ol’ truck and sit in that leather air-ride seat and put his hands on the big steering wheel and shift that thirteen speed like a man, just once. And I said, “John, that’s a shitty dream.” When I was young, I wanted to […]

New Year’s Eve is haunted, or it haunts me. Which way it works, I’m really not sure. Out of the cobwebs crawl the names and faces. None ever forgotten, but at times pushed to the background as life’s busyness demanded my attention. It’s a day of reaffirmation and atonement. Not so much nostalgia as a […]

Christmas 1965 will always stand out in my mind as the best and saddest yet somehow closest to perfect Christmas of my life. My father died in April that year and I started to hate everyone and everything, in no particular order. Ma and I were never close, and we both decided to, at best, […]

Dear Christmas, Two weeks into all this noise, and to be truthful, the decorations and stuff are bugging me. Clutter pisses me off and distracts me. It’s all looking ratty. I do like the lights, but that’s about it. If it was up to me, we could put up lights in October and leave them […]

Da Ace… Nick called me up on a Friday night and said he needed a ride to Newburgh Toyota, Saturday morning. A little confused, I asked, “What car do you have at Newburgh Toyota?” He said, “I got no car there. They have free donuts and coffee and papers and TV. You just walk in […]