After every concert next morning over hotcakes with maple syrup (which my miserable ma doesn’t make any more) Daddy always told us verbs and adjectives about every Cowboy Bob joke and song in the concert he went to. Daddy would also sort of sing Cowboy Bob style, high and up in the nose, right there at the table, which sort of drove my ma to Kalamazoo, since she prefers Barry Manilow.
  When Daddy passed over, most of his legacy consisted of three bags of Karmelkorn and a shoebox full of Cowboy Bob tickets. My ma frowned a lot and sort of sniffed at the tickets, since my obviously unmusical ma doesn’t much like Cowboy Bob, she being also a dedicated Engelbert fan along with Barry, and has a drawer full of headbands, beads, and belt-chains to prove it. But the tickets had printed on them, “Good for free admission to any Cowboy Bob concert anywhere.”
  I put the shoebox in my closet up on the shelf over where I keep my poem books and my wetsuit and my prom dress, all waiting for later possibilities, like when I have lost a little weight. [For another: brief excerpt]