A helicopter falls when it loses its Jesus Nut. A monkey trap holds only what greed refuses to release. A Tea Rose ignores winter's grip and opens anyway, then spends its days raining petals. Bill Stokes has spent a lifetime watching. He has stood at the bedside of memory as it slips away. He has walked the rows of veterans' graves, coin in hand. He has felt the rear-end collision that came from choosing a child's life over his own spine. He has listened to the trees. Furthermore: The Coll...

I am documenting my journey, an inspired poem at a time, from baby steps to a wonderous understanding of the precepts of my salvation. I truly pray that the poetry will guide your understanding of God's grace and promise of eternal salvation. The miracle of knowing that this journey is with your family for all time brings joy beyond description. The poems are not scripture but a documentation of the truth surrounding my soul with grace and love. Using my poetry as a path by following my fo...

Grieving is very much a part of the human condition and has to happen before you can emotionally heal. Grieving is like having to cross a glacier and scrabble up the rocky cliff on the other side. Grieving absolutely has to happen or it becomes an emotional prison. Grieving: Hope: Joy documents my journey across so I could seek and find Joy again—and I did exactly that!

Do you believe in ghosts? No? How about you visit this house and then decide?There is a "haunted" house up there that squats like a huge wooden toad behind a thick grove of pine trees on the end of a dead end road. Maybe once it was painted, but now it has a gray cadaver-like complexion, and its siding is sagged and splintered as if the Devil had been poking at it with his pitchfork. Its windows are streaked and stained, and trying to see through them from the outside is like tryin...

Finally; a book about politics, written from the viewpoint and with input from average Americans. Most political books are written by pundits seeking to convince you of their viewpoints. They chose carefully screened folks to interview who they already know will support their point of view. This book was written after going door to door to speak with average folks, who willingly shared their beliefs and opinions. Americans are concerned with the direction of our country, led by incompetent...

Contains a never before published essay, "Trout Flouderers**".**In these stories, popular Chicago Tribune outdoor columnist Bill Stokes gives himself over to his true passion, trout fishing. It is an activity, possibly a madness, that moves him, time and again, to stand knee-deep in cold and murky waters, offer himself up to clouds of hungry mosquitoes, and attempt to keep from snagging his line in overhanging limbs while trying to outwit a wily ra...

With a story from way back in such low-tech days that cows were milked by hand, you might have to hand-crank the car on cold mornings, and red fox families held forth across the rural landscape like a wild aristocracy.The red fox, it would seem, as adaptable as a mouse, has more or less moved in with us. That could pose a mind-boggling question as to why, at one point in my life, did my blood run hot with the desire to do them in?

Satchel was the undisputed king of the resident muskies. He had roamed the flowage for years, periodically terrorizing innocent fisherman by surfacing like a whale so close to a boat that the occupants could look deep into the fish's black eyes and see what seemed to be undiluted piscatorial evil.

The predatory genes we cannot deny are never more exercised than in deer hunting. In each individual, they travel an age-related arc that begins in youthful passion and settles finally into old-age relaxation. The blood lust with all of its attendant furies and dictates can be an awesome thing when it consumes the deer hunter in the velvet of his life.Crossing the wild water was crazy, I knew, but I had a desperate need to bag the buck.

A man can love a woman. There's no trick to that. And a man can love a dog, especially if it is a good dog with worship in its eyes. But can a man love a fish?An experienced trout fisherman reminisces about the love of opening day in various location in Wisconsin.

For ten years Bill Stokes was a roving reporter and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal. He has written reams of material about his vivid impressions of people, animals, events, personal activities, and “things in general.”Through his travels, Bill has met with the unusual and unique to the humorous, trivial, and tragic. This select group from his collection of stories and columns indicates the broad scope of his journalistic efforts, brilliant talents, and professional ab...

Wisconsin had a big party in 1998. It was a roll-out-the-barrel, slice-the-cheese, strike-up-the-polka-band wing-ding that promised to roust every last badger out of state burrows and into the streets to dance with guests.