dad

Twelve Days of Christmas 2025 finale: So much for the handy gene

Hard-working. Stubborn. Relentless. Competitive. Honest. All traits passed down through the years to the Webb men. Those I have. Good with their hands? Not so much. That’s been a long-running joke in my marriage, though I’ve managed to fix a washing machine twice and a few other repairs in the last 13 years. Typically, however, […]

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Twelve Days of Christmas 2025, Part X: Dad’s last mug shot and nearly being Californians

A few thousand dollars, and life looks completely different. That thought runs through my mind every time I think about my parents and the beginning of their lives together. Dad and Mom met in San Diego in the mid-1970s, not long after the old man finished his last stretch behind bars, largely because his boss

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Twelve Days of Christmas 2025, Part I: The search continues for James ‘Danny’ Hollingshead

If you have any information on James “Danny” Hollinsghead, born in 1942 or 1943, please contact Ernie W. Webb III at erniewebbiii@hotmail.com. I’ve written numerous times in this space how much my late father loved the movie “Shawshank Redemption,” even if he had nightmares afterward due to his experiences in various boys homes, jails and

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Twelve Days of Christmas 2024, Part III: Why the old man finally found his way

I’ve written at length about my father’s early transgressions. Needless to say, he fought the law a lot, and the law ultimately won. What began with stealing BBs from a hardware store in Baldwin, Kansas, steadily escalated. First, as a pre-teen, he began burglarizing the houses of the people on his newspaper route. Then, he

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Twelve Days of Christmas, 2021, Part II: Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em

If you read this blog, you know my father loved to gamble. Not that he spent a lot of money doing it, but it was one of the few things he did financially that wasn’t thrifty (buying his grandchildren gifts also was on the short list). We went to the casino together dozens of times

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Twelve days of Christmas, 2021, Part 1: Dad and a real barn-burner … literally

The first time I told my father I wanted to write about his life, he wasn’t keen on the idea. He wasn’t necessarily ashamed of his past, but he didn’t want his grandchildren to think less of him. I countered that he had a great story of redemption. Not many people who spend 13 years

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