Alva Review-Courier -

By the late 1930s, Henry Roth was no longer trying to write fiction. His novel, “Call It Sleep” – published in 1934 – had been a critical success but soon thereafter Roth abandoned the thought...

When Henry Roth graduated from high school, he enrolled in the City College of New York. While there, he discovered that he had the ability to write interesting stories. An essay he drafted in his...

This story is about a man named Henry Roth. He was born on Feb. 8, 1906, in a small town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is now known as Tysmenytsia, Ukraine. Henry’s given name at birth was H...

Against overwhelming odds, Winnie Simms’s efforts to get her song into the hands of country music star Charley Pride had succeeded, and Pride had recruited John Swheers to add music to Winnie’s wor...

Charley Pride entered the country music business in 1965. By 1973, he was a full-fledged international star with a large corporate office in Dallas and concert dates all over North America and...

Country music star Charley Pride began recording songs in 1966. And while his first two singles failed to hit the charts, the album on which they appeared reached No. 16 on the country albums chart....

By all accounts, Winnie Simms was really nice, sweet, down-to-earth, and well-liked by everyone who knew her. She was born Winnie Lee Honea in Lincoln County, Tennessee, on March 30, 1925. While in...

His given name was Charles Henry Atkins and he was born somewhere in Tennessee some time in 1875. Details of his early life are sketchy. He was an African American living in the Old South just a few...

This is a story about a guy named Matt Williams. While numerous people have that name, this particular Matt Williams played football for Texas Tech University a few years ago. Matt was born and raised...

Like most athletic endeavors, football is a sport played mostly by young people who are physically fit. That is especially true when the game is played at a professional level. Consequently, almost al...

In November of every even-numbered year, the United States experiences something called a “general election” for statewide and national offices. We just recently went through one of those. Now, at the...

Recently, Americans witnessed one of the most contentious (and interesting) elections for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in American history. Ultimately, after 15 rounds of voting, the...

One chilly, overcast November afternoon several years ago I found myself going to see the resident medico at the Memphis State University clinic, a man I knew only as “Dr. Black”. When I arrived, fiv...

One November day when I was in my mid-20s, I found myself driving my car into a large parking lot on the campus of Memphis State University. I wasn’t feeling well and I was headed to the u...

Shortly after my 24th birthday, I moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to further my education at what is now the University of Memphis but was then known as Memphis State University. I lived in that town of...

When I was growing up, and for many years thereafter, our family doctor was a man who was very competent. Also, however, he had a no-nonsense sort of personality. He was blunt spoken. He would tell...

I always like having a doctor that I consider “mine” – someone to go to anytime I have a medical issue. But in an emergency, any doctor will do! I began feeling sick one day when I was working out o...

When I was in my early 20s, I got a job as an insurance agent who went to people’s homes to collect their payments for their policies. My insurance route included four towns of several thousand p...

When I graduated from college I was three months shy of my 22nd birthday. I knew that I wanted to obtain education beyond my bachelor’s degree, but I had to work for a while to earn some money b...

I watch more television than anyone should! But, while engaged in this often-mindless activity, however, I try to save my sanity by ignoring the commercials which are usually silly or stupid, or...

Borden Deal’s publisher refused to issue any more of his books because – while they were well-written and interesting – they no longer appealed to a large reading audience. In order to make money...

Borden Deal was not only a writer of quality fiction, he was also quite prolific. In addition to 21 novels, he published approximately 100 short stories in well-known magazines and literary journals....

In 1952 Borden Deal and Ethel “Babs” Hodges married and settled in Scottsboro, Alabama, which was her hometown. Eventually, the Deals had three children. Unfortunately, they divorced in 1975 aft...

In the 1950s, Borden Deal embarked upon a career as a professional writer of fiction. As a southerner, born in Mississippi and educated at the University of Alabama, Deal wanted to write about the Sou...

Oct. 12, 2022, was the 100th birthday of a man named Borden Deal. Unfortunately, he did not live to celebrate it, having died of a heart attack in January 1985 at the age of 62. Borden Deal was a...