Gil Michaels Archive

Uncle Mingo serves a great Christmas dinner but Cousin Donna’s pro linebacker boyfriend makes a faux pax which makes the occasion memorable indeed. Travel back...

I was running late, so I jumped on my trusty Montgomery Ward Hawthorne bicycle and quickly rolled away from my Fernside Boulevard home, across East...

For those of us who dwell in that state of mind called “Geezerville,” the Thanksgiving of 1963 was the Thanksgiving that wasn’t. On the infamous...

Nonna Kate serves up a special treat (or was it a trick)? The dismissal bell rang, and I ran out of the old Alameda High...

Gayle, our perky 1980s rock-star-style waitress, wrestled the champagne-laden ice bucket down the aisle. Champagne Rosie, sitting across the table from me, was beaming in...

On that Friday afternoon in 1967, Nonna Kate was in a state of bliss because at the moment everything was right in her world. Sitting...

During my regrettably short stint as a teenage stepchild, I was a member of a delightfully quirky Italian-American family. The eccentric matriarch, 75-year-old Nonna Kate,...

The bowling alley near the beach is part of the Real Alamedan’s Knowledge Test. Despite its many permutations—currently “Bowlero”— “Real Alamedans” will always call it...

Or, a night to remember. Back in the 1970s, I took an eclectic assortment of collegiate classes, one of which was speed reading, at Oakland’s...

Here in the state of mind called ‘Geezerville’ the busiest street is always Memory Lane, especially on holidays like the Fourth of July. Stuck in...