LeAnn R. Ralph

I opened the dishtowel drawer for about the sixth time, hoping the towels had somehow magically appeared.The brand new towels still weren’t there, of course.“What did Mom DO with them?” I wondered aloud.I knew they had to be around...

Just as soon as the stores put away their Christmas merchandise, out comes the Valentine’s Day items — even though Valentine’s is still more than six weeks away.I don’t know why, but it always takes me by surprise to see...

One year when I was growing up on our Wisconsin dairy farm, the Brownie leaders had announced we were going to make some extra-special candy at our next meeting.So — when school let out one winter afternoon — I lost no time getting to the...

I casually glanced down at my hand, but instead of a wedding ring and an engagement ring, there was only the narrow gold band."Randy!" I yelped. "My engagement ring is gone."It was Valentine's Day, and my husband, Randy, and...

The whole thing had started about a week earlier when I was paging through a pet catalog and came across a section devoted to dental supplies. “Simply squirt into your pet’s mouth and the specially formulated solution goes to work...

For years I have been listening to those commercials advising me to get my precious "Kodak moments" on film. And they always make it look so easy too. Well, all right then, if it's so easy, why haven't I been more successful?

(From the book: Christmas in Dairyland — True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm; August 2003; trade paperback; http://ruralroute2.com)From the time I was a very little girl, I had always loved to watch my big sister, Loretta, when she was sewing.

It was a couple of weeks after Christmas, and I was standing by my mailbox in the vestibule of the apartment building where I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, holding a letter I had just received.

Forty years ago when I was growing up on our dairy farm in Wisconsin, my mother always saved the Christmas cards she had received in the mail. In those days, people sent many more Christmas cards than they do now.

When I started teaching English at Northwestern Military and Naval Academy near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, nobody warned me about the ghosts.Northwestern — a beautiful, old granite building — was a boarding school.