April Coker, Author

Category: Memoirs

  • More from the big house on Willow Branch

      One night my brother Allen and I woke up to a commotion in the hallway outside our bedroom door in the big house.  The light in the kitchen across the hall was on, and we could see Mama in her nightgown and Daddy in his boxer shorts and work boots.    We must have…

  • When I Was Two (The House That Built Me)

    When I was about two years old we lived in an upstairs apartment in Tyler.  I can remember wood floors and watching the TV game show “Concentration” with Mama while she folded clothes.  I remember my brother Allen being a baby, and I also remember looking out of our second story window to see the…

  • Diaper memories

    I’m still in diapers.  I wake up on the front seat of my parent’s car.  Or is it the bench seat of a pickup truck?  I sit up and look around to see my cousin Ronnie, a toddler wearing only his diaper.  He has come to the open car door to check on me or…

  • I Am Born

    “I am born.”  The first line of the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield is appropriate for my first memoir blog entry, I think. It was Tuesday, January 6, 1959 when I made my entry into the world at the astonishing weight of only 4 pounds 13 ounces.  My mother was only 17, and my father…

  • Out of the blue. . .

    I’m minding my own business, doing my weekly grocery, etc. shopping at our hometown big box discount store.  I pass the sporting goods department where my husband is perusing hunting supplies when I meet a nice-looking man who nods and says hello.  Thinking he is more friendly than most, I nod and say hello and…