Aaron Gilbreath has written essays, many about music, for The New York Times, Paris Review, Tin House, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, Brick, The Threepenny Review, AGNI, Conjunctions, Hotel Amerika, and Cincinnati Review, and written articles for Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review and Yeti. Currently at work on a book of travel writing set in Canada, he sells tea in Portland, Oregon and blogs about music, food and miscellany at http://aarongilbreath.wordpress.com.
My old man was like Zeus’s father Cronos: he couldn’t bear the idea that any of his children might surpass him. Life radiated from the central pulse of his scrap-metal…