Creekbank Stories Curt Iles, Storyteller

    Tough or Hard—The Choice is Yours   In front of me are three objects: a hammer, a brick, and a flat piece of leather. They make for a wonderful lesson we all can learn from. It’s amazing observing folks as they go through ...

Down in the Well   “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”   Proverbs 3:4   My neighbor Dudley Mercer tells a story from his Dry Creek childhood.  His family farm had a 35-foot deep well on which ...

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is today. It’s a story worth retelling. His name is  John Stephen Akhwari and he had the dubious honor to finish last in the Marathon at the 1968 Mexico City ...

The Sermon in the Hayfield   He was one of my heroes, and today would be his birthday. This is a story of what made him special.     Love is patient and kind. . .    I Corinthians 13:4 As far back as I can ...

  The following is Chapter 1 of As You Were, the sequel to our novel, A Spent Bullet. I’d appreciate your feedback on: What makes you want to pull for (and care about) Elizabeth and Harry? What emotions do you sense as Elizabeth stands in ...

    Earthshine   If you study the moon and its phases, you’ll come to realize there is a God in heaven. -Unknown The quote above is true in my life as I’ve never grown tired of observing the moon. One of the best things ...

Love and Discipline I once read a story about a father’s wise advice to his daughter, who was struggling with disciplining her young children. The father invited her to take a boat ride on a nearby lake.  The boat had two oars and the father ...

The Wall from the Curt Iles short story collection,  Stories from the Creekbank.    …By my God have I leaped over a wall. -Psalms 18:29   As I stood in the shadow of the twelve-foot wall, sweat popped out on my forehead. In my ears ...

  For the next six weeks I’m teaching science at Menard High School in Alexandria. I’m filling in for a teacher on maternity leave, teaching chemistry, biology, and environment science. It’s been a good experience so far and has kept me busy brushing up on ...

Immediately after Moses’ baptism, I jotted         the outline of this story in Journal #73 This week, I’m Camp Missionary at Pineywoods Baptist Camp in Texas. The following is a story I related to the boys at camp. I hope you enjoy it as they ...

The story below is one of my favorite ones. It’s a baseball story. But about much more than baseball. It’s about family and (attempting to) live the regret-free life.                   From the Curt Iles book, The Old ...

Billboard Free “One call, that’s all.” I live one mile off Interstate 49. It runs north-south through Alexandria and cuts across Louisiana from Shreveport to Lafayette. There are two things I like about I-49: There’s a 75 mile per hour speed limit on most of ...

  Everyone has a memory of where they were for historic events. I was in second grade when JFK was shot, in a board meeting for 9/11… … and in the home of Ed and Kat King for the first landing on the moon. It ...

I recently read (and shared) a story on Christian cuss words. The author singled out the words “Luck” and “Fortune.”  He insisted that these words have no place in the life and vocabulary of a Christian. We followers of Christ believe that every step of ...