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David Todd McCarty

David Todd McCarty is a writer, director, photographer and cinematographer. He writes fiction and nonfiction essays as well as journalism. You can see his commercial work at http://www.hoppingfrogstudios.com
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The Crick Be Damned

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
September 8, 2020
5 Min read
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T

Fifty-two is not that old really, even though I am now decidedly middle-aged, but since we raised our kids when I was especially young, it’s hard for me to imagine raising a child today. If I had a deficit of patience back then, which I most certainly did, I have infinitely less of it now. Being consumed with my own career, and having come late to the party of raising children I had no part in creating, I was often bewildered at how I had come to live with these small, messy humans. I generally...

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Cutting Bait

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
April 20, 2020
7 Min read
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C

I wasn’t there the morning they found old Bill Yawley with a knife in his chest at the fish camp, but you can be sure I heard all about it when I got back. Story went, and this was from several reliable sources, someone shoved a filet knife straight into Darryl’s chest, clean through his yellow rubber waders, and either he fell back into his chair or he was sitting when he got stabbed. Don’t really matter much either way. They found him sitting there, on one of those cheap, white plastic...

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Wicked This Wind Blows

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
April 14, 2020
10 Min read
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W

Many of us, from time to time, during this peculiar period of forced isolation and rare discomfort we collectively find ourselves, will indulge the desire to protest our current situation, even as we sit there, idle in our climate controlled abode, full of all manner of food and drink, replete with all the comforts of modern life including toilets that flush, the miracle of electric power, cable television, and of course the entire body of knowledge discovered over the course of all human...

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Seven Seconds

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
April 7, 2020
5 Min read
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S

It’s been thirty days since I last had a drink. I don’t know why thirty days holds such a big place in sober circles, but it does. I guess it’s as good a marker as any. A month. Four weeks. Long enough to mean something and at the same time, a mere blip in the radar of life. I have decided that I am not going to drink today, or at least not this morning, and probably not tonight, and at this point, no plans to drink tomorrow either. After that, who knows really, because there is a novel...

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America’s Game

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
March 28, 2020
9 Min read
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A

One of the hardest things to endure when it comes to the global COVID-19 pandemic—for me at least—has been the lack of baseball. To those who are not fans of the game, or sports in general, this might seem callous or even downright offensive in light of the death and destruction that the coronavirus is leaving in its wake, and I’m not suggesting we should be doing anything differently at the moment. Just that I am missing a thing I really enjoy.  Baseball is known as much as a pastime as...

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Stir Crazy

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
March 28, 2020
7 Min read
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S

As a general rule I am not a terribly social person, and in fact avoid in-person social interaction whenever possible, so when I was told to isolate myself because of a global pandemic, I didn’t have to even think twice about it. No problem, I thought, I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life. I’m quite certain that introverts the world over were downright relieved that for at least a few weeks or months, the world would operate on their terms, instead of the other way around. We would...

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Hunting For Gold

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
March 22, 2020
31 Min read
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When I close my eyes, I no longer have visions of deer picking their way through the trees, and the voices in my head have completely stopped, but every now and then I believe I can still catch the faint scent of a mesquite campfire off in the distance. It’s been a week now since I’ve been home, and I continue to be haunted by the memories of my time on a ranch in Sonora, Texas. It’s been a week now since I’ve been home, and I continue to be haunted by the memories of my time on a ranch in...

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Wasting Time

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
March 22, 2020
9 Min read
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W

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve come downstairs to find my wife Jane sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading a magazine.  I’ve been upstairs showering, dressing, and generally trying to decide how I want to waste my time today. That’s what Jane calls it. Wasting time.  I’m okay with that.  I don’t have a problem wasting time.  In fact, a large part of my days off are spent contemplating how to waste as much of it as possible.  I’m good at it. Jane does...

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Power tools

By David Todd McCarty
In Essay
March 22, 2020
16 Min read
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P

Up until quite recently, my entire tool collection consisted of a few mismatched screwdrivers, a circular saw my mother gave me, a power drill my wife bought me, and various tools we had given Ricky, my seven year-old step-son, for Christmas.  Ricky’s tools weren’t even toys, they were real and I had actually chosen them with the idea that I might someday need to borrow them.  The old bowling-ball-bag-gift theory.  They included a hammer, a tape measure, and a little patch of...

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