HeyJaredPat Willard's Stories
Growing up, family, women, adult crap, history, American culture, strange places, necessary encounters and curious people, almost always in the presence of food.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest issues
In the Beer Garden (opens the original)
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It’s a sultry late summer twilight. The brewery bar slowly fills as people drift in after work. The garden (they call it the Yard but you’ll stick with Garden, for now), is in back, though, is almost empty with just a young man fixing a gold balloon in the shape of a three to a corner table for a toddler’s birthday. A couple seated at a long table in the middle of the garden passionately kiss.You and your two companions try to find a place at one of the tiny round tables along the next door neig
Notes On That Day (opens the original)
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I had just walked into the publication office of Brooklyn College where I was the chief writer. My colleague said a plane had hit the North Tower. It didn’t quite compute at first. We figured it was a small plane, a weird accident of limited tragedy. We rushed out of the office and up the stairs to the roof. The campus was only seven miles away and we’d have a clear view of Lower Manhattan. A strap on my new high heels broke so I turned back. By then, someone had turned on the office television
Romeo & Juliet (opens the original)
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There are only a few weeks left in the sardine season. I have four beauties—long, plump and clear-eyed—ready to be grilled.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="317" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!m4Bn!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,
Roadside Joys (opens the original)
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The other day I was meandering down back roads when I came upon a small farm stand at the edge of a sun bleached lawn. There were only a few items for sale on the table—half-pint containers of small country blueberries; fuzzy raspberries; a pile of basil bolting with tiny blue flowers and tangled up with rosemary spears; some beans; and spinach and radishes still dusty from being picked that morning. Black-eyed Susans grow wild around here and bouquets of them were jammed into a beat-up five-gal
A Bad Mom's Summer Outing (opens the original)
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The current situation is that the apartment is tiny and not air-conditioned, your one-and-a-half-year-old son never stops gallivanting around it, and your husband is in the fourth year of writing his dissertation. If he finishes it soon, he will be able to find steady, full-time work instead of pick-up gigs and, thus, better the family’s living standards that have relied for some time on your measly low-paying job.So on most weekends this summer, you take an early-morning train to your family in
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