Here you can read various copy written short stories by Ken Ely. Please check back often as other stories in a collection by Ken will be provided here online. So, go on, turn the page (or click on a book jacket below) and enjoy!

The Pooka
By Ken Ely

Julie was not unconscious; but she soon would be if she did not get her breath. It came suddenly, in a fit of great wracking sobs. I carried her to the bench outside the tack room. After sitting for a minute or two, she was breathing fine - but crying uncontrollably.

Oars
By Ken Ely

We push/pulled another stroke. Halfway through the next one, at the sharp crack of splitting wood, Peter and I tumbled over the thwart. We both exclaimed, 'The oar broke!'

Indeed, it had: one third the way up the loom from the blade, the port oar had snapped. We were rapidly blowing downsound from the floating fragment - and from our destination - and from my word as a gentleman to bring the boat home. Moreover, if we didn't do something fast, we would be walking home from Olga, another three and a half 'sea miles' beyond Rosario.

Dustbin and the Magic Stone
A True Story
By Ken Ely

He leaned forward to look over the end of the bed, but he still couldn't see the source of the light. He got up on his hands and knees and craned forward to peer over the edge of the bed. There it was! A stone, about the size of an ordinary grade AA extra large chicken egg. It was irregular, like any other rock fetched up out of the creek; but it wasn't gray or black, like any other rock: this rock looked like it was some sort of crystal or glass. Dustbin lay down, resting his chin upon his folded arms, and watched the colors turn.

Bullday
By Ken Ely

Many of the stories my mother told to me when I was young I have forgotten. I wish it were not so because the ones I can recall are interesting stories. The forgotten ones probably were, too. The forgotten and the remembered have all left an impression, however, giving me a sense of who I am and from where I came. This is not to discount my father's contribution to where I came from, mind you. It's just that it was because of my mother's stories that I decided to go ranching; and it was through that short-lived but eventful ranch experiment that I connected my own life to the tales she told me and made them mine.

West Sound
By Ken Ely

We made two unsuccessful approaches with the barge but the breeze put us in danger of grounding both times. On the third approach, I decided that three had to be a charm, and that I would take matters into my own hands to insure that it was. Estimating my inverted trajectory as best I could, I made free the amount of cable I required. I climbed to the cross-bar of the crane, stepped aboard the ball, and swung myself outward at the calculated moment. Outward and downward. The water was waist deep where I plunged beside the grid. Dave grinned and called around his cigarette, " Mighty fine! Now, climb up and hook onto the bridle!"

East Sound
By Ken Ely

Waxing in summer and waning in winter as the tide of vacationers flooded
and ebbed, the village of Eastsound, in 1965, consisted of the Outlook Inn, Roger Perdue's service station, Russ Honnicker's service station, Emmanuel Episcopal Church (of which Grampa Benson was Vicar), a clothing store, a cafe or two, a small library, a bank, a real estate office, Templin's Grocery, Gow's lumber yard, a fair sized school, and some residences. (I may have omitted something, but these were the essentials.) It was on the strand below the church that Grampa kept an eight-foot pram which we called HMS Lion. We had been forbidden to use this gloriously named little ship at night; but it was to the strand where it lay, and to whatever adventures that nocturnal voyaging might conjure up, that the
three of us marched in the dark.

Christmas Trees
By Ken Ely

My parents placed the tree against a wall near the short hallway that our bedroom opened upon. We could see it, if we sat up in bed, bent forward, and craned our necks to the right; and we could smell it, no matter where we were; for the kitchen and living room were just one big room with a kerosene heater in the middle, and the two tiny bedrooms and single bathroom were not very far from the heat source. I remember well the ornaments that adorned that tree only because they decorated every tree thereafter until they finally began to vanish from breakage or from becoming so ratty that they were quietly retired.