How Stories Keep Us Alive Long After We’re Gone
There’s a reason people say stories outlive us. They carry our voices, our laughter, our lessons, long after time has taken everything else. In Memories of an Old Fart: Tales I’ve Told So Often I’m Beginning to Believe Them Myself, Kenneth A. Millman turns this truth into an art form. Through a lifetime’s worth of memories, some wild, some wistful, some hilariously exaggerated, he shows that storytelling isn’t just about remembering the past. It’s about keeping it alive.
From the first page to the epilogue, he reminds readers that laughter isn’t a distraction from life’s heaviness. It’s the light that carries us through it. His stories move effortlessly between moments of mischief and moments of meaning: childhood antics with BB guns and freight trains, Navy adventures that test courage and sanity, newsroom chaos that turns deadlines into comedy, and reflections on love, loss, and redemption. Each chapter is a snapshot of a man who learned early on that humor doesn’t erase pain. It makes it survivable.
What makes Millman’s storytelling so magnetic is his honesty. He doesn’t hide from his flaws or soften the edges of memory. He writes about mistakes and regrets with the same ease as he does about triumphs, knowing that both are part of what makes a life worth telling. And he does it all with that signature wry grin, the kind you can almost hear between the lines. The result is a memoir that feels like a conversation across generations, a bridge between who we were and who we hope to be remembered as.
At its core, the book is a love letter to his father, to his family, and to the people who shaped him. His dedication to his father, Henry Hart Millman, and his father’s two best friends, Kenneth McNeil and Alfred Larson, sets the tone for the entire book. These were men built of grit and loyalty, heroes of a time when life was hard but laughter was easy to find. Millman’s stories pay homage to them, carrying their legacy forward one tale at a time. It’s a reminder that the people who came before us live on, not in marble statues or photographs, but in the stories we tell about them. The way they worked, laughed, and loved.
The beauty of the author’s humor is that it never feels forced. It’s not the kind of laughter that comes from punchlines. It’s the kind that comes from perspective. After decades of adventures, heartbreaks, and near disasters, he’s learned that sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh. That laughter, in turn, becomes a lifeline, connecting him to his readers, his loved ones, and even to the younger version of himself.
In the epilogue, he reflects not on fame or fortune, but on meaning. What will remain when the laughter fades? For him, it’s the stories, the way they ripple outward, touching others, reminding them that life, even in its chaos, is beautiful. Every page of his memoir says the same truth: our stories are our footprints, and if we tell them well enough, they never wash away.
Kenneth Millman’s legacy isn’t measured in achievements or accolades. It’s measured in memories. In the sound of laughter shared across a table, in a lesson learned too late but passed on anyway, in the simple act of putting words to what it means to be alive. Memories of an Old Fart is a book, proof that immortality isn’t found in avoiding death, but in living a life worth remembering and telling it with heart. Because when the stories are this good, we never really say goodbye.
Celebrate the laughter, love, and legacy of a life well told in Memories of an Old Fart: Tales I’ve Told So Often I’m Beginning to Believe Them Myself. A memoir that proves the best way to live forever is to keep people laughing long after you’re gone.