We live in Manhattan and we love the hustle and the bustle of the city life, but we also love communing with nature on weekends at our woodsy retreat in the Connecticut foothills. On one recent country weekend I came home from the market with a load of groceries and parked in the cul de sac in front of our garage, a few yards from the house. I got the shopping cart I keep in the garage and unloaded the grocery bags from the car. When the cart is full it’s easier to push...
Recently two of my out-of-town friends had birthdays and as both are serious readers I thought they’d enjoy a good book I’d just read. So I bought two more copies, wrapped each for mailing, and headed for the post office where I found John my favorite postal guy behind the counter. “I’ll send them book rate.” he said putting the first one on the scale. “It’ll be $4.95.” And so I took out a $10 bill to cover the anticipated postage for two. Then John put the second book...
I wasn’t on the faculty at Jane Addams High School for long when I realized there was something special about Milton. Milt’s job description was Stockman and his office was in the school’s basement and was lined with shelves holding reams of paper, school stationery, notebooks, folders, boxes of pencils and pens, printed forms, and a myriad of other school supplies. And standing along one wall were two large, heavy-duty photocopy...
When I was a kid there were two stores in our Bronx neighborhood we called the “five-and-dimes”. One was Woolworth which of course is a national chain, and the other was Fishers which I think was just a local store. Yet to my child’s sensibility they were both grand emporiums selling priceless treasures, and I remember shopping there with my grandmother. She and my grandfather lived about an hour away by car in Far Rockaway and of course we’d often visit back and forth. But...
Home from school, a hurried snack, bread with both sides buttered, chocolate milk, an apple offered but rudely refused. (“Don’t be fresh, young lady.”) Skates strapped over shoes, no purse, no house key, no hanky, just a skate key on a ribbon around her neck, then out the door. (”Be careful.”) Down the block, wind in her hair to Susy’s house, a snack offered, now politely refused, and out again. (“Be careful girls!”) Now two wild skaters with...