You are currently viewing the stories for “August 2024.”
I was only thirteen years old when I decided that I must live in New York City. Fred Astaire made me do it. Watching his old films in the early 1960s on our local tv station while growing up in the Cajun Country of Southwest Louisiana, I saw a glamorous and sophisticated world far different than the folksy, rural one [...]
In 1981 I was working as a part-time super at 258 Broadway and taking graduate courses at NYU. For a time, in early spring, I was the only person living in the eight-story building. It was being converted from offices into co-op apartments, and the real estate company wanted a super for security and to be available for new owners [...]
Trainer Teddy Bentham (in suit), Pellone, and Manager Tommy Ryan (Eboli) ____________________________ I did not expect him to answer the door in his underwear. He was sixty-something, and I was seventeen and lacking direction. My father had just died, and high school was about to end. Instead of thinking about college, I wanted to be a boxer, like the ones [...]
As a television addicted kid coming up in New York City during the 1970s, I regularly watched reruns of the long-running anthology series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Its mysteries of mayhem, murder, betrayal and brutality had plotlines where sometimes the bad guys (or gals) got away with their crimes. Before launching into the drama, the show opened with Hitch greeting the [...]
