Christmas, 1963
I remember fighting a rather lonely wind as I crossed Central Park on
that particular Wednesday before Christmas; an old faded newspaper
flapped in the breeze against a wooden seat but I could still make out
the headline: ‘JFK Dead’. They would be coming soon, those wise men from
the east, the Beatles with their new English beat music. Perhaps we
could stop grieving and begin to move on. I clambered up the hill,
crossed Central Park West sliding in to 72nd Street and as I passed the
Dakota building, a cold chill made me pull my coat in tight.
The Boy Who Told Stories
That harsh winter came without warning which meant that we spent so
much of our time indoors. I knew him as the man who gave away money. He
was a friend of the family and, as such, was always in our home.
“Tell me another story”, he would say, and I had those stories by the hundreds.
“Ask the boy”, my father would tell folks, “he can conjure up such wonderful worlds”.
I always wondered what happened to the man. I hear tell that he left
his family and went to London; imagine that, our Mister Shakespeare in
London Town.
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