1948
From that little room in the cold-water apartment you
could smell Harlem. The top window being stuck open with the paint that was probably
put on around the time of Pearl Harbor. Cooking smells danced in along with
thumps and arguments from far off places.
I decided that I needed fresh air and I headed down to 8Th
avenue where the folks were drinking canned-heat and digging the sex and the
sax. In the dark corner of one coffee shop was Ginsberg and Kerouac talking ‘bout
this and that and not seeing anything of the outside world; God bless 1948.
The day after he buried his mother, he sat suppin’ on a scalding mug of Java and listening to the World Series on the radio. He didn’t have a plan yet, ‘cept that he’d packed a small bag the night before just in case they chased him from the house. When he’d finished, he picked up the keys to Bill’s old Plymouth then threw his stuff in the rear seat and set off along route 30.He had one final stare from up on the ridge. Tomorrow he’d be in Ohio and everything was gonna change.
1940
The air tasted different; fresher even - perhaps
sweeter. Stan was about to drive himself and his dad to Princeton where he was eager
to study aeroplanes. He drove passed his old high school and the Baptist church,
passed Mary Sweeney’s home and passed the cemetery where Steve lay (although he
would always carry him inside). The sun shone all the way to New Jersey and
both of them wished his mom had been here to see her boy. If the war in Europe
didn’t spread to the US then a brave new world would lie ahead for him.
bobby stevenson 2013
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