As a young kid I used to visit a nearby library once a week and more. It was a ten minute walk away in the village of Thornton, on the Cranston side of Plainfield Street, which straddles Cranston and Johnston, RI. A strange library, it had one large dim dingy room with dingy floor-to-ceiling shelves and mostly dingy books. The volumes might have ( Read more... )

FROG CITY

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One of the great remembered joys of my youth, three centuries ago, was Cho Cho Chocolate Malted Ice Cream. It was better known as a "Cho Cho" and we could buy one at Cappelli's Grocery Store next to Thornton School in Johnston in the 1940s and 1950s. They also sold penny-candy by the tons to us cavity-prone kids. A Cho Cho cost just 5 cents! ( Read more... )

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It was our Cinema Paradiso, plain and unadorned as it was, about an eight-minute walk from my house. It was an era when almost every neighborhood in America had its movie theatre. There was no such thing as a multiplex. Whoever sold you a ticket or candy knew you personally. You met many of the same people each time you went. When I first ( Read more... )