September 8, 2018

Springfield, NJ. Spring, 1956


Who is this smiling glasses-free child? All dressed up in a jacket (!) and school tie (St. James School.) Hair all combed and plastered down with a mucilaginous tonic called O’Dell’s Hair Trainer, the noxious aroma of which remains uncomfortably in memory. (It would dry and solidify hair into something you could bend at right angles.) Second grade? I don’t remember smiling very much back then. But, of course, whenever a camera was present, well.... My teacher was Mrs. Marino, a very kind (if excitable) woman who provided a certain degree of stability and warmth when I needed both. No wonder then that some 62 years later I still remember her.

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