Monthly Archives: December 2020

Boxing Day

December 26, 2020 – 1:42 pm

Boxing Day dates back to the Middle Ages. Workers showed up at the manors and estates to receive hand-outs from their English overlords. In those early times the money was placed in a clay pot containing the year’s bonuses and in recent capitalist times the boxclay pot containing the year’s tips, which were doled out […]

By Peter | Posted in holiday | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Journal Entry – December 25, 1977

December 25, 2020 – 4:30 pm

Dec. 25, Boston. Yesterday after dancing at the 1270 Kevin and I ate Monte Cristo sandwiches at Ken’s Steak House on Boylston Street. The nineteen year-old played bass for the Mumps and like most young people he had with more future and less of a past than me, but we talked freely about punk and […]

By Peter | Posted in Before Now, boston, Love | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Merry Stiffmas

December 24, 2020 – 10:56 am

In December of 2009 the jewelers on 47th Street were counting on a big buying spree to recoup from the Great Recession, however the nation’s zombie economy had exiled the masses from luxury purchases gold and diamonds. Only the rich had money and Richie Boy had more than his share of the upper class. One […]

By Peter | Posted in Bet On Crazy, Diamonds, economy, NEW YORK, semi-fiction | Tagged , | Comments (0)

THE GIFT OF UNGIVING by Peter Nolan Smith

December 24, 2020 – 3:43 am

Most of my old landlord’s friends were married couples with kids. His wife and AP regularly invited them over to the Fort Greene Observatory for weekend lunches and evening drinks. I keep my distance from his guests, since my marital status is an enigma and after a few glasses I tend to recite a litany […]

By Peter | Posted in family, holiday | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Tis the Season BET ON CRAZY

December 24, 2020 – 3:11 am

My boss at the diamond exchange hailed from Brownsville, one of the toughest neighborhood in Brooklyn and those streets bred its own language. For years Manny greeted Christmas shoppers to his diamond store with the phrase ‘there is no season for giving’. His son Richie Boy tried on many occasions to explain that he was […]

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