Category Archives: youth

PAPER BOY by Peter Nolan Smith

April 17, 2021 – 4:18 am

Boston published three morning newspapers in 1960; the Boston Globe, the Record American, and the Herald Traveler. My family moved from Falmouth Foresides, Maine to a a suburb south of Boston. The Neponset River separated the city from the town. Our neighborhood had been constructed on an abandoned army base. Several hundred newly-constructed split-level houses […]

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The Year Of The Crow

March 17, 2021 – 1:27 am

My grandmother traveled by ship from Ireland to Boston at the age of 14. One heel of her good shoes broke coming down the gangway. It was her welcome to America. Once on a visit up to Maine someone asked the year of her arrival and Nana responded, “The Year of the Crow.” None of […]

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Journal Entry December 27, 1977

December 27, 2020 – 10:24 pm

After midnight I left Diana and hitchhiked to Milton. I refused two men wanting sex. I walked across the Blue Hills in the dead of night and arrived in my suburban neighborhood after 2am. Only my parents’ bedroom light shone on our street. I crept upstairs to my mother’s bedroom. My father was snoring hard […]

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Old School Boston for the Girls

December 5, 2020 – 12:31 am

This came from a woman writer from the Melrose Post outside of Boston Memories of a time gone by Dear Santa, This year all I want for Christmas is for you to take me back in time about 45 years so I can once again experience the thrill of the sights, sounds, gaiety, and hustle […]

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My First Film SHICHININ NO SAMURAI

June 23, 2020 – 2:46 pm

My grandmother lived in an old farmhouse in Westbrook Maine. She had served with the Royal Canadian Medical Expedition in the Great War. My grandfather had been a doctor for the allies in France. Mementoes of their meeting in 1916 were scattered throughout the house. Zeppelin debris was stashed in the desk drawers. Helmets, bayonets, […]

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