Tag Archives: 47th street

Chinese Iron Rooster BET ON CRAZY

My teenage nephew stopped by 47th Street yesterday evening. It was closing time for our exchange. Zeb goes to a mid-town high school. Public. His father works over at Rockefeller Center. He does something with TV. “You going home?” Zeb and I lived in Fort Greene. His father worked late. The long-haired student liked my […]

GUILT VERSUS SHAME by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the last century I left work on 47th Street early on December 24. Manny complained that I was deserting my post selling diamonds, but I had been working every day since Thanksgiving. “I should pay you a half-day.” Manny was a grinch of the first-order. “Do what you want. I’m heading home.” Boston […]

TORAH TORAH TORAH by Peter Nolan Smith

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother’s favorite films. The infamy of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific. […]

KOSHER PIG by Peter Nolan Smith

Ten years ago business in the Diamond District was almost non-existent during the high holidays of Rosh Shananah and Yom Kippur. The Hassidim disappeared to the various shetls scattered around New York and tourists entered our diamond exchange to gawk at the diamonds and jewelry. At least twice a day out-of-towners asked in complete seriousness, […]

ONE RPM by Peter Nolan Smith

PUBLISHED IN ELK 2006 February’s blizzards buried New York City with two-foot drifts and people conversed about Global Warming as a distant threat in comparison to Iraq. America was gearing up to war and nothing could stop the process, because the President was acting like a pit bull too stubborn to spit out the bone […]