Tag Archives: boston

Linear Algebra 101

December 10, 2021 – 8:15 pm

Back in the 1960s most New Englanders’ were loss at sea when asked to count beyond ten on their fingers. Multiplication and long division flummoxed college students. Calculus was the Black Plague, but I loved the intercourse between numbers and in 1966 I was awarded a scholarship to Xaverian Brothers High School on strength of […]

By Peter | Posted in 70s, Education, youth | Also tagged | Comments (0)

THE PRESENCE OF THE GONE by Peter Nolan Smith

August 23, 2021 – 2:46 am

Boston is a four-hour bus ride from New York. My brothers and sisters lived in the southern suburbs of my old hometown. After my return from overseas in September 2011 from my European posting I called several times to arrange visits, but my father’s death in 2010 had disconnected our present paths from the routes […]

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MISSILE AWAY by Peter Nolan Smith

August 11, 2021 – 3:13 am

During his youth my older brother was a pyromaniac. Frunk nearly burned down each of our houses and those of our neighbors. Each time my mother punished us both with a wooden spoon and my father sternly admonished our incendiary behavior, yet my older brother was undeterred by cracks across the knuckles and hards words. […]

By Peter | Posted in 60s, boston, semi-fiction, Space | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

15 Ways to Know That You’re Old School South Shore

July 25, 2021 – 12:56 pm

1.) You have dove off Shipwreck at the Quincy Quarries and lived to tell the tale without getting a car antenna in your arm. 2.) What about the SS Mayflower at Nantasket Beach? I had a head-on crash there in 1969. VW versus a Delta 88 was no contest, but my four passengers and I […]

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EVERYWHERE by Peter Nolan Smith

June 20, 2021 – 8:50 am

My older brother and I went everywhere with our parents. We drove from Hingham to Maine, Watchic Pond to Boston, Falmouth Foresides to the South Shore. There were thousands of trips with my mother and father. Nowadays Frunk and I live far apart. We haven’t been in a car together for over ten years, but […]

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