The Neighborhood Stores Are An Important Part

Occasionally There Is A Moment In A Person's Life When He Takes A Great Stride Forward In Wisdom, Humility, Or Disillusionment. For A Split Second He Comes Into A Kind Of Cosmic Understanding. For A Trembling Breath Of Time He Knows All There Is To Know. He Is Loaned The Gift The Poet Yearned For - Seeing Himself As Others See Him.

Those Were The Rommely Women: Mary, The Mother, Evy, Sissy, And Katie, Her Daughters, And Francie, Who Would Grow Up To Be A Rommely Woman Even Though Her Name Was Nolan. They Were All Slender, Frail Creatures With Wondering Eyes And Soft Fluttery Voices. But They Were Made Out Of Thin Invisible Steel.

People Looking Up At Her--at Her Smooth Pretty Vivacious Face--had No Way Of Knowing About The Painfully Articulated Resolves Formulating In Her Mind.

Serene Was A Word You Could Put To Brooklyn New York. Especially In The Summer Of 1912. Somber As A Word Was Better. But It Did Not Apply To Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie Was Lovely And Shenandoah Had A Beautiful Sound But You Couldn't Fit Those Words Into Brooklyn. Serene Was The Only Word For It Especially On A Saturday Afternoon In Summer.

If You Love Someone, You'd Rather Suffer The Pain Alone To Spare Them.