14th Street Gold
NY Writers Coalition Press 1
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14 Street Gold Writing by Retired Adults from the 14th Street Y Winter 2005
NY Writers Coalition Press 3
Copyright © 2005 NY Writers Coalition Inc. Upon publication, copyright to individual works returns to the authors. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Editor: Deborah Clearman Layout: Deborah Clearman, 14th Street Gold contains writing by the members of a creative writing workshop for retired adults conducted by NY Writers Coalition Inc. at the 14th Street YMYWHA at 344 East 14th Street. NY Writers Coalition Inc. is a not-for-profit organization that provides free creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society. For more information about NY Writers Coalition Inc.: NY Writers Coalition Inc. 80 Hanson Place #603 Brooklyn, NY 11217 (718) 398-2883 info@nywriterscoalition.org www.nywriterscoalition.org
The Educational Alliance, founded in 1889, is a communal institution dedicated to the strength and vigor of the Lower East Side, the Jewish community and all its neighbors. Through its programs and services, the Alliance serves all people regardless of religion, color or national origin—the old and the young, the sick and the poor, the disabled and the homeless—and provides support for the enhancement and continuity of the Jewish community. The 14th Street YMYWHA, a vital part of the Educational Alliance, provides Lower Manhattan with a Jewish Community Center that offers programs for the whole community. The 14th Street YM-YWHA 344 East 14th Street New York, NY 10003 (212) 780-0800 www.edalliance.org
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CONTENTS TIME Lorraine Beyer Theordor………...……...………...9 THE SUMMER PEACH Muriel Gray…………...……..10 A SONNET Katy Morgan………………………..……10 IN MY THOUGHTS Myra K. Baum...………………..11 WRITE MAKES MIGHT Ed Goldsmith……….…..…13 PANTOUM Syd Lazarus………………….……….…..19 THE WORDSMITH Harry M. Mahn………...……......20 BLUE CABBAGE Sherwood Jacobson…….………….24 STRANGERS Katy Morgan.……………….…….………26 THREE HAIKU Syd Lazarus…………….……………29 MORE THAN DINNER Bob Rosen………..…………30 GOING BACK Muriel Gray…………………….…….34 MONDAY MORNING IN HEAVEN Deborah Clearman…………...…...….36 JAZZ AND THE BLUES Lorraine Beyer Theordor…...38 ON THE TRAIN TODAY Lorraine Beyer Theordor…..39 PHOTOGRAPH KEY………………………………..41
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INTRODUCTION We’re back! The indefatigable members of the 14th Street Y Workshop have been together now for almost three years, gathering once a week to share our joys and pain, our triumphs and tribulation, our caustic observations of a world gone insane, our appreciation for the enduring beauty of that very world, and, as ever, many, many bags of cookies. We battle the noise of sirens in the street, the constant intruders on our turf, and our own nearly irrepressible urge to chat in order to create a ring of quiet. In that hard-won silence we hear voices— from our imaginations, from our memories, from our families and friends and experiences. Our pens move across the page, and the voices that emerge are our own. This third issue of 14th STREET GOLD brings you a sample of those voices—some of them lyrical, some funny, some cranky, some profound, all unique—from our workshop for retired adults. In this issue we meditate on the passage of time, and in this spirit, we have contributed photographs of ourselves at earlier stages in our lives. We invite the reader to guess who’s who! At the end of the book, you’ll find an answer key. Thanks go as always to the staff at the Y, without whose support we couldn’t thrive, and to Aaron Zimmerman, Executive Director of NY Writers Coalition, and to all the members of this wonderful workshop who keep me going from week to week. Deborah Clearman, Workshop Leader December 2005
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TIME Lorraine Beyer Theordor Something strange is happening to time. Sunday was just here, the other day. How could it be here now, today, so soon? It didn’t happen this way years ago, when I was young. I remember Monday and slower still Tuesday taking its sweet time. Wednesday then Thursday plodding along and waiting for Friday, then Saturday dragging its heels. I tried to hold on to Sunday when it finally arrived, for I knew it would be a long week before Sunday rolled around again. Now the hands move so quickly around the face of the clock, and I think that waiting beats not having enough time.
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THE SUMMER PEACH Muriel Gray Taste evoking memories Tall trees wafting Dappled sunshine patterns Savoring gentle breezes Carefree school vacations Vistas of books Endless literary pleasures Life-giving sun Nature’s joyous gift Works another miracle A SONNET Katy Morgan In my mind’s eye, snow is always falling, Silently wrapping the landscape for our eyes To rest, and saving us where it whitely lies From hearing, in my mind’s ear always calling, The voices of our beloved, still recalling Us to the noisy lives, the little lies, The little truth that in me slowly dies, While snow, as it always is, is softly falling. Once there were sunlit days and afternoons, Rain in the evening, stopping overnight, Fog vaguely veiling the morning, disappearing In time to show us brilliant sun-bright noons. But now, what I remember, in dark or light, Is the snow, without seeing, without hearing. 10
IN MY THOUGHTS Myra K. Baum What am I thinking? Examining a life is not easy. What am I doing? Is this right for me now? Events from long ago invade my mind. Examining a life is not easy, Rerunning a history of youth. Is this right for me now? Examining a life is not easy. Was I a good mother, a good wife? Is this right for me now? Am I righting past wrongs? Was I a good mother, a good wife? I hope for a legacy of love and accomplishment. Am I righting past wrongs? Has the legacy already been written? I hope for a legacy of love and accomplishment. What am I doing? Has the legacy already been written? What am I thinking?
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WRITE MAKES MIGHT Ed Goldsmith On previous occasions, when the group leader tried to corral some strays to read aloud at this monthly writers' read, I would simply pass. So, for a change, here I am, on a late afternoon, in a Barnes and Noble cafe, killing time, and rewriting my spiel for a bunch of strangers who will very likely be ignoring my stuff anyway, while revving up their own engines for their own five minutes of fame. Anyway, to maintain my own public credibility I had better show up there, simply because I have already submitted my name to read. Do I regret it? Yes. I can be at home, hiding from the world. So what do I expect to accomplish by coming out to this East 28th Street location? Not much really, but as I said, I did promise to be there. This particular Barnes and Noble cafe is crowded, but at least one enjoys a modicum of elbow room, even if he has to share a table with a stranger. The one uptown at West 82nd Street is the size of a postage stamp. That is real shit, sharing a table with as many as five other strangers. Now if you audience out there, the ones that are actually listening, think that I hate people from what I have written, what can I do? For my own part, if a writer is not honest, I have no use for him. Yes, but if I am so hostile, why reveal it to the world? Simply because even hostile writers deserve the chance to be heard, to share their spleen, or whatever else it is they have inside them. I find writing to be a great cathartic. It liberates the soul, expressing all 13
sorts of feelings. The hassle is the reading of the text before other people. I am at a relatively anonymous level where I can't easily have the public take in my stuff without my being physically present at the reading. Why? They don't know how great I am yet! So I have to spoon feed them my stuff, by reading it aloud to them. That way maybe I am getting my message across. It can be either a triumphant feeling, if the audience approves, or it can even be traumatic if the audience or even one crackpot member of same violently disapproves. At least such has been my experience. As for my consumption of the works of other writers, I never go to those readings at book stores unless I am already somewhat of a fan of, or at least cognizant of, the writer who is scheduled to appear. Why? Because at this stage of my life, time is of the essence, my time, that is. If I am already a fan, then I am motivated to get more than my original taste of the writer, which figures. Even if the writer is a recognizable annoyance to me, I also attend just to keep track of what these noticeable nuisances, who shall go nameless, who already have been picked up on my radar screen, will hazard saying or doing next. However, in this changing world, new writers are constantly being hatched, such being the consequences of sexual unions, the heterosexual ones, that is, stepping out of their egg shells, and making their bids for the big time. I, who have no reason to attend their debuts, don't ever bother, unless there is something provocative in the blurb that advertises their appearance. Where I don't know of the writer, it is usually the subject matter involved which might, on those rare occasions, grab me. For example, I am into cryptography, and religion, and magic, and, oh, so many subjects, that 14
I do, on very rare occasions, attend conferences on these subjects by speakers, previously unknown to me. As for writers I hold in high esteem, they are usually older than me, male and established literary lions. To name a few, they include Tom Wolfe, Frederick Forsyth and Thomas Harris, because of Bonfire of the Vanities, Day of the Jackal and Silence of the Lambs, respectively. On two occasions I was indirectly stood up by two of them, as they canceled out on appearances at book stores at which I had already trustingly arrived. Perhaps success has gone to their heads, and they don't bother to do whorish public appearances that most lesser, younger authors are obligated to do, in order to promote the sales of their books. Also, with advanced age, one finds less energy to run around, and that, too, may be a factor in their cancellations. Surely a fantasy of mine would be to become such a highly regarded author that whatever I churn out will be bought up, sight unseen, without even any consideration of what the critics have said in their reviews. Indeed the fantasy includes the notion that whatever flows from my pen be considered infallible, and therefore not in need of being reviewed. Anyway, here I am, with my fantasies, in reality a senior citizen, donning my writer's hat, without a lengthy track record. Why is that? Well, for most of my earlier years I had to earn a living as an English teacher, among other things. Don't forget that at one time nobody ever heard of Wolfe, Forsyth or Harris either. And I know that eventually the names of these favorites of mine will be lost in the sands of time. Recently I took pity on a talk show host, who found, to his chagrin, that nobody out there in his radio audience ever even heard of Norman 15
Mailer. Will I ever achieve the monumental stature that I have attributed to these aforementioned literary idols I have singled out above? Probably not. But, then again, as it says somewhere in The Ethics of the Fathers, speaking of religious writings: "Know whence you came and whither you are going, from a malodorous drop and to a place of dust, worms, and moths." That applies to all of us, the big and the small. Like it shows on the Tarot card of death, nobody gets out of this life alive. We are all small potatoes at the beginning and end of our lives. So what am I getting at? Damned it I know! However I did fill up some paper for a submission to the third annual edition of 14th Street Gold.
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PANTOUM Syd Lazarus Two subjects I don’t do well in: Poetry and math— A long twenty-five minutes. Forget about Pantoums Poetry and math: Add, subtract, multiply, divide— Forget about Pantoums. Write about the day. Add, subtract, multiply, divide, We were taught in school. Write about the day We learned about Pantoums. We were taught in school English, history, French, algebra, We learned about Pantoums. I was a bad student of poetry. English, history, French, algebra, Poetry and math. I was a bad student of poetry— A long twenty-five minutes.
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THE WORDSMITH Harry M. Mahn Ellsworth was stumped. He knew clichés were to be avoided like the plague. They were the crutches relied on by dull and lazy thinkers. Yet you had to admire the wordsmiths who first coined expressions that would be used for generations to follow. Indeed, many of these expressions, he thought, had been used so long they had become archaic. “Poor as a church mouse”; indeed. Did churches have mice, Ellsworth wondered. He hadn’t been in one since confirmation. Why not, “needy as a New Orleans panhandler post Katrina”? Or, “poor as a Taliban barber”? Too exotic? “Stomach-grindingly poor”? Yes, that was a keeper. Then, there was “madder than a wet hen.” Ellsworth knew absolutely no one who had ever seen a wet hen. Why not “madder than an unrecognized academic,” or “madder than a speech impaired traffic cop?” Ellsworth began to appreciate how difficult it was to create a telling simile or metaphor. So difficult, in fact, that people continued using phrases today that virtually no one understood. Take “spitting image.” Just what was that all about? But, while he enjoyed these late afternoon peregrinations through a language littered with clichés, he also knew time was a-wasting. His job was to create a smashing advertisement for a new account that was looking to launch Guatemalan vodka. Where to begin? “Vodka to a Latin beat?” Or, perhaps, “It’s all in the spuds, bud. Let Latin tubers 20
turn on your lights.” Then again, wasn’t it best to be direct? “All vodkas taste pretty much the same, so why not try something really, really cheap from south of the border?” Or, should it be “south of several borders?” Ellsworth crumpled up the paper on which he had been writing. Best try something different. Those last ideas, he realized, would just bite him in the ass. Besides, today’s advertising copy was meant mostly to augment graphics, rather than visa versa. In the old days – the really old days – advertising turned on jingles. “Pepsi Cola hits the spot. Twelve full ounces; that’s a lot.” But that was for radio. Such copy had long since been discarded for simple slogans like, “Where’s the beef?” or “A quicker picker upper.” Here was, of course, the influence of television, a remarkable advance in media technology that led inevitably to a dumber America. This trajectory in American advertising led to an ad that must have been designed for a demographic that clearly didn’t include Ellsworth. It was the Captain Morgan ad where everyone is shown holding up one knee. Ellsworth knew that the thoughts provoked in him by these images were juvenile, but he couldn’t help chuckling. It was time to go home, Ellsworth decided, and try again tomorrow.
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BLUE CABBAGE Sherwood Jacobson A blue cabbage is a lovely thing When it grows in a ring And makes the cat go and carefully hide rather than riding And then to find a gardener who goes striding Along the rows of roses, Which the children hold up to their noses As they happily dance on their toes With eyes so blue. Only in our garden is you. Go forth, then find a purple wizard, Who can catch a green and yellow lizard, And gobble it down into his pink gizzard, It will be another day. It is a pleasure of the garden, where the wind goes swish, To bring them magic pills To find the days that may bring them every wish. I love you as you know And will buy you a special dish.
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STRANGERS Katy Morgan You have a habit of latching onto strangers in bars and telling them your life story. Actually, you do it also in trains, in waiting rooms, even on park benches, but your most fruitful territory for this activity is bars, especially the kind of dimly lit neighborhood bar where people mostly come alone, drink alone, while watching whatever game is on the TV, and then go home alone. You suppose they come to the bar to drink from a dimly felt need to be with people, yet they choose a bar where they can be with people without being with the people they find there. You come to these bars for much the same reason, and yet you want to take it a step further: not content with merely standing or sitting side by side with others, sharing only your presence in the room and the presence of the lighted, talking TV set, you need to talk too. Sometimes the person you choose to talk to prefers not to be this closely connected to another person, and moves away after a few monosyllables. But others-and you have gotten more skillful over time at picking out which ones they will be--share a vague need, beyond the vague need for the presence of others, for a semblance of communication with others. Unable or unwilling to start a conversation, they respond like a plant to light and water when you turn to them and comment, say, on the weather, or on the teams playing on the lighted TV over the bar. They’re not able or willing to respond with more than good listening noises, but they seem to vaguely brighten and even relax their frowns a bit when you start telling them your story. 26
Once in a while you have run across another like yourself and by accident have started a conversation. As soon as you realize that your interlocutor intends to make you the recipient of his story, you break off immediately, and leave the premises. You know from bitter experience that two of you cannot happily occupy the same room. In these cases, you have no choice but to leave and find another bar, or waiting room, or late-night restaurant. Yes, it is always late at night when you go in search of a listener. Perhaps because, knowing it is time to sleep, and unable to sleep, you find nothing else can fill the time without driving you to nervous pacing, and pacing, and pacing. So you go out to find a bar where you can find a listener. After the weather: “What do you think about this weather? Have you ever known so many sunny days in a row?” or the game: “Those Mets need a pitcher. They’re never going to get anywhere unless they get a pitcher,” then you begin. “I remember in 1987--were you here then?--yes, it was about this kind of weather then, and the Mets were in a losing streak--I remember, my wife went off with my best friend. They left me a note on the refrigerator….”
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THREE HAIKU Syd Lazarus Summer sun burns my skin though I don’t feel it yet-Later comes the pain. A summer fruit the lovely peach waiting for my touch and bite. I reach for it. The cat stares-Does she see anything?-then jumps off the couch.
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MORE THAN DINNER Bob Rosen “Quiet I said. I’m trying to eavesdrop.” There wasn’t a lot of noise by this time of the evening. Most of the dinner crowd had eaten and left. The conversation between the couple sitting behind us was about their pending divorce settlement. Did I want to catch every word? Absolutely! Was I being nosey? You betcha! If you became a regular at this restaurant you could call ahead and ask for Tony. Tony was a part time actor and waiter but a full time lady’s man. It wasn’t hard to imagine him strolling down the Via Veneto, his jacket draped over one shoulder, a cigarette as much a prop as a necessity held between thumb and forefinger in the continental style. Style was important. After all, he was a Roman male in the mold of Marcello Mastronanni, or at least he tried to be. “Tony, please do us a favor. We will be there about nine, so please save us two orders of stuffed mushrooms and a large order of clams casino.” Among the first things we found out when we moved to a new neighborhood was to search out the better restaurants. The Lamp was housed in a twostory house on what may once have been a quiet Nassau County street but now was a busy road. Stuck in between a lumberyard and a car dealership, it soon became our favorite restaurant. We would always start our meal with the stuffed mushrooms. Oh, the mushrooms! Often when you bite into something so delicious you can’t help smiling to yourself. We nodded at Tony. He smiled back at us. “Enjoy, enjoy,” he said. 30
My wife got the recipe from the head chef, Mamma Anna, the owner’s mother. You start with large fresh mushrooms. Add chopped black olives, which was Mamma’s secret, to the minced garlic and bread crumbs. After the Lamp closed my wife could reproduce that dish at home, but it wasn’t like sitting at a table having a late Saturday night dinner. Susan and I were trying to figure out what that couple behind us were quietly arguing about. “What do they look like?” My back was towards them, so Susan had to do my spying. “I can see him, he is facing me, really good looking, about thirty-five. She is blonde, slim, and wearing a big diamond. If you are so interested, get up and walk past them to the men’s room.” “No way. I don’t want to miss one word of this battle.” Going out to dinner once a week after finding a reliable babysitter was something special to us, but this conversation was about who gets to keep the sailboat, what arrangements make about the house on the lake or the pied-a-terre on the upper east side. The cars, they whispered to each other, they would divide in the settlement. Valuable art pieces they collected during their marriage should be sold, their lawyers advised. The jewelry was hers, she insisted. “Do what you want with it!” His voice had started to rise. I had to get a look at them. Standing up, I walked a few feet past their table, turned, and returned to my chair as if I had forgotten something. My wife was right about the young man’s looks. The woman’s face could have been taken off the cover of Vogue Magazine. They were a beautiful couple trying to keep something ugly in their failed marriage, a conversation 31
just between the two of them. During their testy back and forth, the discussion of children, schooling, or visitation rights never came up. Perhaps they had no offspring together, but the sailboat was constantly brought up. You could hear that each desperately wanted the boat to be theirs alone. Happy voyages taken together had turned into a verbal war between them. Most Italian restaurants have a chicken entrĂŠe on the menu, but only here could you find Chicken Bianca. Chicken, cut into pieces with the bones left on, onions, 32
peppers, and Mamma’s magic. Every bit of sauce sopped up with crusty garlic bread. If we needed an excuse to extend our eavesdropping, this was the dish to order. As good a cook as Susan was, she could never duplicate that dish at home. As the restaurant emptied, their voices, no longer having to share space with other diners’, became easier to overhear. The boat was mentioned again and again. I could imagine its sails once filled with the passionate winds of their love, now going slack. Ask me about the Italian cheesecake or zabaglione served here. In Rome on the Corso near the Spanish steps, the famous gelaterias could take a lesson from Grandma’s magic touch. Frank the owner brought us our espresso. “I got some news that I’ve kept for the regular customers. We’re going to close in a few months. Mamma’s getting tired, so Marie and I are moving our racing stable to the west coast. You can see from the pictures going up around the dining room that our horses have been doing really well.” Sure enough, there they were: our hosts at Belmont, Aqueduct, and Saratoga race tracks, posing with their winning horses, trainers, and jockeys. “I’m not going to sell the Lamp to someone and spoil the memories of the food you’ve eaten here.” We don’t know what time that couple left. On our way out we looked back at them. They were finished eating, their faces staring down at the soiled tablecloth. We came back every week until Frank, Marie, Mamma, and Tony closed shop. I often find myself looking out of my windows as the sailboats move to the winds on the Hudson River and wonder who wound up with that boat. 33
. GOING BACK Muriel Gray In the year 1654 a small boat of twenty-six Sephardic Jews sailed the Atlantic Ocean. They had been deported from Recife, an island off the coast of Brazil. Their forebears had fled there during the Spanish Inquisition, after expulsion from Portugal. As the Inquisition arrived in our hemisphere, they went north to New Amsterdam. It was known that the Netherlands had been a religious haven in the past. Pirates chased them in open seas, and finally they arrived, penniless, at the Dutch port. Peter Stuyvesant, governor of the trading post, refused them entry. New York City has his original letters, to the Dutch West India Company, complaining about Jews in general, and his reasons for exclusion. Amazingly, the company wrote back to say that these people are stockholders and must be admitted. Stuyvesant told the ragged bunch they could remain, but only if they took care of their own people, and did not take aid from public coffers. The Jews created a Federation, which became the forerunner of our vast charitable umbrella. Needless to say, we try to extend our help to everyone.
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MONDAY MORNING IN HEAVEN Deborah Clearman The Son of Man wakes up early, hears the cherubim singing through his open window, is about to spring up with his usual morning vim, hesitates for just one more hallelujah, and falls back onto his narrow cot. He stares up at the eternal golden sunshine dancing on the stark white walls of his cell, and watches his good mood evaporate. Yesterday was a great day: he made a cameo appearance at the grand opening of his latest megachurch, where he turned the grape juice into wine. How the party rocked! The rafters rang with shouts of “Thank you Jesus.” He restored the sight of a blind man in Botswana, gave him one last look at his sobbing relatives before AIDS took him to his reward. He managed to save twenty people from an earthquake in Bolivia that cost 4000 lives, all before noon. And he went about his duties with his customary humility and grace. Then last night he and GTF took a stroll on the springy clouds made silver by moonlight and looked down on the blue-green orb they both love. GTF told him the wine trick wasn’t appropriate. Wow. What’s wrong with a little fun? They’ve been arguing a lot lately, he and GTF, maybe that’s what’s got him down. Jesus knows he should be excited about his Second Coming, just around the corner, but he doesn’t think this latest Holy War is nice, even if it is the glorious precursor to Rapture. It’s so tenth century. Maybe this morning while GTF and the Ghost are downstairs at the weekly White House power breakfast, he’ll sneak over to the other side of heaven and spy on Mohammad, who always 36
sleeps until noon on fluffy silk banquettes surrounded by his harem girls. There’s a prophet who knows how to live. Mary Magdalene is busy at the homeless shelter. Jesus wouldn’t mind a peek at those harem girls with their pomegranate breasts. But he can’t get up. He knows he should get busy, win a few more souls while there’s still time. But this morning he couldn’t care less about good and evil, the Ten Commandments. Do the ants ever feel this way, carting around those heavy loads in endless obedience to the rules? He’d like to go and get his feet bathed in rosewater and oil, but all he can do is lie here, like he’s nailed to his hard mattress. Does the gentle cow ever cringe at the sight of the farmer and say, back off, keep those suction cups off my teats. Does the rabbit ever get tired of being everybody’s dinner and think, why me, Darwin? From below he hears another bomb go off, hears a child cry. One of his or one of mine? he thinks. He doesn’t move. Fuck it. Let the paramedics handle it.
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JAZZ AND THE BLUES Lorraine Beyer Theordor You could hear it come out of the horn and off the black and white keys of the piano. The sound was there when the oath of love was given. A crescendo in musical chords when my newborn baby arrived. I hugged it to my breast when the ground split apart and danced to it as the music fit the mood. Jazz and Blues tell the story in all honesty of an aching heart and of the deepest joy of living. I’ve been privy to the richness of the language and though the strains may have mellowed with time, I hear it still.
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ON THE TRAIN TODAY Lorraine Beyer Theordor Young lovers holding hands, talking softly in Spanish. A man with legs spread far apart, daring a fat lady to sit near him. The gray faced man doesn’t see, though he’s staring at me. A little boy on his mother’s lap claps his hands, turns to the man with legs spread apart and throws a kiss. Suddenly, there’s room for the fat lady to sit on the train today.
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PHOTOGRAPH KEY
Bob Rosen…………………………………Frontpiece Harry Mahn………………........................................8 Myra Baum……………………………...…………12 Lorraine Theordor………………………………….17 Syd Lazarus as Redhead.…………………………..18 Deborah Clearman………………………………....22 Sherwood Jacobson………………………………...25 Katy Morgan………………………………..……...28 Syd Lazarus as Blonde……………………………..32 Muriel Gray…………………………….…………..35 Lorraine Theordor……………………………….…38 Syd Lazarus………………………………………...40
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