Poliomyelitis and ‘the Gun:’ a West Warwick Girl’s Memories of Life in the 50’a and 60’s
It’s street name? Polio. It’s what scared us to death in my growing up years of the 50’s. Its advent and its conquering was what got vaccination its well-deserved recognition as life-saver…at least in that time period. Polio was as feared in its day as AIDS would be decades later. Or the zika virus which…
‘Screwing Around’ at the Donut Kettle
Or….Youthful Hijinx…Charity Collecting…The Donut Kettle….Mruk’s…and when I learn the WORST swear word in the English language…. “Screw the lid on the top of the sugar shaker just like this, so it appears as if it’s on,” Joe whispered as he prepared the glass sugar shaker for an unsuspecting customer who’d doubtless upend the…
Ode to Miss Gladys Evelyn McCormick
Sometimes, upon an older person’s extending his hand, in greeting, I inwardly hear Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “He holds him with his skinny hand/’There was a ship,’ quoth he./’Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’/Eftsoons his hand dropt he.” Little do these people know I associate such high drama with mere extension…
How West Warwick Kids ‘Did’ Summer:
Crompton ‘Free’ Library…Camp Ayoho…Vacation Bible School She’d been really sweet—the reader, that is. Telling me I ‘made her smile,’ with my accounts appearing here, each Saturday She said I stoked her own memories. We chatted back and forth on one of West Warwick’s Facebook pages where I post these articles and she mentioned the…
The Day of Yellow Rain
“My cats came in covered in yellow,” one person stated. Another said her mother saw barrels of the Crayola-yellow stuff positioned against the fence that separated the neighborhood of Windsor Park from the Hoechst chemical facility. I posted a shorter version of this story to several Facebook pages dedicated to West Warwick, and I got…
West Warwick Produces Champions
We got the news in the winter of 1960, that our family from West Warwick would represent Rhode Island in a national contest to be held in the spring. We were Rhode Island’s candidate for “All-American Family.” This was no small honor, for families all over Rhode Island competed to represent our state. It was…
