Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Regional Culture

Not that you personally knew every man, woman, and child who walked down the street in Jersey City. But you knew them well enough, could immediately see down into their dusty souls. You knew they had eaten hot dogs at Boulevard Drinks, had gone to the matinees at the Loew's, had relatives who worked for either the Parks Department or Public works and had paid that 85-cent toll on the New Jersey Turnpike a few too many times. You knew what their wardrobe looked like, what their dates looked like, and the kinds of teachers they had--what they had learned or, more important, what they had failed to learn at a place like OLC [Our Lady of Czestochowa].

From Helene Stapinski's Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History.

Change the specifics, and you have my town, and maybe, with another change of specifics, you'd get your town. Wouldn't you know it, Stapinski also wrote a book about being a musician!

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