“Our hometowns are the chapters of our story, written in the ink of our memories.”
Lat night was cooler, down to the 70’s, so I turned off the AC. This morning the house is still cool, but that won’t last. It will be in the 80’s today and most of the week. I will hibernate.
My inner sloth is still reeling. Yesterday I cross off the chores on my to-do list. I scrubbed all the deck chairs and swept the deck, well most of it. I’ll finish the rest today. I need a new broom.
When I was a kid, I loved walking around uptown checking out the stores. I remember there were three drug stores close to each other. I never wondered about that. Middlesex Drug was the fanciest. It had the best soda fountain with a marble top. That is where I’d drink my vanilla cokes made the old way with fizzy water and flavoring. They had counters along the sides and in the middle, and at Christmas I’d wander hoping to find presents for my parents within my meager budget. Pullo’s Rexall Drug was right by the movie theater. It was small. Mr. Pullo, also the pharmacist, used to wear white jackets, the sort Ben Casey always wore. He was one of my father’s friends. Stoneham Pharmacy, Bracciotti’s, was almost next door to Pullo’s. I don’t remember ever shopping there.
One of my favorite stores was the cobbler’s. It was long and narrow and tucked between two other stores. The window was filled with shoes in pairs with Manila tags. The counter too was covered in shoes. The cobbler sat behind the counter working on a shoe held on a metal holder the shape of a shoe. He wore an apron. He always looked old to me.
On the street in the middle of the square used to be a police box. A policeman sat inside and controlled the three sets of attached traffic lights. Signs were on the front. Straight ahead to Route 128 and straight ahead to Route 28. A traffic accident destroyed it.
The square was called up-town while Boston was in-town. I don’t know if everyone called it that, but my mother always did.
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July 16, 2024 at 10:05 am
Hi Kat,
Today will be the same as yesterday with a predicted high of 102°F. The hottest summer on record was 1980. That summer we hit 113°F. One of the TV channels had a woman giving the nightly weather. She posted the temperature in Celsius because it sounded less hot. 🙂
When I was living in New York, we lived in the borough of Queens. We referred to Manhattan as, “New York”. People living in Manhattan referred to the financial district, Wall Street area, as Downtown. The area where the Empire State Building and Times Square is located is referred to as, “Midtown”, and “Uptown” refers to anything north of Central Park.
When I lived in Dallas we called the central business district , “Downtown”. I now live in Grapevine, and we refer to the historic Main Street area, also as, “Downtown”. The city of Grapevine has maintained the Main Street area just as it was in the early 20th century. It’s now a huge tourist attraction. If you have a few hour layover at the DFW airport, you can ride the commuter to train to Ft. Worth, (Tex Rail), two stops and you are at the historic train station on Main Street in Grapevine.
July 16, 2024 at 3:36 pm
Hi Bob,
We are about as hot as we have been all summer. It is 89° but with the humidity feels like 98°. We will have a few more days of this before it breaks.
I remember hearing all the terms for New York City on Law and Order. I know Boston too has specific terms for areas of the city. They also use downtown which describes the center of the city. There is the North End, the South End, Back Bay and Beacon Hill. The Seaport District is the newest formed with lol sorts of rehab and new buildings.
Stoneham has changed but when they were filming The Brink’s Job about the heist in 1950 they wanted places which would fit the time frame. They chose uptown in Stoneham, my old hometown.
July 16, 2024 at 4:01 pm
I never knew that the TV series, “Law and Order”, was an educational program. 🙂
The humidity right now is 38% with the temperature right at 100°. That’s a dew point of 70°. The air is so dry that the temperature would have to go down to 70° for precipitation to form.
North Texas between July 4th and Labor Day is usually very hot and very dry. There’s a very slim chance some rain on Thursday when a cold front arrives. Cold of course is a relative term, the predicted high will be a cool 92°.
July 16, 2024 at 8:02 pm
Bob,
It was a lesson in the geography of New York City.
Earlier tonight the wind started and the sky got dark no rain. It is down to the 70’s now, but it will be hot again tomorrow.
Usually August is our humid month, but we’re stuck with it now.
I’m watching the intros at the World Series. I’m enjoying the guys with their twirling lassos.