Side’s recent publishing slowdown stems from the fact that your correspondent and his frau traipsed off to points south for the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. We departed on an inconveniently snowy morning, but soon escaped that and enjoyed a relatively mild several days in the greater New York City area, most of which was at our daughter’s house in North Jersey, not far from where we were conceived, delivered, and reared.
The first part of our trip was taking in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Mrs. P wisely elected not to come along, as we were joining in with 3 million or so others who had the same idea. We were coached by a high school classmate of ours on how to go about things.
We met her and her family members at 56th and 7th Avenue, well before the parade began, and only after enduring a ‘train’ ride and a ‘subway’ ride in which the dominant sensation was that of being a sardine. Us ‘seniors’ tried as best we could to coordinate via cell phone, and were left wondering how the modern generation can manage to talk clearly in raucous urban circumstances.
Here we offer two snaps of the famous balloons making their way south along 7th Avenue. They move surprisingly fast, and it’s amazing to note how much preparation takes place, including rotating all the traffic signal arms out of the way, of which there must be thousands. In both photos, the building in the background on the right, behind the ‘Muni-Meter’ sign, is Carnegie Hall.
You know the old joke:
Q: “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?'”
A: “Practice, practice, practice.”
We’re glad we made the effort, and we look forward to enjoying other delights of Manhattan on upcoming trips. Being in the midst of residents of the area, to put it mildly, is ‘entertainment’ in its own right.
Further, we’re resolute in our belief that attending this parade is something best done no more than once, like attending the Rose Bowl. Standing motionless for 3 or more hours, bracketed by high energy commuter trips, left us pretty well wrung out. Enough so that we deferred the gala family turkey feast to the following day. More on that in a subsequent post.
On Saturday of the weekend, we went off in search of an Italian Bakery/Deli we had been given a lead on by a friend here in Brunswick who grew up in North Jersey. It’s called Lotito’s, in Ramsey, just a few miles from the New York State border.
It’s one of those places that you walk into and feel transported – back to your growing up days, and into a world where ethnic ambience and specialties overwhelm you. It’s hard to describe; you really need to experience and wallow in it. Think The Sopranos, combined with Wild Oats, combined with Micucci’s, and that only hints at the pleasure of such places.
Oh how we wish that Maine, and Brunswick in particular, could host and make such places a facet of our ordinary daily lives. Sadly, we don’t have whatever it takes to make it so. We could muse at length at what ‘it takes,’ without ever making sense, so we won’t bother.
Instead, we’ll just make sure we enjoy such places every time we’re down in the land of our youth, to which we feel an increasing connection as the months and years go by. Perhaps you feel the same about where you grew up.
We hope so; feeling this connection has been a great pleasure for us.
Here our some views of what we enjoyed:
We’re tempted to say “eat your heart out,” but we’re worried our Doctors would not take such words in the sense they are intended.
So be it, dear readers.
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