Birdsong
Expensive Diary:
On Presidents’ Day, about three dozen folks of assorted ages gathered on the Brooklyn Botanic Backyard’s entrance for a household chook stroll. You couldn’t have requested for higher winter climate: sunny, not too chilly, gentle breezes.
Our information, a girl carrying a bucket hat adorned with colourful chook prints, made some preliminary remarks, and we have been on our manner.
“Yellow-bellied sapsucker,” she referred to as out 10 minutes into the stroll.
The group stopped in its tracks. Binoculars have been raised, fingers pointed, sighting ideas shared.
The opposite birds we encountered included a downy woodpecker, a Cooper’s hawk (a blue jay’s warning cries alerted us to its presence) and a white-throated sparrow camouflaged in a bush’s dense branches.
Towards the top of the stroll, a chook someplace forward burst into tune.
“Cardinal,” the information introduced, and the search started.
Within the flurry of exercise, I puzzled whether or not anyone else was listening to the sensible whistled tune.
“Isn’t the singing fantastic?” I requested, loud sufficient for everybody to listen to.
No less than one different member of the group, a person, heard me.
“Feels like a automotive alarm to me,” he stated.
— Roth Wilkofsky
‘Free Goodies!’
Expensive Diary:
It was round 1952. I used to be 10, and I favored it that my household needed to change from the downtown D to the native AA at West Fourth Avenue.
The vertical I-beams on the platform there had merchandising machines that disbursed miniature Suchard chocolate bars for a penny a pop.
I all the time pulled on the little plungers to see if chocolate bars would seem magically with out the requisite pennies.
Someday, ta-da!: The plungers on all 4 machines weren’t working, and I used to be filling my pockets with free sweets simply because the native pulled into the station.
As I received on the prepare with my household, I noticed one other boy approaching.
“Free sweets!” I yelled, pointing to one of many machines. “It’s jammed!”
As we pulled away within the route of Spring Avenue, I used to be blissful to see the opposite boy busily “milking” the machine at a livid tempo.
— Giulio Maestro
A Little Late
Expensive Diary:
I boarded the M104 and took a seat behind a gray-haired lady dressed all in black. The white tag on her sweater was sticking straight up from her neckline.
I tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” I stated. “Would you want me to place your tag inside your sweater?”
“Sure,” she replied. “The place have been you three hours in the past?”
“It’s best to have referred to as,” I stated.
We each laughed.
— Jane Seskin
Coleslaw
Expensive Diary:
Early one sunny Saturday in 1975, my good friend Beth and I climbed the steps to the elevated tracks in Far Rockaway and caught the A.
The prepare bumped and rumbled alongside the seashore roads, into Brooklyn after which by the tunnel into Manhattan. The lights within the automotive flickered because the prepare screeched into every cease alongside the best way.
At Washington Sq., we jumped off, climbed the steps to the road and emerged into the brilliant daylight of an attractive fall day.
We wandered by Greenwich Village, stopping at outlets the place youngsters only a few years older and much hipper than us oversaw plentiful inventories of artwork posters, handcrafted jewellery, T-shirts and a broad assortment of different, fantastically random gadgets.
The profusion of products was past thrilling to us. We drank within the sights and sounds, flapped enthusiastically over just a few small purchases and tried our greatest to tune into the tradition surrounding us.
To save cash, every of us had introduced a sandwich alongside. At one level, we discovered a facet avenue. We sat on a curb between two parked automobiles and had our picnic.
Beth’s sandwich had coleslaw on it, one thing I had by no means thought so as to add. It created a seismic shift in how I considered meals.
Later, we caught the A, ensuring we received house earlier than darkish.
— June Holder
Class Reward
Expensive Diary:
I used to be working as a fourth-grade trainer at a personal college on the East Facet. As a year-end reward, the mother and father had their daughters scratch their names right into a silverish image body, which was given to me wrapped in yards of tissue paper inside a Tiffany field.
I put a gracious look on my face as I unwrapped it. I held up the body and smiled at every of the 15 women who had “signed” it.
After college, I sneaked right into a pawnshop on Lexington Avenue. The person on the counter seemed approvingly on the Tiffany field.
I eliminated the distinctive blue lid, took the body out of the tissue paper and handed it to him.
He stared at it for a few seconds.
“Inform you what,” he stated. “I don’t need this, however I’ll purchase the field.”
— Mary Jo Robertiello
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee