The Dramatic Hollywood Rabbit

It’s strange what triggers memories. Today was a heavy cleaning day.  Initially with Covid isolation I stayed on top of everything, but this past week I let everything slide and had to scrub all the bathrooms, dust  and change the sheets and some laundry.  At the end I was hot and sweaty and when I sat down all I wanted was an ice cold Coke.  It was palpable how my body was tuned to receive its reward. Growing up my family had enough, but Coke (and I do mean Coke no other cola would do) was for special treats, maybe the rare occasion when Dad would go down the hill and pick up a pizza.  My mom would split 2 cokes between my sisters and me.  My sisters would demand the cans, I took the glass.  Then my sisters would watch to make sure that my mom did their cans half and half.  I was an adult before I realized that I actually ended up getting a whole can of coke when each of them got half.  Mom told me it was my reward for not making a fuss abou...

I grew up in a typical small town that through my growing up years had a population between 5-10 thousand.  If you didn’t know everyone’s name it was still likely that you would know of the family.  My neighborhood consisted of ranch style houses sitting on ⅙ of an acre plot.  When I was very young we, my mom’s sister’s family and Mom’s parents all lived within 2-3 blocks of each other.  Most holidays would find us at my Grandparents house.  That would be 6 adults and five kids in a house with 1 bathroom and only 900 sq feet of space.   Across the street from my Grandparents lived a very nice family of Italian descent.  The father of the house was a postman and had white (grey) hair, but everyone called him Red (rumor had it that when he was younger he had red hair).  The mother, Dolores, was a small compact woman with a smile that made you feel as if you were home.  Mom once told me that when she was little she would go over to their ho...