We search for that special someone, and dream of a future with them.
Will it happen? Maybe . . .
In Time
Fly, but why?
Because, an answer
Up, well yes
Away, with the breeze
Seek, my mission
Find, could be
People, many
People, few
Discover, maybe
Discover, you.
Me, alone
Me, with you
Soaring, high
Thoughts, abound
Should, I think
The world, in you?
Restrain, I must
Control, my heart
Fall, in time
Time, a must
Believe, in time
Me, with you.
Copyright © 2021 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.
As we age, our memory may not be as good as it was when we were younger. Sometimes we struggle to remember our past.
Maybe we should record the special events that helped us make our way through life. As such, join me in . . .
Remembering My Past, Before I Forget It
“The Early Years”
I turned seventy-seven on July 13, 2021. As I lay in bed on a warm morning in early August, I wondered where I’d put my cell phone. It wasn’t on the nightstand next to the bed, connected to the charger.
What confused the situation even more was that I thought I could hear it when I received an email. But I had no idea where it was. Was I slipping into the deep abyss of memory loss?
With this thought rattling around in my brain, I tried to test my memory by recalling some of the significant events in my life. To challenge my mind, I traveled back in time to my early years—the first thirteen to be exact.
My life began in the Bronx, New York. The first four and a half years I lived with my parents in my mother’s parents’ apartment on Harrison Avenue. Aside from becoming potty trained, four other notable occurrences emerged from the cobwebs of my mind.
The first was the birth of my sister. I was almost two and a half years old. My parents came home from the hospital and entered the apartment. My mother was holding a blanket-wrapped package.
I ran up to her shouting, “Mommy, mommy, what’s that?”
“This is your baby sister, Alan.”
“Not a brother?” I asked, somewhat confused.
“No.”
“Why not? Take her back.”
“I can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .”
“Well, I had to keep my sister.”
The second involved a lady living on the ground floor of our apartment building. I was almost three years old, when I first met Molly “Pretzel.” At least that’s what I thought her name was. Her kitchen window faced the street. Every time I walked by, she leaned out the window, with a pretzel in her hand, and said, “Alan, if you’d like a pretzel, give me your hand.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. One day, as I approached her, I raised both my hands and sung out, “Molly, two pretzels, please.”
She smiled and said, “Give me a kiss.”
I puckered up and kissed her cheek and she placed one pretzel in my right hand and one in my left. As I turned away, my mother said, “What do you say?”
I looked up at Molly and chanted, “Thank you.”
The third event focused on a bronze statue of a man sitting on a rock with his chin resting on his hand. I was about four. One morning my grandfather saw me staring at it. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Allie, that man is called the ‘The Thinker.’”
“Why?” I inquired.
“Well, as you grow up, you will have a lot of questions about life that you will think about. And what you need to do is to work hard to find the answers. Will you?” he asked.
Not fully understanding what he was saying, I shrugged my shoulders and muttered, “Yes.” The statue passed from my grandparents’ home, to my parents’ home, and now sits on the mantel above the fireplace in my living room.
Finally, my fourth remembrance is of the visits to the corner soda shop, with my grandfather. He would help me up on the stool across from the soda fountain, and ask,” Allie, what would you like?”
I’d stare at him and say, “A glass of water, please.”
“But you can’t have a glass of water. We’re at the soda fountain. How about a chocolate malted?”
My response didn’t change—“Just water.” This frustrated him to no end.
Well, my time spent in the big city ended in the summer of 1949. My parents moved us to Elmont, Long Island—farming country that was being developed into what would become the largest unincorporated village in the world, at that time.
My grandmother cried to my mother, “You’re moving to the middle of nowhere. I’ll never see you again. It’s so far away.”
“Mom, it’s only fifteen miles from where you live. You can visit every weekend,” my mother responded.
And visit she did. Each Saturday morning, looking out my bedroom window, I remember this little old lady shuffling up the driveway, with a large shopping bag in each hand, filled with goodies for my sister, baseball cards for me, and food she and my mom would cook for Sunday dinner, when my grandfather would join us.
At fifty-two, she was the “oldest” person I knew—ancient in my eyes. She shared my bedroom and became my best friend. I loved her deeply.
My grandfather entered my world on Sundays, dressed in a three-piece suit and tie. My mother would say, “Dad, put on something more comfortable, or at least take off your coat.”
He would look at her, with a smile on his face, and reply, “No.”
“Why not?” she would ask.
“Because I’m wearing a dirty shirt,” he would reply.
And this happened every Sunday that he came to visit. Sometimes he would even sit, dressed to the nines, on a folding chair in our driveway, holding a sun reflector up toward his face to get a tan.
When I began school in September of 1949, my mother marched me to the bus stop on Fallon Avenue. I lived in Fallon Court. Two other boys, accompanied by their mothers, stood next to me. We were just getting to know one another. As our elementary school years passed, we would become friends who hung out together, spent time in each other’s homes, and played baseball and football on the street.
However, during these early years, something happened that made us famous, at least for a short period of time. Mike, our school bus driver, gave us a nickname that stuck with us through grammar school. Since we were the only passengers he picked up on Fallen Avenue, he dubbed us, the “Three Fallon Brothers.” And my wish came true, since I always wanted a brother.
In third grade, I accomplished something I didn’t think could happen. I wanted to be a singer, so I tried out for the glee club. After auditioning, the twinkle in my music teacher’s eyes seemed to have disappeared. Not wanting to disappoint me, she placed her hands on my shoulders and said, “You made it.” My face lit up.
At our first rehearsal, I showed up ready to share my voice with the world. When my teacher saw me, she took me aside, and said, “Alan, I’d like you to do something very special for me.”
I blushed and whispered, “Okay.”
“Please stand on the top of the riser—the very back row. When it is your turn to sing, move your lips, but don’t let any sound come out.”
This confused me, but I was a member of the glee club, so I did what she asked. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered I had invented lip- synching.
From that day forward, my singing reputation preceded me. Five years after my glee club experience, I prepared for my bar mitzvah at age thirteen. It was customary to chant the prayers at the service. As I stood on the platform before the congregation, awaiting my passage into manhood, the president of the temple, a family friend, whispered in my ear, “Alan, it would be better if you recited the prayers rather than sing them.” And so I did.
Just before I entered the fifth grade, my grandparents bought me the most beautiful two-wheeled, red bicycle. I couldn’t wait to ride it. It had been raining during the day, but as soon as it stopped, I got on the bike and sped around the block. As I came around the corner back into the court where I lived, I hit a sandy patch. The bike went out from under me and I landed on the ground, hitting my face on the handlebars. The bike was pretty beat up, but I was worse—a bloody nose and two black eyes. In my school pictures, taken later in the year, even though the black eyes couldn’t be seen by anybody who looked at me, it appeared as if I was wearing a mask.
Although I was shaken up by this event, the death of my grandmother from leukemia at the end of 1954 devastated me. I was only ten and she was just fifty-seven. Our wonderful rabbi, at the time, spent over an hour with me in our basement helping me understand what had happened. To this day, he holds a special place in my heart.
In the spring of my fifth grade year, I stayed up late one night celebrating my grandpa’s fifty-seventh birthday. Mom bought strawberry shortcake for the occasion. I’d never eaten strawberries before. They tasted all right, but not great.
After recess at school the next day, my teacher gave me a weird look and asked, “Have you been in a fight? Your right eye is swollen shut.”
I told her I hadn’t been in a fight. To make sure I was all right, she sent me to the nurses office and the nurse called my mother to come and pick me up and take me to the doctor, as my other eye also now was swollen shut. The nurse stated, “That must’ve been some fight you had.”
When my mother arrived, she took one look at me and asked, “Have you been in a fight?”
I looked her straight in the eye and said, “No.”
At the doctor’s office, he stared at me and asked if I’d eaten something I’d never eaten before. When I mentioned strawberries, he laughed and said, “You weren’t in a fight, were you? You’re allergic to strawberries. You have what we call a case of ‘hives.’” I breathed a sigh of relief, because I was no longer in trouble for the fight I never had.
In the summer, after my thirteenth birthday, I attended a camp in upstate New York and had a spectacular experience. Not only did I learn how to ride a horse bareback, I learned to jump hurdles. However, without the security of a saddle, I went up in the air fine, but when I came down, I found myself grasping the horses mane while looking into its eyes and praying I wouldn’t hit the ground headfirst. I never did try that again.
“Wow! I still have my memory—at least about the first thirteen years of my life. If I get up the courage, I’ll dig into the depths of my mind for more events that shaped my life, as I aged. And if you’re lucky, I’ll share them with you.
Copyright © 2021 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.
Money is a lure that can make us do crazy things. It can change our lives and affect how we live, work, and play.
How far will we go to become rich? Envision . . .
The Power Of Money: Dream Or Reality?
“Dollar bills! Dollar bills!” someone screamed.
Dropping from the sky—floating through the air.
Caressed by the wind—wisped in magical patterns.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
But then movement—people became crazy.
Running and screaming,
they grabbed for the falling wealth—
reckless—out of control.
Those who fell—trampled.
Then it became weird. The bills started climbing up the bodies.
They seemed alive, on a mission, . . . a very deadly mission.
They traveled from feet and hands toward the face.
They covered both the nose and mouth of the foragers,
leaving dead bodies everywhere.
My eyes focused on an astonishing phenomenon.
Emerging from the main entrance
of the Central Valley Savings and Loan
were not patrons, but more bills—
not ones, but fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.
All stood upright and marched
like a “legion of powerful gods.”
Then the bank doors opened again.
I trembled at the thought of what might emerge—
more money draining out of a financial institution.
But it wasn’t money.
Four men, dressed in bankers’ three-piece gray suits and striped ties,
strutted onto the street.
One waved a hundred dollar bill and proclaimed,
“People can’t escape the hold money has on them.
That’s why we, the bankers, are society’s masters.
Just show me one person, who can’t be enticed by money,
and I’ll . . .”
At that very moment, the hundred-dollar bill slithered out of his hand
and landed over his nose and mouth.
He gasped and fell to the ground.
Another hundred-dollar bill stood at attention in front of the masses,
who had succumbed to the power of greed.
Benjamin Franklin smiled and winked.
And, as he has been quoted,
“He that is of the opinion money will do everything,
may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
Copyright © 2021 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.
Libraries can open doors to stories that may be hard to believe. Authors tell tales that are true, but also those that are strange or unreal.
Houses of learning, libraries are places to visit. Sometimes, however, weird events can occur in the stacks . . .
In The Dark Of Night
I was studying for finals in the library stacks late Wednesday night.
Exhausted, I must have fallen asleep, and when I picked up my head
from the table, there was no light.
I looked at my cell phone and found it was after eleven and the library
had closed over an hour before.
Then I heard rustling on the other side of the stacks and hoped
it was a staff member with a key to the door.
I shuffled my tired body in the direction of the noise and was flabbergasted
at what I saw.
There in the dark, with a candle burning, were Edgar Allan Poe
and Stephen King chatting, which left me in awe.
How could that be, for Poe had died over two hundred and seventy years ago?
Still, what they could be discussing intrigued me, so I moved
within ear range cause I needed to know.
The two authors spoke of an Island, in the middle of the ocean,
many miles away.
They talked about an infant, wrapped in a package with a bow,
left on a couple’s doorstep one summer’s day.
King said the couple who’d received the gift had wanted a child
for a long time, but could not conceive in a normal way.
Therefore, the monarchy that governed the island, decided
to give them one, which they needed to raise, as the government did say.
As the years passed, the young boy became a finely tuned machine,
a technological wonder.
His parents made his life comfortable, but, as the directions
with the package indicated, they had to follow strict rules
to raise him, which permitted no blunder.
But the child wanted more and more freedom and began pushing
his own buttons, deviating from his structured role.
The adolescent became his own “person,” but this couldn’t be,
and such deviation would take its toll.
The boy, now a man, had broken away. Not controlled by others,
his terms became clear.
He would no longer be a robot, but would lead his own life without fear.
This troubled the creators, who had given him life,
as this was not what they had planned.
They knew this turn of events would not be to the liking
of the leaders of their beautiful land.
Empowered, the man glared at those who protested his actions,
daring them to challenge him.
Not much for words, mounting the steps of the Capitol Building,
he motioned to the crowd to gather and addressed them with vim.
His appeal was eloquent and moving and the crowd responded
by pledging support for the cause.
They clearly were behind his preaching independence
and the right to be free and showed appreciation through robust applause.
Having accomplished his mission, he descended the steps,
as the appreciative throng shook his hand.
His movements labored, as he made his way through the crowd,
he began to become weaker and this he didn’t understand.
The strong man was fading and melting away, getting smaller
and smaller and much more compact.
As the crowd dispersed, all that was left at the bottom of the steps
was a square metal box, a simple artifact.
Poe looked at King and smiled in way that indicated
they had accomplished their task and it would beguile
those who read their tale.
Then the lights in the library went on, startling me, as a new day began,
and what I didn’t see almost made my heart fail.
Both Poe and King were gone and left no remnants
of their nighttime endeavor around—nothing in sight.
I quivered as I packed up my belongings and muttered,
“Now who’s going to believe what I’d witnessed in the dark of night.”
Copyright © 2021 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.
