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Just past noon, Buddy McMahon and I jumped into the parade at 61st Street joining our classmates and teachers from LaSalle Academy marching up Fifth Avenue. This was non-regulation—starting the parade late and dressed as clowns (we paid the piper with a “knuck off the head” from Brother Brendan the next day at school). We broke off at the Met Museum to run east to… Read more »

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I attended kindergarten, grammar school, high school, and college in Manhattan. It was natural. I only left the Yorkville neighborhood for high school—LaSalle Academy in the East Village. In September of 1972, I entered Hunter College with 16,000 other matriculating students. At orientation, I was way back in the line. When they gave me my first… Read more »

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When I was a little boy, my Ryan grandfather and I sat on his long York Avenue stoop and read The New York Daily News together. If he was feeling good, Pop would spring for a dime and I would run up to the newsstand on 86th Street and buy two newspapers, one for each… Read more »

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Last night, walking through Rockefeller Center a memory struck me like a brick. In 1970 the best bang for the buck in New York City was Radio City Music Hall. My sixteenth year was a very good one. After my last class at LaSalle Academy around 2pm, I’d take the # 6 subway at Bleecker… Read more »