This Saturday, September 29th at 11A, I will be reading at my hometown library in Poland, Ohio. It is nerve-racking to me. I don’t care who you are or who you were in your hometown, but in returning to it after an absence, I think most everyone would feel a sense of wanting to show everyone that you did okay, to be in some sense a part of that town’s pride.
I remember when I was a Brownie and many of our meetings would be on Fridays. But in Poland, Fridays meant something else … waiting in a long line for the Friday deli sale at the Italian grocer, Rulli Bros. I hated this, but always had a book (I still take a book to the grocery store actually) waiting and waiting, complaining of the dried eggplants hanging from the ceiling looking way too much like sleeping bats. Complaining also of the almost-overpowering smell of cheese. Yes, after our Brownie meeting, after my mom taught the other Brownies and I a craft and bought us ice cream cones, she and I would head to Rulli’s despite my usual tirade about the “bats,” the smells and the long line we would have to stand in. But one of those Fridays, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini came in and everyone crowded around him. He had become a huge local celebrity, especially since boxing was as big a commodity in Poland and its surrounding areas as Brier Hill pizza. I didn’t know who he was at that moment but I knew he was someone everyone wanted to see that day … and a respect came too … everyone parting the way for “Boom Boom” to get his order of prosciutto or salami.
I hope to do my best on Saturday and have a good turnout, hoping mostly to make my family feel a “boom boom” kind of pride for me. We shall see.
