he brought back stories about wearing two pairs of trousers two sweaters to warm his bones while harvesting cranberries and cherries in Wisconsin and stripping down to his brown, muscled frame to pick oranges in Florida’s fields that spread way beyond his eyes’ reach. But Old Man Ronald is remembered for people lining up on his front stoop, the village theater, to pay to watch pictures of snow falling, and places he claimed he had been to — the Empire State building, the White House, the Grand Canyon…. The picking season became history, became part of our memory, the Cadillac remained his dream, and the view-master a past sensation. Later, like his neighbors, Old Man Ronald paid a dollar to watch black and white movies on TV in someone else’s house, paid a dollar to live in other people’s dreams. .
Althea Romeo-Mark Island Stories
I.
Force Ripe
We always said Aunty Nelly was force ripe* , fell off the family tree too soon, went her own way, disappeared out of our sight, off the island’s horizon, until her return from Santo Domingo.
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