By Rosalie Tirella

Rose’s favorite Christmas Tree Shoppe find – still with her! photos: R.T.

I suppose it’s no great shakes to say: Lots of my favorite things in my house – in my life! – thru the years, have come from the Christmas Tree Shoppe in Shrewsbury and that I can’t believe this Massachusetts RETAIL ICON is dead. Table cloths, kitchen curtains, a unique end table…still with me, still my fave home furnishings!

So why the sordid, junky demise for a once amazing store – a shopping adventure, really! – with its final customers these days whining about the stores’ final liquidation sales? Over-priced crap! they say. Mark-ups! they cry! The Christmas Tree Shoppe always offered nice stuff – underpriced! – and marked down! The answer? Behemoth Amazon and well priced Behemoth Wayfare and their easy, inexpensive shipping policies. Plus the global Pandemic/COVID. Plus the proliferation of the dollar stores and the dollar generals – all upping their home goods and decor game. And, of course, behemoth Walmart, with Better Homes and Gardens even designing their own brand of furniture and household goods for Walmart (nice stuff). And don’t forget Target – offering coolness and designer chic for the masses … inexpensive but oh so stylish.

The competition was terrific. Most of all Americans got very lazy – and misanthropic? – opting to have little to do with their fellow humans, choosing to sit on their fat duffers at home – probably on a chair with a Christmas Tree cushion or throw on it – scrolling down their computer screen buying, ordering EVERYTHING on line. You can now be agoraphobic and still have a refrigerator full of groceries, a cabinet full of dog food and cat toys…a table laden with amazing, exotic take-out meals and the basic take-out grub. America has gotten very weird, so unlike the America my late mom, my siblings and school classmates and I knew – and loved. ONE BIG CHAOTIC FRACTIOUS AMERICAN FAMILY going out to church, men’s and women’s clubs, the boys club, the girls club, dance halls, bowling alleys, movie theaters, town and city parks and swimming pools. Bowling, eating, swimming, watching movies TOGETHER, cheek by jowl. Sure it was sweaty and you could sometimes smell your neighbor, but admit it: it was ultimately cozy, intimate … human.

In the old days, shopping at the Christmas Tree Shoppe with your mom and aunt or favorite cousin or your kid sister or next door neighbor at the Wonderful Christmas Tree Shoppe on Route 20 in Shrewsbury was the ultimate in gal pal fun. The store was huge, beautifully appointed, super clean, super well organized, and every square foot boasted pretty, sometimes, gorgeous stuff. You grabbed your gal pal for a do it yourself retail adventure – fun, intimate … special. For me, all I needed was $25, $30 tops! And you always came home with a bargain. In fact the Christmas Tree Shoppes’ motto for years and years – sung by those middle-aged ladies on the radio – “DON’T YOU JUST LOVE A BARGAIN?!”

Yes, we did! At our Christmas Tree Shoppe in Shrewsbury! Better than Spag’s, down the road, because the CTS didn’t feel like a stuffed to the gills warehouse with stuff unorganized and still in shipping boxes. They didn’t believe in bags so you brought a cardboard box for your purchases. Once, while looking for nightgowns, I stumbled upon the rifle section. Guns and granny flannel nighties…classic Spag’s. Too radical for me! I wanted tasteful and soothing … Spag’s, even with Anthony Spags in his 10-gallon cowboy hat and his annual tomato plant giveaways didn’t speak to me. The Christmas Tree Shoppe did.

The CTS gave you attractive bags for your purchases and put your stuff in those bags, their aisles were neat and attractive and … flowed … Their furniture wasn’t Rotman’s quality, but you could still pick up very attractive, solid end tables, side tables, coffee tables, small book cases, lamps, rugs, wicker lawn furniture … And their linens? Thick, beautifully patterned or bright and colorful … 100% cotton and they made a room pop. I loved their table cloths, draperies, kitchen curtains, table runners, napkins, place mats – all pretty, many gorgeous, often on sale for like $4 bucks. Didn’t I just love a bargain!

I used to dream in Christmas Tree Shoppe… look forward to their weekly flyers and circle the dishware or seasonal knick knacks I coveted that I saw in those flyers. I’d call my kid sister, still living in Worcester, or just visit her and declare just like that in the middle of the big three decker Green Island kitchen: MARY, LET’S GO TO THE CHRISTMAS TREE SHOPPE!

We were in our thirties back then – alive, especially me, to the life changing possibilities of … home decor! Now I know that’s all nonsense, often a way to camouflage feelings or fill the holes in your life. My immigrant grandparents had nothing when they lived in the Block on Bigelow Street during the early 1920s, but they were so in love with each other, so grateful to their God for being able to come to America from Poland that furniture was just … furniture. A chair to sit on. A bed to sleep in. A kitchen table to eat your dinner on. Purely functional. My Bapy’s prized possession? A peddle-push Singer Sewing Machine with wrought iron “legs” – the machine on which she and later my aunt, her eldest daughter, made all the little kids’ dresses and coats.

Bapy’s sewing machine belongs to Rose these days.

But me? In my 30s I was always looking for that special something for my 10-room!!!, lovely Vernon Hill or Quinsigamond Village flat – always in one of Worcester’s old three decker with a fussy Woo landlord who’d grown up there or his wife had her childhood memories there … always on the third floor, always with the cheapo rent, always making me feel regal with two big three decker windows in each bedroom (3!!!) and three windows in the living room and the kitchen. I always needed curtains and draperies! Bought exclusively at the Christmas Tree Shoppe in Shrewsbury for a song …

So, years back, in the early 1990s, during the heyday of the Christmas Tree Shoppes and “DON’T YOU JUST LOVE A BARGAIN?” mania, my “kid” sister and I – like half the middle-aged women and their sisters or best gal pals in Worcester County – would make an afternoon of it and drive to the Shrewsbury Christmas Tree Shoppe for two or three hours, an afternoon, of ooohhing and ahhing over pretty, quality Thanksgiving serving platters or adorable Christmas tree ornaments or big hot pink beach umbrellas and towels or funky throw pillows and draperies or clean lined cutlery or wonderfully huge prints of the Eiffel Tower or mugs of cocoa waiting on the table for you and your soul mate, the kitchen window open, the backyard drowning in sunlight…or maybe there were big framed art photos… of a cat sitting on a door mat waiting just for you to come home …or a couple drenched to the bone, kissing in the rain! For the college kids with dorm room walls to decorate there were prints of electric guitars and musical notes and … Paris. Middle class parents loved this store when it came to college time for their kids: you could furnish your son or daughter’s dorm room for about $300 bucks. I could do it for $150.

For the lucky ladies with hubbies with good jobs – living in pretty houses in the suburbs of Westboro or Northboro – oftentimes it meant visiting the CTS with their gal pals to pick up not very expensive but always fun and happy decor for their little lake house or the beach “shack” on the Cape. I could always recognize these woman when I saw them: they were preppy, attractive, fine lines on their slack but still beautiful faces, long hair pulled back in pony tails, tanned, very tanned, and athletic looking even beneath their breezy khaki shorts that stopped at the tops of their knees (they were hunting for tableware, not guys!) and plaid button-down blouses.

For me and my sister, we’d hop into my jalopy, get some coffee for the drive and zip up Route 20. We never talked much, were not very chatty…just me telling my sister: Once where there, don’t get lost. Meet me at greeting cards after an hour. Ok? Let’s stick together this time!

Mary’d nod her head and say sure, but, true to form, as always, she wouldn’t be at greeting cards at the requested time. She’d be at the opposite end of the big store…maybe perusing the coffee mugs, choosing a cute one for our mom, with whom she still lived and adored. Or maybe she’d be examining the bottles of bubble bath in the cosmetics/personal care aisle – she loved taking bubble baths … So, for 15 minutes, I’d walk up and down almost every aisle of the Christmas Tree Shoppe whisper-yelling: MARY! WHERE ARE YOU? MARY!!! It was during pre-cell phone days – and kinda fun. I’d always find my sister, oblivious to my calls, her nose in a Marilyn Monroe picture book for sale or maybe scoping out the beach flip flops. Sometimes she’d be secretive with me because she had just bought me a little porcelain pup or maybe two candle stick holders for my new used kitchen table in my apartment. Always the good sister, the thoughtful sister, helping Ma pay the bills now that she had a good job in Boston. Running the household with Ma because Daddy was out having fun. My favorite sister! In my favorite store! Both unassuming yet … treasures!

Mary went to church with my mother every Sunday. She went grocery shopping every Saturday morning – taking a cab to and from the supermarket because they were still unable to buy a car and Mary didn’t have her driver’s license. Mary supported my mother. She loved Green Island and would visit the owners of the mom and pop stores on Millbury Street just to say hi and maybe buy some apples or a curtain rod or an order of fish and chips. She was a counter girl at Commercial Fruit for years – loving the family who owned the Millbury Street biz. Getting such a kick out of the big-bummed owner, Macho, mimicking his accent when she came home after work, laughing at his antics at the fruit store – Macho always freaking out over the little things – but in a comical way.

Everyone loved Mary. I was more show woman – Mary was the real deal. The best of Green Island. Once our downstairs neighbor, I could hear her thru our bathroom floor, said to her husband: “MARY IS GOLD.” She didn’t much care for me, thought I was selfish … definitely not gold.

But that was years ago… Christmas Tree Shoppe days…when, after our shopping spree – me with my new kitchen curtains and table cloth, Mary with her little gift for my mother and James Dean picture book – driving home, feeling content and slightly proud of our bargains … I’d open up the box of plain bagel chips I had bought and offer some to my sister and we’d start munching away…. snacking all the way home, to my mother and sister’s house, the same apartment in the same old three decker in Lafayette Street. We were still poor, we had not bought a lot of things at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. But we were happy, listening to the music on the radio as I drove down route 20, my sister looking out her window, looking for and smiling at the Rainbow Motel – the motel where each of the “rooms” were teeny cottages, every tiny dwelling painted its own special color: pink, blue, mint green, yellow. Mary just loved those cottages!

Christmas Tree Shoppe memories!

Rose, left, and her Christmas Tree Shoppe-loving kid sister! – Amherst, 1986.

By Rosalie Tirella

Lilac, left, with Jett at the dog park. photos: R.T.

Lilac. My second dog. Old Jett’s rouser, playmate, herder, explainer, guardian, cheerleader and Best Friend. Lilac. Always looking out for her beloved Jett. Always lying only a few yards away from the sleeping oldster, aware, even in slumber, her soft brown eyes closed to the world but open to Jett and his whereabouts, his feelings… I tell myself Lilac will be the first to sense Jett has died. It will break her heart more than it will break mine!

Lilac. Just a mutt. The mutt I didn’t want, the dog I had no room for in my life but made room for in my life when I saw her circumstances – dumped by her owners outside the kennel, then kennel-bound, then the kennel’s owner using Lilac as a punching bag for the other dogs … running Lilac with the big dogs … sweet Lilac being mowed down by the pit mix to give him even more confidence – and fight. There she was, good-natured Lilac, in the outdoor kennel run, gangly, really just a big pup (8 months old) … taking it all. Running wildly in the hot sun and loping in that outdoor run with this bully breed dog slamming into her soft flank every few feet … Lilac stressed, exhausted, submissive … yet full of love. Always that goofy, open-mouthed doggy grin of hers. My Lilac. The other dog was rough and mounted her, a dominant move to show who was boss. I was afraid he’d hurt Lilac, break a bone even! She was still a pup, her bones not yet fully developed. I knew she was suffering and would continue to suffer here. The owner didn’t even feed her dog kibble for breakfast like the other dogs. Lilac got a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal in milk! She wasn’t deemed worthy of cheapo dog chow!

So, angry at the kennel owner, righteous in my anger, my heart exploding for Lilac, I said: “I’LL TAKE HER! NOW! I’LL BUY HER! NOW!” Then I paid $250 in cash for my shepherd/collie/hound mix, vaccine records a no-show. And I felt great. My new, sweet dog – huggable, loveable, smart, intuitive. I would eventually find out brave, too.

A young Lilac being cozy in Rose’s old Ward Street apartment.

Over the next year, Lilac grew a few more inches, gained a few more pounds but basically stayed the same. She never got super big … or beautiful (like Jett) … or tough or anything very special to most folks. But to me, Lilac was – is – lovely. Lovely like a meadow covered in purple clover. Or the hand-sewn quilt my cousin made when she was just 16. Or like the two big lilac bushes – almost trees – in our front yard on Lafayette Street – Lilac’s namesake. The lilac bushes in old Green Island, the ones my late mom loved and made a part of my childhood: the ritual I felt more deeply than anything I had experienced at St. Mary’s church – Holy Communion, First Confession, the singing of hymns, the prayers, the incense. Nothing compared to my mother’s lilacs, fragrant, deep purple in color, as tall as the first floor apartment window of our three decker.

A little Rose, a pal, and Rose’s mom, CECELIA, at Crompton Park.

Every spring Ma would take out her roll of Reynolds Wrap and head downstairs with me to “her” lilac bushes. Then she’d take out her big pair of scissors from the right hand side pocket of her duster and grab a few limbs and branches of one of the lilac trees and pull them forcefully to her breasts. The fragrant branches, the clusters of small simple flowers pushed up against my mother’s neck and chin, my mother cutting those long branches off the bush – two or three full ones – sometimes twisting them off – and wrapping them tightly in the shiny aluminum foil. I was to give this bouquet to my third grade teacher at Lamartine Street School. She was young and pretty like the lilacs my mother had just gathered for her.

That’s why I named my new dog Lilac. For my late mom, for Lafayette Street, for Green Island – my first loves. Always complicated.

Lilac and Cece.

When we were leaving the kennel – me, Jett and Lilac – the kennel owner handed me my new dog’s crate, just before we headed to my car. It was a tiny black cage, two sizes too small for Lilac, made for toy breeds. I imagined the gangly Lilac jammed into that thing at night, maybe even during the day. As if to obliterate the image, I said: “LET’S GO, JETT AND LILAC! LET’S GO HOME!” Then we drove home. Lilac proved to be eminently teachable – my first super smart dog – always good natured, a natural born swimmer, and a terrific little watch dog – never aggressive but always aware. Sometimes the collie part of her kicks in and she tries to herd me and Jett to go in the direction she wants, the apartment door to head to the dog park. She’ll even nip at Jett’s hocks if she’s feeling especially impatient. … And, of course, she became Jett’s best bud.

I remember when I first got Lilac and visited Chef Joey to show him my new dog, and he said: “Jett looks happier.”

I thought: How can you tell? Jett seems the same.

But Chef Joey was right. And after almost a decade of sleeping bum to bum, eating breakfast and supper together every day…after the thousands of joint walks, romps at the dog parks all over Southern New England I see Chef Joey’s point every day … Lately, I see how “lost” Jett is when Lilac decides to take a detour thru the little woods before running into the dog park. She leaves her ol’ pal Jett behind in the dog park, behind the big wire fence. Jett will not play. Refuses – cannot – have any fun. He’ll stand there on that big sweep of lawn, staring in the direction he last saw his Lilac. Jett is upset. Jett will be anxious and be a statue fixated on the spot he last saw Lilac. He will stand there for as long as it takes. Waiting for her return. To him.

Old friends …

And when Lilac comes galloping through those weeds and into the dog park, Jett runs up to her for a gentle hello, then after the smelling he goes about his usual routine, walking the perimeter of the park with Lilac, looking to pounce on a still lethargic mouse or mole or snake half dozing by the fence. And killing it. Both my dogs go to the dog park to hunt woodland creatures, not to play fetch or frisbee with me or even to hang out with the other dogs. Last year at a dog park Jett caught a snake and ran up to me jauntily while shaking the snake wildly in his clenched jaw. So proud! AURGH!!!!! I screamed at the wiggling snake and bolted up from my blanket and ran away.

I swear Lilac was amused.

A young Lilac!

An 8-year-old Lilac, today, by Rose’s side.

By Rosalie Tirella

Yeah, yeah, yeah! photo: R.T.

When I was a girl growing up in Green Island I learned what it meant to be the object of a boy’s affection. Worshipped from afar – and up close. Talked to with a kind of tentativeness, even deference. I never initiated anything, but the boy strangely glommed onto me, following me around after class, saying HELLO, ROSALIE! every morning in the school yard before we kids were allowed to enter the school building. He admired me … admired me, Rosalie. It felt weird, being hoisted on a pedestal. Sure, it was a poor girl’s Green Island pedestal, but to be shyly adored … for my … smarts. Interesting. Not for my looks. Not for my Catholic girl morals. Not for my sense of humor. Not for my quiet ways. But for being brainy. For being “THE SMARTEST GIRL IN CLASS,” as my not-so-secret admirer would tell his friends with pride. “Rosalie is the smartest girl in Lamartine!” he’d say, as if dedicating a monument to a dead me in the middle of Kelley Square!

I was just a kid – 10, a fifth grader at Lamartine Street School – so I wore my medal of honor pretty lightly. I was used to getting all A’s and having my mom be so proud of me whenever I was first in my classes. My father, who was hardly around when I was in grammar school, even acknowledged the fact, calling me “smart” whenever he visited. But Daddy always praised me in a smart aleck-y way, with a smirk plastered on his handsome face. My father knew we were poor and I think he believed that I wouldn’t – couldn’t! – get far in life, even if I was smart. He was very smart – but felt like a “loser”… He was very cynical and took his frustrations out on my mother. Daddy called me “smart” the way some people call other people “stupid.”

I’ll call my admirer “John.” John was big, round-shouldered and lumbered down the our school’s hallways, even though he was a very gentle soul and always spoke in a soft monotone. John was kept back twice at Lamartine, so he was about a foot taller than most of the boys in our class. But unlike the other three or four other boys who were also kept back at Lamartine and were now in fifth grade, again, John wasn’t a wise guy, he wasn’t a bully, and he never stopped trying to learn … to read … to add numbers. I remember he really wanted to read! He wanted to understand what an author was trying to tell him, the reader. What was the secret code, the message in the bottle that drifted out to sea? He never got the words right. He wanted to … he loved books! Made a gallant effort to read from our Lamartine text books – history, literature…books from the library. Whenever we as a class got to read a story aloud together, each student taking a paragraph or two, John was the one who held us up for a torturous five minutes, trying to sound the word out, often guessing its meaning as best he could based on the story. The teachers called it “context.”

John always wore clean, button-down shirts, often plaid, tucked into khaki pants, belted. His white tee shirt always peeked out around the first two button holes of his shirt and his shoes were always black tie ups, the kind my Uncle Mark wore. An older man’s shoes. John wore his blondish hair in a crew cut, always, and had a way of rolling his eyes and looking up at the ceiling whenever we had a class photo taken. He lived with his big brother above the old Steeple Bumpsted’s barroom on Millbury Street, the barroom named after the comic strip – you know, the weird little guy who always wore a plaid cap and sat at the bar sipping beer from a huge beer stein. When I was a kid Steeples was the place to go for a beer or two or three for many a Green Islanders. Millbury Street, not gentrified then, was lined with bars – 20, maybe 30! Plus a few flop-houses and of course the PNI. A disgruntled or forsaken person could start drinking at one end of Millbury Street, up by Crompton Park, and drink himself into a drunken stupor by the end of Millbury, right at the flophouse at Kelley Square. Where he could pass out and spend the night …The flop-house/bar is now owned by notorious gentrifier Bob Largesse, who hosts poetry readings!!! Of course the rooms at this flophouse are unaffordable to the local drunks. Steeple Bumpsted’s owner even sold Steeple Bumpsted tee-shirts! With the image of the comic strip guy sipping his beer at the bar, his back to you, his arse glued to his barstool. The tee shirts came in all colors. When I was 19 I went out with a guy kind of from the neighborhood who wore his Steeples tee shirt with great pride, telling me his father, as a rite of passage, took him out to Steeples for his first beer ever at a bar. It was his birthday. He was of age now, so his dad put his arm around his shoulder, and together they walked down Vernon Hill to seedy Millbury Street to drink together, father and son, at Steeples. His dad didn’t take their car; instead they walked down to Steeples and boozily threaded their way back up Seymour Street to their three decker when the night was through.

But I digress! Back to John! … My family was poor, but the kids who lived on Millbury Street, in apartments above Steeples and the barrooms and all the Millbury Street mom and pop stores, seemed even poorer than we were! My family had a huge tenement with lots of windows because we rented on Lafayette Street, a three decker there. But the Millbury Street kids didn’t live in three deckers. They had no backyards – the expressway (I 290) was their backyard. Their windows were few and far between and their apartments were small. It was noisier, too, what with all the traffic and fights outside the barrooms.

Like I said, John lived above Steeple Bumpsted’s with his big brother. I don’t remember ever seeing his parents. I think his brother raised him all by himself. John was a smaller version of his almost adult brother who dressed exactly like John. Or vice versa.

Sometimes John would start a conversation with me … but it went no where. Then, one day, in the school yard, during recess, he walked up to me, very respectfully, and said: Rosalie, did you find the bird in the bird cage I left in your backyard for you last week?

I said, my interest suddenly piqued: No, John! I didn’t see any bird in a bird cage in our backyard!

I wish you had, Rosalie, John said. It was so pretty…blue with black eyes …

Me, a good kid … a very gullible, good kid … heartbroken! I said: I wish you told me the bird was waiting for me, John!

John said: Don’t worry, Rosalie. I’ll leave another one for you this Sunday. It’ll be even prettier!

I was thrilled! I already had two little turtles, Tommy and Speedy; two newts whom I never christened, a white hamster I called Joy and a yellow canary my mom named Butterball. But there was room for more pets in my bedroom! I loved all animals and so wanted John’s exotic birds for my menagerie – something wild and free, not from the Woolworths’ pet department on Front Street!

So Sunday morning, before Sunday morning mass at St. Mary’s with my family, I ran into our backyard and looked all around for my green bird in its pretty cage. I looked by the stockade fence with the dandelions all around, I looked by the wire fence where the Big Yard began, I even looked by the garbage cans in the shed, with the white maggots crawling outside the beat up garbage can lids … but NO BIRD! AGAIN!

That Monday in school I told John that I never did find the green bird he left for me, and he told me the bird’s story. How he, John, caught it on his porch on Millbury Street, how it had flown from someone else’s kitchen window across the way because the little girl there had left the birdcage door open. How the bird was so fragile and tame, how it would sit on your finger and let you gently stroke its head.

I cried! John! I said, let’s try again.

So John said: Next Saturday at 2. That’s when he would have another bird in a gilded, beautiful little cage waiting just for me, even prettier than the green bird I didn’t find.

And so I ran home and in a girly ecstacy took out my Beatles record and played it on my portable red record player and fell asleep dreaming of Paul McCartney’s dimples. I was in fifth grade, almost a sixth grader now, and many of us older kids loved the Beatles. Abby Road was brought to class for show and tell by one classmate. Another classmate played the acoustic guitar and played Yesterday so beautifully , a mini-concert before class began.

So Saturday came. And went, without my bird. I looked around our dirt yard and began to feel hopeless. Not duped by John. Never angry with John – he was a good kid. I was just disappointed in my life. Our backyard used to have grass and a birdbath and even a sandbox, but the landlord did all that for a tenant he was sleeping with (my mom told me years later). When she moved out, our backyard looked like crap again. The sky above was always pretty, except during thunderstorms, but the earth was always disappointing. I sat on the wooden stairs that led to our backyard and thought: It’ll never get better. All the good things I wish for: the pretty birds in their beautiful cages. The presents from friends. The old bird bath. The old sandbox. The green grass … I trudged up the two flights of stairs to our apartment feeling low. Not at all special.

Then one day, right around that time, right when I was falling in love with the Beatles and wishing for my very own Beatle … I found myself wanting something wonderful, something from … the Beatles. To me, Rosalie. An autograph in my autograph book from White’s Five and Ten. A turquoise pin. A telephone call from Paul, the cutest Beatle, from his house in Liverpool … I felt about the Beatles the way I felt about the beautiful birds John had left me outside my house … the birds that had flown away, the beautiful tokens of his admiration, caged but “all your life, you were waiting for this moment to be free.” I could read. I was free. John could not. He was in a cage, so he told me stories of birds to be free. And then one day I was skulking around our Lafayette Street backyard, looked down and there it was in the dirt: a Beatles baseball card! Autographed by Paul McCartney, my favorite Beatle!!! I gasped! I reached down to pick up my treasure! I wanted to scream to the heavens but I didn’t want anyone to come over and say: This is my Beatles card! Give it back, thief! As if in my own little miracle, I looked at my card up close, then closed my eyes and smiled.

One of their old trading cards that came with a flat pink stick of gum, like the baseball cards with photos of Carl Yastrzemski or other ball players on them … But Beatles trading cards that my much older cousin bought in the early ’60s, no longer made in the 1970s. You just didn’t see them around anymore. Except in my backyard in Green Island! Just floating around for the taking! And so, for years, I’ve toted my Beatles baseball card along with me, pulling it out of my wallet whenever I want to smile, feel good, to think of John at Lamartine Street School and our poverty transcended with elegant little birds in their beaded cages … and stories…and dreams that often times don’t come true, but sometimes do.