Stories and Places I Remember: Humorous and poignant, Stories and Places I Rememberwill take you around the world from the streets of Brooklyn to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

Stories and Places I Remember: Short Stories

Buy at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Google Play

Read first chapter

BLURB: Stories and Places I Remember

Humorous and poignant, Stories and Places I Rememberwill take you around the world from the streets of Brooklyn to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Meet Anthony in 1950s and 1960s Brooklyn, then journey with a host of other delightful, contemporary characters portrayed in twenty-six tales set in New York, Texas, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, the Middle East, and Italy that will tickle your wanderlust.

EXCERPT: Stories and Places I Remember

Stickball on a Brooklyn street was a game of skill. Don’t look at me like that. Unscrew your mother’s broomstick, wrap the grip with electrical tape, and let’s see you hit a wildly spinning Spaldeen two sewers. Our playground was a canyon of parked two-toned cars, brown-brick apartment buildings, and asphalt-shingled row houses. Neighbors heard us on the street and dreaded the crash of a broken window. The old lady who poured a kettle of water on our chalk-marked skelzie box hovered behind a screened window like a gray ghost. The guy with the shiny maroon Buick who didn’t say hello to my father asked me not to hit his vehicle. My parents worried that I’d shoot out from between parked cars chasing a ball and be hit by one of the speeders down our block. They taught me to look both ways before crossing, even on our one-way street.

We played “automatics;” a ground ball not caught was a single, a hit beyond one sewer was a double, and two was a home run. A ball caught on the fly was out even if it first bounced on a car.

My turn to bat and I took practice swings with the broomstick over the sewer home plate. Lenny Spazzolato pitched. Gene Kaplan stood in the outfield and his younger brother Carl was backstop. I nicknamed Lenny Cousin Weak Eyes. His peepers bulged like a toad, but if I called him Frog Face, I would’ve had a fight on my hands. He didn’t like the Cousin Weak Eyes moniker, but it didn’t rise to an insult that demanded a punch in the mouth. Gene was Jewish, chunky, a curly redhead and lived in the apartment house. His mother told my mother that her Gene was like “white bread.” I didn’t get it, but Gene was my best friend, probably because he emulated everything I did. Carl was dark, skinny, and a pain in the butt. I tolerated him as the toll for Gene’s company.

Lenny pitched a knuckle ball, looking like a half moon in the air before it bounced, destined to squib and be impossible to hit, so I was happy to see the pink De Soto round the corner. I yelled, “Car,” and play was suspended.

We squeezed aside as the De Soto rumbled toward us. The tires screeched and I jumped. A man with a three-day beard rolled the window down and stuck his head out like a turtle. “You want a dog?”

The black snout of a camel-faced animal with brown bushy eyebrows popped out next to the man’s head.

My parents had cautioned me to be wary of strangers beckoning me from stopped cars. I took a half step away. “Why?”

“I’m taking him to the pound. They’ll put him down.”

“Is he sick?”

“In the head.”

“What’s his name?”

“Faccia Brutta. You want him or not?”

I’d pressed my parents for a dog. My father had given my mother a wink and countered that a baby sister would be better. Christmas was six months away. The dog panted, red tongue lolling. He smiled at me, and I made an executive decision.

“Yeah.”

The man tipped the bench seat forward, and the dog jumped from the back to freedom. He slammed the door and took off. The gangly dog jumped up on me, pushing his paws against my chest, and I was pinned against a hood. His breath was hot, and his yellow-brown eyes seemed to say, “Guess which one of us is in charge?”

KEYWORDS

Brooklyn, New York, Texas, Growing Up

Website URL: http://joe-giordano.com/

Blog URL:I use Mailchimp to blog.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Joe.Giordano.author.921/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Twitter handle: @Joe_jagintx

LINKS

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FRP6L3Y

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stories-and-places-i-remember-joe-giordano/1137467004?ean=2940162872108

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/stories-and-places-i-remember/id1527358706?mt=11&app=itunes

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/stories-and-places-i-remember

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Joe_Giordano_Stories_and_Places_I_Remember?id=W8b2DwAAQBAJ

NEW RELEASE