In answer to this depressing question, "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot," my answer should be quite obvious. This is number eight in my series about the old gang and me hangin' out on the various street corners, alleys, hallways and barrooms and watering holes of our hometown in good old Lawrence, Mass. I have two more volumes to construct and that should, without doubt, give me the world's record for the most short stories ever written about a city in New England that no one ever heard of and that many of the folks who have lived there are still trying to forget. It was twice voted the stolen car capital of America. Today it can boast of a 40% jobless rate, a 50% high school drop out rate and more cirrhosis of the liver victims than Moscow and Leningrad put together. Most Lawrence liver victims attribute the overabundant diseased liver subscribers to the contaminated water supply, left to the residents as a legacy of the textile mills who took their pound of "liver" and absconded to bluer waterways and greener, less well informed victims around the world. Alchoholism had nothing to do with it. Instead of calling it Lawrence, it is now referred to as Lawtown by critics. There's no gun shortage in Lawtown as I understand it. Everyone over the age of ten has one. There is though a death by gun problem. Lots and lots of killings. The last mayor, I heard, is hiding out in a mountain village somewhere in the Dominican Republic with two Lawrence fire trucks, four ambulances and a suitcase full of one hundred dollar bills under his bed. But love it or leave it, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, till death do us part, su casa es mi casa, it will always be "My Hometown." Oy Vey! Dios Mios! Gesundheit! And last but not least, Jeezus, Mary and Joseph... please pray for us sinners, amen.
About the Author: Richard Edward Noble was raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He attended St. Rita's grammar school in Lawrence, Central Catholic high school also in Lawrence, Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill and Merrimack College in North Andover. His mother and father and grandparents - on both sides of the family - were Lawrence textile workers. Richard lived in Lawrence until the age of twenty-seven and then migrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he met his wife Carol. Richard and Carol have been a team for over forty years. Richard has been a truck driver, a butcher, a beef boner, a beef breakdown man, a dishwasher, an oysterman, a fruit picker, a restaurant manager, a chef, a small butcher shop owner, a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, a fry cook, a broiler man, an expediter, a restaurant line boss, a hole digger, a swill collector for a pig farm, a raw bar man, a sous-chef, a tomato sorter, a sander in a spray paint factory and the owner/operator of an ice cream parlor and sandwich shop in Carrabelle, Florida. These experiences and many more were published in Hobo-ing America - A workingman's tour of the U.S.A. and other works by this author. Richard is now retired and working as a writer. He writes fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. He published a column in a local newspaper. In 2007 he received a first place award for humor from the Florida Press Association for this column. Richard has a variety of interests - philosophy, history, politics, the American and world labor movements, economics, poetry, music, biography, autobiography and the unique history of Lawrence, Massachusetts.