Old Dock Road

About the Book

If you had the good fortune to grow up in a small village of about 3,000 people in 1930 through 1940 - especially a village less than an hour away from a major city like New York, you may well relate to most of these essays. Unfortunately, most small towns have merged with other towns to form small or medium - size cities, in which case you may enjoy reading about a young boy growing up in a town that size - a town where there was little or no crime and the one policeman was a lonely as the Maytag repairman. The town - Closter - was a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) community and you can imagine the problems John Saladino - an Italian Catholic - had when he opened a barber shop in town, or when Sam Moscowitz (he quickly changed his name to Sam Morse) opened a drug store. Were either of them accepted by the locals? I'm not going to tell you everything in this synopsis. Please read on.

About the Author

When Don Bell was in high school, Nora Schrop - his English teacher - clasped his hand to her ample bosom and said; “Don, Don, you will be a writer.” “Forget it, Mrs. Schrop,” he said, “I get an 'F' on all my papers because I can't spell.” “Spelling has nothing to do with good writing, and you are the most creative person in all my classes,” she replied. Had Don listened to her, he would have taken classes in typing instead of Algebra and Trigonometry so that he could type this memoir with more than two fingers. Live and learn.