I have started writing some short stories about growing up in Jersey City in the 1940's and 1950's. Because they rely on memories of my early childhood and adolescence, I cannot vouch for the veracity of the stories. Perhaps it would be best to describe them as 'fictional memoirs,' part fact and part imagination. 

  For example, It it easy for me to remember the playground at Washington Park. The park is real. It is still there, although it is much changed from when I first went there as a toddler with my mother.

  The park looms large in my memory. In some ways it reflects my growth from childhood to adolescence and finally to manhood. 

  As a child, it was a place of safety, security and happiness. As an adolescent, it became an escape from the constraints of home, a haven to be enjoyed with friends, and a place of initiation into an exciting new world. However, when I write about the park, I find myself mixing it up with memories (real and imagined) of things that happened at different times and different places. So, as I said, perhaps it is best to think of these stories as neither fact nor fiction, but as some combination of each.

  I have started work on several short stories. The first is called, "Welcome Home," and it describes my earliest memories of my parents, specifically, my father's return from WW2 in 1945. The second story, entitled, "Into the Woods," chronicles my memories of Kindergarten in St. Paul of The Cross Elementary School. The third, The King of the Gypsies, jumps several years forward until 1954, when I was 14 years old, and recounts a true (well, mostly true) event that took place shortly after dad had been elected Councilman for Ward D in Jersey City.

  All of these stories are fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.