What about staying sober?

In his moment of grief—a moment that will grow to fill his remaining years—a father asks, “Why didn’t she just stay there?” His daughter, now dead, had walked off down the highway alone instead of staying with her friend. Both girls, 18 years old, were drunk—too drunk to make good choices, too drunk to think straight. Now, one of them is dead, a murder victim.

The New York Times, quoting Andrew Karmen, a Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reports that “half of all murders involve somebody who is drinking.” The article goes on to say that the drug most implicated with violence is alcohol.

go to column

Garlic and gasoline

It must be summer, because I see the gas prices are surging again. I spend a lot of time behind the wheel and so I wonder just how the cost of fuel will affect my business.

I remember pondering this same question many years back when I was a teen growing up in New Jersey. My life was spent driving back and forth to college during the day and to Roy Rodgers restaurant, where I worked, at night.

There were two loves of my life in those days. The first was my boyfriend Eddie and the second was my ‘65 Chevy. The boy was great but that car was more than a car; it was teenage freedom. My grandfather had given it to me as a birthday present. It was freshly painted with a coat of fire-engine-red high-gloss paint. Inside he had the seats re-covered with red plaid seat covers.

go to column