Image Credit: Gina Greenlee, paint, ink, collage For more of my take on growing up on New York City’s Lower East Side: Black and Blintzes: Growing Up Not Quite Jewish on the Lower East Side Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York Hush Life, a novel No Tears for Frankie: A Memoir on the Life of an Essay     ◊ ◊ ◊ Take a YouTube tour of my hometown. The background song is the 1977 hit Native New Yorker , performed by Odyssey . The lyrics, shared in this

I was in the fifth grade when Frankie died. It was 1971. My whole class planned to attend the funeral, since we knew him. My father...