from Gene’s Notebook

…love of pre-dawn, started when my father would tickle my heels to awaken me before we’d leave for chicken buying in steamy Miami, a Miami that was surrounded by mon and pop chicken farms …I know, it’s impossible to imagine swamps, fruit trees and chickens in its 2008 freeway culture of three million people ….

We’d eat dry cereal in the dimly lit kitchen, drive off to get the truck and its chicken crates and then stop for hot chocolate and coconut-covered donuts at the Royal Castle, a store that had no front, wide-open, 24 hours, closed only when hurricanes neared …. Deep in the house, mother and brother slept - never lovers of the pre-dawn ….

Now, I still get up at pre-dawn, and it’s my time, silent streets, no traffic …. I pedal off, using my front light - it blinks - and soon see …the neighbor lady who daily walks 10 or so circular miles in the pre dawn; a working woman who cleans two two historic buildings, her keys jingling; and a face-hit teen streetwalker who offers anything for as little as a dollar or as much as eight ….

…time to head back - work routine calls - and the walk-in-circles woman is still at it; the cleaning woman has let herself into one of downtown’s ghost-filled buildings; and the teen, stunned, is staggering into a suburban neighborhood ….

Over my shoulders, white and creamy dawn is breaking …and a thousand miles away my father, no more chickens in his life, is readying his current work, leading prayers, folk to prayer, not chickens to crates …..

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
September 6, 2008