If I had a magic wand, I would step back in time – not all that many years ago – to the time when the Passaic Herald News newspaper was bought out and the new owners decided to throw away the original copies of the paper that had been stored.

Thankfully, at least some of the newspaper has been microfilmed, but the downside is that it is only available, as far as I know at the Clifton and Passaic Public Libraries and neither library will inter-library loan it.

Yes, I could hire someone to go read the film for me, but my family lived in Passaic for about 70 years and all kinds of items were published. I even remember when I was about ten years old and my cat, Missy, got stuck in the tree in front of our house. My friend Howard, who lived across the street, called the fire department to come rescue her and then called the Herald News to make sure the story got in the paper. Sadly, I no longer have that clipping nor do I have a picture of Missy, who was a petite black and white cat. I think I got her from a friend whose cat had kittens, but my grandmother mostly took care of her.

I do have several newspaper clippings saved, but not many compared to how many people we knew who would have been mentioned in the paper at one time or another.

No, Not Me!

When I was in 8th grade, my English teacher, Mr Barbarito, handed out letters from Japanese pen pals looking for English students who would correspond with them.

This was 1966 – only 21 years after the close of World War II – and the Rotary Club was promoting correspondence between Japanese and American students.

All of the students dutifully wrote letters back to whichever student we were randomly assigned. Some of my classmates never got any answer back – or at least they weren’t admitting to it – but Lesley, Janet and I had written and gotten letters back. I had forgotten, but I had received more responses from my pen pal Kimiko – six letters – than anyone else in the class. Kimiko lived in Chiba, Japan, but I don’t remember much else about her. I do remember her last name, which I am omitting here in case she is living and not wanting her name to be on the internet.

Here is the lengthy article that went with the picture above, of Lesley and the Wayne Rotary Club president.

Wayne Rotary Club Talk

Lesley, Janet and I each had to write a talk to present at the Rotary Club meeting. That meant public speaking, so we negotiated a trade with Mr. Barbarito. Since we had to not only write out a speech to present about our pen pal experience, we had to get u and present it to a room full of adults we didn’t even know, in return we would not have to do the next class assigned oral book report. Mr. Barbarito agreed that was a fair trade since he was looking for public speaking experience with the oral book report.

I don’t remember much at all about the Rotary Club meeting. I assume all went well. However, Mr. Barbarito conveniently forgot about excusing us from the next oral book report – until I reminded him. I was a good student, but I wasn’t looking for any extra work and a deal was a deal. Mr. Barbarito agreed.