GOOD NEIGHBORS
***********************************************************************
AT UNION AVENUE PHARMACY, THEY WON'T TAKE YOUR MONEY!!
For the past 15 years, the Union Avenue Pharmacy has turned away your money if you want to buy a pack of cigarettes. Your neighbors at Union Avenue would rather have you put your money back in your pocket than provide a substance to you that is harmful to your health.
When they say that they care about their customers, they prove it by not taking your money.
***************************************************************************************
THE OLD MAN WHO LIVED ACROSS THE TRACKS
He kept his place tidy because he said that folks should. His pride was his garden and the pride of his garden was his tomatoes which he put in bags and baskets and brought to all his friends until one day he didn't come by.
His name was John Magulak but everybody called him Johnny. If you are an old timer, you might have seen him driving a garbage truck for the town many years ago. He retired after 25 years with Bound Brook.
You probably didn't know that in WWII, he was a prisoner of war. He wouldn't talk about it. He said that he couldn't; that if he thought about it, he was right back there and then he'd change the subject and start talking about tomatoes.
The best way to eat one was to wait until the sun was beating down and take your salt shaker out to the garden and pick a really ripe one, shake some salt on it and take a bite right there.
He couldn't eat rice because that was all he got in the camp if he got anything and rice made him remember and he'd change the subject again and tell you to never put the tomatoes in the fridge and to wrap the green ones in newspaper until they turned red.
Johnny died right before Memorial Day and we all said a prayer after the parade. At the council meeting, Mayor Pilato offered a moment of silence.
Johnny – We know you can hear your neighbors who believe that you are someplace tending your tomatoes and that those bad memories are gone. We will tell our children about their good neighbor, Johnny, and about his tomatoes and how as a young soldier he was taken prisoner. We will tell them that Johnny's suffering was for them and for every American.
If we do that, Johnny will not be forgotten.