Starving for news

And New Yorkers themselves — I’ve been missing them, too. Resilient, sturdy, funny, diverse, hard-working — brusque, maybe, but hey! They have to be. They’re New Yorkers, right? They’ll give you the shirt off their back if they think you need it, and they know you know that.

Then there are the Italian delicatessens. Mama mia! How have I managed without those? Chad took me to a little sandwich shop called Sainato’s, on Quail Street. “Mom,” he cautioned me, “you have to know what you want before you get up to the counter, or ...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what he meant. They would roll right over me. I’d have to go to the back of the line, like a child who hasn’t done her homework. But I knew exactly what I wanted, as if no time had passed since I was a kid with that rare thing: pocket money. I wanted a turkey sandwich on an Italian roll, with lettuce, tomato, onions, pepperoncini, and roasted red peppers.

Chad decided to try something called garbage bread. “Why?” I said. “What’s in it?”

“I’m not sure,” Chad said. “He lost me after the salami, the sausage, and the mortadella. But I’m sure it’s good.”

We took our sandwiches to a beautiful nearby park and sat eating them with our eyes rolling back in our heads, they were so perfect.

Parks — there were parks everywhere, large ones, with big old trees, playgrounds, lakes, bridges. I went to three parks in three days, and we were just getting started.

And perhaps best, most delicious, most amazing of all, there were newspapers! I could get the New York Times anywhere. Everywhere. It was all I could do to keep from buying it over and over, just for the thrill. But there was also the Albany Times-Union, the ubiquitous USA Today, and even (because it’s a capital city) the Legislative Gazette. There were newsstands outside every mom-and-pop corner store, offering all of these. I probably startled some Albanians (could that be right?) with my excitement. They’ve never lived someplace where major daily newspapers were impossible to get.

I am starving for news here in northeast Georgia, I discovered. I had no clear idea what was going on in the world, because I can’t get that from a TV. I can get some broad ideas, some sound bites, a few scandals — but how will I know whether we should stay in Afghanistan, or why energy doesn’t represent our only looming shortage? True, I can go online, and we’re lucky to have that option, but not everyone does have it. Ah, well — at least we have this paper!

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers for the Commerce Library Board and the Jackson County Literacy Program.