Tag: john richard smith

Pictures of a Fireman Grandma said his eyes rose like moons above the rim of his glasses when he leaned over the table at the pool hall the first time they met, called every shot. I remember him descending from a cloud on a ladder of flames with a woman in his arms, clipped from the front page of the Newark Evening News and framed on their living room mantle. Or as he was in the photograph I found in an attic album of him tending register behind the bar of a speak-easy, his eyes dark, cheeks flushed, grinning back at the camera as if he owned the place. I see him seaside, sometimes, up to his knees in weekend surf, his white, button-down shirt flapped open like the wings of a Great Egret, fishing pole bowed, tip sparkling like a cufflink on a cloud as he tugs at the [...]