Big round navel oranges under glass for a quarter, and shiny nickel plated machinery to make it come out, and the mystery of the men behind the little windows who woudl fill them up from behind, whose lives you could never know!

There were other strange gustatory adventures in the Village then, too -- Italian restaurants with redchecked table cloths and wax-coated Chianti bottles which really were Italian, the tablecloths hand-sewn by the mama who took the orders or stirred the pasta; and then, a legend in its own time, was the Chock Full O'Nuts cofeeshops with their unusual doughnuts, and little mom and pop lunchrooms where 85 cents would get you a Spanish omelette that could keep you walking for a week.

There were as many strange souls as there were strange foods, too. Strange disoriented musicians, blithe wrecks who would spout poetry or chalk art on the fly along some sidewalk, and the downtrodden survivors of the FOrties -- desperate shards of life wasted by tumults and contortions we could never really know. We were the rising youth, after all, and anything prior to 1944 or so was incomprehensible and suspect, while the future was irresistible -- a happy edge to be balanced on, as long as we could maintain the necessary innocence.

I went from there to North Beach, but that's another thread altogether!

A