A past full of people.

Ida Bliss

Ida was an old lady who lived in the apartment below ours at our house in  Roxbury, Mass.  My aunt, our guardian, had hired her to more or less spy on my mother and make sure we kids were behaving ourselves. We disliked this crabby old woman, whom we called Blissy Bones, but were frightened enough of her not to show it. Especially since she had the neighborhood's only television and periodically let us watch The Big Top. Every Tuesday night we visited her married daughter,Blanche Grubbs, near Dudley Street. We loved Blanche, whose son Foster had a great electric train set.

I started something new the other day that might be something you would like to do, or something you think is really stupid. It's called the Book of Names. What I am doing is trying to remember something about everyone I've known. I write down their name and then a brief paragraph about each person, longer if it was somebody very important. I've just started, but already have recalled 60 people from my earliest years.  This is not necessarily something anybody will ever read, or even have any interest in reading, but I find it interesting to summon up memories of almost forgotten persons and preserve some small recollection about who they were. I include an example above of someone not very significant to my personal history.