Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

In answer to this depressing question, "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot," my answer should be quite obvious. This is number eight in my series about the old gang and me hangin' out on the various street corners, alleys, hallways and barrooms and watering holes of our hometown in good old Lawrence, Mass. I have two more volumes to construct and that should, without doubt, give me the world's record for the most short stories ever written about a city in New England that no one ever heard of and that many of the folks who have lived there are still trying to forget. It was twice voted the stolen car capital of America. Today it can boast of a 40% jobless rate, a 50% high school drop out rate and more cirrhosis of the liver victims than Moscow and Leningrad put together. Most Lawrence liver victims attribute the overabundant diseased liver subscribers to the contaminated water supply, left to the residents as a legacy of the textile mills who took their pound of "liver" and absconded to bluer waterways and greener, less well informed victims around the world. Alchoholism had nothing to do with it. Instead of calling it Lawrence, it is now referred to as Lawtown by critics. There's no gun shortage in Lawtown as I understand it. Everyone over the age of ten has one. There is though a death by gun problem. Lots and lots of killings. The last mayor, I heard, is hiding out in a mountain village somewhere in the Dominican Republic with two Lawrence fire trucks, four ambulances and a suitcase full of one hundred dollar bills under his bed. But love it or leave it, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, till death do us part, su casa es mi casa, it will always be "My Hometown." Oy Vey! Dios Mios! Gesundheit! And last but not least, Jeezus, Mary and Joseph... please pray for us sinners, amen.