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Often I hear grown adults complaining about their childhood and blaming their character flaws on their parents. Well, I’ve got a story that beats all. Long ago, a farmer from Pennsylvania planned to bring some barnyard animals to the Staten Island Mall and open a petting zoo in the parking lot.  When my mother read about this, she was so excited that she slapped the newspaper. “To this we go!” She believed that every child should milk a cow.  Who knows why, but in her mind, m

For the last six months, I had been subletting my apartment and toiling on a work-farm in Ohio. It was something my social worker arranged. The hours were long, but I stayed sober, and on the first of April, I returned to the city with some bucks in my pocket. I came back on a Greyhound; it was one o’clock in the morning, and as I stepped off the bus, my old friend, Yakov, was there to greet me. “Good you are back, Royal. Neighborhood no same without you.” “Thanks, Yakov, and