• Whiskey goes down the drain, like rain down a gutter.
• Rose heard the door slam followed by the sounds of Marty trudging to the study. “Uh, oh. He's had a bad day.
• Lily wrote something hard and scratchy, a she cat with the blues wearing a red slip, something worthy of a woman's worst wrist-cutting moods.
• I dimly remember the past—days marching by, cold and sexless as stones, as I waited for something to happen.
• Harvey C. Hamby was drunk.
• That summer, whatever summer in the fifties it was, I had just learned how to read enough to see that those black plastic signs with reverse etched white lettering over the water fountains at the supermarket said “White Only” and “Colored Only.”
• The old man walks out to the mike in the center of an otherwise bare stage.
• Sombre weather befitted the occasion. 
• Remembering his body makes me think of Egyptian cotton sheets dried in the sun.
• Gusts of wind billowed Tillie's skirt and whipped her long, blond hair around her head.
• The path down from the old house ended at a rusty mailbox with a weathered JENKINS painted on the side.
• "Youze guys suck!"
• The sun conducts an orchestra of light and shadow as it rides an air current.
• Holy Christmas! How am I supposed to read the print on this bottle without a magnifying glass?
• Mary stood before her opened closet fingering the chiffon maroon dress.
• My brother was born silent.
• We grill chicken, corn, sweet potatoes.
• When he asked to see me that morning, I should have said no

• MORE FIRST LINES
  

Cultural Literacy by Nonnie Augustine

I taught special education in public and private U.S. schools for fifteen years and during that time probably gave fifteen hundred tests. A phrase I came across, again and again, was “cultural literacy.” There were, and are, facts, figures, fantasies, questioned on basic skills tests, i.e.; I.Q. tests, PSATs SATs, and even GREs exams for children and young adults. What do we mean by “the cradle of civilization,” Victorian society, and who were James Joyce, Horatio Alger, Daffy Duck, and Marie Curie? Who was Al Capone? These are the sorts of things we wish a college graduate to know, it seems. in addition to quantum physics or fluency in Arabic.

When I was a seventh grader in a parochial elementary school in suburban New Jersey, I took one of these tests, and my reading score was the same as a sophomore in college. I did not skip any grades. I had not been brought up traveling the world, and I certainly was no genius. But I grew up in an atmosphere of conversation about current events, fiction and non-fiction reading, and parental regard and encouragement. Wherever our interests lead us, within reasonable parameters, my mom and dad urged us (three brothers and myself) to journey.

Life magazine’s arrival by mail every week was an important happening in our household, possibly eclipsed by the monthly appearance of National Geographic. Ed Sullivan was “must see T.V.” and I’ll never forget my father’s laughter over Sid Ceasar and his Show of Shows. We had Rod Serling and we had the yearly showing of The Wizard of Oz and Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. There were also nights devoted to reading, homework, and or discussion, and everyone in the family, including my mother and father, were involved in these activities.

I’ve already written in The Linnet about my Nonnie, and her fabulous treasure trove of fairytales, nursery rhymes and songs, but there were also uncles, (Jerry was a soft-shoe dancer), aunts, cousins, my other grandparents, and my brothers, their friends, and of course my friends who shared what they knew in a mysterious carousel of knowledge. There was my ballet teacher. My father painted in oils. My mother took me to plays. Everyone, everyone read. And, yes, everyone talked about what they read.

Have I mentioned school yet? Not very much, have I? Hmmmm. Could it be cultural literacy, even then, had little to do with school and everything to do with family? The first volume of The Great English Poets didn’t sit among the picture books on my second grade classroom bookshelf. It sat in our living room. In a bookcase right next to the television.