My mom always encouraged me to read.  In fact, some of my earliest memories occur in the children’s section of our local library in New York.  I even had my own library card.  When I was seven years old, my mother and I moved from New York to Miami Beach.  (I’m conveniently forgetting my two older sisters, but they’re not part of this story.)  Miami Beach is a series of islands, all connected by bridges, located between the city of Miami proper and the Atlantic Ocean.  We lived on Normandy Isle.

Across the street from the grocery store where my mother used to shop was a little magazine store named Eddie’s News.  It contained newspapers, magazines, cigars, racing forms (for both horse and dog tracks) and COMIC BOOKS.  The owner, of course, was Eddie.  To my youngster’s eyes, he was an old man, but he was probably around 50 when I first met him in 1954.  He called me "pardner."  I suspect he used the same honorific for all the neighborhood kids.

My mother offered me a deal (I could have an allowance of $1.00 a week or 12 comic books at ten cents each.)  I did the math and took the comic book option.  I was a frequent customer at Eddie’s from that time until my high school graduation a decade later.  Each day I would pick up X number of comics, multiply X by a dime and add the 3% sales tax.  Then I would tell Eddie the total and give him the money.  After he got to know me, he stopped checking my math and just accepted the total I told him.  I respected his trust in me and never cheated.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that comics were delivered only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Those were the days I lived for.  If the new comics weren’t out on the racks by the time I got there, Eddie allowed me to go into the back room, cut the cords on the bundled stacks, and take what I wanted.  I would then just tell Eddie or Dan, his younger employee, how much to charge me.

This relationship continued until I left for college and afterwards, to a lesser extent.  Eddie retired in the mid ’70s, leaving the news store to Dan.  I found this out when I visited my mother in 1979.  She still lives in Miami Beach today, but has since moved to another island.

Last year, as part of a vacation to the Caribbean, my wife Karen and I stopped over in Miami Beach to visit Mom.  We drove over to Normandy Isle and I showed Karen my old stomping grounds.  I was surprised to see that Eddie’s News was still there, across the street from the grocery store that now had a different name.  As "Should I go in?" raced through my mind, I realized that you can go home again, but somebody else lives there now.  We drove past without stopping.