TIPS AND SNIPPETS: Growing Up In Gcity, Cleanup of Junk Yard? Train Blocks Traffic

By William E. Cleary Sr.

REMEMBERING THE “GOOD OLD DAYS” — Howard “Butch” Shaffer rolled up from Hilton Head, South Carolina, to meet a few of his childhood buddies at the Brooklawn Diner on Thursday, April 2. For a moment, it felt like Gloucester City in the 1940s and ’50s all over again — a town where everyone knew your name, your father’s nickname, and which streetlight you were supposed to be home by.

Back then, our little community ran on corner stores, church bells, and the kind of front‑porch gossip that traveled faster than any newspaper. World War II was winding down, the Korean War was starting up on the other side of the world, and kids like us were more worried about stickball games, jukebox music, and whether we had enough change for a Coke.

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Divorce vs murder

Sue, a calm, respectable and understanding lady went Into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his Eyes, and said, “I would like to buy some cyanide.”

The pharmacist asked, “Why in the world do you need Cyanide?”

Sue replied, “I need it to poison my husband, Phil.”

The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he explained, “Lord Have mercy! I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband, That’s against The law! I’ll lose my license! They’ll throw both of us in jail! All kinds Of bad things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide!”

Sue reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of Phil in bed with the pharmacist’s wife.

The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, “Oh, You didn’t tell me you had a prescription.”