Editor’s note: This is the second of a four-part series.

One of the major businesses on my boyhood newspaper route was the city’s finest men’s store. Tarny’s had been dressing lawyers and entrepreneurs for a generation. Mr. Tarnapol wore the most beautiful fabrics and served the entire establishment clientele in the town. His storefront display was always dashing and handsome and even as a child I admired it.

It was some years before a former employee would open a competitor and, even then, Fedric’s was barely in the same class.

Next door was a magnificent theater, The Capitol. The foyer was a marble stairway and the interior was a throwback to the grand stages of vaudeville and a richer time in our colonial city. The owner was an Irishman, a Mr. Murphy.

When I was in the fourth grade I came to have a special relationship with his family. At St. Mary’s school only one of our teachers was not a member of the religious order of The Sisters of Mercy, Mrs. Ida Bergstrom. She was an excellent teacher and a great lover of the theater. She was determined that her third grade class should present a play for the school each semester.

I got to play the lead in a drama I remember nothing about – except the first line of the play; “Dat you, Joe!” I shouted as I tossed a bucket into the air. I remember I performed in Black face out of a tube called Baby Face.

Mrs. Bergstrom wanted the stage to look authentic, and she asked the class if we knew anyone down South so she could get some Spanish moss to hang from the trees on the set. I wrote to my Aunt Rose and remember that while she couldn’t get the material to us, my Uncle Shikory Saleeby from Jacksonville did deliver a huge box of the stuff.

In any case, Mrs. Bergstrom wanted my parents to arrange for me to receive elocution lessons. She insisted it would be a perfect fit, since she thought I had talent for the theater. My father had been a part-time musician as a younger man and had always hoped that he and his sons might one-day form a band. He played the saxophone and arranged for my older brother, Al, to learn the clarinet.

Mike played the drums and it was close to time for me to take up some instrument. Sadly, it was clear that I enjoyed no musical gifts. But my third grade teacher’s advice found fertile soil in my mother. At the cost of $1.45 each week, I was signed up for elocution lessons.

The vaudeville headliner, Rena Arnold, lived with her husband in New London’s tallest building, the Mohegan Hotel. A uniformed, black engineer maneuvered the elevator to the ninth floor to the Murphys’ apartment.

Mrs. Murphy had as wrinkled a face as I had ever seen, and a large mouth that wrapped around every word with a deliberateness that amazed me. She directed my weekly exercises while using a canvas chart featuring the vowels with distinctive markings to vary the inflection. Breath, “a,” breath,”e,” breath, “i,” etc.

There were lessons in etiquette, “When eating an olive, discard the pit in the cupped hand and place it on the plate.” Then, there were alliterations; “Around the rough and ragged rocks the ragged rascal rudely ran.” But the highlight of our time together was to be the “Recitations.”

Drawn from a piece of Americana respectfully put away by our more sensitive natures, ethnic poems were her staple. For the next 70 years I could recite Irish, Chinese, Italian and Black verses that must have sparkled during vaudeville days, but would make modern audiences cringe.

My teacher would gather several of her star pupils and bring us to Odd Fellow meetings, or receptions at the Old Peoples’ Home, or social occasions or actual stage performances. I would proudly tell tales of Dusky Sam, or Little Ah Sid, or Miss Fogarty’s Cake at the famous Lighthouse Inn to peals of laughter.

Having a repertoire of recitations became part of high school and Boys State and Boys Nation. I could go to any party and easily perform readings, and one day I would give speeches and arguments to juries.

No small part of those later accomplishments came because a third grade teacher cared enough to call my parents and make a suggestion. Many years later I heard George Burns describe my elocution teacher as the woman who introduced him to Gracie Allen. She had possibly performed locally in the Lyceum Theater, which still stood in ruins across from the downtown.

In any case, my elocution teacher was married to the owner of the Capitol.

Next on my route was The Trick Store. While this was not one of my customers, since it was a newspaper dealership, this was a paradise for kids. It had dozens of little knick knacks.

There was a gadget you could put under a chair and it would make the sound of passing gas. There were two magnetized dogs you could get to fight with each other. There were dozens and dozens of similar items, and every kid I knew loved the place.

My folks would tell me that everything in the place was “junk” and, like most cheap stuff, made in Japan. I did notice that among the papers available were all the New York and Boston editions as well as The Corriere Della Sera, some Hebrew publications and an Arabic paper.

Also on my route was an appliance store. I know Black and White eventually occupied the spot, but can’t be sure if it was the original on the site. This was a very special memory for me because it was the first time I saw a television.

It was Christmas time and a crowd of us gathered in the cold to look in the window of the store where a small set was showing a brand-new holiday performance. It was Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, and the show featured Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We were all enthralled by the miracle of a performance, all the way from New York, being seen before our very eyes!

Gil Shasha is a retired former New London attorney.