Couple Two-Tree Birthday Wishes

This is for my "favorite cousin" Jimmy, who's April 6th birthday I just realized I missed. The fact that I did is even worse, since we've been corresponding quite a bit via email about the Democratic primary!

With the emphasis on Hillary Clinton's Scranton roots, memories of our younger days have been prominent of late. As I've mentioned before, growing up, my neighborhood was mostly a mix of Italians and Irish (with my grandparents and a number of my aunts and uncles living on the same block). My cousin Jim and I lived across the street from each other and attended the same Catholic grade school, St. Joe's. We walked to school every day together, accompanied by his older sister, Joanne. Clinton's family lived a few blocks away from us as well. See All Roads Lead to Scranton.

The other day, he pointed out Hillary's new TV Scranton ad, Clinton ad features Scranton roots, which is titled “Scranton,” and "contains clips of Mrs. Clinton as a young girl in Scranton and pictures of her father, Hugh Rodham; the former Scranton Lace Co. where her grandfather, also named Hugh Rodham, worked; and the Rodham family’s cottage at Lake Winola."

The Scranton Lace Works was also in our neighborhood, with the tower visible from where we lived. And I know I owned an outfit like that pictured in the ad, with a white organdy frock, white anklets and Mary Janes.

As Jim noted: My God, you'd think she grew up in Scranton. I half expect to find out in the next ad that she in fact did grow up in Scranton and actually walked to school with us in the morning!

Later on, Jim's family moved to the "country," to Moscow, but we still shared the family gatherings for holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, at my grandmother's house.

We know that Hillary's not really from Scranton, since she wouldn't understand the above video or this:

Heyna, heyna
Heyna, heyna
I'm from Scran-on Penn-cil-vain-ya!

P.S. I still have your birthday present from the big one that we missed!