RV Fears of a Late-in-Life, Bronx-bred Mom by Pamela Francis

I grew up in NY in the 1970s (as I’m fond of relating) and I can tell you that the only “bonfires” we experienced were the fiery flames of the 5-story tenement buildings that flanked the brick, monolithic, 21-story structures of the housing projects in which my family lived. Those rat and roach-infested tinderboxes (the tenements, not the pjs) went up in a conflagration of bright orange every week, it seemed, until eventually nothing remained but a row of abandoned, charred and blackened environmental health hazards. Those of us who lived in the…