Yellow Hook Shirts Review
BY
JASPER LIPTON ON
JULY 3, 2017 • (
4 COMMENTS)
My grandfather grew up in New Jersey, the son of Ukrainian Jews who’d emigrated to escape prosecution and worse and found a new life running a grocery store in the city. Until he died and my grandmother moved to a smaller house, my family and our collected relations would converge upon my father’s rambling ancestral home with a sort of semi-irregularity dictated by holidays and the globe-hopping travel schedules of my always-moving grandparents.
My grandfather, a man of whom I have fond but few distinct memories, had a study that I found fascinating, decorated with objects he’d collected from innumerable journeys abroad, smelling of – retrospectively, at least – a combination of cologne, pipe smoke, and mothballs. It’s that smell – as indistinct and hazy as it may be now, sixteen years after his death – that I most associate with him. It followed him when he came to visit our family, followed him when we joined my grandparents for a family reunion in the South of France one year, and was as much a part of him as anything else he was.
