They Do Things Differently Down There

Miller High Life was my beer when I lived in New York. I cannot remember why, but it probably had to do with being conveniently placed in the refrigerator case at the neighbourhood deli where I shopped. I know why I smoked Marlboroughs. They were the only cigarettes that came in a flip-top cardboard pack, as opposed to those paper pouches they had down in the States. The ones you could not close again, from which cigarettes escaped and broke apart in the bottom of you purse. Or I should say ‘pocketbook,’ as they called them in New York.