Fran Lebowitz

He lost, at a certain point, the store, my father's store, the building that it was in, he was renting.

And the landlord tripled or quadrupled the rent, and he had to give up the store.

Very.

I had a very happy childhood because, first of all, this was a very good town to be a child in.

My parents seemed very happy.

They were happy when I was a child.

So the 1950s, through the 1950s.

Yes.

And I think that, I said to someone recently, they said, how did you have a happy childhood?

It's like against the law, by the way, for a writer to have a happy childhood.

So I said, well, I had a bicycle, a library card, and there were two movie theaters.

I mean, what more could you want from life?

So I really did.

You know, it was a very pretty town, too.

And I had a very enjoyable childhood.

He drank a bit, but there wasn't... Both my parents would have a drink before dinner.

Yeah, and they smoked.

My father smoked a pipe so much that even though my father probably stopped smoking that pipe at least 10 or 15 years before he died, when he died and I had to take care of getting rid of his clothes and stuff, his clothes still smelled of pipe tobacco.

His whole closet, which I'd never been in my father's closet, obviously, and I'd gone through my father's things, there was such a strong smell of pipe tobacco everywhere.

My father also kept all of his pipes because he stopped smoking the pipe because his dentist told him, you have something in your mouth, and if you don't stop smoking that pipe, you're going to have cancer.