Highlands, NJ.
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he taught his grandson well. So well, in fact, that when Middletown lost 37 of its own on 9/11, the 9/11, first thing his chapped ass did was call the editor, now your editor, and upgraded to a full-page, fourcolor ad for the next four months. Pfleger’s business paid the salaries of about half of the staff that year. Christmas bonuses and all. You’d ask about Pfleger’s shop often. So often, in fact, that you could almost mimic your editor’s reply—word for word—if you hadn’t been forcibly preoccupied refuting his accusations of your necrophilic aspirations time after time. You just wanna romance a dead chick? Don’t you? He’d taunt, before turning serious. It’s the business of death, Scotty, he’d continue, with miniscule bits of chewing tobacco still clinging to his face. Your guess was as good as any, but they were probably avoiding the coffee stain trailing from the corner of his lips almost down to the jawline. And the worst part was, according to him, there wasn’t shit anyone could do about it, that’s just the way it was. And with a second, much more intuitive glance, the man stood corrected. Sonofabitch, he’d say. Scratch that. Keep it down to 200 tops. Space is looking tighter than a fly’s ass this week. 200 words. 50 less than usual. And that was that. Turns out that Karen A. Parsells, 51, of Middletown, who died last Monday at the Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank would merely be granted a box of 200 words to pack her life into. 200 words. And when the surviving members of Karen’s family—her husband Bruce; stepson Robert; cousins Mary Anne and Olivia; her several nieces and nephews; the people that perhaps mattered most to her in this world—opened their front doors Thursday morning to find the paper found its way to their doorstep, they’ll do as any other valued subscriber. They’ll pick it up. They’ll glance at the front page,