Ever since my book, Over 60 and Getting Younger, came out, readers have been telling me that it reminds them of Harry Golden's famous book, For 2 Cents Plain. Harry was a New Yorker who, in the 1940s, traveled south to North Carolina. He brought with him his ingrained "New York Shtick" and he presented them to his new friends and audience south of the Mason-Dixon line. Things like bagels, egg creams and salt-pretzels intrigued his readers.

Personally, I don't see the connection, but by a long stretch of the imagination, my old Bronx experiences are a new experience to today's readers on Long Island. I am a columnist, but Harry formed a newspaper called The Carolina Israelite. In his newspaper he tried to open the eyes of his mostly rural Christian readership into the Semitic, New York urban intricacies of life and love.

For 2 Cents Plain actually refers to a fountain drink of Seltzer (carbonated water - Vichy). The New Yorkers would ask the counterman to put a little cherry syrup on top and keep the price at 2 cents. Putting syrup on top turned the drink into a cherry soda and would cost 5 cents. It was a gentle deception that rarely worked.

In those years the south was a puzzle to New Yorkers and New York City was the land of the despised "Yankees," who triumphed in the Civil War. Harry became a mediator of sorts with his insight into both camps. Today, through travel, T.V. and modern communications, that gap has narrowed and there is greater understanding.

Let me give you an insight into the biography of Harry Golden (1902 - 1981).

Born: Herschel Golhirsch in the Ukraine.

• Came to America and lost his job as a stockbroker in 1929.

• Wrote for The Charlotte Observer about racial segregation and the Jim Crow Laws of the time.

• Wrote for his own paper - The Carolina Israelite.

• Wrote of New York's Lower East Side.

• Later in 1961 he covered the Eichman Trial in Israel.

Some of his book titles: Only in America, Enjoy, Enjoy, For 2 Cents Plain, So What Else Is New, Ess, Ess Mein Kindt, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Long Live Columbus and America, I Love You.

Harry Golden wrote what was on his mind. In that area, Harry and I have a great similarity.