Story Five, The Star-crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski Summary

The lure of things foreign is the narrator's demise in The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski. Walking home from band practice a week before Christmas, he smells the usual smells of his hometown in Indiana, the sulphur from the Chemical Works plant, the swap-gas smell from the Sinclair refining plant, and the blast-furnace dust that mix together to blend his daily breathing air. Overlying this usual smell, the narrator catches whiffs of something different, something foreign and spicy. As he reaches his house, he sees that there are lights on in the Bumpus house, a place that has been empty ever since the hillbilly family bailed out in the middle of the night after trashing the place. His mother knows that a Polish family has moved in next door...