Melvin

Our apartment house was one of a multitude of pre-war buildings that had been part of the construction boom that occurred in the early 1940s. Originally, it had been surrounded by a two foot deep row of hedges and had a long canopy which stretched from the courtyard to curbside, but by the time we moved in both of these were long gone. The hedgerow had been cemented over and the all that remained of the canopy were the metal rings on the sidewalk where the poles used to stand in support of it. The outside of the building was faced with the deep red bricks which were common to the period. The builder had apparently cut some costs in the construction since quite a few of the internal mechanisms, like the boiler and the elevator were having more than their fair share of breakdowns. But all in all, it was a pretty nice place to live. The hallways were floored with a polished granite-type surface. There was a fire door which separated the two ‘wings’ of each floor.

Our third floor apartment, adjacent to the incinerator chute, had a closet which shared a common wall with the chute and which we dubbed the ‘hot closet,’ since temperatures in this closet were always in the hundred degree range. As you entered the front door, you found yourself in a powder blue foyer which forked in two directions, one leading to the living room, and the other branching off towards the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom. In addition to the ‘hot’ closet, there were two other closets near the entry to the living room which were a his-and-hers arrangement for my folks. If you continued on through the living room, there was a second entrance to my parents’ bedroom through a set of French doors and a vestibule at the far end of the room which turned left into the bedroom shared my brother and myself, and turned right into the bathroom. The linen closet was straight ahead. With the exception of the living room, which was carpeted in a dark green, all the other rooms had a variety of linoleum floor coverings. All these rooms were fairly spacious by today’s standards. While far from luxurious, the furnishings were pretty comfortable.

A four-room flat, it was in the back corner of the building with windows which overlooked a long fifty foot wide courtyard that served as a common service area for three other buildings. In the center of the courtyard, surrounded by a cement sidewalk, was a little arboretum (actually an untended 20 by 30 foot stand of trees and hedges interspersed with numerous weeds). My grandfather also lived on the third floor but his apartment overlooked the avenue just up the hill from the store. It was a pretty convenient set-up for the family.

I had a best friend who lived in the building, Melvin. He lived in the same apartment row as I did and his bedroom was two floors above mine. We used to knock on the steam pipe and send messages back and forth. Eventually, we became technologically more advanced and used frozen juice cans. He would tie a string to a juice can, and lower it to my window and I would attach my can and bingo, we had a working intercom. This step forward into the scientific age was greatly appreciated by the old couple, Leo and Fay Rice, who lived on the fourth floor, between us, since it meant that they didn’t have to listen to the pipes clanging all day and night. Although Leon was quite hard of hearing, his bed was right next to the pipe and he had no trouble hearing our Morse coded messages. (Fortunately, he hadn’t been in the navy) The other four apartment dwellers in our row of pipes were also quite relieved when the primitive communications system was abandoned.

Leo, who owned the grocery store on the corner, moved to the suburbs after investing most of his money in Toyota stock, which cost next to nothing, on the first day of its issue. He told my father about this opportunity, but Dad couldn’t see any future in Japanese cars.

I met Melvin, when we first moved to the building from the Bronx, in 1952. At first, our parents encouraged the friendship, since we were two of the three Jewish boys in the building. The third, Kenneth Weiner, was deaf and dumb and most of the kids were deathly afraid of him. Looking back, I guess we were all scared of his guttural utterings, which nobody could understand but which sounded pretty aggressive. At the age of 5, you enter into relationships without regard for intellectual capacity or good or evil. Such concepts don’t affect your behavior until later on and sometimes, they never do. Socially, we were acceptable to our parents and that’s what mattered above all else. However, ten years later, they discovered that we could cause far more trouble together than we ever had separately. I was basically a prisoner of the candy store. My father knew everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knew me. I couldn’t shoot a paper clip without him finding out. Melvin, on the other hand, whose parents worked in the Manhattan all day, was free to do as he pleased. He could lie to his folks and they would think he was as truthful as George Washington. And lying, it would turn out, was the least of Melvin’s transgressions. In the end, my relationship with Melvin would have a very meaningful effect on my future. But who could know this at the age of five or even fifteen?

God Bless America

Until I was fourteen, the store had an antiquated soda fountain which was fronted by a long pink and white marble counter. By 1961, the fountain was often out of order for one reason or another. We had a half a dozen ice cream bins just below the fountain. If you had to describe the store with one word, that word would have been ‘old’. If you had to use two words, you could have added ‘dirty’ as the overall description. There were six antiquated metal revolving seats which were always being abused by kids who insisted on rocking back and forth while they merrily spun themselves around and around. One of these seats was constantly coming up out of the partly rotten wooden floor to which it was nailed. The linoleum which covered the wood seemed to always be worn out down the center aisle. The store was long, narrow and not quite adequately lit. On the back wall there was an aging Breyer’s Ice Cream clock above the entrance to the rear storage area. Looking up, you would see a drab yellow nicotine-stained high tin ceiling and the rest of the store was always in varying states of disrepair.

My mother was continually asking my father when he was going to either clean it up or leave it to work in what she called the ‘real world.’ She had worked for years at the Quality Toy Company in Manhattan as a bookkeeper and I suspect that this was the only reason our family survived financially. The profit margin in the candy store business was really slim and with a 500 or 600 dollar gross each week, it had to support both us and my grandfather. Finally, he decided to get rid of the fountain and redo the entire place. He signed a contract with Hallmark cards to sell only their products in the greeting card area. We gutted the entire store, added several rows of card display and storage racks down the center of the store and built all the other display areas out of formica covered wood. We got rid of the two display windows that had to be passed by in order to enter the store, thereby pushing the selling area right out to the sidewalk where a new front was installed. He added a humidor for tobacco storage. In just three weeks, we had a brand new, clean card shop. The soda fountain was eliminated and since greeting cards were marked up 100%, the profit margin became more comfortable. We were the only Hallmark retailer within ten blocks and soon the whole neighborhood was buying its cards at our store.

For almost ten years, I spent every Saturday night and Sunday morning working in the store. Each Saturday night, I would put together the Sunday papers, which came in sections that had to be collated before they were sold. I used to help out practically every day and was glad to do it. Sunday mornings were the most interesting. Every hour, as each church mass was finished, the people would all show up at the store for their newspapers. It was amazing to me that so many of these people, who believed they had just spent an hour with God, would immediately arrive at our store looking for the National Enquirer. Usually, the lead story had a headline that read something like, “Baby Born With Two Heads and No Brain” or “Mother Drops Kids in Vat of Acid” or “Is Ed Sullivan Sleeping Around?”.

While I had some obvious anti-Christian feelings, I would like to believe that they were rooted in the post-world war II paranoia which affected Jews throughout the world. My parents and grandparents were acutely aware that the Roman Catholic Church had, for almost two thousand years, held all Jews accountable for the death of Christ. This was a ridiculous notion, if there ever was one. That was like holding all Roman Catholics responsible for the medieval crusades, or for helping the Nazis to escape after the World War II holocaust.

We did not have a very large family by the end of World War II. Our ancestry was geographically located on both sides of the Rumanian-Polish border. Out of more than 400 pre-war members of the family tree, only a handful survived the holocaust. I think two or three escaped to Israel, two made it to Argentina, and my grandparents had immigrated to the United States in the early 1930s. Most of those who died in the holocaust were victims of the atrocities committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. So, while we were safe in America, the war became a personal tragedy for our family.

Growing Up Short and Dumpy

I wasn’t particularly tall at age thirteen, reaching about 5 feet 6 inches with my shoes on. In fact, I was pretty dumpy looking since I weighed about 160 at that time. However, in the summer of 1960, an amazing thing happened. I grew almost three inches and lost ten pounds at the same time. All of a sudden I went from a plump little kid to a lanky, strapping teenager. Eventually I would grow another three inches and hold my weight in the 160 range. It’s unbelievable what a few inches in height and a few less pounds can do for your self-esteem. Although my upbringing was centered on education and intellectual pursuits, I always felt somewhat inferior in physical activities. In reality, I was fairly coordinated and had excellent reflexes, but my size and shape always seemed to hold me back. When the kids used to choose up sides for the stickball or basketball games (I was never allowed to play football and, in the 1950’s and early 60’s, football wasn’t nearly as compelling as it is today), I usually was the last to be picked. This didn’t please me, but my folks never failed to remind me that education and vocational aptitude were far more important things in life than athletic prowess.

I had worn eyeglasses since the age of 4, when my mother realized that I always wanted to sit within 3 or 4 feet of the television and took me to the optometrist. It turned out that I was extremely nearsighted and had a high degree of myopia. Eyeglasses were a must. While this led to my being the brunt of some common children’s cruelty, I never regarded my glasses as a major hindrance. I could see better with them than without them and that was all that mattered. However, the extra few inches in height enabled me to cut a more acceptable figure than that of a short plump kid with glasses. My self-confidence soared and I now felt equal to any physical challenge that came my way.

There was an Irish punk, Mike McNulty, who used to insult me every chance he got. It wasn’t unusual for him to come running up to me, screaming ‘Four-eyed Jewboy!’ for all to hear, as he proceeded to grab my hat or books or whatever he could latch his miserable fingers onto. Occasionally, he would even punch me in the stomach and I, having no idea whatsoever how to defend myself, would either run away or go home with a bloody nose. Not that three inches is the difference between being a tough guy or a wimp, but I finally decided that I had had enough of this mean bastard’s abuse. One day in September of that year, I was walking through the playground on my way home from school when McNulty came running up to me in his usual fashion and made a grab for my books. Instead of standing stock still, which had been my customary reaction to his previous attacks, I sidestepped his lunge and punched him square in the face, bloodying his nose. Despite the shock he must have felt, he had a reputation to uphold. McNulty put his hands up, palms forward, in a traditional signal of surrender, and then launched a kick straight for my groin. Fortunately, I knew what a rotten apple he really was and had no illusions about his backing off. When his leg began to move forward, I stepped inside the range of his kick, and brought my books up into his unguarded chin, knocking him unconscious for almost five whole minutes. My parents weren’t very happy when they found out about the incident, but McNulty never physically bothered me again. Once in a while, he would yell a religious slur at me but it was always from the other side of the street. When the word of my defense got around the neighborhood, I received a great deal more respect from the other kids. I had found out that, while turning the other cheek was a normal reaction to the religious prejudice most Jews experienced, sometimes it felt far better to smash someone’s face in. It was a lesson I didn’t soon forget.