Stepping Up....

About a year after Larry joined the Air Force, while walking over to Broadway for a bite at Dave’s Delicatessen, I ran into Danny Cohen. If he hadn’t called out to me, I never would have recognized him. He had grown a full beard, and was wearing old army boots below what looked like clothing bought from a Bowery bum. (In those days, we called them ‘bums’ whereas today they are politely referred to as ‘the homeless’.) “Hey man, how’s it goin’?” Now Danny had never been the ‘Hey man, how’s it goin?’ type. He was more of the ‘Hi guy. How ARE you?’ type. He was also one of the best dressed friends my brother ever had. Larry and the whole crew used to defer to him on what was proper attire wherever they were off to. Anyhow, Danny, who never had much to say to me when my brother was around, invited me up to his apartment, saying he had some music he wanted me to hear. I had no problem with that and went along. It turned out that the music was folk music and the singer was some guy named Bob Dylan. It was, after all, 1963, and Bob Dylan wasn’t exactly a household word at the time. Manny had bought a guitar and had become pretty proficient with it. He could really play nicely but he couldn’t sing at all. I guess Bob Dylan was his hero. But unlike Danny, Bob Dylan had a message for all that cared to listen. The words were important, not whether he could sing them or not. In fact, his style of singing almost forced the listener to hear his message. His songs seemed to raise issues that were important. I hadn’t thought very much about whom the “masters of war” were or that the U.S. government was supporting dictatorships around the world. Dylan spoke to the conscience of my generation and the rest is history. Danny, being four years my senior, had been one of my role models when he and Larry used to pal around. I was both shocked and impressed to see him transformed in such a radical fashion. He had long hair down to his shoulders in addition to his beard, and no longer wanted to be an English teacher. Danny asked me if I’d like to see some folk music in the village and we made a plan for the weekend. I also noticed that Danny had started smoking cigarettes. But they didn’t smell like the ones my father smoked and he explained that he liked to ‘roll his own’.

The raw nature of the folk sound, not just that of Dylan, affected me in a radical fashion. It wasn’t long before I discovered Phil Ochs, Patrick Sky, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and a myriad of other artists whose music held more than a beat and a message of love. These people were writing and singing songs which cried out for listening. Whether they were singing about war and peace, riches and poverty, segregation and integration, love and hate, or just about children and the things they do, these artists captured both my imagination and my intellect. But the message in the music was only a catalyst for the reaction I experienced.

When I went down to Greenwich Village with Danny, I discovered a different side of myself. Instead of being the child of my family, I discovered that I was a member of a generation. I’m talking about the Baby Boomers. Everywhere I looked, there were people my own age, and they weren’t even close to the mold that the parents of that generation had hoped to shape. Somewhere along the line, the rules that I was brought up to obey ceased to relate to the substance of my life. I guess that the music elevated my consciousness and made me question who I was living my life for. The answer was obvious. And, oh yeah, the music led to some other hobbies too.

Where Were You When?.....

In the fall of 1963, preparations were underway for the annual football clash with DeWitt Clinton High School, Stuyvesant’s arch-rival in the New York world of scholastic athletic competition. Traditionally, the usually sedate studious nature of the would-be scientists at the school would throw off the yoke of their studies for a week and galvanize into a supportive pillar for the football team with rallies held on a daily basis. Usually these rallies would culminate with some prank like the overturning of a Volkswagen beetle or the stopping of traffic in Union Square on the Friday before the big game. That year, however, as the rallies increased in intensity day by day, until on Thursday a thousand cheering students burned an effigy of DeWitt Clinton in Union Square Park, the faculty became quite apprehensive of what would occur on Friday. Preparations were made, with plans for a massive display of vitriolic splendor directed at our opponents. After all, Stuyvesant wasn’t particularly noted for its athletic leadership, but rather for scholastic achievement. Thus, the rally assumed more importance than the game itself since everybody assumed we would lose the game no matter what happened on Friday or Saturday. However, on this particular Friday afternoon, there was to be no rally. At 12:30 or so in the afternoon, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, and all thoughts of athletics were suddenly banished from the world.

One day, in my senior year, while I was working on a term paper in my bedroom, I needed to ask my Mom a question about some obscure historic fact. She was cleaning the house as usual on Saturday (since she worked during the week), and I went looking for her. I found her collapsed in a reading chair in my parents’ bedroom, dead or about to die from a massive heart attack. She was 47 years old at the time and her heart attack was not entirely a surprise. Mom had had rheumatic fever as a child and was always aware that she had a heart condition stemming from this illness. She was a very courageous lady who gave birth not once but twice after being told that she would probably shorten if not lose her life in the process. Of course, at 17, I didn’t appreciate that and actually felt that 47 wasn’t so young anyway. Nonetheless, I was really surprised by my lack of emotion at the time. I knew I loved her deeply and could only imagine what life would be like without her, but I protected myself by relating to it as a ‘bad break’ and concentrated on how ‘life goes on’.

Shortly after her death, I graduated high school. My grades weren’t strong enough to get me any scholarships for college. In fact, they weren’t even strong enough to get me into a regular four-year college. However, I did gain entry to Bronx Community College as a non-matriculated night student. Probably I was more affected by her passing than I realized, since in my first term at night school, I managed to finally hit my stride as a student, receiving A grades in both my courses. In my second term, I was allowed to matriculate and attend the day session. This was important, since it not only meant that I wouldn’t have to spend four or five years getting a two year degree, but I could get my higher education for free. The City University of New York, in the middle 60s, was a terrific place to get a college education. For the first time, I was allowed to pursue my own scholastic interests, and this was reflected by my actually learning the subjects I registered for.

Easy Money Part 1

While I was not a stupid kid, I wasn’t such a great student either, and for some reason which I still don’t understand, I was accepted to Stuyvesant High School. This was a special advanced high school which had a strong educational emphasis on math and science. My parents were adamant that I should take the test for the school and, unbelievably, I was chosen. The system must have recognized something in my ability that my teachers did not. I soon discovered that I hated math and science but loved English and history. Out of a class of 699, I ranked 672 at the time of my graduation. This wasn’t too surprising to me, since I simply didn’t have any interest in the required curriculum. My folks were really disappointed as each year passed and my grades were consistently poor. I think ‘pissed off’ would more accurately describe their feelings. After being told that I had a very high IQ, they figured that I was on the road to a wonderworld of scholastic endeavor that would be followed by a huge income and galactic recognition.

On my first day at Stuyvesant, I was surprised to see a familiar face from my neighborhood. Chris B had apparently also been accepted to the school and we immediately began to spend time together. The school was loaded with all sorts of exceptionally brilliant kids, most of whom qualified as being typecast as original nerds. About halfway into the first term, I had a major disagreement with one of the guys in the lunchroom and he challenged me to a fight after school. Happily, this was a whole different atmosphere than I was used to in Astoria. However, at precisely three o’clock, with mounting apprehension, I marched to my fate at the rear entrance to the school. Chris and I had fallen in with a crowd of street-wise guys. They were all offering advice as to how to deal with this fight, but I was basically pretty scared since I had never taken part in any of the riots back in Astoria. A crowd gathered and this kid, who was three or four inches taller than me, appeared right on schedule. He then proceeded to announce to me and the audience how he knew karate and was required by law to advise me that his hands were considered lethal weapons. While he was saying this, he began to remove his overcoat. As soon as his overcoat was half off, I charged him, tackled him, pinned his arms in the coat, and began banging his head against the sidewalk. He never threw a punch, and nobody was too anxious to fight with me after that.

Melvin was attending Long Island City High School while I was traveling each day to school in Manhattan. In the middle of our sophomore year, he was sneaking around in the basement of his school and discovered a box of keys in the janitor’s office. Among these keys was a grand master key for Sargent locks. As it turned out, these Sargent locks were the standard used throughout the New York City School system. Armed with this key, Melvin was able to penetrate the various offices at his school and abscond with a horde of other items which were used all over the city. There were passes of all description, from elevator passes (which were used primarily for handicapped students and faculty), to guidance passes (which were sent by school monitor to classrooms as a summons from deans and guidance counselors for individual students to appear in their offices forthwith).

Chris and I arranged a plan where he would show up at my classroom posing as a monitor, show the pass to my teacher who would then release me from class to answer the summons. Chris would then enter his class a little late, and after a few minutes I would perform the same charade for his teacher. This scheme led to a virulent class-cutting binge where we found ourselves doing a brisk business as the passes proved to be a valuable commodity. We had been rubber-stamping the passes with the signature of Dean McGowan, a tall, red-faced, rotund alcoholic who served as the Dean of Student Behavior. (Through connivery and by using duplicates of Melvin’s invaluable grandmaster key, we had been able to steal one of Dean McGowan’s rubber stamps and have it duplicated.) Our success, however, soon turned to greed, as we found ourselves selling the passes to our friends and anyone else who would pay the fee. Ultimately, one of these customers had a problem which led to his appearance before Dean McGowan. He spilled the beans to the Dean who, in a fit of rage, went personally to my classroom only to discover from the teacher that a monitor had taken me to his office earlier. This confirmed the story he had been told leading to my immediate suspension and requiring my mother’s appearance for an audience with Dean McGowan. During this meeting, I was repeatedly asked to inform on my source for the illegal passes and key, but I just couldn’t bring myself to implicate Melvin. After some well-deserved punishment, coupled with a multitude of promises of good behavior, I was reinstated and allowed to return to classes.