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.

My Brother Before I Really Appreciated Him

My brother, Larry, wasn’t such a great student, but what he lacked in academic endeavors didn’t extend into his social life. He had girls by the carload. One day I ran across a little file box that had at least a hundred cards in it, each with a girl’s name, address, nickname, how far she would go, when she went that far, and with which one of his friends she had gone. He and his friend, Danny Cohen, seemed to outdistance their other two pals, Lenny Weinberg and Leon Klarman and Carl Eisenberg in this regard. Danny’s father was an accountant, and he wanted to be an English teacher. Lenny’s parents owned a candy store, much like ours, on the next blocks and Leon’s father had one on Broadway (four avenues away). They were quite a wild crew or so it seemed to a rather naive twelve year old.

They were definitely, for Jewish kids, a crazy bunch of guys. Lenny wasn’t all that bright and was affectionately nicknamed “The Dope.” One night, all four of them were out in Danny’s car and were pulled over by the cops when Larry leaned out the window to grab some girl. The cop, a big Irish bruiser, stormed up to the car and asked Danny, who was driving, what they had in the car. These were not the days of drugs so I guess he was looking for beer or hard liquor. Danny, smartass that he was, pointed in the back seat to Lenny, and told the cop that the “Dope” was in the back. They all wound up spread-eagled against the wall while the cops ripped the car apart looking for heroin (in those days, nobody but the ghetto kids and artistic types used marijuana or other drugs.) The guys all told this tale as though they had robbed a bank or something. I thought it was funny, but I wouldn’t realize just how funny it was until a few years later.

But as fate would have it, Larry did poorly in high school, and, pressured by our parents to continue in college, he managed to do poorly in college as well. I do remember him, however, camping by the mailbox for days when the college marks were due and substituting postcards with Bs on them for the Ds and Fs which he was really getting. This was only helpful in the short run because how was he supposed to explain to Mom and Dad why he was drummed out of school with such great marks? Shortly after his college debacle, Larry decided that the only way to get out of the house was to join the Air Force. He was successful in that regard and wound up in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas or Florida We were only semi-close before he left and afterwards, for many years, it seemed like we were from different planets.

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.