In the Grand Manner – Introduction to Chapter One:
The path to Grand Manner Avenue can start from many places. As I am the guide and narrator, allow me to take you on a path that starts during the Great Depression in Brooklyn, NY. Brooklyn has spawned many, many people who have demonstrated a wide diversity of ways to travel in the Grand Manner. Many of them left Brooklyn. And it continues to have a population of several million soles and is a very diverse place. Lately, given the gentrification going on in many of its neighborhoods, the astronomic prices for a living space in Manhattan (almost always referred to as “the City” from the outer boroughs, and “New York” from everyone outside of there), having a Brooklyn address is a plus. I’d like to invite you to take a voyage back with me to Brooklyn in 1936, and to move ahead while time unfolds as seen from my perspective.
It is pretty amazing when a comparison is drawn between growing up in a time and place of no television; no computers; no cell phones; no social networking; families composed of children living together with the same parents; a country united to protect its way of life and today’s path to maturity (if we can be so kind). How did that generation fare? Did the kind of stimulation and interactions experienced and enjoyed result in a different zeitgeist? And, fast forwarding, where will the human race (assuming there still is a viable human race) be in 75 plus years from today (closing in on 2100 A.D.)? Care to speculate?
Will the planet be on the brink of the challenges and the disasters that are now predicted? Will humankind find ways to communicate and resolve differences, working together . . . or will it continue to split into innumerable tribes, each protecting their bits of turf and stuff? The technology is there (in actuality or concept) to create close connections, understanding, communication. We have the ability to provide for each person’s physical needs, to protect the planet and the environment that nurtures humankind and all the other things that humankind and the planet (Universe?) needs and desires. Will we be able to reach down into our spiritual pool – the history and heritage that has underlain all the major religions and that have been the lessons of the great spiritual teachers – and do unto others while they do unto us what will contribute to the betterment of both humans and the planet?
Can each of us grow the peace, love, joy, - the clarity that is within us and transfer it to the outer world? Is that perhaps getting to understand what “In The Grand Manner” means?
So, back to my beginnings:
CHAPTER I: ROOTS: A KID GROWS IN BROOKLYN:
“Brooklyn, New York, cradle of tough guys and Nobel laureates, fourth largest city in the United States, proof of the power of marginality, and homeland of America’s most creative diasporic culture.” (From www.brooklyn.net home page)
I was given to understand that the time and place where we live and grow up are important parts of the making of who we are. Sure genetics -- our DNA -- has a most important effect, and the environmental aspects that we move through – time, place, family, friends, events – also play a crucial part. The debate has not been resolved as to what elements are the most important. Suffice it to say that both are involved in making our choices for incarnation. Souls get to determine some of the basics about the life they chose and those things needing to or desired to be worked on. All this happens in a broad context where free will operates and multiple forces and choices abound.
It is the environmental aspects that I have moved through that are featured in the narrative that follows. I will leave my soul choices and challenges as a sidebar to be filled in later. What follows, then, is a trip to the period 1936 through 1958 – my 22 years of growing up.
I was born and grew up in the southern part of Brooklyn in an area called Sheepshead Bay. Historically, my years in Brooklyn - also known as Kings County - encompassed the end of the Great Depression, World War II, and the few years following (1936-1950). When I returned to Brooklyn after my formal education was over, I was then a family man with a wife, daughter and jobs in the “City” - across the East River (1964-69). I was then privileged to have been asked to help run Brooklyn’s complex of cultural institutions. So, the Borough has an important and warm spot in my heart as well as a major place in my cultural development. .
With three million souls procreating, with little industry or a major business center, the biggest export of Brooklyn was, and is, its human beings. Once a city, now one of five boroughs of the City of New York, Brooklyn is known the world around – mostly for the accent of its natives and for the many people who are “from there.”
My recollections of this area are a crazy quilt. Maybe more accurate would be an analogy with a single-framed film – a kaleidoscope of snapshot images running into and overlapping each other. I was to get involved with this single framing communication later with Rawn Fulton, as we worked on materials for the Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum (see Chapter ____). My quilt is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, “New York” (as Manhattan is generally referred to), and places like LaGuardia Airport (Long Island). Some of the squares are filled with a street pathway intersected with trolley tracks and overhead electric wires; a baseball stadium; kids’ games in the back yard, an adjacent vacant lot and underground passageways; public school rooms; victory gardens; roof-top searching for enemy aircraft; early TV programs; my buddies Hank Leder, Otsie Stone, Freddie Schwartz, and Richard Addison; the corner store with egg creams and “two-cents plain;” the Olympics Club and the cherished jacket that brings flashes of West Side Story-type conflict.
The Coney Island section of my crazy quilt contained barkers promoting their games and attractions in the backwash of the Coney Island amusement park; scary rides, including the Cyclone, Bobsled, Parachute Jump and those spinning “rides” (where being the one who could last the longest without barfing wins the game), and the Steeplechase horse race. Other squares are filled with hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people on blankets on a beach so crowded that there was no sand left to walk on; by the Boardwalk with all the attractions and distractions it contained (both over and under); and with endless hours riding the waves at Brighton, Manhattan, Coney Island, and Atlantic beaches. I also remember New Year’s Day at the beach where the ‘Polar Bears” - a group of men including my father - would take a swim and prance on the beach throwing snowballs in freezing weather.
Between about 1880 and the end of the Second World War, Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the United States. First visited by Henry Hudson, who found less than a warm welcome and moved on to Manhattan Island, the Island was named Konihn Eiland, which is Dutch for Rabbit Island. Coney Island was connected to the mainland in 1829, by Shell Road (yes, the basic component was shells). Coney Island House, a large hotel, opened for business in 1834, drawing a large summer crowd to the seaside. More hotels followed, as sea bathing was considered to be a healthy activity). The upper crust filled the rooms, including such distinguished visitors as P.T. Barnum, Daniel Webster, and Washington Irving.
The completion of Plank Road (yup, made of planks) in 1850 made for easier access. To accommodate bathers, George Tilyou (a Coney Island legend) built bathhouses on the beach so visitors could change into bathing suits. A dress code was strictly enforced for many, many years, with women’s costumes weighing some 15 pounds, including stockings – (100 women were arrested in 1918 for not wearing them) and, in the 1930’s, men could get arrested for bearing their chests – with a fine of $50 and ten days in jail the penalty.
Frankfurters came to the United States from Germany, with their popularity receiving a boost by Charles Feltman, a German baker, who settled in Coney Island and sold boiled frankfurters on heated buns with mustard and sauerkraut from a cart for ten cents. Feltman’s success lead to his opening Feltman’s German Beer Garden. He hired a delivery boy in 1913 named Nathan Handwerker, paying him $11 a week. Nathan saved most of his salary and, in 1916, opened his own stand offering a unique spiced meat frankfurter that his wife Ida created. He marketed his stand by offering free frankfurters to the area’s doctors who had to eat them in front of his stand wearing their white coats and stethoscopes. Nathan’s franks were only a nickel.
Handwerker’s stand was called Nathan’s Famous. And famous it was and has been. Today, as Nathan’s Famous, its hotdogs are in most supermarkets and its franchised clones number about 1,000. Nothing though could, can, or will compare with the “Original.” In the over 96 years that have passed since opening day, Nathan’s has gained worldwide recognition for the unequaled quality and taste of its product. Today, Nathan’s has gained a reputation for being among the highest quality hot dogs in the world.
Nathan’s popularity was almost instantaneous, and in its earliest days had legendary characters such as Al Capone, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, and Cary Grant as regular customers. It gained its first international exposure when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt served Nathan’s Famous hot dogs to the King and Queen of England in 1939. Later, Roosevelt had Nathan’s hot dogs sent to Yalta when he met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Years later, Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, stated that, “No man can hope to be elected in this state without being photographed eating a hot dog at Nathan’s Famous."
Politicians, show-business personalities, and sports celebrities are often seen and photographed munching Nathan’s dogs, and heard singing its praises. Barbra Streisand, actually had Nathan’s hot dogs delivered to London, England for a private party. A trip to Nathan’s was the focus of a Seinfeld episode created by comedian Jerry Seinfeld. More recently, the ex-mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani declared Nathan’s the “World’s best hot dog.” Shortly after that, Nathan Handwerker was named to the city’s top 100- joining the ranks of Joe Namath, Irving Berlin, Andrew Carnegie, Joe DiMaggio and others. Even Jacqueline Kennedy loved Nathan’s dogs, and served them at the White House. In his final last will and testament, actor Walter Mathau requested Nathan’s hot dogs to be served at his funeral – they were! The point is Nathan’s is not just a hot dog, it has history and it is Americana!
Last year there were over 435 million Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs sold! Today, Nathan’s is sold and enjoyed in all 50 States and available at over 40,000 food service and retail outlets.
One of my strongest recollections is of a hot summer night, 2 or 3 A.M, sometime during the 1940’s. Because there was no air conditioning, it was hard to sleep. The sidewalks and steps in front of the apartment houses were very alive at that time. Sometimes, we would go down to the beach area to catch some breezes. Coney Island, at 2 A.M., found Brooklynites and their brethren from other New York City boroughs lined up 10 or 20 deep in front of the counters at Nathan’s, while the men behind the counter hocked their hot dogs, hamburgers, roast beef sandwiches, and crinkle fries. Round the corner in a kind of alley-way were the big fat ears of corn (who knows how long they sat in water, how old they were, and how they gave the wrong impression to city kids of what a fresh ear of corn could taste like), and the root beer and grape drinks.. Most items were a nickel. We all ate until it hurt!
When the visit to Nathan’s was during the day, when the rides all around were open, the next stop was the amusement park. And then that created a real challenge to keep the meals from being regurgitated. I and my friends, as well as many others, often “lost it.” That made the rides just a bit more iffy and juicy.
My birth certificate lists 3051 Ocean Avenue as my first address. I have no recollection of that place. So, let’s start with what I can remember – Sunlit Gardens , apartment 4D at 2830 Ocean Avenue.
My life as a kid growing up in Brooklyn spanned a most interesting era. I was born in the midst of “The Great Depression.” I have no specific recollection of that difficult time – a time when my father and mother moved from the lower East Side and Harlem respectively to Brighton Beach, met at a dance, romanced, and married. My father progressed in his law firm, the only job he ever had (having started as an office boy), while my mother started as a stenographer, and also helped her mother run a knitting shop.
I do have some strong images of life during World War II – a most impressionable time for a five-to-nine year old. I was five when the war began and nine when it ended. Life was very full for me, a mix of arriving at personhood, of lots of experiential input, and games, friends and family.
My family was pretty traditional – mother Ruth, father Frank, sister Susie (five and a half years my junior). I had several aunts, uncles and cousins living nearby and did visit them often. They helped expand my world and provided a sheltering environment in a difficult time. Many of my past lives were lived within a large family setting and this extended family served that background in many ways. I can remember only one grand-parent (my mother’s mother) Dad became the only professional in his family, going from Yeshiva to New York Law School. Although never discussed, I believe there was a schism between my father and his father because of this choice – I was told that my grandfather was a part-time orthodox rabbi as well as a grocery store operator. [What fascinates me to this day is the fact that to the best of my recollection at NO TIME did my parents, my uncles and aunts, all the members of my father’s family, EVER discuss their parents, ever!] Our religious practice involved being a “dietary Jew” where the foods involved with the religion (not the dietary practices) were brought in for “holidays.” Any other religious practice was minimal.
Dad began his work life as an office boy at the international law firm of Hardin, Hess & Eder. It was the only job he ever had – and when he retired from the firm, the New York office was dissolved. Hardin, Hess & Eder was involved with work in Italy before WWII and, when that conflict erupted, they opted to open offices in Mexico. Dad spent a lot of time away in Mexico, the Caribbean, and other places. I estimate he was home perhaps less than half the time, and there were many departures and homecomings. These were the highlights of my relationship with him and my recollection was that it did not matter that much to me whether he was physically “home” or away on business. My mother played both roles and did give me a broad exposure to
Looking at the lessons to be learned from this relationship, I can understand that one needs to look at who the other person in any relationship really is and what they are working on. Given that understanding, the overall context of the relationship and the day-to-day interactions can be viewed at being the best that could be at that time given who the parties are. Also, one can view the relationship as designed to be lessons for the achievement of the purposes for which this lifetime was chosen. In my father’s case, I finally “got” that our interaction was designed to help me achieve beyond what “normal” would be. Trying to please someone who would seemingly only be “pleased” with perfection sets a pretty high standard.
As indicated above, my mother was a stay-at-home mom who had been a stenographer, after working at her mother’s knitting shop from an early age. The disparity in age between my sister and me, plus other factors I still can’t clearly list, created a distance that has never been bridged. We were never in the same school at the same time. Our interests have never overlapped. Our goals and values have been universes apart. Perhaps it was, in part, because I was Mother’s boy and Susan was Daddy’s girl.
I regret not being closer to my sister and certainly would advise parents who want more than one child to have them closer in age. My sister’s life experiences lead her to become a very close-family centered person, her children and their children being paramount. Her husband had his relationship with his family completely severed over disagreements in the family business that he, his brothers, and his father were involved with. Perhaps his karma in this life was to make up for some prior transgression. He ended his life early – perhaps wanting to move on to a more complete incarnation next time. Susie was a brilliant business woman – at least in the venture she co-founded and help guide with husband Harvey. They conceived of and created “The Great American Party Store” in Northern New Jersey. Everything for your party – whatever size or price. And the big money-maker turned out to be Halloween costumes. After opening several other stores, they sold the business and moved North of Phoeniz, Arizona to a million dollar plus home community with four golf courses. Harvey got involved with real estate which was not his strong suit. That ended up creating a turn in their financial circumstances.
As mentioned, my father was not physically home a good half of the time – traveling mostly to Mexico with other trips to the Caribbean. His law office specialized in representing U.S. clients in various international ventures, focusing on Italy and Mexico before WWII, and Mexico and the Caribbean nations during and after the war. The Mexico office was larger than the New York one, with many Mexican lawyers. There was a lot of coming and going. When he was at home, Dad focused on friends, card games (gin rummy), the beach and some family events.
The only time I ever remember him being involved with a game I played was when I was in high school on Long Island. There was some kind of softball game with sons and dads. Funny how that sticks in my memory. The beach was the one place out of the house that we shared together. I spent innumerable hours surfing the waves or making architectural wonders from sand that would not survive the tsunamis that high tide brought in. Mom wasn’t a “soccer mom” – partly because I never played soccer (who even heard of the game in my youth?). I don’t remember her (or Dad) ever attending a baseball game I played in or any of the pick-up games we played in the vacant lot next door. Later, when I was a member of my high school and college golf teams, they were no shows. So I played for the joy of it and to test myself and be in companionship with team-mates.
My territory as a child consisted primarily of one large city block. It also had a variety of levels. Our apartment house complex was made up of six separate units of six stories each. They were connected at the basement level. There was an entrance at each end and the elevator banks stopped at “B.” The connected basements jogged back and forth and in some of the interstices were the laundry rooms, some storage space, machinery rooms and some places for ghosts and ghouls. At the South end, there was enough space to play roller-skate hockey. Although I didn’t comprehend this space as such, it was the purgatory of Sunlit gardens and of the denizens who inhabited the spaces above. Rooms off the dark and dingy walkways were where clothes were laundered, garbage was collected, electric was routed, telephones entered and exited, and where huge boilers sent heat up above to radiators hung with water jackets. It was a passage from one end to another – where the voyager could conjure up fantasies and get his heart beat up when strange noises occurred, shadows appeared, and slurred words were heard and uninhabited footsteps occurred.
The Lot:
The part of the “block” that wasn’t occupied by the apartment complex was a vacant lot. I am not sure of its dimensions – perhaps it was the size of a football field or a little larger. When I visited the area many years later, there was a supermarket and parking lot there. That couldn’t destroy the soulful hours and memories hidden beneath those tributes to commercialism. And where are the vacant lots today where the freedom and creativity that the youths of the past was unleashed?
In any event, the lot was a major part of my outdoor life and framed a good part of my youth. It served me as farm, multiple sports field, stadium, crosswalk, battleground, hiding place. Its name was “the Lot.” Across from the Lot were a few attached homes and a small store that sold newspapers, cigarettes, gum, some toys – the predecessor of our gas station convenience store of today. The BIG attraction of this store was that it sold Duncan yo-yo’s. And, most importantly, the Duncan yo-yo man would periodically come. He would demonstrate all the tricks: walking the dog, around the world, cat-in-the-cradle, multiple versions of tricks I don’t remember the names of – and we kids would practice and practice, spinning our yo-yo’s hour after hour.
During World War II, the Lot was converted into a “Victory Garden.” Neighbors had plots of ground and would mark off their plots and grow vegetables. I guess this was pretty much just a symbolic effort to allow people to feel they were doing all they could to support the war effort. Fast forward and contrast that to the way we have observed subsequent “war efforts,” and what “sacrifices” have been made. What happened?
Other things that stick in my mind include collecting gum wrappers and the innards of cigarette packs – what was called “silverfoil.” We would pick silver-backed papers off the street, in trash cans, wherever, and pack these into large balls. Somehow these got to where they could be used to support the “boys in the army” – in what manner I remain uninstructed. We crushed “tin” cans and made bundles of newsprint. There were periodic drives to collect scrap and paper. We also collected cans of fat at home Again, I am not sure what the fat was supposed to be used for or how this supported the war effort, but we collected fat.
{For more direct memory discussion of impressions of WW II, the SeniorNet website – http://discussions.seniornet.org has an extensive dialogue as well as references to other publications.]
Other effects of the War on my “gang” of impressionable youths in Brooklyn include the studies we did of the shapes of allied and enemy (mostly German) aircraft. The idea was that we could help with spotting planes. We got cards showing the silhouettes of planes from the top and bottom, sides and forward views. These were part of the “flash cards” that were part of our growing up along with math and spelling. Maybe there was a Rorschach test component we weren’t aware of. Looking at the images used, one can certainly see lots of the outlines of the enemy aircraft of that time. The air raid wardens for each block were a part of our lives and we looked up to them in their helmets and arm bands. We would go to the roof of our building with binoculars and check out aircraft flying overhead. Every time there was an aircraft noise anywhere, I would strain to see it and sort the image against the outlines in my head. One can only imagine what the children in Great Britain, in other of the threatened European countries, even the German and Japanese children, studied and felt. I had lots of nightmares of squadrons of enemy bombers massing overhead and the explosions of their bombs coming nearer and nearer. It was a scary way for a young person to wake. The newsreels and movies also contributed to the scary images.
My father wasn’t drafted. He was deferred because of allergies, I think. I was somewhat disappointed – other kids had their dads off being soldiers. It wasn’t as if I would have had him suddenly torn away from our home as discussed, he was away at least halftime as part of his work. He did get us some privileges such as increased ration books and additional gas coupons for our LaSalle, a car with pull-up back seats. I am not sure why we got them – something related to certain responsibilities he had. I never knew anything of this – too bad. Rationing that related to meat, cigarettes, shoes, sugar, coffee, etc. was, for me, more related to the stamps than to the scarcity. At age five, there isn’t a lot of memory of missing things -- of being affected by shortages. It was more like being a part of a game. Listening to the adults and watching how they prized the ration stamps was just part of the landscape. And, there wasn’t that much overall complaining, what with being patriotic and having lived for years in a depression-related consumer economy.
Blackouts were pretty confusing for me. The top half of each car’s headlights were masked – supposedly to cut the glare or light transmission. Maybe this is something that we ought to permanently consider legislating not only for cars but also all our public lighting. This issue came up in my life more than once while considering responsible development in New York State, part of which related to the need to responding to this aspect of environmental considerations. We also needed to keep our curtains closed when the blackout signals sounded (sirens). In those days, it was assumed there would be time for warning the populace if a raid was to take place. Things were kind of eerie with the limited lighting during those “tests,” lights quickly being extinguished and silence reigning.
VJ day, August 14, 1945, was a memorable one for me. My mother, sister and I were going to Mexico City to meet my father. I remember being in a taxi before dawn, with big barn fires being lit along our route to La Guardia airport. I understood the celebration and yet was removed - an observer. The flight was in a DC-3, unpressurized and certainly not set up for luxurious travel. We stopped in Nashville, Tennessee and had a tire blow. All were taken off the plane and sent to a hotel. The next day we resumed our flight and were able to get to Mexico City. I remember often going to La Guardia to see father off or return. At that time, one would park outside the gate and could directly enter to meet or send off the passenger. The roof of the terminal had been set up as an observation platform; with a charge to get up (I think 25 cents). There were those binoculars on a pole for viewing the planes or whatever else. It was a way to pass the time waiting. Waiting, perhaps the activity we as humans most share and the (in)activity that perhaps consumes the most time.
V for Victory and Gardens:
I have fond – if faded – memories of the Victory Gardens. This certainly may relate to the number of past lives I have viewed that involved planting, caring for, and harvesting crops. The strongest images and tastes relating to these Victory Gardens (yes, I can still close my eyes and experience this taste) were the “Mickeys” we would make. What were Mickeys? Well, you dig down deep in the soil and pick out potatoes that grew under green foliage. Outside the garden, you make a deep hole, and drop the potatoes at the bottom that is lined with rocks that have been heated in a fire. You then collect a bunch more firewood -- some twigs and small sticks to get the fire started, and then some bigger and bigger pieces so that they will burn for an hour or two --creating embers and keeping the rocks hot.
When the embers have died back to a dim glow, you dig below the embers and ashes and pull up the potatoes, now charred like lumps of charcoal (careful to not pick up the rocks or bite into them!). I am not sure where the phrase “hot potato” came from, but one source certainly could have been the Mickeys we pulled out of the embers. The condiment of choice with the treat was kosher salt. Butter had no role, as butter was a pretty precious item during the “War.” The center – the reward – was a delicious white core that was a great treat. One of the extra bonuses from the Mickey caper was the messed up faces we would get from biting into the center of the potato through the burnt skin. It was pretty much a badge of honor and a fun way to get attention.
Most, if not all, of the gardens were done individually rather than cooperatively. I vaguely remember plots fenced off with a variety of crops growing. I do know that I have always felt most “connected” to the planet and to the past when my fingers are stuck into the soil and I am caring for plants.
After the war, the Lot became a mixture of playground and battleground. My recollections morph into elements of West Side Story, with our “enemy” being an entity called “Patsy’s Gang.” The older kids told us stories of the Italians from several blocks away “attacking” across the lot to capture kids from our apartment complex (which consisted largely of Jewish families whose origins were from many different European countries). There was a fear of some kind of “invasion” that was fostered upon us mostly, I suspect, as a tale rather than fact. Anyway, it was enough to create a fear syndrome and to get the younger set into line and organized. Our defense weapons of choice became rocks – they were plentiful, could be easily carried and hidden, and one could practice using them at any and all times. I had at least one “score” – a rock as missile I threw that clipped the head of a target I understood to be an attacker. I did not know who he was and was certainly caught up in the excitement of the moment. My enemy was hit and bloodied. It turned out he was one of the Sunlit Garden kids.
Somehow my victim’s mother found out who the attacker was and visited my mother. It was not a pleasant experience to say the least. I did admit to the deed and did indicate I was “sorry.” I got that this type of violence could be very dangerous and lead to consequences that – clearly looked at – were not desirable and that were real. I wonder if all those hours that our youth spend looking at cartoons where the characters commit untold numbers of violent deeds on each other and quickly rebound, unharmed, to again face new attacks with similar consequences. Television programs and motion pictures, most of them carrying graphic violence, carry in my opinion similar messages – look, there is all kinds of violence, the heroes almost always survive, while the bad guys (rarely bad gals) get their just desserts. Our press carries similar kinds of messages. The reality of the actual effect of violence in our lives has for most of us been muffled if not misdirected. Yet it continues and escalates. And, from time to time, the “real world” is visited by deranged people who attack others for no apparent reason.
I have recollections of alarms that “Patsy’s Gang” was about to attack and the gathering of our “troops” to defend the homeland. One memory relates to my joining a group on the roof of our apartment house, six stories up. This was during winter and our defense consisted of rather large snowballs stacked up in cannonball-like piles. Maybe some had rocks at their core. Looking back, it had elements of the King’s Castle being stormed and the defenders at the ramparts with a variety of weapons. On that particular occasion, we did put out “decoys,” a few youths to draw in the enemy. They came running across the lot, followed by a group chasing them. The decoys disappeared into the sanctuary of the basement while we hurled great quantities of snow down at the invaders. I don’t remember any injuries but do remember a shared joy and celebratory feeling about this ploy.
The matter of our “gangs” was eventually handled in a very civilized way by someone who was quite wise, I suspect. I don’t know who it was --whether it was a neighbor, social worker, school official, police or who. What did happen was that an athletic league was formed. To enter, you had to create a club that would field its own team. A group of the Sunlit Garden kids were organized, gave ourselves a name, and got fancy jackets with both the club name and our own names signed in fancy scrip embroidered on them. We became the “Olympics,” with blue jackets and gold letters in script. The jackets did fade in time to a purplish hue, but no matter – I think I ate, slept, and lived 24 hours a day in my jacket. To be a member of a special club with jackets that mirrored those worn by our great heroes: The Brooklyn Dodgers . . . WOW!
We played baseball and football. The games were contentious with arguments. And, there were adult referees and rules to allay potential violence. How much of all this is real, how much is grafted from the media, movies and fantasy, I can’t really say. Given the rest of my memories of the days at Sunlit gardens and environs, this stuff seems like a bright ray of sunlight. I “belonged” to a group and my identity was defined, in part, by being a member thereof.
To the North of our “block” was a corner of stores. I don’t remember any supermarkets in my early life. Rather there would be small shops where one type of product was sold. So the butcher shop, the produce store, the delicatessen, the fish store, a hardware place, and of course, the Corner Store where the song “Standing on the Corner watching all the girls go by” could have been coined. [I can imagine past souls attending many “markets” where the goods that were available would be offered.] We kids would meet at the corner, hang-out there when nothing was going on, wait there while Mom would go shopping (I never remember Dad going shopping), and have the corner store serve as a second living room.
At the Corner Store’s entrance was the counter with lots of candies, some in jars. There were newspapers and magazines. In the back, some booths languished in dull light. The main part of the store was taken up with a long counter and stools that swiveled. Here was the home of the lime-ricky, two-cents plain, sour ball, marshmallow twist, cherry coke. There were probably some kinds of solid food I ate there, perhaps a tuna fish or grilled cheese sandwich, I don’t remember that, but the other “stuff” – you bet! Burgers and fries were not the food of choice (or perhaps even offered).
My other favorite store was up the block. It was a delicatessen, with high glass counters with smoked fish, cold cuts and home-made salads in array. There was sawdust on the floor. The big attraction to me was the large wooden barrels full of pickles – sour, half-sour, and just a’chill’n. We would get offered one on a visit – and would go fishing with our hands in the brine to pick out a good one. I have come to really enjoy food shopping – (I mightily resist any other kind of shopping and do pretty much most on the internet) -- spending time in an upper scale supermarket, looking for new products, perusing labels, and comparing prices, thinking of combinations and permutations for the next meal or meals. I think cooking is one of the higher art forms and practices.
My Hole-In-The-Roof Gang:
I did have one major regular excursion from the immediate neighborhood to the then “village” that was a bigger commercial district that was between Coney Island and Ocean Avenue. This excursion was to go to the movies. Our movie theater was the Sheldon. This was located near the Sheepshead Bay exit of the elevated line that came from Manhattan and ended in Coney Island. The Sheldon was our home for Saturday afternoons. For twelve cents, we would enter and get a comic book and candy bar. The price probably went up in later days – but I do remember that one!
My favorite candy was Peanut Chews, little bars of peanuty stuff covered with chocolate. Sometimes I can still find them –and although they touch a memory bar, it just ain’t the same. There was one show then – all afternoon. We would get dropped off around noon. The theater needed some work – actually there was a hole in the roof that leaked, so on rainy days it paid to get there early to avoid that area. The Sheldon seats were ample. Good thing, as most days they were filled with more than one occupant – perhaps that is how the low admission price could be maintained. Then there was the matron: a scary lady with a flashlight that could render terror in the heart of the objects of her venom. Her patrols certainly keep most of us in line for the hours we occupied our part of a seat.
So what was on the screen? Well, first remember there was no television then. So we had to get all of our visual input in one large dose. Here’s the way it went:
The Newsreel – headlines flashed at us, then a big voice would begin a narration that was illustrated by pictures of allied bombers blasting some city, or troops charging from fox holes, or battle ships firing those big guns, or landing craft on a Pacific beach. Finally there were the crowds welcoming our boys riding by in tanks and trucks. We would get the weekly progress of the War from our trips to the Sheldon and certainly felt part of what was happening from the newsreels.
Cartoons – anywhere from 5 to many more – probably necessary after the stuff that was on the newsreel. My favorites? Definitely Woody Woodpecker, Heckle and Jeckel, and Bugs Bunny.
The Serials: These were why you had to go every week – constant suspense with the hero always in some disastrous situation. There were cowboys, Flash Gordon, and others, always seemingly off’d at the conclusion of the week’s episode. It was amazing how they always escaped through some mechanism that we apparently missed the week before. And, yes, there were damsels in distress.
Double Feature: We were then primed for two full length features, with the total running time for the entire outing running to five or six hours. We didn’t obsess or even care to see a feature from the beginning. In fact, it was sometimes more fun to see the latter part of a film and then decide if we wanted to sit through it completely again from the beginning.
That was a Saturday afternoon!
The Media: Radio and then Television!
The radio was perhaps the best friend I had in my youth. I had my regular programs – ones that stimulated my imagination and connected me to a world “out there.” There was the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, the Invisible Man, Fiber Magee and Molly, Fred Allen, Amos and Andy, and Jack Benny. I was allowed an hour an evening and truly looked forward to the shows. There was also the show sponsored by Ovaltine (which I still haven’t tasted) where I got the secret decoder ring they advertised. Every week I would diligently get the coded message and decipher it, hoping to get some truly special revelation. This was one of the first examples in my life of having an expectation that lead to a disappointment. Hope for some great revelation was built up, only to be answered by some quite mundane communication, usually urging the decoder to tell their mommies to go buy some Ovaltine.
The entire expectation build-up that was and is fueled by the advertising world – and which is amplified to the nth degree by the explosion in the media that has come to occupy our lives instead of having the freedom and imagination that went with it as my generation grew up – has lead to a different way of looking at life and its “rewards” for the generations that have grown up in this different world. Perhaps that is why I got so involved with “HighPlay” and George Pfeiffer (See Chapter ___) where the bottom line we promoted was looking at ways to recapture that joy and innocence of our youth, and the creativity that came with that experience.
Perhaps this disappointment or “rip-off” was best illustrated in the motion picture “The Christmas Story” where Ralphie gets a similar disappointment. By the way, the narrator in that film, Jean Shepherd, was one of my great “heroes.” I listened to him at late hours on the radio through law school, and for some years both before and after. I was fascinated by someone who could be so “off the cuff” for hours and hours, holding the listener’s interest and then getting them out of their everyday world, their role playing and identification with what they did in that world, instead of tapping into who they really were. Shepherd would also urge his listeners to undertake some (at the time) rather outrageous actions like when you come up to a toll both pay for the car behind you or he would ask listeners to put their radios out on the window sill and turn the volume way up high. He would then yell to the neighbors to undertake some ribald task or just become real people..
To know more about Jean Shepherd click on his name.
Jean Parker Shepherd was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he went on to work in the steel mills. He served in the Army Signal Corps before entering the arts. In the 1950s, he began a long career as a radio personality telling stories of his youth, commenting on current topics and performing silly songs. While at WOR-AM in New York, he also broadcast live night club acts from the Limelight in Greenwich Village. He wrote for Playboy and other magazines. His articles were published in a series of books including "The America of George Ade", "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, and Other Disasters", "A Fistful of Fig Newtons" and "The Ferrari in the Bedroom". During the 1970s, he did two series of humorous programs as well as several "American Playhouse" (1982) episodes for PBS. In 1983, he wrote his first feature film, A Christmas Story (1983), putting together many tales of his semi-autobiographical character "Ralphie". A sequel, "My Summer Story" (aka It Runs in the Family (1994)) was made in 1994.
My favorite radio program was the Lone Ranger – that big guy from out of the past with his sidekick Tonto and the great horse Silver – always doing right. Later on in life, I would be mesmerized by the heroes that would take on seemingly impossible challenges, like Don Quixote. I don’t know how often I would stay home from school because of illness – but I do remember listening to soap operas like the Romance of Helen Trent (its theme would later in my life be the tune for the Alma Mater of Colgate University). They expanded my exposure to things that weren’t part of my “regular” life listening to the trials and tribulations of the those occupying the soap opera world.
I was also privileged to experience Fiorello LaGuardia, the diminutive mayor of New York City, read the funnies on Sunday morning on the radio. There was a newspaper strike and the feisty mayor didn’t want to deprive the kiddies of New York from their funnies. I don’t recall newspapers being in our house, although I am sure my father read one or more every day. Maybe he got them in the office or read them on the subway. My reading at home doesn’t come large onto my life’s screen until we moved to Long Island. There may have been books and magazines and newspapers around, I just don’t remember them.
Our living room at Sunlit Gardens in Brooklyn was at a 180-degree turn from the end of the entrance hall. It had two windows with a fire escape outside. It seemed to me to be a big room. In 1947 father brought home one of the first television sets in the neighborhood. It was a Dumont, with a round screen, in an enormous cabinet. At one time, we put some kind of a screen in front that had the primary colors on it to give a semblance of color, but black and white it was. When the TV came, we had no problem getting “baby sitters.” Our living room became a stadium when the boxing matches featuring Joe Louis were on. Mother would fix a mess of snacks and it seemed like the whole building came in. I felt invaded and developed some resentment against the neighbors who acted as if the television was their own. .
Joe Louis was perhaps the first black I was exposed to. And, to me and those around me, he was a great gentleman. Jackie Robinson was another black figure at that time. I heard fairly derogatory and negative comments about black people in my house, the “N” word being used. I had no direct contact or exposure to black people at that time in my life. There were no blacks in our neighborhood, none I can remember in my grade school. Those blacks in our Brooklyn neighborhood were domestics. Outside of sports figures, the media didn’t expose viewers to minorities. That certainly helped color my vision. That changed some when we moved to Long Island with about 20% of my high school class being of African-American descent. . It was not until college that I had daily contact with African-Americans and other dark skinned contemporaries, ending up living with them, and sharing some of their lives and dreams.
Anyway, I had some other favorite programs I could watch on TV. Milton Berle’s show was a big attraction. His slapstick seemed to suit my sense of humor at that time – geared at an 11 year-old mentality. I remember well that we got to be in the audience of the show. It was the first television show I attended. I was most impressed with the technology of how the cameras worked and the warm-up that was done for the audience, including the signs for quiet and applause. My favorite kid’s show was Howdy Doody. Buffalo Bob, Clarabelle the Clown and all the puppets like Howdy, Princess SummerFallWinterSpring, and the others kept my interest. Then there was the Peanut Gallery where the visiting kids would sit and perhaps get noticed.
I had a big moment (may we call it a “claim to fame?”) when I got to go to the show and sit in the Peanut Gallery. I was somewhat appalled by Bob Smith’s open voicing of Howdy’s dialogue that was not shown on the tube. That was all cured when I was picked to play a game of tick-tack-toe with “H’s” and “D’s” with another Peanut Gallery member. I came up a winner and I remember going home with a pile of prizes, including a half dozen games and a very big smile. I wonder if a video-tape (did they have them then?) exists. It would be a gas.
My attraction to the media, to radio and television, has not diminished. I recognize that I probably have some form of ADD, and that having these “distractions” on-going while I focus on something else seems to help. They also mask the tinnitus that I have had for several decades now – an affliction that affects millions (the estimate is that some 50 million Americans have this affliction) that the medical profession basically dismisses. Often with the media playing, I have no consciousness of what actually is going on. This is quite contrary to the experience of my life partners (all three, Joyce, Elaine and Jeanne) who seemed to be completely tuned into what was playing. I would say I am a “tv-holic”, and use television as a sedative and relaxer on a very regular basis.
No Julia Childs:
My involvement in shopping and food preparation was pretty limited as a kid. I do remember, at a very early age – maybe under four – getting up before my mother and making the coffee. I would fill the percolator bottom, put in measures of coffee (I can’t remember how many) and turn on the gas. A big trust for a little kid. I would also turn it off at the right time (or so I thought). Mom would wake and need that coffee or she would be grumpy and Arthur didn’t want that.
Back to apartment 4D. At the end of the entrance hall was the dining room, off that the kitchen. The windows looked out to the South where there was a small grassy courtyard, not used for play. The kitchen had a small table by the opening to the dining room near the window. There was a gas stove and an electric refrigerator. The radio was in the dining room.
My first forays to the refrigerator would be to get relief from the god-awful wheezing, tight chest, and scariness that my asthma (which began before I was three), would bring on. I remember night-time -breath-seeking trips to the fridge to get the nebulizer, a glass beaker type arrangement with a bulb on one end. I had to squeeze the dark liquid into a spray that would allow me to breathe again. I did this even before I started making coffee. Asthma has been a companion all my life. In my teen years and twenties, it took a holiday. And then, like a long-lost friend, returned to accompany me through the rest of my life, showing up in the cold, when cats were around, when smoke of pretty much any kind reached my lungs, and during strenuous exercise. That rescue squirter in my pocket has saved me more times than I like to remember. And, it just ain’t fun and restrictive in life, whether physically or mentally. The current spat of drugs certainly help to keep one in the game. I rarely need any help from the rescue tube in my pocket these days – and it is a part of my life.
Given the importance of food in my later life, my recollections of early favorites and participation in cooking are dim if not nil. As I came to know some Chinese brothers and sisters better, they admitted, perhaps even boasted, that they “lived to eat” rather than ate to live. I can understand that. Food and cooking became important to me in my teen years. I have had a love affair with it since and, like other love affairs in my life, it has involved more than one favorite. I had a reasonably broad exposure to food varieties as a youngster. At this time in my life, I have come to understand that sensible eating, sometimes building on the vegan diet has both major ecological value as well as great health benefits – and I have done it, with a non-puritanical attitude.
In one of my attempts at weight loss, I met with a hypnotist. One exercise was to pick a food I didn’t like – the object was to visualize that undesirable food whenever I wanted to have a snack or “treat.” Picking that item took lots of thought! I finally came up with a serving of tripe that I had ordered in Southern France. I thought it was a fish that I had at another time. My order evolved into a battle with the French waiter who insisted I wouldn’t like it. He was so right! It ended up in my napkin, hidden so I wouldn’t further embarrass myself. And that event, plus an incident in Mexico where, on a visit when I was perhaps nine – it could have been that VJ trip in 1945 – I attended a “fiesta” at a government minister’s estate. The youngsters were relegated to their own table. I was the sole “gringo” there. I was told that a red mix in a bottle was catsup. Pouring it on my burger, I was blasted by the strongest chili that was ever created under the sun. My fellows thought this was just the greatest fun. My mouth burning crazily, I jumped into the pool which was full of dirt and frogs. I finally came back into the real world after drinking large quantities of milk.
While we are on the subject of eating, two restaurants in the neighborhood were important in my early years. One was a Chinese restaurant on the other side of Ocean Avenue up about three blocks. We would visit on occasion, my father always ordering chicken chow mien. My mother and I, and later my sister, were somewhat more adventurous, enjoying spare ribs, egg rolls, wonton soup, fried rice, I would learn later about the great cooking, delight, and concern that the Chinese would have for food and its preparation – including unbelievable feasts I was privileged to have in China itself. (See below in the Chapter on Ginseng Diplomacy) Although Chinese restaurants would later be an important source of “take-out” in my life, I don’t remember this being the case early on. Pizza was not something I knew early. Mercifully, we were spared the fast food revolution that came later.
How About Them Clams?
The major institution in my early life in Brooklyn wasn’t a museum, a temple, even Ebbets Field or Coney Island – it was Lundy’s Restaurant at the bottom of Ocean Avenue across from the water of Sheepshead Bay. Lundy’s was a weekly ritual on Sundays– at least when my father was home. It still exists in a replication done in a small part of the former colossus. Situated on two floors in a building that was a big block square, Lundy’s, in its heyday, seated about 2,200 people at one time. It had its own fishing fleet, oyster and clam beds, and I think it also had its own Caribbean Island from where it imported all its waiters.
Owned by three brothers, it was always a mystery what the F.W.I.L. Lundy’s stood for. I am given to understand from internet research that it was Frederick, who took charge and used his names: Frederick William Irving Lundy. Why not? The name and what it represented has to be etched into the gustatory gray matter of millions. The other brothers are (hopefully) resting in peace.
Walking in from a variety of entrances, you immediately noticed there was no one to seat you. My favorite entrance was from the corner of Ocean and Emmons, which took you through the bar where they served clams and oysters. The smell was very distinctive and there were several men, in aprons, with special knives, who would magically slice the shelled wonders picked from vats of ice, laying them out on platters with those little round hollow crackers, with loads of horseradish, catsup and lemon combined to make the dipping sauce. Anyway, once inside, one had to find a table that was empty or wait by one where the occupants seemed to be toward the end of their meal. The place would most often have every table full, with hundreds waiting in the isles for a chance to be seated – balancing their wanting to pick up the people at the table and move them out -- with some degree of politeness in allowing those seated to enjoy their dessert and conversation.
One important element in eating at Lundy’s was to figure out how to get served. As indicated, I understand that all the waiters came from the same island in the Caribbean - from which one I am not sure. They were light-skinned Negroes, who were quite independent – particularly when it came to giving service. The system they worked under was quite unusual. When they left the kitchen with an order, they became personally liable for paying it. This was designed to make sure the establishment got paid for what it put out and that there was no “hanky-panky” in preparing the bill and collecting the proper amount. I suspect working in this enormous place, with perhaps more tables than they could handle over long hours, would take its toll. Eventually, it literally did – when they tried to unionize and the owners shut the place down rather than give in. In any event, we had many occasions where, after finally getting a table where we were seated, we waited for what seemed like hours to get our orders taken and for the food to arrive.
I remember we finally had good experiences with one of the waiters. Perhaps my father finally unlocked his wallet and left a reasonable tip. In any event, we would then make sure that we found where that waiter was and get a table there. Getting service and served was half the battle won. And why all this furor and crowding? How’s this? I remember “The Shore Dinner” being priced at $1.25. For that sum, one got:
·A tray with celery, carrot sticks, olives;
·Melt-in-your-mouth biscuits with fresh butter;
·A cup of clam chowder, full of clams, potatoes and veggies;
·A big bowl of “steamers” – long necked clams that were nut sweet, dipped in broth and butter;
·A broiled lobster (or half a lobster, half a broiled chicken);
·Huckleberry pie (my favorite) or apple, blueberry – with vanilla ice-cream of course.
I don’t remember if beverages were included. They probably weren’t and it didn’t matter. I do remember, years and years later, riding the subway from Brooklyn Heights or Manhattan to Sheepshead Bay, having one of these meals (the price was considerably more) and groaning all the way home, swearing never to do it again and secretly smiling within that I had had another Shore Dinner.
Lundy’s closed in 1979. Frederick lived above the restaurant and, I understand, “lost it,” firing shots through the door when the police came to check on him. Today, Lundy’s has reopened in part of the original building under different management. There is also a Lundy’s in Times Square, New York, seating some 800 according to the internet. For those wanting to learn more and recreate some of the dishes, they can check out a cook book called “Lundy’s: Reminiscences & Recipes From Brooklyn’s Legendary Restaurant” by Robert Cornfield and Kathy Gunst that was published by Harper Collins in 1998.
I had one of those strange coincidences in the late 1980’s when, as a realtor, I had the pleasure and privilege to work with Antoinette Chautempts Samuels, who was then involved with development for New York State as the Director of the World Trade Council. She was well connected with the State, her husband Howard J. Samuels having run for governor a number of times (1962, 1970, 1974). He never won the primary, however. Antoinette, was also well connected in Europe, her father having been the Prime Minister of France four times!
Click the hyperlink here for more on Camille Chautemps, Antoinette’s father.
Antoinette was a dynamite woman, fixed on creating a dream and using who she was and who and what she knew to realize that dream. The project we worked on was definitely almost and was not done primarily due to environmental concerns about new roads and too much traffic. Bummer!
Through a co-brokerage inquiry I received from Fritz Schwartz, a real estate broker from Long Island, I got involved with trying to find a large property that would be suitable for a theme park – dealing with the European heritage of the settlers of this country. The idea was to recreate a representative village from each of the countries that reflected the way people lived at the time the first settlers from that country arrived on these shores. There would be shops, costumed individuals, and inns – a living museum like Williamsburg. Visitors would be able to stay overnight above the shops. There would also be recreational facilities, carriage rides, etc. The facility would be a living history and support from investors from France and other European countries was indicated. I got to play big time broker and used a limo, helicopters, and a variety of contacts on this one. Antoinette got some relatively big-time investors from France interested in the project and we went about doing a lot of work
The place we found that would be most suitable for this project was one that had been put together by – you guessed it – Frederick Lundy on some wonderful land just above Ellenville, New York, some 90 miles from New York City. He had put together a number of parcels over many years, including two wonderful estates. Apparently Lundy had then been “taken” by his accountant and secretary and they created a situation where he lost the property, it ending up in the hands of some apparently less than savory Lithuanians who had, among other things, a bank in Queens, New York.
A lot of planning was done for this project. I quietly worked to secure options for adjacent properties to provide access and protection. This was the right project at the wrong time. It did not go ahead because of environmental opposition relating to the completion of a four lane road that was deemed necessary for the project to bring visitors from New York City. Although this road project had been in the planning process for many years, the environmental lobby was able to stop it. With the continued decline of this area, the access road remains at two lanes with the potential of this project having been lost.
A KID GROWS – PART II:
Back to Brooklyn and Sunlit Gardens:
The entrances to each unit of apartments at Sunlit Gardens were recessed from Ocean Avenue, a main thoroughfare that was bisected by trolley tracks. Over the rails in the street were electric wires for the trolleys to attach to. One of my secret ambitions was to emulate the kids who would hop on the back of the trolleys. They would keep their heads below the windows so the conductor, who was also the driver, could not see them and so they would get a free ride. When, later on, I would ride the trolley daily to Cunningham Junior High School and occasionally to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers, once in a while I would hang on the back – once in a rare while - as I knew it could be dangerous.
Ocean Avenue’s foot rested on Emmons Avenue, the road that ran along the bay named after the sheepshead fish. [The Sheepshead Bay area in the later part of the nineteenth century was a noted sporting center. A horse race track operated by the Coney Island Jockey Club was a major draw. The track was converted to motor car racing in 1915 when Harry Harkness and associates built a three and a half million dollar Sheepshead Speedway, then considered the fastest automobile track in the world.]
As stated above, the golden ring on the big toe was Lundy’s restaurant. Along the bay, there were piers, built by New York City in the year I was born. Along these nine piers, a fifty vessel fishing fleet was moored. Some of the boats were charter vessels, taking as many as two hundred passengers on fishing cruises. My mother would buy her fish from the boats – leaving me with a lifelong love of really fresh fish. This love has involved into a passion for sushi.
I would drown many a worm off the side of the railings around the bay and from the wooden bridge that crossed it. We would fish with salt water equipment, long rods, fairly big reels, sinkers on the line and sometimes bobbers. I didn’t fish again after I reached 11 years old until my son Raven became a fanatic. He started at two and a half years of age and to this day fishing is a major part of his life. He is a wildlife biologist and spent years working in Montana’s rivers and lakes – taking care of fish. Raven and I took many a trip to exotic places to fish – places like Costa Rica, British Columbia, the Sea of Cortes and the Pacific off Baja, and many lakes, rivers, and sounds up and down the East Coast of the U.S. and elsewhere. I have passed many an hour “being a good Dad” while Raven fished. My catches in Sheepshead Bay started with eels, fluke and flounder (if you always lie on your side, why not two eyes on the same side) and evolved to tennis shoes, tin cans, plastic bags, and sometimes a tiny fish whose name we never knew.
The head of Ocean Avenue ran into Bedford Avenue, one of the boundaries of Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. All the youngsters in my circle were fanatic baseball fans. We were all ardent rooters for “dem Bums,” although one or two of the “gang” -- desiring to be sophisticates, made noises about the Yankees. The arch enemy was the Giants from the Bronx. Later on, my interest in baseball was squashed when the Bums left for Lost Angeles. In my exuberant youth, I did on many occasions hope the trolley car in from of our building on Ocean Avenue and end up at Ebbets Field, where for sixty cents one could get into the bleachers behind center field. On more than one occasion we thought we could affect the outcome of the game by capturing sunlight into the hand mirrors we had brought and shining the reflection into the eyes of the hated Giant’s batter. At least there was some comfort in thinking we had some effect on the game. There was a hole at the top of the chain link fence that warded off the bleachers from the rest of the seats in Ebbets Field and some small fans could wiggle through, perhaps ending up in a “reserved” or even a box seat. That usually lasted only a little while until the ushers came down and “suggested” we vacate those seats.
Fast forward to the time when my father was involved (as an attorney with offices in Mexico) with some of the major league players who had “skipped” out to play baseball in Mexico. I remember Sal Maglie being among them. In any event, this mishmash led to his getting to know Branch Rickey, the owner of the Dodgers and an invitation for both of us to sit in Mr. Rickey’s box behind the Dodgers’ dugout. Talk about pig heaven! I got a ball signed by the whole team at that time, managed by Leo Durocher, with Dixie Walker, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Duke Synder, Ralph Branca, Vic Lombardi, Clyde King, Dan Bankhead, Bruce Edwards, Howard Shultz, Spider Jorgensen, Carl Furillo, Pete Reiser, et al. This team won the world series and had 1,807,526 fans jam into the rather small stadium. And how much did these stars make in salary? Well, the internet tells me that Jackie Robinson and Duke Snyder both took home the grand amount of $5,000 each! WOW!
Here is a summary: basketball; boxball, box baseball; hide-and-seek; hopscotch (potsy); Johnny-on-a-pony; jump rope; Mother May I (giant steps); off-the-stoop (curb); punchball; red light, green light; red rover; ring-o-levio; skully; slug (king-queen or Chinese handball; stickball;
Among the "Other" games listed were (in no particular order): Saluggi; Freeze Tag; Statues; Iron Tag; Marbles; Pitching pennies; Flipping Cards; Hit the Penny; "A My Name Is..." and other ball-bouncing, leg-turning games; Off the Wall; Johnny May I Cross The Golden River; Slap Ball; Running Bases; Ghost.
The Circle:
Back again to Sunlit Gardens and the games we would play. From my parent’s bedroom, I could look out at the backyard area where there was a concrete circle, bounded by grassy and dirt areas. The back boundary was a wire fence perhaps ten feet high, separating the backyards of two-story homes facing Twenty-First Street. The other three sides were mostly the six-story apartment building faced with windows. There were openings on the North and South sides, with the North end being an entrance from the tunnel under 2820, the South end being a continuation of the backyard path, ending at the underpass under 2860. This route saw many things pass by. I remember the call – “High Cash Clothes” - by a man leading a horse and wagon, the wagon containing used clothing. Then there was the bell of another man who pushed his cart. He was the knife and scissors sharpener. I liked to watch the sparks fly off his wheel. I suspect having sharp instruments was not a problem at Sunlit Gardens.
The Circle was the playground for most of the kids. The games we played didn’t require any kind of major financial outlay. Maybe the biggest expenditure for any parent was for a baseball glove, one to be plied with lots of oil, to be tied with the ball in it and left to season. In fact, to be “fully equipped” as a gamesman in my Brooklyn, one needed only a knife, a bag of marbles, a folded coffee can top, some running shoes and a couple of pennies.
This view from the fourth floor window also gave rise to years of dreams that I had – evolving from falling nightmares (I would dream of leaning too far out the window and then fall, waking up with a start and with that awful pit of the stomach feeling.) Falling dreams were among the ones that seemed to dominate my early years. A later recurring dream related to my going back to grade school as an adult to finish courses I still needed to take. There were variations to the dream that related to a variety of not-having-finished college courses and/or other similar requirements. Perhaps it was the ghost of “Go back, you didn’t say may I” haunting me. This brings me to think about learning the lesson in this life of not only having great ideas but being able to move them ahead and realize them – question is have I/will I still have time to do this or is this a “lesson” for the next life?? These dreams were very disturbing and seemed to hang on during the daylight hours. I ended up developing a counter-dream to these falling, failing ones. One that perhaps my guide from Elysia helped me with and was a precursor to what is to happen when this life adventure ends.
This counter-dream involved my being able to lighten myself sufficiently to elevate from the ground. It also involved being able to stop a fall and convert it into a soaring ability. The feeling (albeit in a dream) of being able to levitate – to will oneself off the ground and to soar at will, is a tremendous feeling – perhaps among the greatest one could imagine. I did have waking previews later in life with out-of-body experiences and “trips.” This is set forth in more detail in Chapter ____ where I had an out-of-body experience at King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
I guess to a bird or flying insect it is nothing – to the rest of sentient beings, it is fabulous!
Pink Ball – That’s All!
The game of choice at Sunlit Gardens was slap ball. This was our version of baseball. There were the four bases, pitcher, catcher, infield, and outfield. The only equipment needed was a pink ball, called a spauldeen, (after one manufacturer, Spaulding). The pitcher would serve the ball up on one bounce. The spin put on the ball could create any number of challenges to the batter, it curving in either direction, scurrying forward or hesitating, sometimes just coming straight on. The “bat” we had to hit the ball was our hand. In some of the games, you couldn’t punch with a closed fist, hence the term “slap.” However, there were many occasions where a batter’s knuckles somehow made contact with the ball and it would get extra loft and bring the outfield much more into play.
It seemed that there was almost always a slap ball game going on. Often, these would be at the end of the day – after school, when parents were home, when a cheering section was assembled. The countless games played often pushed daylight – and there were no lights outside of those that peeked out from the windows framing the circle on three sides. The teams would encompass representatives from every element of the tenant population, with dads, girls (ugh), even a mom or two. (unfortunately, not my Mom or Dad). To field a full team, it was clearly OK to reach out to whomever that was around. That made the games interesting and did bridge some of the generation gap as well as the gender one. There was no league, no formal organization. Just grab a pink ball, shout out “anyone for slap ball” and the fun began!
Besides slap ball, we had a lot going on at various times in the day and on the periphery of the circle. With television still years away, with a contained and safe space as our “playground,” and with a philosophy of get ‘em out of the house, we kids had free reign to be creative, independent, and relatively safe. Another pink ball game involved a wall and some lines in the hard surface in front. I don’t remember what, if anything, we called the game. It was a derivation of handball and smelled a bit of squash or racket ball (without the rackets). Play was simple. The serve and return were both on one bounce into your opponent’s “box.” Hitting ‘killers” – balls that hit the bottom of the wall and kinda stayed there – were one way get an almost sure winner. A derivation of the game, and lots of fun, was one with more than two players. The play here would run from the first player and box on down the line and then back up again. If you missed, you would move to the end of the line. It was a fast and fun game.
Being Polite Pays Off:
Then there was the “May I?” game – which I understand is more properly called “Mother, May I?” or “Captain, May I?” One person was designated as being in charge – “mother,” if you will. The other players lined up at the baseline of the designated field, usually the outfield of our circle. In turn, a player would ask if he or she could take one or more of a number of steps that were configured in many imaginative ways: baby steps, giant steps, umbrella steps, hopping and jumping steps, crawls, and backwards steps. The game was a bit like Simple Simon in reverse with a mixed in dancing down the yellow brick road from the Wizard of Oz. You would get to take your steps and hopefully advance to the finish line if “mother” was so predisposed AND if you prefaced your request with “May I.” In the excitement and speed of the game, it did occur that one would forget the nicety. Then would come the dreaded: “Go back; you didn’t say ‘May I?’”
How often in life do we forget the niceties -- as simple as asking “May I?” A space is created for the “game” – whether it be a play game, a relationship game, a work game, or a political/world game. The soul comes to play the game, to learn, to move on. Life’s rules are – if you take a look at them from some altitude – relatively few and straightforward. There’s Rule Number One – often called the Golden Rule. Do unto others – get into the skin of “the other.” Think and act from compassion and understanding of the other soul’s (person’s) history and mission. Allow the understanding of how you can help the other with its mission come to you and act accordingly. This involves one of the missions that each soul takes on when it incarnates – call it the Prime Directive, perhaps somewhat different from the one conjured up for the Star Trek series, relating to non-interference with other worlds and species.
Have You Lost Your Marbles?
Then there were the marbles games. One developed a stash of marbles of all sizes and sorts, with “shooters” having an important spot and many special ones being stashed away and privately gazed at in a most miserly fashion. There were hours and hours of practicing on the living room rug. Then, putting my weapons and soldiers in a drawstring bag, I would march off to the war zone – patches of dirt in various parts of the yard. There, circles and other geometric shapes would hold the innocent glass balls while the assassins, always keeping their knuckles down to the ground, would hurl their missives into the pot to see who they could knock out from the sanctuary and then possess them. There were all sizes and kinds of agates. The special ones might be offered for sacrifice in special games of skill. Sometimes they would be offered for trade, with perhaps 10 or 20 of the ordinary ones being offered for that special one.
This game and its consequences was, for most of us, a good learning ground about gambling, about developing skills, about winning and losing. I think most of us got that it was the game’s process, that playing it was what counted, and that the playing was the fun and purpose. Compare this to the complete emphasis on winning in today’s world of children’s games – be they on computers, on the field, or elsewhere. Yes, the oft used phrase, “have you lost your marbles?” certainly was a part of this game and the philosophy and effects thereof were perhaps a little different than in today’s uses of that phrase. Interestingly, I have never heard anyone saying, “have you found your marbles?” or “have you won your marbles?” Winning and losing in these arenas had more relations to developing and testing skills, rather than being an end in and of itself. Today’s competition with parents driving the kids on to win the soccer, baseball, football, or whatever game or competition perhaps is way wide of the proper mark of playing games.
George Pfeiffer:
Fast forward to 2003 in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the beginning of a ten year relationship with George Pfeiffer and serious thinking (and a little action) around the joy of life that young people had through their play. George and I began as golf buddies, and he was my wife’s boss, so we had some social get-togethers from time to time. When I went North to work on intergenerational model communities, I began more serious work with George around a book, some workshop planning, and a lot of philosophy. I would periodically visit with him where, around a lot of wine, stuff spread out over the dining room table, and a lot of drafting, editing, researching, etc. we put together a philosophy, a dream, and a book. I even moved back to the Charlottesville, VA area to occupy a lovely little cabin on George’s mini-horse ranch to work on finishing the book, and (in my dreams apparently) move forward with the various aspects of the HighPlay business. After a lot of back-and-forthing, a book draft was put together.
George’s career has been an interesting one, he moving from being inside the corporate world working on wellness, to becoming a consultant, publisher, and insider in the world of consultants to businesses and others regarding their healthcare practices. George has been President of the Charlottesville, Virginia-based WorkCare Group, Inc. (WCG) since 1991, where he provides consulting, program development, and award-winning communication services to employer groups. Recognized as one of the primary leaders in worksite health promotion, he draws from more than three decades of experience and expertise.
Throughout his career, George has served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, governmental agencies, and national nonprofit organizations. In 1974 he began his career with Xerox Corporation where he created and managed the award-winning Xerox Health Management Program. From 1984 to 1991, he was co-founder and Vice President of The Travelers Center for Corporate Health Promotion, where he managed product development and strategic planning. He was responsible for developing and integrating Employee Support Services (e.g., health communications, employee assistance programs, medical self-care and telephonic counseling services) to over 8,000 organizations under The Travelers Managed Care Program. In 1984, the U.S. Jaycees and the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports named Pfeiffer one of 10 Healthy American Fitness Leaders for his contributions in worksite health promotion.
In 1994, he was recipient of the Distinguished Leadership and Service Award by the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and in 2005, Pfeiffer was recognized by the National Wellness Institute for his lifetime contributions to worksite wellness. He currently serves on the National Wellness Institute Board of Directors. Pfeiffer was a founding member, fellow, and former president of the Association of Worksite Health Promotion (AWHP) and was the senior editor of Worksite Health, its professional journal. He currently serves as Senior Editor of the Journal for Value-based Health Management. Pfeiffer is the author of five books and has written numerous articles for professional publications.
Here are some introductory words from the HighPlay book draft:
This book is about play—HighPlay—an exploration of the game(s) we play, and also the reasons we choose to play in the first place. It is not meant to be a “how to” book about becoming a better athlete or, as the title might suggest, having a peak experience. Its intent, rather, is to help you become a better player—beginning from within. As such, regardless of your chosen sport, the inner player directs the outer athlete. Within this duality, the sport experience can be something very magical, something very special. Why is this important? The practice of your sport, your play can be one of life’s most enriching experiences—lasting long after your play has ended. It provides a context to compare against other life experiences that challenges you to answer the question: “At what moments in my life can I say: “I (was) am truly alive?”
This reflection, this exploration of the sport experience—your experience—focuses the lens not only on the reasons and motives for staying engaged in your chosen activity, but also on your fears and hesitations. For example, why do some players invest an inordinate amount of time and energy into their play when the “results” are dismal or only marginal at best? Are these players delusional about their abilities since extrinsic rewards are improbable? Or, do they hold some inner secret, have an internal drive, that keeps them being passionate about their play?
HighPlay not only explores these kinds of questions, but also reflects on the extraordinary moments that transcend our perceived boundaries, as well as the more mundane, yet essential, aspects of sport practice. Through these explorations and reflections, we may gain further appreciation of how these moments contribute to making us who we are as athletes, and, as stated above, even more importantly, who we are as human beings. Through the lens of play, “being above the game” challenges us to play at a higher-level of being, beyond our win/loss column, our personal records and titles. Here, our play teaches us and maybe — through our example, enables others to be exposed to and to enjoy the wonders, frustrations, and joys of our chosen games and the life lessons that sport contains.
The twists and turns of life’s experiences, this one involving George, HighPlay, prior experience with Charlottesville, the TJMCUU Church there, and the offer of a secluded cabin to work and think, opened the opportunity for me to offer to do a dance of learning and communication while remembering to say: “May I?” This opportunity is writing itself as my life’s chapters continue.
Mini Moguls – Land Developers:
Another Sunlit Gardens game that might have been a major precursor of what was to become one of my life-long interests was called “Land.” All that was needed was a pocketknife. Now, the choice of what kind of knife to use was most important. The full-of-all-kinds-of –gismos knife, like the Swiss army knives, could be less balanced than a simpler blade. On the other hand, more “heft” or weight might give a better balance for sticking in the ground. Decisions on the best equipment for any game in life is usually an interesting challenge and one most enjoy working on.
Anyway, to be a “player” in the game of Land, one had to make a compromise and balance the knife with a few crucial gismos (we were too young for corkscrews, but an awl, scissors, and small blade might be important). The next element was a reasonable piece of ground. Not too muddy, not too hard, not too sandy. Dirt that could be easily pierced by a blade, but not be too soft as to challenge the ability to hold the knife firmly – that was the right plot.
The Land game was really an exercise in geometry, conceptualization, and future planning. One of the players would start by drawing in the ground the “field.” It could be of any shape but needed to be a closed shape, such as a rectangle, square, circle, triangle, etc. – an early lesson in geometry. The first player would throw his knife into the shape and, assuming it remained standing, he or she (I don’t remember any “she’s” playing but I intend to be politically correct in a general sense) would then draw a line emanating from the direction of the blade to the line of the field on either side. He or she would then select one of the two parts formed by the thrust and line and put his or her initials thereon.
It really isn’t as complicated as it sounds – just picture a square, a knife blade splitting the middle, a line then drawn connecting each side and a resultant two rectangles. The “open” shape then left (the one not initialed) would then constitute the field. The remaining pieces would then be cut up, leaving smaller and smaller pieces, requiring more skill in throwing the knife so that it was within the open field left. The winner would be the one with the most shapes with his or her initials thereon.
I wonder if Donald Trump and some sub-divider brethren, in creating their neighborhoods, weren’t products of this game. Certainly, some seem to have the same sense of planning. Cut it all up into funky shapes, put your name on it, and move on. Anyway, in case it hasn’t come through yet, I think that I am happiest when I have dirt under my nailsand my life revolves around direct involvement with dirt and its products. Maybe this game was a cause, maybe it was a product of a variety of my past lives as one involved with growing crops. To think about it, the way evolution has worked, most of we souls spent lifetimes as serfs, slaves, dirt farmers – attached to the land and working it for sustenance.
“Potsy” (a.k.a. hopscotch):
Draw eight boxes, with numbers three and six standing alone, stretch the size so that it is a chore to hop on one foot through the boxes, skipping consecutive boxes; then hit the boxes consecutively with a token, skip then one through eight and then in reverse – first one home wins. That’s the game - testing hand-eye coordination in throwing the token, testing balance in hoping around the course and in bending over to pick up the token. My strongest memory of hopscotch, which we called potsy, was of making the proper device to toss into the boxes that we would chalk on the walks in the rear of the apartment complex. The game itself was fun, was open to all, was clearly coed, and required nothing more than a piece of chalk and a token. I don’t see those boxes anymore on sidewalks, nor do I see youngsters hoping around except perhaps from one stool to another in front of video games. Learning hand-eye coordination and balance from such a game seems like a good way to get these basics – and the computer alternative may be said to have its advantages also. However, it lacks the physical aspect, the fresh air, and the actual contact with the ground and one’s human friends.
My secret weapon in potsy was a properly folded top from a coffee can. The weight, the material, the dead space – these all combined to produce a projectile that, with the lots of practicing I did, would land in the proper box almost as if it had its own eyes. Balancing on one foot to pick up the potsy (and making sure you balanced on the proper foot) was an exercise that became routine with practice and maturity. The game evolved into a work of art as more intricate and difficult box sets were chalked.
What was fun to do and watch was to be walking along the side walk, encounter a potsy court and – like Dorothy and her companions on the yellow brick road – take a hop, skip and jump. Much of life partakes of a game like Potsy. We are comfortable with a limited “field.” We continually go back and forth, being comfortable in the routine – think of the hordes crawling along the highways in their commutes to and from work, or riding the same train or subway ‘round trip each day. And routine gives us comfort, whether it is having a limited menu, sticking to a tight schedule at home, saying the same things to our partners, etc, etc. Again, the elements making up a game of potsy have been replaced by the buttons, joy sticks, and flashing screens of today’s “games.” Different training, different preparations, different world, I guess.
Big Time Money:
Another favorite game involved the ubiquitous pink ball, sidewalk boxes (and cracks) and two players. “Hit the penny” is the game name that comes to mind. Sidewalks were (and still are) built with lines across them for expansion (or for the mold into which the concrete was poured). Put a penny on one crack, step back a box (or more for the advanced version) on each side and toss the ball to hit the penny – one hit, one point. This was kind of a handicap game as when the coin was hit, it usually was advanced toward the opponent, giving him or her a shorter shot.
Another game with a penny (this time each player needed one) was “closest to the wall.” Again, we used the environment as our court: we needed a wall, a line and the money. There were alternative games to play, either closest to the wall without hitting it or closest and you could hit it. For the big time spenders, you could capture the other player’s coins with a winner. Some form of gambling is in most of our genetic make-up. Without a “gamble,” progress or evolution would be hampered or even stalled. And it is often the players (I like that better than gamblers) who do move the token down the path.
Chasin’ – Catchin’ – Jumpin’
Using the apartment complex as the playing grounds, there were the moving games of hide-and- seek, ring-a-levio, Johnny-on-the pony. There were others where we could run, hide, sneak around, and tag some target – they remain nameless in my memory. I remember hiding in the basement, sneaking behind bushes, trying to outrun someone to tap a tree or bench or pole and shout something like: “Home free all!” or “ring-a-levio!” releasing those less fortunate who were tagged or caught. I don’t remember a lot of heroics on my part or great joy in these games. Being “it” was, to me, something to shake off like a leech. That was an undesirable spotlight. Later in life, “itness” became something to look for – at least where it was on my terms. The lesson here might be that in these games a sharing of focus and a minimum of derision could prepare the players for the exigencies that life throws at them as they mature.
Other Games:
To close out the games section, I remember playing polo on bicycles – a game with disaster written all over its face and certainly a precursor of the “chicken” games we would see later in life in the movies involving cars. We also played hockey on roller skates which I recall was lots of fun. There were some occasions when we would get taken to an indoor roller rink or even to ice skate. I never liked the rinks, where all you got to do was go around in a circle and any high jinks were quickly disparaged. There were also the games played in the P.S. 254 school yard and a lot next to it.
There were basketball games with my strongest memory involving getting pushed into the post holding up the basket, resulting in my spitting out a triangle of each of my two front teeth. I recall not being very disturbed at all, finding out immediately I could spit with my teeth clenched. I can still laugh (not nice Arthur!) at the memory of walking up to my mother, saying “guess what?” and giving her a smile. How that must of shocked her!
In my first year of high school, had my front teeth capped. The job that cost $200 and was supposed to last until I was twenty one has lasted at latest count an additional sixty plus years and still counting. See what a job well done can do? My early baseball career involved pitching and playing second base. I was a terror on the mound, to the batter, to the umpire, and to myself. I remember innings where the batter never got the bat off his shoulder, except when he was ducking. A typical inning for me would encompass three strikeouts balanced by a number of walks that varied from two or three to much higher numbers. I ended up playing second base more and being called in as a reliever. Baseball was to become a great social event during my legal career at Milbank, Tweed and thereafter. There was a “lawyers league” where games were played on the lower East Side of Manhattan (See Chapter ___, pages ____). Good memories there and good hangovers!
A final note on games: It was always a hard moment when it came time to choose teams. I was seldom (if ever) a captain who got to select his players. So I would stand around while the teams were selected. The ultimate embarrassment was to be completely left out. There are memories of holding my breath as the last players were chosen. And, a great joy arrived when I was chosen early in the round. My skills were not great, my running speed just ahead of a snail, but my enthusiasm was always great and I definitely played better when confidence in me was shown. Tennis and golf came later in life. Only softball was a carry-over. I have no memory of either of my parents being involved in any of the games I played – there was certainly no “soccer-mom” or “baseball-dad” in my life. In fact, it was only many years after I had moved away from home that my parents ended up taking up golf, a sport in which I came to excel (See Chapter ____). Even then, I never got to play a round of golf with either of them.
“We the Kids:”
My entourage of playmates in Brooklyn was divided into several parts. When I have been using “we” it is pretty indeterminate as I don’t really think I was attached at the hip to any one – at least not until I was chosen to go off to Cunningham Junior High. Prior to that my buddies/companions were related to age, school class, parents, and – to a lesser extent – mutuality of interest. My initial “inner circle” was composed of Hank Leder and Arthur “Otsie” Stone. Around them circled Bobby Tanenbaum, Freddie Schneider and a few others who haven’t stuck in my memory. The Leders and the Stones were close friends of my parents. Hank was an only child (no one would call him Harmon) and Otsie had an older brother Allen. Hank was the athlete – he later was quite a basketball player, attending Michigan State when I lost track of him. Otsie was more the clown – where that name came from I would have to plead ignorance. I should also be thankful that it wasn’t a name stuck on my “Arthur.”.
Speaking of which, before I was born it had been initially decided to name me William Arthur. I understand my mother decided she didn’t want a son with the initials WAR. Whether that had some influence on my relative pacificity over my life, who knows? I think I am happier being an Arthur, particularly when I get in touch with my days in Camelot.
I spent a lot of indoor time in the Stone and Leder apartments, where we played a host of games. Our favorite involved a baseball game where there were round cards with a hole in the middle representing the batting prowess of many of the major leaguers. We would create our teams by picking cards and then trading. The game was then played by putting the card on a spinner and then giving the metal arrow a good spin. Of all the players involved guess who comes to mind for me? Mel Ott! Who? Melvin Thomas "Mel" Ott (March 2, 1909 – November 21, 1958), nicknamed "Master Melvin." Ott was a Major League Baseballright fielder who played his entire career for the New York Giants (1926-1947). He was born in Gretna, Louisiana. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. The first National League player to surpass 500 home runs, he had a lifetime 304 average and 511 career home runs in 22 years. Why didn’t we latch onto a Brooklyn Dodger or even a New York Yankee? Maybe it was the bend of the card – anyway, this is my memory of the indoor game I played most. Ott had a real big home run segment on the card and was the player we most prized. Players like Babe Ruth weren’t included in the card set which included only “contemporary” players.
Other indoor games included the board games with dice, tokens, and board spots to traverse. I don’t know when I started monopoly. It is without doubt my favorite board game. Why? I was and am still turned on by the trading that -in the games I play - is involved at the beginning of the game. I also like the revised rules I play, with all the money paid into the bank for houses and hotels, fines, etc. being put into a fund that goes to whoever lands on “free parking.” The game can turn around on one roll of the dice. This play big and play once turned out to be my life-long gambling philosophy. I guess it was/is a counterbalance to the multiple careers and other multiple experiences I have gone through in life – or perhaps it is like to enjoying jumping off the cliff in the Don Juan/Carlos Castaneda story (See p. ____). I also like the idea of acting like a real estate tycoon.
From the Parapets:
The roof at Sunlit Gardens played many roles. It was a forest of clothes lines - with many of those scarecrow-like contraptions holding the wet clothes of the tenants, looking like a modern dance company, flapping in the wind. The surface was a tar underlayment with loose gravel on top. One could skid and get some good bloody scraps trying to run and turn too quickly. There was a three foot high wall surrounding the roof, our parapets. Some of the “gang” would walk on the wall. Perhaps that is one place my vertigo came from. I don’t mind heights, but that straight drop down gets me right in the middle and – with some breath considerations – perhaps the only physical fears or concerns I can list in my dossier. I saw the roof being used for airplane spotters during WWII and then sprout with the weeds of TV antennas. I had a strange fascination and dread of that space given all the hours I had spent up there.
Fast forward to one of the ideas I broached while working for NYC Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs and later with the Rockefeller Family. New York City, in general, and the Borough of Manhattan, in particular, has a dearth of park/recreation space – particularly where the high rise office and apartment buildings are clustered. There are a few pocket parks, like Paley Park. The idea I had was to require all new construction of high rises to create parks on the roofs. These would (of course) be fenced in and create acres and acres of outdoor settings that could also have heating for the cooler months with trees, plantings, etc. The current use as a place for machinery could be handled in a variety of ways. This same concept could work for the cheek to jowl residential construction being done, giving residents a private, special contemplative place. All objections could be handled. The concept has been applied in a few places. It could be encouraged by giving zoning bonuses to those who would create such places. Architects could work to make this happen. One of the concepts being advanced for the housing for an Eco-village I am currently helping with has the houses with gardens on the roofs.
SCHOOL DAZE: Formal Schooling:
I remember my mother pissing and moaning over a long period of time about how my cousin Lisa, who was the same age as I was, got to enter first grade without having to go to kindergarten because she had gone for a year to a nursery school. Mother was always more interested in what others thought and how she and we were viewed rather than how we actually felt and did. Doing well and being successful were measured in the mores of the society in which she lived (or wanted to live). And, it was in that external world where my accomplishments (or lack thereof) as well as those of my sister were discussed or ducked. My father was, to me, one step even more removed. It was his life that completely dominated our relationship. My “take” on what he wanted from me was to take pressure off him from my mother. I did learn later, much later – that my accomplishments were shared with their friends and associates and that there was apparently pride in their son. This pride or joy was never fully communicated to me.
In any event, that “being held up or not getting pushed ahead” syndrome would be a theme throughout my school daze. My school career began in Public School 254 – a red brick building with three stories that I could see out of our bedroom windows. It was a few blocks away, across the vacant lot, up the street and across 19th Street. So going to school, I had just one street to cross – that being a quiet one. There was a time that even looking at the school created problems for me – problems related to not wanting to be there.
One major decision about school that was made early for me (I only learned of this many years later) was my mother’s decision (I doubt my father had a say) as to whether to send me to a special school in upper Manhattan (always “New York”) run by Columbia. It was for the very bright. Apparently I tested very high on I.Q. tests early on and the school officials recommended I be sent there. Outside of the extensive traveling that would have to be undertaken, I think my mother turned this down because she always wanted me to be “normal.” Normal was interpreted by her as what those she was involved with regarded as a standard of behavior. And, as indicated below, the “normal” was interpreted to include her ability to boast to her friends and family about my accomplishments – boasting that didn’t trickle down to me. To this day, I think of it as a pejorative term – something I absolutely don’t want to be. Perhaps that is what has lent to my rebellious nature (often sublimated) throughout my life. I have walked a path that -- from one vantage point -- could been looked at as quite “normal” or traditional. And then, around that I have embroidered what some might describe as a “crazy quilt.” Perhaps I can leave that for you, the reader, to judge.
At PS 254, I went through the schooling from first to sixth grade that all my contemporaries mushed along with. Classes started twice a year and so one might be in Grade Two A or Two B. Periodically the A’s and B’s would get merged, so one group would be accelerated, in effect, “skipping” a half-grade. I was in the B or “merged into” section at least twice, thus never being moved ahead. This allowed more maturation in those students not pushed and even some repetition of work (designed to catch up those who hadn’t had the materials when they were pushed ahead) which enabled a better understanding. I believe I benefited from this repetition and got a BIG repeat of my first year in high school when we moved from Brooklyn to Long Island (more later). In any event, my grades were very good. Early on, our report cards were replete with items like: “plays well with others;” “has clean ears and nails;” “speaks clearly;” and the like. There was also penmanship, as well as the regular subjects. I remember my parents (mother of course) being called into school during my fifth grade because Mrs. Abrams had to hit me for misconduct. The ruler was still a teaching tool then. I speculate that I was not being challenged in class and therefore had time and inclination to find some mischief.
In any event, despite my boredom, I did persevere in my studies – driven I suspect by the desire I had to please my parents – particularly my father – who seemed to me to never be satisfied with what I did and by mother who seemed to me to always be holding up what I did to a standard of the best of the rest of the world – to achieve results that she could boast about to her friends. At the end of sixth grade, two students from PS 254 were selected to go to Cunningham Junior High School (PS 234). There was an experimental program called “Special Progess” there where selected students were sent to a Junior High to do three years of schooling in two. The courses would be challenging and the students would be on a fast track when they got to High School, starting their Sophomore year. I was one of those selected and my “buddy” Richard Addison was selected as the other one. Richie lived one floor below me in Sunlit Gardens and our bedroom windows faced each other. We had rigged up a pulley line from our bedroom windows and would send messages back and forth quite often. Anyway, Richie and I travelled every school day on a trolley car to Avenue S and walked the several blocks to school. There we studied languages, took advanced math courses, had civics, and other academic courses.
In addition, some “genius” in the school system decided that our Special Progress classes should be teamed up with some young men (I don’t think there were any girls in this category) who had been released from “reform school” after being sentenced there for a variety of violations of the law. We shared classes relating to the “trades.” These included woodworking shop, metal work, printing, and some others. Actually, I truly enjoyed these – except for the daily harassment from the “boys” who “requested” a quarter each day for their “snacks.” One passed the monetary unit over when the requester had a sharp chisel pointed at you, or one of those knives that flipped out their blades at the push of a button. The quarter was half the “snack money” I was given for each day. I used the balance to get some treats from the Good Humor Man whose truck was parked outside the school daily.
Cunningham Junior High was my introduction to social life. We went to a number of parties where “spin the bottle” was a usual “game;” blind-folded groping of a member of the other sex to identify her (and him for her) was another game; and then there was the sending a guy (or girl) into a dark closet and then sending in a member of the opposite sex. Opportunities . . . that really were not taken advantage of (at least on my part). Two of my “great teachers” were at Cunningham: Miss Benson who taught French – and who I really disliked. But the “old maid” could teach. I still – after 66 plus years -- can read French, understand it when it is spoken slowly, and can sputter some phrases.
The other teacher was my civics teacher whose name I have forgotten. He began the year-long class by passing out a shiny new penny and then having us become aliens from a galaxy far-away who happen on this burnt-out planet that used to be called “Earth.” The only item that we discovered was this shiny new penny. “What could we know about this planet’s history?” Well, enough to pretty much take up the rest of the school year in this course. What could be learned, really? Well, everything from the image of who might have peopled the planet, the clothing they wore, the fact that they had languages, counted the time, believed in a deity, valued liberty, had a monetary system, had a government, had interesting architecture, used metals and could manufacture things, etc. etc. More on great teachers like Warren Seavy (“A hits B” – that’s the whole course for the year in torts in Law School”.
Another unusual aspect of the civics class was his testing a theory that certain students will just perform better on tests because they have an innate ability to pick the “right” answers. So what he would do is give a weekly “test.” The test consisted of a number of multiple choice answers – there were no questions posed, just a choice to select of four or five answers. We selected answers and the “tests” were graded. Scores were all over the place. Mathematically, the expectation of a “grade” would be in the 20-25% range. Some got lower, some got higher. I believe I scored well over 50% -- and my fuzzy memory believes my score was even higher.
Perhaps that ability aided my ability to get good grades throughout my exposure to tests. One real “proof” occurred when I took the test in my senior year in high school that they then gave for those who wanted to get a NY State Scholarship – an aid to pay for tuition if one went to a college or university in NY State. The exam was given over two days – six hours a day I believe. At that time, I had no intention to attend a school in NY State, having applied to Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard (all of which ultimately sent me an acceptance letter). So, I “finished” the exam, filling in most answers without reading the questions. It took me less than three hours. And, I received word that I would be awarded one of the scholarships. This, combined with my guidance advisor’s advice that I should go to a small school and a visit to the Colgate Campus which I feel in love with, landed me at Colgate. Should I have gone elsewhere? Would I have been more challenged? Would my life have taken a whole other road? The only way to know would be to have cloned Arthur and send one or more of the clones to multiple universities. So many choices. So many twists in the road of life.
I do remember being asked to “monitor” a class in Junior High when the teacher had to leave the room for a while. Well, some of my classmates decided to act up tossing spitballs, running around the class, marking up the blackboard, etc. When the teacher (Miss Levine) returned, she was livid. Unfortunately for me, this was exactly the time when the report cards where being completed. She pulled mine out and slashed in a red “0” next to conduct. This could have been a first, as the grades were all letters - (Query: is a “0” the next step below an “F”?).
When I graduated from Cunningham Junior High, my next step was to go into my sophomore year at Madison High School in Brooklyn. That didn’t happen as we moved to Woodmere Park in Nassau County, just over the County line and close to what was then Idlewild Airport (later renamed Kennedy Airport). This was a major change in life, being in a new community where I ended up with just a few friends, a long commute to school, and a lot of relative isolation. From a school standpoint, I had a real challenge: they would not recognize the-three-years-in-two that I had accomplished in Junior High. So, it was back to my freshman year – with pretty much the same courses and same books as I had at Cunningham. In today’s environment, I suspect I could have found respite in drugs, acting out rebellion, or getting lost in the internet.
Those were not any choices I saw and I plunged back into the work, getting something like a 97% average my first year. Getting such a good grounding in the basic elements of a high school education was the basis for my ending up with the highest average of my class and becoming valedictorian. My “best” subject was math, where I ended up with a 98% average in the NY State Regents Exams. I never took another math course – perhaps something to regret looking back. This brings up the subject of advising students on the path they might consider pursuing in their studies and where to pursue them. I had no real guidance at home – just the model of my father’s choice and work – a choice where he started as an office boy in a law office and ended his working career in that same office. I saw others – my uncles for instance – who were working as a carpenters; in manufacturing (women’s clothing); owning a liquor store; with aunts engaged as teachers. There was some mention of my pursuing an engineering career . . . and I still don’t really know what would have been involved. My high school guidance officer’s only “advice” was that I should go to a smaller school as I might not socially fit into a larger school environment.
In any event, I was not socially active in high school, not really dating, and focusing on being with the “boys” in social settings. I played stick ball on the vacant space at the back of our development, rode the bus back and forth to school, and when the blessed day came that I got my driver’s license (a couple of days after my 16th birthday) that opened up a world where I ended up focusing on playing golf. Golf has been a major part of my life. It is, in my opinion, truly the “game of life.” I have written a book entitled: Golf: the Game of Life.” In the introduction, I wrote:
“Golf is truly the tie that binds so many of us together. It is the language that we intuitively know how to speak. And it is the lover who, time and again, teases and tempts us with splendor and charm, only to stay just out of reach while continuing to bring longing to our hopeful, expectant hearts.”
I then went on to discuss the great attraction that golf has for so many, and why players love the game: “It is a sport that combines the best that nature and man have to offer. Golf offers opportunities for relaxation, companionship, and accomplishment. The challenge of competition is present on every shot because the golfer competes not only with others, but also with him or herself.”
So, studying and getting good grades came relatively easy at that time. I would study watching television – often with the radio also on. Clearly some element of ADD were (and are) present in my life. Assuming that is so, perhaps there is some relationship to my having had so many experiences and changes in life; my being attracted to new things and approaches to what has been the “usual” way; and my continuing need to have the spaces in life filled in with activity. I have been able to get good grades in whatever path I chose – perhaps in part because of my curiosity, perhaps because of my extra grounding in studies, perhaps because I knew how to take tests and parrot back to the teacher what they wanted to hear and read. And perhaps because I (immodestly) have been endowed with some good DNA, good brain synapses, some right choices, and good luck.