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The Ovation
“You call that a standing ovation?” screamed the actor wearing the torn gray overcoat and blackened eyes as he stepped forward from the otherwise overlooked collection of characters on the stage of the Belasco Theatre, one of the mainstays of Broadway. He stared at the well-dressed crowd that glared back at him in shock, many mouths opened and gaping, stunned at this unexpected rebuke.
“A flock of weak canaries, that’s what you sound like,” the actor muttered, yet projected his voice effectively . . . maybe a bit too effectively, according to the amazed expressions on the faces of his fellow thespians. “We worked so damn hard,” he continued, grunted almost every syllable, “and all we hear from you at the end of our magnificent performance is the sound of a wounded animal multiplied. And some of you aren’t even on your feet. Give me a break!” He slammed his right hand against his side and shuffled two feet to his right in unconscious half-steps.
The members of the audience stared at each other, overcoming their shock and awe only to feel the beginning of an unaccustomed feeling --- of guilt! They had spent hundreds of dollars only to be rebuked and they were forced to admit that they had deserved the harsh words.
Group by group, they lowered first their eyes and then their entire heads, first those in the orchestra seats and then those in the less expensive sections, one by one, as if trying to imitate the wave motion of baseball fans. A few muttered disconcerting comments of frustration at being lumped in with such an unappreciative group.
They didn’t know what to do. They just stood there, feeling more and more self-conscious and inadequate. They couldn’t bring themselves to stare at the actor in the torn gray overcoat. One or two actually began to quiver. A young woman dressed to the nines started weeping.
“We are actors!” the speaker now shouted, passionately. “We live for your applause, for your lively, even loving response . . . and this is what we get?!” He stared at the sections of rebuked ticket-holders, and just shook his head. “I am at a loss for words. I am at a loss . . . .” And with that final utterance, he looked away from the receivers of his anger and disappointment, and all was still.
Then an unexpected sound was heard from one of the balcony boxes. The sound caused the actor’s head to shoot up and his eyes to stare in the direction of this marvel. It was applause --- LOUD applause, started by the one audience member in the box seat. Almost immediately, this action was joined by others, until the entire theatre resounded with this acclimation and not so gradually, the crowd were on their feet and screaming, accompanied by a waving of hands. This was the standing ovation any acting troupe would die for!
The actor in the torn gray overcoat just looked calmly at the director and muttered, “I guess I’m more than a bit player, after all.”
“A flock of weak canaries, that’s what you sound like,” the actor muttered, yet projected his voice effectively . . . maybe a bit too effectively, according to the amazed expressions on the faces of his fellow thespians. “We worked so damn hard,” he continued, grunted almost every syllable, “and all we hear from you at the end of our magnificent performance is the sound of a wounded animal multiplied. And some of you aren’t even on your feet. Give me a break!” He slammed his right hand against his side and shuffled two feet to his right in unconscious half-steps.
The members of the audience stared at each other, overcoming their shock and awe only to feel the beginning of an unaccustomed feeling --- of guilt! They had spent hundreds of dollars only to be rebuked and they were forced to admit that they had deserved the harsh words.
Group by group, they lowered first their eyes and then their entire heads, first those in the orchestra seats and then those in the less expensive sections, one by one, as if trying to imitate the wave motion of baseball fans. A few muttered disconcerting comments of frustration at being lumped in with such an unappreciative group.
They didn’t know what to do. They just stood there, feeling more and more self-conscious and inadequate. They couldn’t bring themselves to stare at the actor in the torn gray overcoat. One or two actually began to quiver. A young woman dressed to the nines started weeping.
“We are actors!” the speaker now shouted, passionately. “We live for your applause, for your lively, even loving response . . . and this is what we get?!” He stared at the sections of rebuked ticket-holders, and just shook his head. “I am at a loss for words. I am at a loss . . . .” And with that final utterance, he looked away from the receivers of his anger and disappointment, and all was still.
Then an unexpected sound was heard from one of the balcony boxes. The sound caused the actor’s head to shoot up and his eyes to stare in the direction of this marvel. It was applause --- LOUD applause, started by the one audience member in the box seat. Almost immediately, this action was joined by others, until the entire theatre resounded with this acclimation and not so gradually, the crowd were on their feet and screaming, accompanied by a waving of hands. This was the standing ovation any acting troupe would die for!
The actor in the torn gray overcoat just looked calmly at the director and muttered, “I guess I’m more than a bit player, after all.”
He Knew
William understood women. He knew how they thought (a mystery to so many of his male friends, who struggled to understand the logic in the thinking of their wives and girlfriends ---and even their mothers and sisters). He knew how to speak to them, so as not to be overbearing or interrupting continuously. He knew how to listen, to be attentive to their interests and their needs and their concerns. He remembered a theme from Chaucer’s tale told by the Wife of Bath, that women want to make their own decisions and determine their own paths in life, and he was exceedingly good at communicating all this knowledge to the women he wooed.
And his reputation grew exponentially as his friends’ failures and disappointments accumulated. He became advisor to several of his friends in matters of romance . . . and in other, more mundane concerns involving an assortment of interchanges between men and women. Sometimes even a woman would come to him seeking advice about her failing or weakened relationship with her boyfriend or husband. Oh, he never charged money for this service; rather, he took pride in his flourishing acknowledgement as a kind of detective nonpareil of the world of love. Not bad an accomplishment for someone who had just arrived in New York from San Francisco two years before.
One day, a young man he worked with, a marketing specialist with a large chain of electronics products, came to him desperately in need of advice about a gift to buy his fiancée.
“I just don’t know what to get her,” Matthew exclaimed quite dramatically. “She’s so beautiful. She deserves the world, but my bank account echoes when I make a deposit. I don’t want her to get the idea that I’m cheap or that I can’t handle money, so what can I get her that will leave her contented?”
William scratched his head. “That’s a problem all right, Matt,” he responded. “You know, if she really cares about you, it won’t make much of a difference what you get her as long as the gift shows that you care about her and that you understand her. Women like to be understood, not taken for granted.”
William gave it some more thought. “It’s getting cooler now that summer’s ended and autumn is arriving. A woman enjoys softness and comfort . . . and color! I know! Get her a nice warm and brightly colored scarf, one well made, maybe even imported. That won’t break you and it will put her in the right mood. It’s personal but not too personal. She’d love it. And her love for you will grow, I think. I’ve had experience with similar gifts and you can trust me. She’ll react just the way you want her too, and your bank account won’t complain an iota.”
The following week, Matthew presented Judy with a brilliantly hued Merino sweater, and she chirped like a bird at the sight. He wrapped it around her shoulders and neck, and she hugged and kissed him enthusiastically, with gentle tears in her eyes. Success! At a reasonable price! This further cemented William’s reputation as one who understood women quite well, and word was passed around.
A week later, Justin approached William, shyly, hesitantly, but with great need. “I’m stuck,” he moaned. “I’m in so much trouble. I have a big mouth and I used it once too often. I got into this giant argument with my girl, and I called her a bitch . . . and she left me, said she never wanted to see me again. Oh, God, I love her. What should I do? You’re supposed to be this great expert with women. I need your help here. What the hell should I do?”
“What was the argument about?” William inquired.
Justin looked down momentarily and then answered the question. “Television.”
“What?” Matthew responded involuntarily.
Justin gathered his courage and overcame his inclination to make the humdrum dramatic. “Monday night, I wanted to watch the football game and Susie wanted to watch some reality TV show and she insisted that we watch together and I said no, I’m going to the other set in the bedroom and she said I was being selfish and . . . I called her a . . . bitch . . . and she screamed at me and walked out. What the hell do I do?”
William scratched his head. This was a tough one. Had the ship already sailed, carrying Susie with it? The woman whisperer began his reply. “Listen,” he began, “first of all, you’ve got to recognize that this was not even an argument about a football game versus a reality show.”
“Huh?’ Justin uttered.
“It was about letting Susie have her opinion valued. She wanted to be heard and all you did was shout her down and curse her out. So now you are down and out, Man.”
“Yeah . . . and?”
“You’ve got one chance to fix this. Call and apologize. But ‘I’m sorry’ won’t hack it. You’ve got to convince her that you realize you disrespected her and bullied her and that you’re an oaf who needs her to civilize you. Tell her it’s more important to you to just be with her, and it doesn’t matter what’s on TV. Got it?”
Justin got it. And he was grateful for the advice. It actually made sense to him --- although he also looked at it as a bit of a con job because he just didn’t think that way . . . but he’d follow William’s suggestion completely because . . . well, William! The man knew his game. And he had a track record to prove it.”
“Oh,” William added, as Justin started to leave. “Get rid of the TV in the bedroom. Tell her that room is for one thing only . . . and that when you guys are together there, you want to concentrate all your attention on her and her desires. She’ll eat it up, I promise.”
“Thanks, brother,” Justin smiled and walked away, looking forward to his impending victory.
Of course, there was a third young man on a quest to win the golden round, so to speak. A tall, gaunt but hairy guy in his late twenties looked William up about five days later, and, of course, he had his own problem to be solved. He approached William while the latter was reading a copy of The Goldfinch on one of the benches of the very public park.
“Hey, Bill,” Stan shouted from half-way across the park, loudly enough to make several people turn their heads in his direction. Little kids on swings and the seesaw even turned their eyes in his direction.
Stan walked up close to William, who smiled at him. “What is it, pal?”
“Ahhh,” Stan began, taking a deep breath, “You see,” he was having trouble getting the words out but he knew that only William could help him. He couldn’t talk to his parents about this matter. After all, he was 28 years old and married. So he focused on William, or Bill, as he preferred to call him.
“Well,” Stan began again, fighting against stalling much longer. “Well, it’s my wife. She don’t want no more kids. I mean, we have three but I want four. We have all girls and I want a son. I mean, she told me to stay away from her, you know what I mean? Until I change my tune, is what she said. I mean, what do I do? How do I make her want another kid? I don’t think I’m asking for so much.”
“Oh, Man,” William shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Let me ask you a question: How old are the kids?”
“Uh, two, four and six.”
“Do you have any idea how much work your wife has?”
“Hey, I’m the one who works. I have to go to the construction site early every morning and get my hands real dirty and work for sometimes 10 hours a day. Don’t tell me about work,” was how Stan put it.
“You have a problem. It’s called lack of respect. Your wife feels that you don’t respect the work she does. She feels that you think what you do is more important than what she does.”
“Well, it puts food on the table.”
“And who is that food for? Why do you work as hard as you do?” asked William to a perplexed-looking Stan, who just stood their thinking (which took effort).
“Look,” William continued, “your wife doesn’t get a break. Do you get time for lunch?”
“Sure.”
“She doesn’t. She has to gulp her food down while she feeds three starving kids, and they’re always starving. She has to be paying attention to all three, making sure that they don’t get into trouble, showing them that she loves them, and then you come home expecting a big supper after your hard work, am I right?”
“Yeah,” Stan replied, his tone sounding lower and less sure than before.
"Have you ever watched all three kids for a while?”
“Yeah,” Stan said defensively. “I do that sometimes.”
“And how is it?”
“Freakin’ exhausting.”
“And now you want to add a fourth?”
“Okay, I get it,” muttered Stan, the light bulb over his head giving a soft but steady light. “Thanks. I guess I didn’t try to see her point. Gotta go. I got some apologizing to do. See ya. Thanks. They sure right about you. You do know a lot about woman.” And with that Stan walked out of the park so much quieter than he had been when he’d entered.
William just smiled. He did that quite often. He loved it when they all said he was so smart about how women thought and felt. He felt so needed. He also wondered what they’d think if they found out that for the first 25 years of his life, he’d answered not to the name William but to simply Willa.
And his reputation grew exponentially as his friends’ failures and disappointments accumulated. He became advisor to several of his friends in matters of romance . . . and in other, more mundane concerns involving an assortment of interchanges between men and women. Sometimes even a woman would come to him seeking advice about her failing or weakened relationship with her boyfriend or husband. Oh, he never charged money for this service; rather, he took pride in his flourishing acknowledgement as a kind of detective nonpareil of the world of love. Not bad an accomplishment for someone who had just arrived in New York from San Francisco two years before.
One day, a young man he worked with, a marketing specialist with a large chain of electronics products, came to him desperately in need of advice about a gift to buy his fiancée.
“I just don’t know what to get her,” Matthew exclaimed quite dramatically. “She’s so beautiful. She deserves the world, but my bank account echoes when I make a deposit. I don’t want her to get the idea that I’m cheap or that I can’t handle money, so what can I get her that will leave her contented?”
William scratched his head. “That’s a problem all right, Matt,” he responded. “You know, if she really cares about you, it won’t make much of a difference what you get her as long as the gift shows that you care about her and that you understand her. Women like to be understood, not taken for granted.”
William gave it some more thought. “It’s getting cooler now that summer’s ended and autumn is arriving. A woman enjoys softness and comfort . . . and color! I know! Get her a nice warm and brightly colored scarf, one well made, maybe even imported. That won’t break you and it will put her in the right mood. It’s personal but not too personal. She’d love it. And her love for you will grow, I think. I’ve had experience with similar gifts and you can trust me. She’ll react just the way you want her too, and your bank account won’t complain an iota.”
The following week, Matthew presented Judy with a brilliantly hued Merino sweater, and she chirped like a bird at the sight. He wrapped it around her shoulders and neck, and she hugged and kissed him enthusiastically, with gentle tears in her eyes. Success! At a reasonable price! This further cemented William’s reputation as one who understood women quite well, and word was passed around.
A week later, Justin approached William, shyly, hesitantly, but with great need. “I’m stuck,” he moaned. “I’m in so much trouble. I have a big mouth and I used it once too often. I got into this giant argument with my girl, and I called her a bitch . . . and she left me, said she never wanted to see me again. Oh, God, I love her. What should I do? You’re supposed to be this great expert with women. I need your help here. What the hell should I do?”
“What was the argument about?” William inquired.
Justin looked down momentarily and then answered the question. “Television.”
“What?” Matthew responded involuntarily.
Justin gathered his courage and overcame his inclination to make the humdrum dramatic. “Monday night, I wanted to watch the football game and Susie wanted to watch some reality TV show and she insisted that we watch together and I said no, I’m going to the other set in the bedroom and she said I was being selfish and . . . I called her a . . . bitch . . . and she screamed at me and walked out. What the hell do I do?”
William scratched his head. This was a tough one. Had the ship already sailed, carrying Susie with it? The woman whisperer began his reply. “Listen,” he began, “first of all, you’ve got to recognize that this was not even an argument about a football game versus a reality show.”
“Huh?’ Justin uttered.
“It was about letting Susie have her opinion valued. She wanted to be heard and all you did was shout her down and curse her out. So now you are down and out, Man.”
“Yeah . . . and?”
“You’ve got one chance to fix this. Call and apologize. But ‘I’m sorry’ won’t hack it. You’ve got to convince her that you realize you disrespected her and bullied her and that you’re an oaf who needs her to civilize you. Tell her it’s more important to you to just be with her, and it doesn’t matter what’s on TV. Got it?”
Justin got it. And he was grateful for the advice. It actually made sense to him --- although he also looked at it as a bit of a con job because he just didn’t think that way . . . but he’d follow William’s suggestion completely because . . . well, William! The man knew his game. And he had a track record to prove it.”
“Oh,” William added, as Justin started to leave. “Get rid of the TV in the bedroom. Tell her that room is for one thing only . . . and that when you guys are together there, you want to concentrate all your attention on her and her desires. She’ll eat it up, I promise.”
“Thanks, brother,” Justin smiled and walked away, looking forward to his impending victory.
Of course, there was a third young man on a quest to win the golden round, so to speak. A tall, gaunt but hairy guy in his late twenties looked William up about five days later, and, of course, he had his own problem to be solved. He approached William while the latter was reading a copy of The Goldfinch on one of the benches of the very public park.
“Hey, Bill,” Stan shouted from half-way across the park, loudly enough to make several people turn their heads in his direction. Little kids on swings and the seesaw even turned their eyes in his direction.
Stan walked up close to William, who smiled at him. “What is it, pal?”
“Ahhh,” Stan began, taking a deep breath, “You see,” he was having trouble getting the words out but he knew that only William could help him. He couldn’t talk to his parents about this matter. After all, he was 28 years old and married. So he focused on William, or Bill, as he preferred to call him.
“Well,” Stan began again, fighting against stalling much longer. “Well, it’s my wife. She don’t want no more kids. I mean, we have three but I want four. We have all girls and I want a son. I mean, she told me to stay away from her, you know what I mean? Until I change my tune, is what she said. I mean, what do I do? How do I make her want another kid? I don’t think I’m asking for so much.”
“Oh, Man,” William shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Let me ask you a question: How old are the kids?”
“Uh, two, four and six.”
“Do you have any idea how much work your wife has?”
“Hey, I’m the one who works. I have to go to the construction site early every morning and get my hands real dirty and work for sometimes 10 hours a day. Don’t tell me about work,” was how Stan put it.
“You have a problem. It’s called lack of respect. Your wife feels that you don’t respect the work she does. She feels that you think what you do is more important than what she does.”
“Well, it puts food on the table.”
“And who is that food for? Why do you work as hard as you do?” asked William to a perplexed-looking Stan, who just stood their thinking (which took effort).
“Look,” William continued, “your wife doesn’t get a break. Do you get time for lunch?”
“Sure.”
“She doesn’t. She has to gulp her food down while she feeds three starving kids, and they’re always starving. She has to be paying attention to all three, making sure that they don’t get into trouble, showing them that she loves them, and then you come home expecting a big supper after your hard work, am I right?”
“Yeah,” Stan replied, his tone sounding lower and less sure than before.
"Have you ever watched all three kids for a while?”
“Yeah,” Stan said defensively. “I do that sometimes.”
“And how is it?”
“Freakin’ exhausting.”
“And now you want to add a fourth?”
“Okay, I get it,” muttered Stan, the light bulb over his head giving a soft but steady light. “Thanks. I guess I didn’t try to see her point. Gotta go. I got some apologizing to do. See ya. Thanks. They sure right about you. You do know a lot about woman.” And with that Stan walked out of the park so much quieter than he had been when he’d entered.
William just smiled. He did that quite often. He loved it when they all said he was so smart about how women thought and felt. He felt so needed. He also wondered what they’d think if they found out that for the first 25 years of his life, he’d answered not to the name William but to simply Willa.
A Pleasant Drive Spoiled
The pristine triangular white marquee fronting the overhead covering above the gently curving driveway that led up to and then away from the entrance of the Methuselah Senior Homestead attracted more than its share of chilly raindrops that evening. Inside, in the combination dining / social room, four octogenarians sat around a circular oak table, engaged in their yarns of days long gone --- which comforted them more than these damned modern times. Their stories from the 1950’s (on this particular evening) were recalled with far more clarity than the details of the breakfasts that they had ingested that morning at the same table.
These four had become acceptable friends, with staggered entrances into the life of Methuselah over the past few years. They noted that they argued less often than others when they were together, and since passing time with other “inmates” was the favorite pastime in this institution --- for seldom did a relative bother to grace the premises with his or her presence for more than a very uncomfortable hour of small talk, if at all --- this quartet gravitated to each other frequently and shared memories of their vital years. This night, the subject was TV shows of their youth, namely, the 1950’s or what was once called in Golden Years of Television, although they differed in their judgments as to which shows were the best.
The oldest, George Fermont, was 89 years old. He had owned what was called a stationery store back in the day, you know, selling newspapers and paperbacks and stuff. He had worked long days --- and nights, healthy or sick, had dealt with customers ranging from the brisk business-like to the strange and deranged to the boring, and when he retired he swore that he would never have anything to do with “those people” again. He wasn’t the friendliest man around, but he didn’t want to be alone, either. His son and grandkids hardly ever visited him
“I can do without them!” he once shouted at one of the supervisors when informed that his son had called to cancel a visit at the last minute. “Let them all stay away, the bastards. Let them go to hell. That’s where they belong,” he harrumphed, and he walked away, head bowed as if it were carrying a hundred pounds of lead and shuffled to his room.
On this particular evening, he was happy to be lost in this meaningless discussion. Actually, the topic held his interest, bringing happy recollections of a better time. “Wrestling!” he shouted at his companions.
“What?”
“Wrestling!” That was the best thing on TV in the ‘fifties. Yeah, some idiots would say no, “Friday Night Fights” was better but they don’t know what they’re talking about. That boxing was boring unless it was a championship bout --- and only when it was for the Middleweight or Heavyweight Championship. Nah, I loved wrestling. I think it was Channel 5 when I was growin’ up in the Bronx. Yeah, it was fake but not always. And they were athletes plus good actors. And you rooted for the good guys against the freakin’ villains. Yeah, like that fairy, Gorgeous George and that Argentine, Antonino Rocca . . . and my favorite, Mr. America --- Gene Stanley. I could watch that stuff for hours. With my father. He loved it, too.”
“I can see it,” replied Al, a retired cab driver who used to cruise the streets of Manhattan for three decades. “But I was a big baseball fan --- still am. But in the ‘fifties, New York had THREE teams. At least until those greedy idiots who owned the Dodgers and the Giants dragged them away from Brooklyn and upper Manhattan to Lalaland and Frisco.” He looked around for any agreement. “At least those Bronx Bombers stayed, but I loved my Bums . . . Hodges, Campanella, Furillo, Robinson, Newcombe. They was colorful. Even their pre-game show, what was it called?” His deep thinking looked like suffering, and then the light bulb lit: “Happy Felton’s Knot Hole Gang! I was once almost on it, woulda won it, too. At least, maybe.”
“Anyways,” he continued, “ ’Cept for ‘fifty-five, every year was excruciatin’. Those damn billionaire Yanks won almost every year --- ’49 through ’53, ’56, ’58. Still, them Bums was what they called lovable losers before the dumbass Mets were ever born but they wasn’t no losers to me. I wore my blue Dodgers cap whenever I was out, ‘specially playing punchball or stickball. We didn’t have no Little League where I was. Loved them Bums.” At which point, Al became lost in thought, transported to another time, and accompanied by two of his companions.
“Sports, sports, sports!” Janet grumbled. “That’s all you men care about.”
“Yeah,” Al reacted. “What about you. You was watchin’ TV in the ‘fifties, just like us. What’d you waste your time on then?”
Janet quickly became lost in the world of her pre-teen and teen years. She was more than aware of who she was --- a widow who had been alone for thirty years until her kids “put her in” this place “for her own good.” She was good at dismissing that realization as her way of surviving, mentally. So she smiled gently, and said, “Two shows. “American Bandstand” and “Your Hits of the Week.” I loved my music. I loved to dance. That was before the lousy arthritis. I wasn’t that crazy about the “Hits” show because they didn’t have the original singers, but it was nice to hear the tunes. I absolutely loved “American Bandstand.” Dick Clark got us. He knew what we enjoyed. He involved the teenagers in the dancing and got their opinions. Plus, he had the actual singers performing their hit songs. It was like attending a kind of concert five days a week. I remember doing my homework while watching the show. Maybe I would have gotten better grades without the show, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much. Those were the days . . . , ” and she became lost in another place, at least until Grady spoke up.
“Yeah, I see all of your points. So, no comedians among you? No fans of Uncle Miltie or Red Buttons or Sid Caesar or “I Love Lucy”? Or Cecil and Beanie, even? No high-brows who admit to watching “Playhouse 90” or that type of show? What about fantasy, you know, “lights Out” or the original “Twilight Zone”? No?” He gazed from one of his friends to another and saw no response.
“Come on, tell us what you liked, Grady. We’re too old to be kept in suspense. We’ll be dead soon,” George finished, and he stared at Grady, who started, “Well, I think they call them sit-coms now. I was into shows like “Leaver It to Beaver” – hey, don’t laugh! – and “Father Knows Best” and “The Ozzie and Harriet Show” and “The Donna Reid Show.” I liked that any problem could be solved in half an hour, maybe because I had a lot of problems that needed solving and it kind of made me feel more confident . . . even if it was unreal.” The others nodded understanding.
“Go on,” Janet urged Grady. It felt good to be learning something about Grady, who was what she’d call a gentleman, especially compared to the gruff and less than polished Al. Besides, Grady was kind of cute, she thought, and his eyes shined when he spoke of the past. “Go on and tell us which was your favorite.”
Grady knew exactly what to say to make Janet feel good. “That would be “Father Knows Best.” Jim was this always reliable insurance salesman whose work world --- which you never got to see --- was perfect but every time he came home, he was faced with some minor problem that he would have to fix, only he wasn’t as smart as he seemed but his wife was smarter than she was ever given credit for, so by the end of the show, she was the one who solve the problem most of the time. I love the irony of the title (although I couldn’t have defined irony in those days). I really like that show. Sometimes I’ll catch a repeat of it on one of those crazy cable channels . . . but when I watch it now, it isn’t as funny. I don’t Know why . . . ,” and he trailed off, lost in thought.
Janet was drawn to Grady because the latter was a retired teacher, and Janet loved to read and think, and she had perceived rapidly that Grady was well-read and that she could have real conversations with him. Indeed, they’d often discussed politics (They agreed on most matters of policy and personality) and books (He loved the classics and she tended to the more contemporary), but most of all, he made her feel valued, that her opinion counted, a sentiment that had been absent in her marriage.
“You know what?” Al grumbled, “I think we are finished talkin’ ‘bout TV shows. Unless you want to rip those so-called shit reality shows --- pardon my French” (directed to Janet). I got an interesting topic.” He peered at the others, who indicated interest. “How about this: What is the least likely way you will die?”
“Oh, God, no,” Janet responded. “Who wants to talk about death?”
“I read in a book once – I think it was a Nigerian novel called Things Fall Apart” (Janet was impressed) “that there’s a saying that old people get nervous when a skeleton is mentioned. That seems apropos here.” Again, Janet was impressed. “Still, it would be an intriguing discussion.”
“Fine,” grumbled Al. “We got all the time in the world and the TV sucks. I’ll go first. I will never drown! Why? ‘Cause I can’t swim, so why would I be in the water?”
“Yeah,” George piped in, “but maybe you’re on a cruise and you fall overboard . . . or are pushed. Ever think of that?” He smiled self-assuredly.
“Nah,” Al replied. “I hate cruises. I took one once to Bermuda. I was seasick the whole time. When we got to Bermuda, everyone else had a great time and I stayed in my room in the Princess Hotel, I think it was. And I hated the trip back. I kept wishing I would get lost in that Bermuda Triangle but no such luck. No. I’ll never drown. You can bet on that!
The other three looked at each other, wondering who would speak next. George volunteered. “I was watching the Jack Paar show one night and he had on this guest, I forget his name. The guy liked to talk. He wrote a book called May This House Be Safe from Tigers. Paar asked him about the title and you know what he said. He said that whenever he visited someone before he entered the home he said out loud, “May this house be safe from tigers, and it worked. No one he ever visited was attacked by a tiger in his house.”
The others gazed and smiled. “So whatcha sayin’, exactly?” Al challenged George.
“Well, I am going to go one step further. I guarantee that I will not die because a tiger attacks me while I’m riding a horse. I dare you to say that will happen.” He looked quite smug and self-satisfied. Janet shook her head, and the other two men threw up their arms in apparent defeat.
“What about you,” sked Grady to Janet. “Name one way you will never leave us for good. And make it interesting. Show us something about the hidden you.”
Janet took a deep breath and considered her options. Knifed? Shot? Hit with a car? No, too unpredictable.
“Okay. I don’t like alcohol so I’m going to say that I’ll never die from being poisoned by someone putting some poison like arsenic or cyanide into a drink and inviting me to partake. You know what I mean.” She looked around the room, at the stark white walls whose pallor was broken only by a few rectangular paintings of tranquil scenes --- a field of yellow flowers, a landscape with pure snow on the trees and covering the land, with an isolated cottage having a snow-covered rooftop and warm gray smoke emanating from the chimney, also with glowing yellow light coming through the windows for that nice down-home look, a vase with muted colored flowers.
“That’s my safe way,” Janet finished, and then turned to Grady, the lone remaining participant in this game of “How Won’t You Die?”
Grady was quite aware that it was his turn, and he smiled but gave it some speedy deep thinking. He fidgeted with his wristwatch, an old 18-jewel Bulova calendar watch that he’d had for decades and loved, and finally stated, “I’ve got one for you. I guarantee you that I will never be killed by being hit by a second bolt of lightning after I survive the first. Try to top that one!”
They shared a communal laugh and enjoyed the temporary light mood. Al looked at the clock on the wall. It was approaching 9 pm.
“They’re gonna close this place up for the night soon,” he noted. “Get us back to our cages and feed us sleeping pills --- which I spit out, by the way.”
“Damn,” uttered Grady. “I was just starting to relax.”
Janet added, “Only people like us can relax by talking about death.” She suddenly felt her 81 years mounting on her.
Sure enough, the attendant in spotless (and lifeless) white jacket approached them and announced that the time had arrived for them to retire to their rooms, as he put it, but that they should look forward to the next night. “It’s movie night,” he pronounced.
“Yeah,” Al inquired, “what movie. X-rated, I hope,” and he chuckled.
“Something called “Eat Drink Pray” with Julia Roberts,” was the reply. “It’s kind of long so be prepared,” the attendant cautioned.
Janet corrected the attendant, a guy in his twenties. His name was Andrew.
“You have the title wrong, dear,” she said. It’s “Eat Pray Love” but you do have the star’s name right.”
“Great,” George grumbled. “A chick flick. All talk, no action.”
“Like you can do anything but talk at your age,” responded Janet, good-naturedly.
George had a ready reply: “Hey, we’re all the same age here. Don’t you forget that, Miss Superhero.”
“Point taken,” Janet conceded. “But listen, I know you hated that other movie that we saw last year . . . what was it called?” She struggled with her memory, a battle she lost more often than won, but not this time. “Oh, yes. That was “The English Patient.” And you had a right to be miserable. I remember you told me that you fell asleep for an hour and when you woke up, you hadn’t missed anything. How did you put it? Oh, you said that they just kept talking and talking.”
As they were walking away from the circular table, George let the rest know that he would not be attending the movie performance. “My grandson is coming tomorrow. He’s going to take me to his home for the weekend. I don’t see him and his wife very much. And I don’t mind. Their kid makes too much damn noise. But I won’t mind the change of scenery. I’m sure you get it. A chance to eat some good home cooking and sleep in a comfortable bed and maybe walk around town and say hello.” Then he gazed at his companions. “Don’t forget what I look like, okay? I’ll be back Sunday evening. This isn’t a prison break. It’s a temporary pass, okay?”
They all smiled. And they departed to their rooms for the night.
The next morning, George’s grandson arrived looking too cheery for George’s taste, and sounding too bouncy.
“Hey, Gramps!” it began. “You look like you need a vacation. And I’m here to rescue you.” He hugged George a little too enthusiastically, and the old man let out an involuntary “Ummmppphhh” which made Archie, the grandson, smile.
“Good to see you, Kid,” was George’s response. “What do you have planned for me?”
“Well, we leave after you have breakfast . . . .”
“I already ate,” George interrupted.
“Great. Then we leave as soon as you’re packed . . . .”
“I am packed.”
“Then let’s go,” Archie concluded. “We’re taking the highway to my place and you’re going to relax and leave everything up to me and Mattie.”
“I get enough relaxing in this place,” George replied. “I need some action. Not too much, mind you. I am an old fart. But maybe we can go into town and walk around a bit later or tomorrow morning?”
“Absolutely. We can talk more while I’m driving.”
A few minutes later, Archie carried George’s suitcase to his car. “Are you sure you packed? This feels so light it might be empty.”
“I packed. I’ll only be gone for a couple of days, right/ I don’t need much,” George pointed out. Then he noticed Archie’s new car. “Wow!” he said to his grandson. “You must be doing pretty good at work to afford this.”
“I am,” Archie boasted. “Even starting lawyers get good salaries nowadays if they finish high enough in their class.” Seeing his grandfather gaping at the car, he added, “You like it?’
There before them was the latest model Ford Mustang, a hot sports car that mirrored Archie’s exploding personality at a relatively modest price tag, but it did shout “On the way to the top!” to the casual viewer.
“Its color is called Rapid Red. It’s got a 2.3 liter Ecoboost engine. I’ll explain that while we’re driving. It’s got a ten-speed automatic transmission. It does 32 on the highway but I think I can do better,” Archie announce with the pride of a new owner who hasn’t experienced his car’s first scratch yet. George was impressed, not that he knew much about the inner workings of cars.
Soon, they were on the highway, driving smoothly. The trip would take about two and a half hours --- plus the requisite rest stops. George felt a strange combination of relaxation and trepidation. He had become institutionalized, he concluded (without the vocabulary) and he was glad he was getting this change of pace. His son hardly very visited him, so he was kind of thrilled that Archie had arrived.
They had been driving for a little more than an hour. George was beginning to feel the need to make a pit stop, He was about to suggest making the next stop when it happened.
From out of nowhere came a leaping bolt of orange and black. Archie swerved instinctively, trying to avoid the crash, but there was no way to avoid the inevitable meeting of the two moving masses. The large animal smashed into his windshield and shattered it. Archie lost control of the car and it careened off the road and across the shoulder, right through the silver-colored metal barrier and straight down the long steep cliff. The car exploded into a fireball that could be seen for miles. Where it could not be seen, the explosion could be heard. It had all taken less than a minute. Eighty-nine years gone in less than a minute.
The police investigation closed the highway for several hours. The cops just stared at the carcass of a fully grown 480-pound male Bengal tiger, bones broken by its impact with the Mustang. It had escaped from the nearby zoo during feeding time because a novice zookeeper had left the door to the enclosure open “just for a second.” Its nature led it to just run for freedom. Instead, it found death. And in the process, so did Archie and his grandfather, George.
Later that day, when George’s Methuselah companions heard about and began digesting what had happened to their friend, Al just muttered, “What did he say? That he would never die by a tiger attacking him while he was riding a horse. Damn!”
These four had become acceptable friends, with staggered entrances into the life of Methuselah over the past few years. They noted that they argued less often than others when they were together, and since passing time with other “inmates” was the favorite pastime in this institution --- for seldom did a relative bother to grace the premises with his or her presence for more than a very uncomfortable hour of small talk, if at all --- this quartet gravitated to each other frequently and shared memories of their vital years. This night, the subject was TV shows of their youth, namely, the 1950’s or what was once called in Golden Years of Television, although they differed in their judgments as to which shows were the best.
The oldest, George Fermont, was 89 years old. He had owned what was called a stationery store back in the day, you know, selling newspapers and paperbacks and stuff. He had worked long days --- and nights, healthy or sick, had dealt with customers ranging from the brisk business-like to the strange and deranged to the boring, and when he retired he swore that he would never have anything to do with “those people” again. He wasn’t the friendliest man around, but he didn’t want to be alone, either. His son and grandkids hardly ever visited him
“I can do without them!” he once shouted at one of the supervisors when informed that his son had called to cancel a visit at the last minute. “Let them all stay away, the bastards. Let them go to hell. That’s where they belong,” he harrumphed, and he walked away, head bowed as if it were carrying a hundred pounds of lead and shuffled to his room.
On this particular evening, he was happy to be lost in this meaningless discussion. Actually, the topic held his interest, bringing happy recollections of a better time. “Wrestling!” he shouted at his companions.
“What?”
“Wrestling!” That was the best thing on TV in the ‘fifties. Yeah, some idiots would say no, “Friday Night Fights” was better but they don’t know what they’re talking about. That boxing was boring unless it was a championship bout --- and only when it was for the Middleweight or Heavyweight Championship. Nah, I loved wrestling. I think it was Channel 5 when I was growin’ up in the Bronx. Yeah, it was fake but not always. And they were athletes plus good actors. And you rooted for the good guys against the freakin’ villains. Yeah, like that fairy, Gorgeous George and that Argentine, Antonino Rocca . . . and my favorite, Mr. America --- Gene Stanley. I could watch that stuff for hours. With my father. He loved it, too.”
“I can see it,” replied Al, a retired cab driver who used to cruise the streets of Manhattan for three decades. “But I was a big baseball fan --- still am. But in the ‘fifties, New York had THREE teams. At least until those greedy idiots who owned the Dodgers and the Giants dragged them away from Brooklyn and upper Manhattan to Lalaland and Frisco.” He looked around for any agreement. “At least those Bronx Bombers stayed, but I loved my Bums . . . Hodges, Campanella, Furillo, Robinson, Newcombe. They was colorful. Even their pre-game show, what was it called?” His deep thinking looked like suffering, and then the light bulb lit: “Happy Felton’s Knot Hole Gang! I was once almost on it, woulda won it, too. At least, maybe.”
“Anyways,” he continued, “ ’Cept for ‘fifty-five, every year was excruciatin’. Those damn billionaire Yanks won almost every year --- ’49 through ’53, ’56, ’58. Still, them Bums was what they called lovable losers before the dumbass Mets were ever born but they wasn’t no losers to me. I wore my blue Dodgers cap whenever I was out, ‘specially playing punchball or stickball. We didn’t have no Little League where I was. Loved them Bums.” At which point, Al became lost in thought, transported to another time, and accompanied by two of his companions.
“Sports, sports, sports!” Janet grumbled. “That’s all you men care about.”
“Yeah,” Al reacted. “What about you. You was watchin’ TV in the ‘fifties, just like us. What’d you waste your time on then?”
Janet quickly became lost in the world of her pre-teen and teen years. She was more than aware of who she was --- a widow who had been alone for thirty years until her kids “put her in” this place “for her own good.” She was good at dismissing that realization as her way of surviving, mentally. So she smiled gently, and said, “Two shows. “American Bandstand” and “Your Hits of the Week.” I loved my music. I loved to dance. That was before the lousy arthritis. I wasn’t that crazy about the “Hits” show because they didn’t have the original singers, but it was nice to hear the tunes. I absolutely loved “American Bandstand.” Dick Clark got us. He knew what we enjoyed. He involved the teenagers in the dancing and got their opinions. Plus, he had the actual singers performing their hit songs. It was like attending a kind of concert five days a week. I remember doing my homework while watching the show. Maybe I would have gotten better grades without the show, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much. Those were the days . . . , ” and she became lost in another place, at least until Grady spoke up.
“Yeah, I see all of your points. So, no comedians among you? No fans of Uncle Miltie or Red Buttons or Sid Caesar or “I Love Lucy”? Or Cecil and Beanie, even? No high-brows who admit to watching “Playhouse 90” or that type of show? What about fantasy, you know, “lights Out” or the original “Twilight Zone”? No?” He gazed from one of his friends to another and saw no response.
“Come on, tell us what you liked, Grady. We’re too old to be kept in suspense. We’ll be dead soon,” George finished, and he stared at Grady, who started, “Well, I think they call them sit-coms now. I was into shows like “Leaver It to Beaver” – hey, don’t laugh! – and “Father Knows Best” and “The Ozzie and Harriet Show” and “The Donna Reid Show.” I liked that any problem could be solved in half an hour, maybe because I had a lot of problems that needed solving and it kind of made me feel more confident . . . even if it was unreal.” The others nodded understanding.
“Go on,” Janet urged Grady. It felt good to be learning something about Grady, who was what she’d call a gentleman, especially compared to the gruff and less than polished Al. Besides, Grady was kind of cute, she thought, and his eyes shined when he spoke of the past. “Go on and tell us which was your favorite.”
Grady knew exactly what to say to make Janet feel good. “That would be “Father Knows Best.” Jim was this always reliable insurance salesman whose work world --- which you never got to see --- was perfect but every time he came home, he was faced with some minor problem that he would have to fix, only he wasn’t as smart as he seemed but his wife was smarter than she was ever given credit for, so by the end of the show, she was the one who solve the problem most of the time. I love the irony of the title (although I couldn’t have defined irony in those days). I really like that show. Sometimes I’ll catch a repeat of it on one of those crazy cable channels . . . but when I watch it now, it isn’t as funny. I don’t Know why . . . ,” and he trailed off, lost in thought.
Janet was drawn to Grady because the latter was a retired teacher, and Janet loved to read and think, and she had perceived rapidly that Grady was well-read and that she could have real conversations with him. Indeed, they’d often discussed politics (They agreed on most matters of policy and personality) and books (He loved the classics and she tended to the more contemporary), but most of all, he made her feel valued, that her opinion counted, a sentiment that had been absent in her marriage.
“You know what?” Al grumbled, “I think we are finished talkin’ ‘bout TV shows. Unless you want to rip those so-called shit reality shows --- pardon my French” (directed to Janet). I got an interesting topic.” He peered at the others, who indicated interest. “How about this: What is the least likely way you will die?”
“Oh, God, no,” Janet responded. “Who wants to talk about death?”
“I read in a book once – I think it was a Nigerian novel called Things Fall Apart” (Janet was impressed) “that there’s a saying that old people get nervous when a skeleton is mentioned. That seems apropos here.” Again, Janet was impressed. “Still, it would be an intriguing discussion.”
“Fine,” grumbled Al. “We got all the time in the world and the TV sucks. I’ll go first. I will never drown! Why? ‘Cause I can’t swim, so why would I be in the water?”
“Yeah,” George piped in, “but maybe you’re on a cruise and you fall overboard . . . or are pushed. Ever think of that?” He smiled self-assuredly.
“Nah,” Al replied. “I hate cruises. I took one once to Bermuda. I was seasick the whole time. When we got to Bermuda, everyone else had a great time and I stayed in my room in the Princess Hotel, I think it was. And I hated the trip back. I kept wishing I would get lost in that Bermuda Triangle but no such luck. No. I’ll never drown. You can bet on that!
The other three looked at each other, wondering who would speak next. George volunteered. “I was watching the Jack Paar show one night and he had on this guest, I forget his name. The guy liked to talk. He wrote a book called May This House Be Safe from Tigers. Paar asked him about the title and you know what he said. He said that whenever he visited someone before he entered the home he said out loud, “May this house be safe from tigers, and it worked. No one he ever visited was attacked by a tiger in his house.”
The others gazed and smiled. “So whatcha sayin’, exactly?” Al challenged George.
“Well, I am going to go one step further. I guarantee that I will not die because a tiger attacks me while I’m riding a horse. I dare you to say that will happen.” He looked quite smug and self-satisfied. Janet shook her head, and the other two men threw up their arms in apparent defeat.
“What about you,” sked Grady to Janet. “Name one way you will never leave us for good. And make it interesting. Show us something about the hidden you.”
Janet took a deep breath and considered her options. Knifed? Shot? Hit with a car? No, too unpredictable.
“Okay. I don’t like alcohol so I’m going to say that I’ll never die from being poisoned by someone putting some poison like arsenic or cyanide into a drink and inviting me to partake. You know what I mean.” She looked around the room, at the stark white walls whose pallor was broken only by a few rectangular paintings of tranquil scenes --- a field of yellow flowers, a landscape with pure snow on the trees and covering the land, with an isolated cottage having a snow-covered rooftop and warm gray smoke emanating from the chimney, also with glowing yellow light coming through the windows for that nice down-home look, a vase with muted colored flowers.
“That’s my safe way,” Janet finished, and then turned to Grady, the lone remaining participant in this game of “How Won’t You Die?”
Grady was quite aware that it was his turn, and he smiled but gave it some speedy deep thinking. He fidgeted with his wristwatch, an old 18-jewel Bulova calendar watch that he’d had for decades and loved, and finally stated, “I’ve got one for you. I guarantee you that I will never be killed by being hit by a second bolt of lightning after I survive the first. Try to top that one!”
They shared a communal laugh and enjoyed the temporary light mood. Al looked at the clock on the wall. It was approaching 9 pm.
“They’re gonna close this place up for the night soon,” he noted. “Get us back to our cages and feed us sleeping pills --- which I spit out, by the way.”
“Damn,” uttered Grady. “I was just starting to relax.”
Janet added, “Only people like us can relax by talking about death.” She suddenly felt her 81 years mounting on her.
Sure enough, the attendant in spotless (and lifeless) white jacket approached them and announced that the time had arrived for them to retire to their rooms, as he put it, but that they should look forward to the next night. “It’s movie night,” he pronounced.
“Yeah,” Al inquired, “what movie. X-rated, I hope,” and he chuckled.
“Something called “Eat Drink Pray” with Julia Roberts,” was the reply. “It’s kind of long so be prepared,” the attendant cautioned.
Janet corrected the attendant, a guy in his twenties. His name was Andrew.
“You have the title wrong, dear,” she said. It’s “Eat Pray Love” but you do have the star’s name right.”
“Great,” George grumbled. “A chick flick. All talk, no action.”
“Like you can do anything but talk at your age,” responded Janet, good-naturedly.
George had a ready reply: “Hey, we’re all the same age here. Don’t you forget that, Miss Superhero.”
“Point taken,” Janet conceded. “But listen, I know you hated that other movie that we saw last year . . . what was it called?” She struggled with her memory, a battle she lost more often than won, but not this time. “Oh, yes. That was “The English Patient.” And you had a right to be miserable. I remember you told me that you fell asleep for an hour and when you woke up, you hadn’t missed anything. How did you put it? Oh, you said that they just kept talking and talking.”
As they were walking away from the circular table, George let the rest know that he would not be attending the movie performance. “My grandson is coming tomorrow. He’s going to take me to his home for the weekend. I don’t see him and his wife very much. And I don’t mind. Their kid makes too much damn noise. But I won’t mind the change of scenery. I’m sure you get it. A chance to eat some good home cooking and sleep in a comfortable bed and maybe walk around town and say hello.” Then he gazed at his companions. “Don’t forget what I look like, okay? I’ll be back Sunday evening. This isn’t a prison break. It’s a temporary pass, okay?”
They all smiled. And they departed to their rooms for the night.
The next morning, George’s grandson arrived looking too cheery for George’s taste, and sounding too bouncy.
“Hey, Gramps!” it began. “You look like you need a vacation. And I’m here to rescue you.” He hugged George a little too enthusiastically, and the old man let out an involuntary “Ummmppphhh” which made Archie, the grandson, smile.
“Good to see you, Kid,” was George’s response. “What do you have planned for me?”
“Well, we leave after you have breakfast . . . .”
“I already ate,” George interrupted.
“Great. Then we leave as soon as you’re packed . . . .”
“I am packed.”
“Then let’s go,” Archie concluded. “We’re taking the highway to my place and you’re going to relax and leave everything up to me and Mattie.”
“I get enough relaxing in this place,” George replied. “I need some action. Not too much, mind you. I am an old fart. But maybe we can go into town and walk around a bit later or tomorrow morning?”
“Absolutely. We can talk more while I’m driving.”
A few minutes later, Archie carried George’s suitcase to his car. “Are you sure you packed? This feels so light it might be empty.”
“I packed. I’ll only be gone for a couple of days, right/ I don’t need much,” George pointed out. Then he noticed Archie’s new car. “Wow!” he said to his grandson. “You must be doing pretty good at work to afford this.”
“I am,” Archie boasted. “Even starting lawyers get good salaries nowadays if they finish high enough in their class.” Seeing his grandfather gaping at the car, he added, “You like it?’
There before them was the latest model Ford Mustang, a hot sports car that mirrored Archie’s exploding personality at a relatively modest price tag, but it did shout “On the way to the top!” to the casual viewer.
“Its color is called Rapid Red. It’s got a 2.3 liter Ecoboost engine. I’ll explain that while we’re driving. It’s got a ten-speed automatic transmission. It does 32 on the highway but I think I can do better,” Archie announce with the pride of a new owner who hasn’t experienced his car’s first scratch yet. George was impressed, not that he knew much about the inner workings of cars.
Soon, they were on the highway, driving smoothly. The trip would take about two and a half hours --- plus the requisite rest stops. George felt a strange combination of relaxation and trepidation. He had become institutionalized, he concluded (without the vocabulary) and he was glad he was getting this change of pace. His son hardly very visited him, so he was kind of thrilled that Archie had arrived.
They had been driving for a little more than an hour. George was beginning to feel the need to make a pit stop, He was about to suggest making the next stop when it happened.
From out of nowhere came a leaping bolt of orange and black. Archie swerved instinctively, trying to avoid the crash, but there was no way to avoid the inevitable meeting of the two moving masses. The large animal smashed into his windshield and shattered it. Archie lost control of the car and it careened off the road and across the shoulder, right through the silver-colored metal barrier and straight down the long steep cliff. The car exploded into a fireball that could be seen for miles. Where it could not be seen, the explosion could be heard. It had all taken less than a minute. Eighty-nine years gone in less than a minute.
The police investigation closed the highway for several hours. The cops just stared at the carcass of a fully grown 480-pound male Bengal tiger, bones broken by its impact with the Mustang. It had escaped from the nearby zoo during feeding time because a novice zookeeper had left the door to the enclosure open “just for a second.” Its nature led it to just run for freedom. Instead, it found death. And in the process, so did Archie and his grandfather, George.
Later that day, when George’s Methuselah companions heard about and began digesting what had happened to their friend, Al just muttered, “What did he say? That he would never die by a tiger attacking him while he was riding a horse. Damn!”
Burial
There was no storm, just an annoying steady downpour backed up by a nasty current of breezes and a dull gray sky. The trees were mostly bare and water-laden fallen leaves sloshed when someone walked over a patch. There was no joy this morning as Joe Halboro gazed around at his fellow mourners, all dressed in either black suits and overcoats to match or black dresses and pantsuits with the mandatory suitably hued coats.
He tried to get closer to the coffin, but people ignored him. He was by nature soft-spoken sand he found no inner strength in this moment that demanded quietude to be aggressive or assertive. That was too out of character for him. Instead, he accepted his situation and simply stayed in the background. There was a definite benefit to this, he thought; he could avoid staring at the faces of the grieving crowd in their time of anguish. Yes, there was that.
He surveyed the crowd. The minister with his booming voice stood at the front, before the gravestone and the gruesome emptiness that used to be a rectangular patch of earth, but which now served as a “final resting place” for the deceased. Then would be the immediate family (he couldn’t quite make out their faces but used his imagination to envision their expressions of grief), followed by family, friends and work associates --- and, he supposed, a few others who simply thought that their appearance at this event would do them some good eventually when it came to networking or some conversation at a social gathering in the future.
Joe nervously fingered the left pocket of his suit jacket and accepted the raindrops graciously and passively. After all, he wasn’t the “guest of honor” here. He wasn’t even part of any of the short and brief lowly stated side comments or conversations as the minister went on and on about the deceased’s accomplishments. He did have excellent hearing, however, and he couldn’t help but overhear some of those side comments.
“The man was a phony,” said a tall, thin gentleman to his left. “The guy thought he was fooling everyone but we all knew that he was a liar. He always made out that he was rich, but he owed everyone I know. Phony.”
“Shut up,” grunted his female companion. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t . . . .” She had made her point. Mr. Tall shut up. Joe was upset --- not that the deceased was being labeled a phony. It was more that Joe wanted to hear more . . . maybe a couple of examples of said phoniness.
Then a young woman, a bit hefty, not far from the tall man, caught his attention. She was telling her friend (he guessed at the relationship based on what he heard), “I hated him. I’m only here to get the last laugh. That bastard cheated on me. He swore that he loved me, but he slept with at least two women I know of. And I know --- they couldn’t wait to tell me as soon as he left their beds. I hate him and I’m glad that truck crushed his mini-Cooper.” She had an evil smile, Joe thought. “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t see the damn accident. I would have enjoyed that immensely, trust me.” He friend nodded a clear understanding mixed with a degree of empathy.
Joe was beginning to wonder about this crowd. He’d never attended a funeral before where the guy being laid to rest, as they like to say, was disliked so much. He tried to recall any reason he’d had to dislike the deceased, but his mind was a blank. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention to the others once again.
“Glad he’s dead,” muttered an old man in the right center of the small crowd. “He owed me money. Lots of money. I was a damn idiot for lending it to him. I knew his reputation but his father had been a friend so I figured I could trust the son. Boy, was I wrong! The crap-head. He didn’t just not pay me back. He denied that I’d ever lent him the money.”
“I heard,” whispered the woman accompanying him. “You’ve grumbled about it a thousand times.”
“Well, I coulda used that money. I was an idiot, I tell ya. An idiot. May his soul go straight to hell. This funeral is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I can’t afford tickets to Hamilton but this was free --- and that’s what any show with him in it would be worth. The crap-head.”
Joe shook his head unnoticeably. He didn’t want to call anyone’s attention to himself. He wondered what kind of person would attract this type of “audience.” He turned his attention to the minister.
“Ashes to ashes,” the clergyman was reciting. “Dust to dust.”
“That’s him, all right,” volunteered a middle-aged woman to his far right. “That’s what he was worth. Ashes and dust. Go on, Minister. Sorry.”
The minister continued. “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.”
“Yeah, naturally,” an obese man in the front center said rather noticeably. “Why would he fear evil? He was evil!” And the others laughed and poked each other.
What kind of a funeral is this?, Joe questioned, out loud this time, but there was no response. He looked around, prepared to defend himself, but no one gave him the courtesy of challenging his incredulity. He assumed that no one really felt that the deceased was worth an argument. Only slightly did he feel that maybe these people had an iota of dignity, enough to feel a slight bit of shame for their behavior. However, he was astounded that not even the minister admonished them for their unkind words.
“The poor man is dead, after all,” he continued in a barely discernible voice, “Let him be. It’s only common courtesy.”
But no one replied. They all stared straight ahead, perhaps ashamed of their words. At least, Joe hoped so. He’d always seen this trusting side in people. Why would his view change because of a few malcontents?
The rain came down harder. It was becoming difficult to see. A few of the crowd coughed and sneezed. A gust of wind broke off one of the tree branches and it fell to the ground, almost hitting Joe.
“Come on, Reverend,” shouted the tall, thin man. “Finish up. I got to get home. The Giants are playing the Dolphins later and I want to see it.”
“You got a new 85 inch TV last week, right?” one of the other men asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Mind if I come over?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Hurry up, Minister.”
The minister looked at the bunch. He had put up with their ridicule and nasty commentary, and he now glared at the tall, thin man. He took a deep breath, and at last he mustered up the courage to say, “So listen to me, Sam.” he hesitated but then said what was on his mind. “Can I come over, too?”
“Sure,” was the reply.
And the minister signaled the grave diggers to fill the grave, to cover the coffin which had been lowered into the vacuous ground, to finish their job, and they began this work. Joe was amazed at how quickly they accomplished the feat with a combination of their mini-derrick and good old-fashioned shovels.
At the same time as this work was being done, the minister led the assemblage away from the grave and toward the awaiting cars. Joe had no desire to watch any football game or socialize with these people. He couldn’t even understand why he had found himself a part of such a group of thoughtless, undisciplined people, and he was happy to see them leave.
He would do the right thing. He would quietly pay his respects to the deceased in his own way. He walked to where the coffin had been buried. He ignored the pounding rain. He stared at the newly compiled mound of earth and envisioned the lonely coffin lying some six feet beneath where he now stood. Then he stared at the tombstone, so pristine (except for the raindrops), so blatantly made not from Italian marble or slate or granite, as might have been expected, but from poured and roughly shaped concrete, and yet so deeply inscribed with the words:
“Rest in the Peace that You Afforded None Who Knew You in Life, for God is Merciful. Joseph Halboro. September 5, 1985 – September 5, 2020. Happy Birthday.”
For the first time ever, Joe Halboro felt bad.
The Family Store - a memoir
I grew up in The Bronx. I went to P. S. 119, Junior High School 125, and James Monroe High School. I was a fan of The Bronx Bombers. I played in the school playgrounds and the wonderful vacant lots. I remember, in the 1950’s, sleighing down the vacant lot across the street from my building until it was replaced by some hated private houses. I recall regularly going to a traveling carnival until it no longer made those welcome appearances because that vacant lot (not the same one) was replaced by the construction of a monstrosity called the Cross Bronx Expressway! Most of all, I remember ““The Store”,” the stationery store located at 1781 Westchester Avenue, owned jointly by my father and my sister’s husband for decades.
Of course, we didn’t sell just stationery there. We sold cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and tobacco (when they were popular, before their cancerous connection was made widely known), candy (most of which cost five cents a bar, except for the very expensive Mounds and Almond Joy, which sold for 10 cents each), greeting cards, school supplies and newspapers. In addition to the News, the Post and The New York Times, there were the Mirror, the Herald Tribune, The Journal American and several foreign language publications in Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, Hungarian, German --- all representative of the make-up of the neighborhood. There was also the racing form, as well as a few magazines (Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, The Saturday Evening Post, Sunbathing --- and I admit that I may have accidentally perused the latter a few times in my extended pursuit of the study of human anatomy).
A customer could come into ““The Store”” and purchase any of a large number of comic books (for 10 cents apiece) or paperback novels (as I remember, about 50 cents each). At my age then, I was partial to the comic books; every time a new shipment came in, my father would bring me home a selection of my favorites (featuring the Disney characters, Superboy, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Batman, Elastic Man, Archie) which I carefully read, not adding any unnatural creases to the pages so that they could be returned to their proper places on the brackets of the wall of ““The Store”” and sold as new. I used to live vicariously through my super-heroes, especially Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. I even made a cape out of an old shirt (which I wore only in the privacy of my home, which was a good thing, because I might otherwise have been locked up in a mental institution if I had been sighted on the street in one of my alter egos).
When I was very young, I tried to take part in the “life” of ““The Store”” a few times. I can recall once, during the Major Leagues baseball World Series in an October of the very early 1950’s, when my cherished New York Yankees were playing for one of their perennial World Championships, I was keeping my father company in ““The Store”” (since my mother had passed away in 1950) and I took it upon myself to post inning-by-inning scores of the day’s World Series game on a cardboard score sheet which I had constructed and placed in the outside window. It was easy to see since all World Series games were played during the day in those times. I also remember that we had two wonderful phone booths, the kind with seats and doors which you could close from the inside for privacy. I had no one I wanted to spend five cents calling, but I used to sit in one of those booths every once in a while and pretend to be a bus driver, opening and closing the folding door for imaginary passengers. What can I say? I was creative.
I cannot forget another time; I decided to make some money in ““The Store”” so I produced, at home, a giant bag of Jolly Time pop corn (They came in these aluminum pans with handles, were covered with aluminum foil and popped to completion when placed for a short time on a stove burner). I can’t remember where I got a giant bag, but I managed to, and when I finally carried that unwieldy and completely filled bag to “The Store”, I was not allowed to sell any of it “for health reasons.” So ended my brief career as an entrepreneur.
My father and my brother-in-law shared the hours of work between themselves. Both worked six days a week, putting in the daily hours of from 5 A.M. until 11 P.M., and they alternated working on Sundays, when ““The Store”” was open from 6 A.M. till 3 P.M. (but actually showing up by 5 A.M. to put the different sections of the newspaper together so that they’d be ready for sale when ““The Store”” opened). I replaced my father when he retired and went on Social Security, collecting the grand total of $90 a month (which, by the way, in those days paid our rent of $71 monthly for the one-bedroom apartment on Virginia Avenue, across the elevated train tracks from Parkchester, where we lived for approximately 17 years). I was a junior at C.C.N.Y. (City College of New York) at the time (1963 – 1964).
For two years, I took sole control of ““The Store”” at 5 P.M. and closed at 11 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays. I also became the sole worker every Sunday, arriving at 5 A.M. (when the only other store open was the neighborhood bakery, which served wonderful coffee --- appreciated especially on frigid winter mornings, after I had walked the two miles from my home --- and my favorite hot cross buns) to take in the newspapers and go to the back (the front door was still locked till 6 A.M.) and put together the eight or more sections of The New York Times” (“All the news that’s fit to print”) together with the other papers I already mentioned. I used to love looking at the front page of the magazine section of the Italian newspaper we sold; it always featured a landscape of a different Italian city, in glorious black and white, which made it appear so romantic, and which I hoped to visit one day.
As I said, the neighborhood in which ““The Store”” was located was diverse. While I worked there (doing my college homework between customers --- as an English major, I was constantly reading; at other times, I was studying three languages at the same time --- Hebrew, Latin and Greek --- with three alphabets --- What was I thinking?), I had the pleasure, and sometimes the displeasure, of coming into contact with a wide range of characters. One of the most memorable as a teenager who went to a Catholic institution called Power Memorial High School. He was a chubby, amiable, enthusiastic boy who would regale me with tales of a very tall player on his school’s basketball team. This player was more than tall; he was very athletic (I used to play in my high school against a 6’7” classmate who was not coordinated and who I could easily defeat even though I was one foot shorter than he was) and dominating. The name of the boy from Power Memorial (which has since closed) was Lew Alcindor. Of course, I later followed his college career at UCLA and his professional career in the NBA, first with the Milwaukee Bucks and later with the Los Angeles Lakers (which I had known, growing up, as the Minneapolis Lakers, home of the hated yet admired George Mikan). As you might know, Lew Alcindor eventually changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
A customer whom I cannot forget was really annoying. He was a self-proclaimed undiscovered genius. He expounded on many theories and told me about a multitude of inventions he had created, none of which ever made him wealthy or famous. That never stopped him from talking my head off for hours. After all, in those days, the customer was always right, and he had, in me, a captive audience. So, on he talked and on I nodded my head at proper intervals. My entire body used to twitch whenever I saw him enter our establishment, and I would long for his departure, which too often didn’t come till I announced that I was closing ““The Store”” for the night.
Then there was Maxie, a mentally challenged man in his thirties. His face was home to a never-ending smile. He was always eager to help out in any way. He was a pleasure to see when he entered. There was no deep conversation with him, just neighborhood stuff about what was going on in his life, stuff about his mother and his “friends.” I felt quite sad when his mom, who had been his sole caretaker, passed away but somehow Maxie managed to carry on. His mother must have done a terrific job building his sense of independence. I was proud of him and respected him for that.
One of my steady customers once talked me into a blind date with his niece. I was wary because this man had the largest nose I had ever seen (putting Jimmy Durante’s to shame, making Bob Hope’s look like a dot and challenging Cyrano de Bergerac’s). I confess that I was in my very early twenties and perhaps a bit superficial. So, I feared that this proboscis might be a family trait, but the man was relentless, day after day assuring me that his niece was beautiful and that I would be pleased if only I would trust him and take a chance --- so I finally acquiesced. On the evening of the date, I took a series of subway trains from my part of the Bronx to her stop on the other side of the Bronx (ironically, not far from William Howard Taft High School, where I would a few years later teach, for 30 years). I knocked on the girl’s apartment door and she opened it. I could barely see the rest of her face because of her nose. Our relationship lasted just the one date but, a I said, I was superficial, and therefore stupid. She was a really nice girl who was easy to have a conversation with. Hopefully, she found the right man for herself to share her life with. She deserved that.
Well, my “career” at “The Store” came to an end upon my graduation from college. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. His brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, came to speak at C.C.N.Y. the week after the assassination (a coincidence in scheduling) to recruit near-graduates for the relatively new Peace Corps, and I became emotionally carried away (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” – I loved JFK and the idealism he promoted) and ended up filling out an application to join. By June 1964 I was a college graduate (first in my family, by the way, although so many others have followed), finished with “The Store” and headed to Indiana University for a 10-week training session preparing me to serve for two years as an English Language and Literature teacher in Schlenker Secondary School, located in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, West Africa, one of the poorest nations in the world, a country which had just gained its independence from Great Britain a few years before. (If you are interested in any of my Peace Corps “adventures,” feel free to explore the section on the PEACE CORPS elsewhere on this site.)
My sister took my place in “The Store” and the family tradition continued until her husband, my brother-in-law, facing the barrel of a gun one time too many as the neighborhood changed for the worse, finally sold the place, at which point it underwent a metamorphosis from concrete to intangible, living on only in my memory.
And that’s good because memory tends to block out the unpleasant in favor of the acceptable. “The Store” will always hold fond memories for me. After all, it was kind of our home away from home.
Of course, we didn’t sell just stationery there. We sold cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and tobacco (when they were popular, before their cancerous connection was made widely known), candy (most of which cost five cents a bar, except for the very expensive Mounds and Almond Joy, which sold for 10 cents each), greeting cards, school supplies and newspapers. In addition to the News, the Post and The New York Times, there were the Mirror, the Herald Tribune, The Journal American and several foreign language publications in Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, Hungarian, German --- all representative of the make-up of the neighborhood. There was also the racing form, as well as a few magazines (Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, The Saturday Evening Post, Sunbathing --- and I admit that I may have accidentally perused the latter a few times in my extended pursuit of the study of human anatomy).
A customer could come into ““The Store”” and purchase any of a large number of comic books (for 10 cents apiece) or paperback novels (as I remember, about 50 cents each). At my age then, I was partial to the comic books; every time a new shipment came in, my father would bring me home a selection of my favorites (featuring the Disney characters, Superboy, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Batman, Elastic Man, Archie) which I carefully read, not adding any unnatural creases to the pages so that they could be returned to their proper places on the brackets of the wall of ““The Store”” and sold as new. I used to live vicariously through my super-heroes, especially Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. I even made a cape out of an old shirt (which I wore only in the privacy of my home, which was a good thing, because I might otherwise have been locked up in a mental institution if I had been sighted on the street in one of my alter egos).
When I was very young, I tried to take part in the “life” of ““The Store”” a few times. I can recall once, during the Major Leagues baseball World Series in an October of the very early 1950’s, when my cherished New York Yankees were playing for one of their perennial World Championships, I was keeping my father company in ““The Store”” (since my mother had passed away in 1950) and I took it upon myself to post inning-by-inning scores of the day’s World Series game on a cardboard score sheet which I had constructed and placed in the outside window. It was easy to see since all World Series games were played during the day in those times. I also remember that we had two wonderful phone booths, the kind with seats and doors which you could close from the inside for privacy. I had no one I wanted to spend five cents calling, but I used to sit in one of those booths every once in a while and pretend to be a bus driver, opening and closing the folding door for imaginary passengers. What can I say? I was creative.
I cannot forget another time; I decided to make some money in ““The Store”” so I produced, at home, a giant bag of Jolly Time pop corn (They came in these aluminum pans with handles, were covered with aluminum foil and popped to completion when placed for a short time on a stove burner). I can’t remember where I got a giant bag, but I managed to, and when I finally carried that unwieldy and completely filled bag to “The Store”, I was not allowed to sell any of it “for health reasons.” So ended my brief career as an entrepreneur.
My father and my brother-in-law shared the hours of work between themselves. Both worked six days a week, putting in the daily hours of from 5 A.M. until 11 P.M., and they alternated working on Sundays, when ““The Store”” was open from 6 A.M. till 3 P.M. (but actually showing up by 5 A.M. to put the different sections of the newspaper together so that they’d be ready for sale when ““The Store”” opened). I replaced my father when he retired and went on Social Security, collecting the grand total of $90 a month (which, by the way, in those days paid our rent of $71 monthly for the one-bedroom apartment on Virginia Avenue, across the elevated train tracks from Parkchester, where we lived for approximately 17 years). I was a junior at C.C.N.Y. (City College of New York) at the time (1963 – 1964).
For two years, I took sole control of ““The Store”” at 5 P.M. and closed at 11 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays. I also became the sole worker every Sunday, arriving at 5 A.M. (when the only other store open was the neighborhood bakery, which served wonderful coffee --- appreciated especially on frigid winter mornings, after I had walked the two miles from my home --- and my favorite hot cross buns) to take in the newspapers and go to the back (the front door was still locked till 6 A.M.) and put together the eight or more sections of The New York Times” (“All the news that’s fit to print”) together with the other papers I already mentioned. I used to love looking at the front page of the magazine section of the Italian newspaper we sold; it always featured a landscape of a different Italian city, in glorious black and white, which made it appear so romantic, and which I hoped to visit one day.
As I said, the neighborhood in which ““The Store”” was located was diverse. While I worked there (doing my college homework between customers --- as an English major, I was constantly reading; at other times, I was studying three languages at the same time --- Hebrew, Latin and Greek --- with three alphabets --- What was I thinking?), I had the pleasure, and sometimes the displeasure, of coming into contact with a wide range of characters. One of the most memorable as a teenager who went to a Catholic institution called Power Memorial High School. He was a chubby, amiable, enthusiastic boy who would regale me with tales of a very tall player on his school’s basketball team. This player was more than tall; he was very athletic (I used to play in my high school against a 6’7” classmate who was not coordinated and who I could easily defeat even though I was one foot shorter than he was) and dominating. The name of the boy from Power Memorial (which has since closed) was Lew Alcindor. Of course, I later followed his college career at UCLA and his professional career in the NBA, first with the Milwaukee Bucks and later with the Los Angeles Lakers (which I had known, growing up, as the Minneapolis Lakers, home of the hated yet admired George Mikan). As you might know, Lew Alcindor eventually changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
A customer whom I cannot forget was really annoying. He was a self-proclaimed undiscovered genius. He expounded on many theories and told me about a multitude of inventions he had created, none of which ever made him wealthy or famous. That never stopped him from talking my head off for hours. After all, in those days, the customer was always right, and he had, in me, a captive audience. So, on he talked and on I nodded my head at proper intervals. My entire body used to twitch whenever I saw him enter our establishment, and I would long for his departure, which too often didn’t come till I announced that I was closing ““The Store”” for the night.
Then there was Maxie, a mentally challenged man in his thirties. His face was home to a never-ending smile. He was always eager to help out in any way. He was a pleasure to see when he entered. There was no deep conversation with him, just neighborhood stuff about what was going on in his life, stuff about his mother and his “friends.” I felt quite sad when his mom, who had been his sole caretaker, passed away but somehow Maxie managed to carry on. His mother must have done a terrific job building his sense of independence. I was proud of him and respected him for that.
One of my steady customers once talked me into a blind date with his niece. I was wary because this man had the largest nose I had ever seen (putting Jimmy Durante’s to shame, making Bob Hope’s look like a dot and challenging Cyrano de Bergerac’s). I confess that I was in my very early twenties and perhaps a bit superficial. So, I feared that this proboscis might be a family trait, but the man was relentless, day after day assuring me that his niece was beautiful and that I would be pleased if only I would trust him and take a chance --- so I finally acquiesced. On the evening of the date, I took a series of subway trains from my part of the Bronx to her stop on the other side of the Bronx (ironically, not far from William Howard Taft High School, where I would a few years later teach, for 30 years). I knocked on the girl’s apartment door and she opened it. I could barely see the rest of her face because of her nose. Our relationship lasted just the one date but, a I said, I was superficial, and therefore stupid. She was a really nice girl who was easy to have a conversation with. Hopefully, she found the right man for herself to share her life with. She deserved that.
Well, my “career” at “The Store” came to an end upon my graduation from college. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. His brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, came to speak at C.C.N.Y. the week after the assassination (a coincidence in scheduling) to recruit near-graduates for the relatively new Peace Corps, and I became emotionally carried away (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” – I loved JFK and the idealism he promoted) and ended up filling out an application to join. By June 1964 I was a college graduate (first in my family, by the way, although so many others have followed), finished with “The Store” and headed to Indiana University for a 10-week training session preparing me to serve for two years as an English Language and Literature teacher in Schlenker Secondary School, located in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, West Africa, one of the poorest nations in the world, a country which had just gained its independence from Great Britain a few years before. (If you are interested in any of my Peace Corps “adventures,” feel free to explore the section on the PEACE CORPS elsewhere on this site.)
My sister took my place in “The Store” and the family tradition continued until her husband, my brother-in-law, facing the barrel of a gun one time too many as the neighborhood changed for the worse, finally sold the place, at which point it underwent a metamorphosis from concrete to intangible, living on only in my memory.
And that’s good because memory tends to block out the unpleasant in favor of the acceptable. “The Store” will always hold fond memories for me. After all, it was kind of our home away from home.
ADDENDUM TO "THE STORE"
I received the disturbing news today (January 28, 2021) that "The Store" burned down this morning in a fire that started in a 99-cents store at 6 a.m. Thankfully, no one was hurt, including the 145 firefighters and EMT workers who showed up. All that's left of "The Store" are my memories and what is shown in the photo that follows:
TOP 15 GEMS OF ADVICE TO A NEW HUSBAND
1) Learn the lesson of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath's Tale” from his Canterbury Tales. Let your partner know that you realize that you two have an equal partnership. There will be no boss. All decisions will be made jointly. She is in control of her destiny. You are her lover, not her boss.
2) Listen! Don’t talk too much. Do not interrupt. Women hate that because it is a sign of bullying, a male-dominance trait that they hate.
3) Don’t forget the following dates, ever: anniversaries (wedding, engagement, first date), birthdays, special occasions --- and don’t forget gifts.
4) Choose romantic gifts, not utilitarian ones. Don’t select a vacuum cleaner or a microwave or even a robotic vacuum cleaner as a gift. That is read as an indication that you expect your wife to do all the housework. Instead, choose flowers, music, eating out, seeing a show or a movie, jewelry, even a romantic book (but not Erich Segal’s Love Story, with its sad ending).
5) Every once in a while, give her a gift for no particular reason, but just because you love her. (That’s reason enough.)
6) Never be hesitant about showing emotion to her. Women like their men to be vulnerable and sensitive – just don’t overdo it. Be as affectionate as the situation calls for. Don’t overwhelm but don’t hold back.
7) Compliment her frequently (but not overly, in frequency or in content). Compliment her looks but don’t say, “You look great tonight” which indicates that she doesn’t usually look great. Instead, say, “You look especially great tonight.” Compliment her taste in clothing. Also, compliment her intelligence as well as her physical being. Let her know you recognize her intellect when it comes up.
8) Share the workload at home. Agree on who does what job. I throw out the garbage, pick up mail and packages, do the dishes at least half the time. Don’t make her feel that it’s her job to do the housework whether she works outside the home or not. When the kids come, share the roles of handling them. Avoid the situation in which one of you is the fun parent and the other is the disciplinarian. And never let your kids divide you. Always back your wife when there’s a disagreement with the kids. If you do disagree about how to handle a child’s behavior, discuss the matter in private and look for a way to compromise. At the least, listen and don’t interrupt.
9) Support her educational goals any way you can – financially, with advice, driving her to classes and back, sharing the car, letting her bounce ideas off you. Always encourage; never discourage.
10) Don’t be jealous of the time she spends with her friends. You both need “alone” time. You need occasional breaks from each other, but when they are over, you will appreciate each other more. You are not one person; there are two of you and you won’t always want to do the same thing.
11) There will be arguments. That is normal. It is not a sign that there’s trouble. You are unique individuals. What is important is how you handle those fights. Avoid saying anything personally insulting. Stick to the issue and work it out mutually. Never bring up things you fought about in the past (called the shotgun approach) because, by losing sight of the current issue, you cannot solve the current problem. Do not hold grudges. Some people have this rule: Don’t ever go to bed angry. If there’ still disagreement, let it go till the next day, when the heated emotions have cooled, and you’re both more able to think more clearly and rationally.
12) This is a biggie, and I speak from experience: NEVER project. That means never expect the other person to do what you would do or act as you would act. That situation inevitably leads to disappointment and the blame game. It justifies doing dumb things and getting nowhere. You jump to the conclusion that the other person is ignorant or mean or selfish because she is not acting or responding as you would. Very bad! If you want a partner who acts, thinks, and reacts the exact same way you do, then marry yourself (or develop a clone of yourself to get married to).
13) Do not speak against her family, but also do not allow anyone from her family to get between the two of you. When that happens, point it out to your wife and then let her handle it. Be prepared to do the same, if this situation centers on your family. Don’t let anyone from your family say things against her. Remember, the one family that you need to focus on from now on is the family that starts with your wife and yourself.
14) A sense of humor is vital in a relationship. Make her smile frequently. Avoid unpleasant jokes and nasty, sarcastic comments. Keep it light and cheerful. If you have a point of criticism to give, flavor it with humor. And don't be afraid to poke fun at your own mistakes and idiosyncrasies. Develop a sense of what she is sensitive about and avoid joking about those topics. Being self-deprecating is fine as long as it's occasional. The main point is that people who know when to make other people smile and treasured.
15) Always remember your why. Why did you fall in love? Why did you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with this other person? Remember that and it will be easier to keep things in perspective.
2) Listen! Don’t talk too much. Do not interrupt. Women hate that because it is a sign of bullying, a male-dominance trait that they hate.
3) Don’t forget the following dates, ever: anniversaries (wedding, engagement, first date), birthdays, special occasions --- and don’t forget gifts.
4) Choose romantic gifts, not utilitarian ones. Don’t select a vacuum cleaner or a microwave or even a robotic vacuum cleaner as a gift. That is read as an indication that you expect your wife to do all the housework. Instead, choose flowers, music, eating out, seeing a show or a movie, jewelry, even a romantic book (but not Erich Segal’s Love Story, with its sad ending).
5) Every once in a while, give her a gift for no particular reason, but just because you love her. (That’s reason enough.)
6) Never be hesitant about showing emotion to her. Women like their men to be vulnerable and sensitive – just don’t overdo it. Be as affectionate as the situation calls for. Don’t overwhelm but don’t hold back.
7) Compliment her frequently (but not overly, in frequency or in content). Compliment her looks but don’t say, “You look great tonight” which indicates that she doesn’t usually look great. Instead, say, “You look especially great tonight.” Compliment her taste in clothing. Also, compliment her intelligence as well as her physical being. Let her know you recognize her intellect when it comes up.
8) Share the workload at home. Agree on who does what job. I throw out the garbage, pick up mail and packages, do the dishes at least half the time. Don’t make her feel that it’s her job to do the housework whether she works outside the home or not. When the kids come, share the roles of handling them. Avoid the situation in which one of you is the fun parent and the other is the disciplinarian. And never let your kids divide you. Always back your wife when there’s a disagreement with the kids. If you do disagree about how to handle a child’s behavior, discuss the matter in private and look for a way to compromise. At the least, listen and don’t interrupt.
9) Support her educational goals any way you can – financially, with advice, driving her to classes and back, sharing the car, letting her bounce ideas off you. Always encourage; never discourage.
10) Don’t be jealous of the time she spends with her friends. You both need “alone” time. You need occasional breaks from each other, but when they are over, you will appreciate each other more. You are not one person; there are two of you and you won’t always want to do the same thing.
11) There will be arguments. That is normal. It is not a sign that there’s trouble. You are unique individuals. What is important is how you handle those fights. Avoid saying anything personally insulting. Stick to the issue and work it out mutually. Never bring up things you fought about in the past (called the shotgun approach) because, by losing sight of the current issue, you cannot solve the current problem. Do not hold grudges. Some people have this rule: Don’t ever go to bed angry. If there’ still disagreement, let it go till the next day, when the heated emotions have cooled, and you’re both more able to think more clearly and rationally.
12) This is a biggie, and I speak from experience: NEVER project. That means never expect the other person to do what you would do or act as you would act. That situation inevitably leads to disappointment and the blame game. It justifies doing dumb things and getting nowhere. You jump to the conclusion that the other person is ignorant or mean or selfish because she is not acting or responding as you would. Very bad! If you want a partner who acts, thinks, and reacts the exact same way you do, then marry yourself (or develop a clone of yourself to get married to).
13) Do not speak against her family, but also do not allow anyone from her family to get between the two of you. When that happens, point it out to your wife and then let her handle it. Be prepared to do the same, if this situation centers on your family. Don’t let anyone from your family say things against her. Remember, the one family that you need to focus on from now on is the family that starts with your wife and yourself.
14) A sense of humor is vital in a relationship. Make her smile frequently. Avoid unpleasant jokes and nasty, sarcastic comments. Keep it light and cheerful. If you have a point of criticism to give, flavor it with humor. And don't be afraid to poke fun at your own mistakes and idiosyncrasies. Develop a sense of what she is sensitive about and avoid joking about those topics. Being self-deprecating is fine as long as it's occasional. The main point is that people who know when to make other people smile and treasured.
15) Always remember your why. Why did you fall in love? Why did you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with this other person? Remember that and it will be easier to keep things in perspective.
LONG ISLAND HIGH
One girl told me that I reminded her of her 99-year old grandmother. Another emailed me her lovely photos of flowers and trees because she knew I was home-bound during the pandemic. They are typical of the international students I've had the past 16 years. I've been fortunate to be teaching English for the Study Center of Great Neck South High School. Over the years, I have interacted with students from many nations, students whose families have moved to Great Neck because of its school system. The large classroom in which I work is an educational United Nations, housing, at different tables or computer stations, teachers of English, Math, social studies, and the sciences.
Our students, both local and international, get the devotion of teachers whose experience covers hundreds of years. Only on Long Island will you find a classroom like this. The students I’ve worked with have come from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Peru, China, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, India, Pakistan, Australia, Moravia, Greece, Albania, Israel, Guatemala, England and other nations. They learn from us, but we also learn from them.
Our ENL program hosts a luncheon every year in which students prepare and serve to teachers and other students foods from their birth countries. Our school hosts an evening highlighting their artistic and athletic skills. Most importantly, in the Study Center we expose these students to the nuances of our language, such as idioms and allusions, which make English live. We also try to read, in English, of course, stories that our students can easily relate to, through connections with characters, settings and situations. We discuss their local experiences. We want these youngsters to know how much we care about them. There is Long Island life here!
Newer international students get help from teachers as well as students from their homelands who have been here longer. Native-born English speakers help them. There are also times during the school year when parents of all our students are invited to join us to hear about the education their children are experiencing and to have a fun evening put together by these students, their own kids, involving music and video presentations. We want them to feel at home in Long Island.
In retrospect, I feel that it's great that the first meaningful and long-lasting experience these students (and their families) have with America occurs on Long Island. I am proud to watch these students grow over the years they are with us. When I was a Peace Corps teacher decades ago, my mission was to show citizens of another nation what a typical American was like. Here I am with the same mission today, only because of my Great Neck, Long Island school district, students from dozens of nations over the years have come to know, through me and the other Study Center and ENL teachers as well as their fellow but native-born Long Islanders, what America is really about. I have often heard from our students during and after their college careers via email and personal visits. I have known these young people to go on to become scientists, attorneys, architects, and writers --- and no matter where they end up living and working, they will always be, in part, ambassadors for the goodness and hope found in abundance on Long Island.
One girl told me that I reminded her of her 99-year old grandmother. Another emailed me her lovely photos of flowers and trees because she knew I was home-bound during the pandemic. They are typical of the international students I've had the past 16 years. I've been fortunate to be teaching English for the Study Center of Great Neck South High School. Over the years, I have interacted with students from many nations, students whose families have moved to Great Neck because of its school system. The large classroom in which I work is an educational United Nations, housing, at different tables or computer stations, teachers of English, Math, social studies, and the sciences.
Our students, both local and international, get the devotion of teachers whose experience covers hundreds of years. Only on Long Island will you find a classroom like this. The students I’ve worked with have come from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Peru, China, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, India, Pakistan, Australia, Moravia, Greece, Albania, Israel, Guatemala, England and other nations. They learn from us, but we also learn from them.
Our ENL program hosts a luncheon every year in which students prepare and serve to teachers and other students foods from their birth countries. Our school hosts an evening highlighting their artistic and athletic skills. Most importantly, in the Study Center we expose these students to the nuances of our language, such as idioms and allusions, which make English live. We also try to read, in English, of course, stories that our students can easily relate to, through connections with characters, settings and situations. We discuss their local experiences. We want these youngsters to know how much we care about them. There is Long Island life here!
Newer international students get help from teachers as well as students from their homelands who have been here longer. Native-born English speakers help them. There are also times during the school year when parents of all our students are invited to join us to hear about the education their children are experiencing and to have a fun evening put together by these students, their own kids, involving music and video presentations. We want them to feel at home in Long Island.
In retrospect, I feel that it's great that the first meaningful and long-lasting experience these students (and their families) have with America occurs on Long Island. I am proud to watch these students grow over the years they are with us. When I was a Peace Corps teacher decades ago, my mission was to show citizens of another nation what a typical American was like. Here I am with the same mission today, only because of my Great Neck, Long Island school district, students from dozens of nations over the years have come to know, through me and the other Study Center and ENL teachers as well as their fellow but native-born Long Islanders, what America is really about. I have often heard from our students during and after their college careers via email and personal visits. I have known these young people to go on to become scientists, attorneys, architects, and writers --- and no matter where they end up living and working, they will always be, in part, ambassadors for the goodness and hope found in abundance on Long Island.
And the Games Began
The Bronx of the 1950’s and ‘60’s was one large playground for those of us who loved playing sports --- the non-organized type for kids who didn’t have Little League or even PSAL in our neighborhoods. We never failed to find some game to play and enough players to field two teams. The weather was not an obstacle. We had cold weather sports as well as those we played under the scorching sun. The main thing was that there was life in the Bronx and friendships and competition, sometimes between friends and classmates and sometimes among “strangers” from other neighborhoods.
One of my favorite games was called Pitching In. All we needed was a broomstick cut to become a bat and a pink rubber ball (you remember, the Spaldeen, our Bronx-lingo version of Spalding, the name of the ball’s manufacturer). Oh, yeah, we also needed a schoolyard with a handball wall. We’d use white chalk to draw the rectangle representing the strike zone onto the wall. Even two on a side were enough for a game. Needless to say, most of us were fans of the Yankees (the Bronx Bombers) so it wasn’t uncommon for hitters to pattern their batting stances after specific players, such as Joe Di Maggio (bat over the shoulders at 180 degrees) or Mickey Mantle (bat at 45 degrees) or Gil McDougald (I won’t even try to describe his unorthodox batting stance). Naturally, there was the occasional intransigent rebel who liked the hated Dodgers or even the Giants, so you might see a hitter looking like Duke Snyder or Willie Mays.
I remember that we played our games in the playground of P.S. 119 (which had been my elementary school in the early ‘50’s). I also remember being the first of my friend-group to hit a home run onto the roof of the school across the street, Junior High School 125 (aka Henry Hudson JHS). I also recall going to a local hardware store on Westchester Avenue to shop for just the right broomstick to be converted into a bat that hopefully would not splinter too quickly.
That was far from the only ball game we played. Another favorite was Punchball, which had the two requisite sides, with the offensive player throwing the ball straight up about 4-6 inches and then punching it, sometimes as far as possible and sometimes aimed at a strategic location, such as a wall or a fire escape. My most memorable of these games were played during long summer days, on a dead-end side street adjacent to my apartment building (1236 Virginia Avenue, on the other sides of the E. 172 Street elevated train station, with Parkchester on the other side). I used to gulp supper down and rush to the designated playing area almost every evening in July and August, when the 90-degree weather had begun to cool down and the humidity had lessened, so that we could play. Of course, I preferred hitting to fielding because that was where the action was.
Then there was Stickball. As with Pitching In, all we needed were the broomstick bat and the Spaldeen. There was no pitching involved here, and the playing field was not a playground. It was an occasionally traffic-interrupted side street in the neighborhood, and home plate was a manhole cover. The batter threw the ball up (as in punchball) and hit it with his bat. Then either the ball was caught or it landed. Depending on how far you hit it, if it bounced off the street it became a double, triple or homerun. More than a few parked cars were hit, but no one’s windshield was broken by the rubber ball. Of course, every time a car was driven by, we had to stop the game momentarily, but we had a world of patience because we accepted that this was part of the game in the Bronx.
We also played Stoopball, which was an informal game in which the “batter” threw the ball against the edge of a step on the stoop in front of a building or house and tried to hit the edge hard enough to send the ball soaring over the heads of the opposing players. More often than not, he’d miss the edge of the step and the ball wouldn’t go very far, but, hey, we enjoyed ourselves. Another version of this game was Infield. (I realize that different neighborhoods probably had different names for these sports.) In this activity, there would be fielders at first, second and third base and the offensive player would throw the Spaldeen against the side of our apartment building and try to get it to go past one or two of the fielders while he would run to first base. I always enjoyed watching the “hitter” trying to pick up the locations of the defensive players from the corner of his eye so that he could place the ball where he wanted it to go. As with so many of the other games, what made this sport good was that we didn’t need a whole lot of players to have a game, and the games were always exciting, since our skill levels were pretty similar.
When the weather was just too cold for the games I just described, we went to Plan B. There were three choices there. First, there was Hockey, which four of us played frequently (myself and three friends from an Ellis Avenue apartment building). The goals were two manhole covers. We used roller skates rather than ice skates (the Bronx!) and the puck, in pre-mass manufacturing rubber puck days, was a wooden square. There were no cages around the manhole covers. We were dressed in multiple layers because of the often frigid weather, but that was okay because we didn’t have to be that flexible: skate and swing at the puck with our hockey sticks (readily available at a local sporting goods store not far from Castle Hill Avenue). Occasionally, various combinations of us, from Virginia Avenue, Ellis Avenue, White Plains Road and other nearby streets, went to the playground of JHS 125 and played Touch Football. No tackling was allowed on that concrete ground. Being knocked down would hurt and tear clothing. I remember wearing gloves to keep my fingers from becoming icicles. I was good at catching (receiving) but lousy at throwing (passing).
The third of these activities was going to the JHS 125 gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from 7 to 10 p.m., to play Basketball. This was a great activity, one I was willing to give up my TV shows for. (All those western and quiz shows would have to wait for the summer repeats, if ever --- and remember there was no taping them for later viewing). But it was worth it. There was always excitement in these three-on-three half court games. One of my favorite memories didn’t even involve me. It revolved around a really good basketball player who was a bit younger than I but who was obviously a talented athlete. I used to love watching the grace with which he took a jump shot or smoothly went to the basket. His name was (and still is) Eddie Kranepool, a fellow alum of Monroe H. S., the same guy who later had a 17-year (1962-1979) career with the Mets.
The one sport I engaged in that I haven’t mentioned yet is Softball. We didn’t play baseball. The nearest Little League was located in the Castle Hill Road neighborhood, and that was nowhere near where we lived, so we substituted softball. We had enough friends to make up a team, and we sought out similar teams from nearby neighborhoods, and when we had a match, the two groups usually met on a Saturday morning and played the game on the JHS 125 playground, although there were a few times we played games on other playgrounds (one, I remember, on the way to the Whitestone Bridge and another on Boynton Avenue, a block away from my eventual alma mater, James Monroe High School). At one point, my friends and I even semi-organized ourselves into a softball team we called the Jets (Pre-West Side Story and pre-NFL Jets). We went all out, designing and ordering powder blue jackets with the name “JETS” emblazoned on the back, together with a shiny satin interior lining. Ah, memories of simpler times!
So there you have it: sports as they were played by non-professionals in the Bronx half a century ago and more. We didn’t need batteries or electronic devices. We were engaging in exercise long before that practice became popular. We didn’t need fancy gyms with their monthly fees or home exercise centers. We played games but we also solidified friendships and honed our competitive skills. I’m sure psychologists could write papers about how we were also developing problem-solving skills and sociologists could talk or write about our networking activities, but you know what? It all comes down to this: We had fun!
The Bronx of the 1950’s and ‘60’s was one large playground for those of us who loved playing sports --- the non-organized type for kids who didn’t have Little League or even PSAL in our neighborhoods. We never failed to find some game to play and enough players to field two teams. The weather was not an obstacle. We had cold weather sports as well as those we played under the scorching sun. The main thing was that there was life in the Bronx and friendships and competition, sometimes between friends and classmates and sometimes among “strangers” from other neighborhoods.
One of my favorite games was called Pitching In. All we needed was a broomstick cut to become a bat and a pink rubber ball (you remember, the Spaldeen, our Bronx-lingo version of Spalding, the name of the ball’s manufacturer). Oh, yeah, we also needed a schoolyard with a handball wall. We’d use white chalk to draw the rectangle representing the strike zone onto the wall. Even two on a side were enough for a game. Needless to say, most of us were fans of the Yankees (the Bronx Bombers) so it wasn’t uncommon for hitters to pattern their batting stances after specific players, such as Joe Di Maggio (bat over the shoulders at 180 degrees) or Mickey Mantle (bat at 45 degrees) or Gil McDougald (I won’t even try to describe his unorthodox batting stance). Naturally, there was the occasional intransigent rebel who liked the hated Dodgers or even the Giants, so you might see a hitter looking like Duke Snyder or Willie Mays.
I remember that we played our games in the playground of P.S. 119 (which had been my elementary school in the early ‘50’s). I also remember being the first of my friend-group to hit a home run onto the roof of the school across the street, Junior High School 125 (aka Henry Hudson JHS). I also recall going to a local hardware store on Westchester Avenue to shop for just the right broomstick to be converted into a bat that hopefully would not splinter too quickly.
That was far from the only ball game we played. Another favorite was Punchball, which had the two requisite sides, with the offensive player throwing the ball straight up about 4-6 inches and then punching it, sometimes as far as possible and sometimes aimed at a strategic location, such as a wall or a fire escape. My most memorable of these games were played during long summer days, on a dead-end side street adjacent to my apartment building (1236 Virginia Avenue, on the other sides of the E. 172 Street elevated train station, with Parkchester on the other side). I used to gulp supper down and rush to the designated playing area almost every evening in July and August, when the 90-degree weather had begun to cool down and the humidity had lessened, so that we could play. Of course, I preferred hitting to fielding because that was where the action was.
Then there was Stickball. As with Pitching In, all we needed were the broomstick bat and the Spaldeen. There was no pitching involved here, and the playing field was not a playground. It was an occasionally traffic-interrupted side street in the neighborhood, and home plate was a manhole cover. The batter threw the ball up (as in punchball) and hit it with his bat. Then either the ball was caught or it landed. Depending on how far you hit it, if it bounced off the street it became a double, triple or homerun. More than a few parked cars were hit, but no one’s windshield was broken by the rubber ball. Of course, every time a car was driven by, we had to stop the game momentarily, but we had a world of patience because we accepted that this was part of the game in the Bronx.
We also played Stoopball, which was an informal game in which the “batter” threw the ball against the edge of a step on the stoop in front of a building or house and tried to hit the edge hard enough to send the ball soaring over the heads of the opposing players. More often than not, he’d miss the edge of the step and the ball wouldn’t go very far, but, hey, we enjoyed ourselves. Another version of this game was Infield. (I realize that different neighborhoods probably had different names for these sports.) In this activity, there would be fielders at first, second and third base and the offensive player would throw the Spaldeen against the side of our apartment building and try to get it to go past one or two of the fielders while he would run to first base. I always enjoyed watching the “hitter” trying to pick up the locations of the defensive players from the corner of his eye so that he could place the ball where he wanted it to go. As with so many of the other games, what made this sport good was that we didn’t need a whole lot of players to have a game, and the games were always exciting, since our skill levels were pretty similar.
When the weather was just too cold for the games I just described, we went to Plan B. There were three choices there. First, there was Hockey, which four of us played frequently (myself and three friends from an Ellis Avenue apartment building). The goals were two manhole covers. We used roller skates rather than ice skates (the Bronx!) and the puck, in pre-mass manufacturing rubber puck days, was a wooden square. There were no cages around the manhole covers. We were dressed in multiple layers because of the often frigid weather, but that was okay because we didn’t have to be that flexible: skate and swing at the puck with our hockey sticks (readily available at a local sporting goods store not far from Castle Hill Avenue). Occasionally, various combinations of us, from Virginia Avenue, Ellis Avenue, White Plains Road and other nearby streets, went to the playground of JHS 125 and played Touch Football. No tackling was allowed on that concrete ground. Being knocked down would hurt and tear clothing. I remember wearing gloves to keep my fingers from becoming icicles. I was good at catching (receiving) but lousy at throwing (passing).
The third of these activities was going to the JHS 125 gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from 7 to 10 p.m., to play Basketball. This was a great activity, one I was willing to give up my TV shows for. (All those western and quiz shows would have to wait for the summer repeats, if ever --- and remember there was no taping them for later viewing). But it was worth it. There was always excitement in these three-on-three half court games. One of my favorite memories didn’t even involve me. It revolved around a really good basketball player who was a bit younger than I but who was obviously a talented athlete. I used to love watching the grace with which he took a jump shot or smoothly went to the basket. His name was (and still is) Eddie Kranepool, a fellow alum of Monroe H. S., the same guy who later had a 17-year (1962-1979) career with the Mets.
The one sport I engaged in that I haven’t mentioned yet is Softball. We didn’t play baseball. The nearest Little League was located in the Castle Hill Road neighborhood, and that was nowhere near where we lived, so we substituted softball. We had enough friends to make up a team, and we sought out similar teams from nearby neighborhoods, and when we had a match, the two groups usually met on a Saturday morning and played the game on the JHS 125 playground, although there were a few times we played games on other playgrounds (one, I remember, on the way to the Whitestone Bridge and another on Boynton Avenue, a block away from my eventual alma mater, James Monroe High School). At one point, my friends and I even semi-organized ourselves into a softball team we called the Jets (Pre-West Side Story and pre-NFL Jets). We went all out, designing and ordering powder blue jackets with the name “JETS” emblazoned on the back, together with a shiny satin interior lining. Ah, memories of simpler times!
So there you have it: sports as they were played by non-professionals in the Bronx half a century ago and more. We didn’t need batteries or electronic devices. We were engaging in exercise long before that practice became popular. We didn’t need fancy gyms with their monthly fees or home exercise centers. We played games but we also solidified friendships and honed our competitive skills. I’m sure psychologists could write papers about how we were also developing problem-solving skills and sociologists could talk or write about our networking activities, but you know what? It all comes down to this: We had fun!
RESUME
Herbert Munshine
71 Grace Avenue, Apartment 3 L
Great Neck, New York 11021
(516) 967 – 8355 (cell)
Experience:
From November 2003 to the Present (currently on leave because of the pandemic)
English teacher, Great Neck South High School; Great Neck, New York
(both classroom and Study Center)
From September 1996 to August 2002
English teacher, Benjamin Cardozo High School; Bayside, Queens
From September 1966 to September 1996
English teacher, William Howard Taft High School; The Bronx, New York
From September 1964 to June 1966
English teacher, Schlenker Secondary School; Port Loko, Sierra Leone, West Africa (Peace Corps)
In addition, and concurrently, I taught decades of SAT preparation and yeshiva English
classes as well as one-on-one tutoring in late afternoons and evenings. I also taught 26 ½
summer school sessions, including three weeks in Great Neck (shared with Susan Dorkings).
I also teach after-school English Regents preparation sessions every year in Great Neck.
Education:
June 1964: B. S. in Education from City College of New York
June 1968: Master of Arts in English from City College of New York
In addition, I completed three successful semesters of law school, a year of studies at Empire
State College (all A’s), creative writing courses at RCC (all A’s) and two graduate-level ESL
courses online with the University of Phoenix (98% in each class).
Skills and Activities, at various times during my career:
Herbert Munshine
71 Grace Avenue, Apartment 3 L
Great Neck, New York 11021
(516) 967 – 8355 (cell)
Experience:
From November 2003 to the Present (currently on leave because of the pandemic)
English teacher, Great Neck South High School; Great Neck, New York
(both classroom and Study Center)
From September 1996 to August 2002
English teacher, Benjamin Cardozo High School; Bayside, Queens
From September 1966 to September 1996
English teacher, William Howard Taft High School; The Bronx, New York
From September 1964 to June 1966
English teacher, Schlenker Secondary School; Port Loko, Sierra Leone, West Africa (Peace Corps)
In addition, and concurrently, I taught decades of SAT preparation and yeshiva English
classes as well as one-on-one tutoring in late afternoons and evenings. I also taught 26 ½
summer school sessions, including three weeks in Great Neck (shared with Susan Dorkings).
I also teach after-school English Regents preparation sessions every year in Great Neck.
Education:
June 1964: B. S. in Education from City College of New York
June 1968: Master of Arts in English from City College of New York
In addition, I completed three successful semesters of law school, a year of studies at Empire
State College (all A’s), creative writing courses at RCC (all A’s) and two graduate-level ESL
courses online with the University of Phoenix (98% in each class).
Skills and Activities, at various times during my career:
- Drama coach (Schlenker)
- Basketball coach (Schlenker and Taft)
- Newspaper advisor (Taft)
- Creative writing magazine advisor (Taft)
- Yearbook advisor (Taft)
- Computer Coordinator (Taft)
- Debating team advisor (Great Neck South)
- Creator of a course called “Modern African Literature” (which I taught several times)
- Creator of the Study Center website (www.southstudycenter.com) as well as a site called
- for all English classes
- Creator of libraries at Schlenker and Taft and a small lending library in the Study Center
- Creator of GN South High’s ninth-tenth grade English-ESL classes (which I taught for four
- Member of the National Council of Teachers of English
- LEADERSHIP POSITIONS –
- Team manager, Vice President: Spring Valley Little League
- President of the Board, New Holland Village Condominium
- Secretary of the Board, 71 Grace Avenue Cooperative
LETTERS TO A GRANDDAUGHTER AT CAMP
Dear Abby,
You must be having a lot of fun at camp. Nothing exciting is happening with me. I climbed the world's tallest mountain wearing ice skates this morning. Then I had lunch with the lions at the zoo.
After that, I got caught in a rain storm going home but it wasn't raining water. It was raining marshmallows. I ate 20 of them as they fell into my mouth from the sky. When I got home, I played with my new baby dinosaur. It's a pterodactyl, which means it flies. It's small because it's only a month old and it still fits in a cage. When it gets bigger, I will replace the cage with a tree, where it can build a nest. To get the big tree to fit, I will have to make a large hole in my ceiling right through my roof.
Anyway, I'm jealous that you're having a great time while my life is so ordinary, but I'm also happy to see you smiling in the photos your mom sent us.
Tell your friend from Rockland that we lived in a town in Rockland called Nanuet for almost 20 years. That's true. Which town does she live in?
Next time, I'll tell you about the unicorn I ride to work, if you want.
Love,
Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby –
OMG! I am so sorry that I took so long to write my second letter to you --- but I had a good reason for the delay. You see, I was riding to the supermarket on my magic dragon, Puff , when we were attacked by a giant gorilla! I couldn’t fight the gorilla because I didn’t have my ping pong paddle, but Puff managed to breathe fire on the big ape and he ran away crying like a baby.
When I got into the supermarket,I tried to buy some chocolate covered worms but I was attacked by two crazy dancers in “Cats” costumes. I got away from them but then I was delayed because I forgot where I had parked my dragon.
I finally found Puff and we started going home but then we were accosted by a flying monkey who had escaped from the Wicked Witch of the West but who was still mean and angry. I gave him a chocolate covered worm and he became friendly.
I finally got home, parked Puff and wanted to go upstairs to write this letter for you but you’ll never guess what happened! Okay, I’ll tell you. When I got into my elevator, I was greeted by a very hungry and nasty ogre who growled that he was Shrek’s cousin. Well, guess what I gave him to eat? Correct! A worm.
Then I finally got to my computer and wrote this letter. So, did anything interesting happen to you in camp in the last few days? You can answer by email but if you don’t have time to email, I will understand. I just want you to have fun at camp.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby – I was in the cemetery this evening visiting the grave of someone I didn’t know just because I love walking in dark, scary places at night, being scared and crying a lot, when, suddenly, a tall and freaky-looking vampire jumped out at me from behind a large gray --- and very old --- tombstone. He glared at me and said, “Good evening. Do not be frightened. I just want to suck your blood!” He tried to grab me but I am very fast, as you know, so I ran away, calling out, “Leave me alone! I have to write a letter to Abby!” When he heard this, he stopped chasing me, and replied, “Sorry. You should write to her. I’ll go to MacDonald’s instead.”
So I was walking out of the cemetery, listening to the howling of a rabid wolf and not paying enough attention, when I was abruptly attacked by a werewolf dressed like a camp counselor. “He reached for me with long, sharp claws, trying to scratch my eyes out, but I fought him off with my salami sandwich, which had been made for me by my son David, a really good cook. The werewolf smelled the salami and let me get way as I dropped the sandwich on the ground. (I guess the salami smelled tastier than I did.) As I ran, I called out at him, “I must go home and write a letter to my granddaughter Abigail Munshine. “Go ahead,” the werewolf grunted. “I understand but I’d rather eat this delicious sandwich.”
I had to take the train home. As I walked through a dark, gloomy, damp tunnel to get to the train station, 10 zombies started staggering in my direction. There was no way I could escape them so I closed my eyes, waited for the end, and cried a lot. Fortunately, they weren’t interested in me. They were on their way to a concert by a group called The Grateful Dead. I sighed and finally arrived home, sat at my desk and wrote another dull letter to you. I hope you enjoy reading it.
– Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I hope you are having a great time at camp and are into wonderful friendships. I’d love to hear about a really enjoyable day you had. You can write a paragraph at my email address.
As for me, I had a slow and quiet few days. Since I am a spy for the United States government, I really can’t discuss the details of what my last assignment was, but let’s just say it involved rescuing a prime minister of a certain European nation by preventing his or her kidnapping and using a motorboat to rive him or her to safety until the traitors were captured and arrested. (I don’t want to brag but President Biden awarded me a gold medal for leading the rescue effort. Don’t tell anyone.)
After that adventure, I put on my astronaut outfit and flew a secret space shuttle to the International Space Station to deliver several tanks of a specially formulated oxygen that will make the other astronauts who have lived on the ISS for many months have younger bodies than their age. I flew there in the dark of night and I flew back during a hurricane so that I could not be tracked by any nation’s radar. As I said, it was a secret mission (because the oxygen formula must remain hidden from our enemies). For my commendable action, I received another gold medal from President Biden.
Yesterday, I decided to take it easy so I visited the Riverhead Aquarium on Long Island. I wore a disguise as a girl scout so no one would recognize me, and I hid in the broom closet while they were closing. Later, with no humans around (besides me), I went to the large fish tank and, using my latest invention --- a technological masterpiece that translates English into fish language, I had a lengthy conversation with a bunch of flounders and tunas. They told me that they were tired of always being stared at and wanted to go home, so I helped them escape from their prison and brought them in my pickup truck equipped with a giant aquarium made to look like a Mr. Softee truck to Jones Beach, where I was able to drive with them on my motorboat to the deepest part of the ocean and I set them free.
Other than that, I had a boring week. I am jealous that you are at camp having so much fun while I am living such a dull life.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I hope you can get your father to help me. I was working on my HP computer earlier because it was acting funny. OI had to open the case that housed the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and I started washing the motherboard, figuring that the computer would work better if it were clean, when, all of a sudden, sparks began to fly all over the place.
Well, I blew on the part of the interior that was where the sparks came from, hoping to put out the electrical fire, but that only made it worse, so I splashed some Snapple that I was drinking right onto the sparky board, which then made a crackling sound.
When I reached to touch the motherboard, a sudden magnetic force drew me into the CPU and my body became integrated with the computer so that I can only communicate via the keyboard and printer.
I need you to tell your father to get me out of the computer. I’m not scared or bored inside this computer. I entertain myself with the games I have and I watch Netflix and HULU shows. But I am getting lonely. Grandma doesn’t know how to access me. (She’s an iOS user and I am a Windows user. I guess opposites do attract!)
If your father is too busy to come over, it’s all right. I can get used to my new life --- and, most importantly, obviously, I can still write letters to you!
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************Dear Abby,
I have been in the hospital recovering from my adventure inside my computer. I was operated on by a Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who offered to give me a new head, but I refused. I like my own face, I told him. After he stopped crying, he fixed me up with a bandaid and then gave me a lollipop for not crying (even though I really did cry --- a lot).
Anyway, I left the hospital and decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, my favorite museum. I enjoy all the great artwork --- the paintings and the sculptures and even the early American furniture --- but my favorite section is the one on the first floor that contains all that ancient Egyptian stuff. Well, I was walking slowly, trying to recover from my time inside my computer, when I heard a really high, creepy voice call out my name. At first, I thought it was a creature from another planet but it wasn’t.
I looked down and saw a disgusting hand reaching up from the floor. It had twisted gray fingers and long crooked nails, with gobs of blood dripping. I can’t describe it more because I’ll cry again. Do you understand? That’s why I started running away, but just as the hand, which was crawling along the ground following me, started climbing up my pants, it was knocked away by Ramses III, or rather his mummy . You see, this mummy has been my friend for hundreds of years (yes, I am that old) and he protected me from harm. I thanked him and left the museum.
On my way home, a werewolf asked me for directions to the zoo and I told him how to get there, but instead of thanking me, he reached for me and tried to attack me with his claws, but I used my knowledge of karate and defeated him, and he disappeared! I guess you can say that now he’s a WHERE wolf because no one knows where he is hiding from me. By the way, what kind of strange creatures do you have at camp? Are they dangerous? Ugly? Cool? Tell me.
I finally arrived home and took the elevator to my apartment and sat down and wrote you this letter. I like writing to you because I love you but also it reminds me of the summer when I was a counselor at a sleep-away camp. I think it was 1961. I did a good job. I lost only three of the children I was supposed to watch. For some reason, their parents were upset. Stay happy.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I told you in a recent letter about my having been a camp counselor in 1961. It’s true: I was one of the counselors in charge of the bunk with 14- and 15-year-old boys. Truthfully, it was a secret experimental camp run by the army and the “boys” were really newly-developed robots with A. I. (artificial intelligence). I was still a college student, and I was being trained by the army to program the robots (We called them automatons because they looked like real humans) to act like actual teenagers, who would then be sent to different homes to protect important scientists who were working on special projects that had to do with getting a person to the moon by 1969, as President Kennedy had promised.
Anyway, as I was remembering this experience, I started reminiscing about the fun we had programming the automatons to play different robot sports, such as catching frisbees by propelling themselves into space to grab them, swimming underwater for half an hour and running one-minute miles on the camp’s track. I missed those days so much that, a few days ago, I built a time travel machine and got into it and, after pressing a number of differently shaped and colored buttons, and hearing the whizzing of the vibrating machine, I felt myself being shot through decades back to 1961 --- to where the camp was located, in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. Fortunately, one of the features of my time machine was that I was invisible, so I was able to roam the camp and watch the events taking place.
I knew that I had only an hour to spend in 1961 (I’m working on longer stays but so far I’ve been able to travel and remain for just one hour), so I took my transparent self around and viewed some of the other robotic campers “doing their thing.” I observed the senior automatons practicing spying from the sky as they glided behind clouds with their jet packs. Those ultraviolet binocular implants enabled them to see through clouds! I also noted a group of androids making believe that they were toasting marshmallows at a campfire and eating them. I wondered what the government had planned for those creatures.
Then I returned to my basement workshop and sat down and wrote this letter to you. I think you should be careful about your friends. You can’t be sure that they aren’t robots, can you? Why don’t you ask them? Now, they may think you’re crazy but that might just be an act.
Anyway, I’m planning my next trip on my time machine. I have some questions and you can help me decide what to do. Here are my questions about my next time trip:
Love,
Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
You must be having a lot of fun at camp. Nothing exciting is happening with me. I climbed the world's tallest mountain wearing ice skates this morning. Then I had lunch with the lions at the zoo.
After that, I got caught in a rain storm going home but it wasn't raining water. It was raining marshmallows. I ate 20 of them as they fell into my mouth from the sky. When I got home, I played with my new baby dinosaur. It's a pterodactyl, which means it flies. It's small because it's only a month old and it still fits in a cage. When it gets bigger, I will replace the cage with a tree, where it can build a nest. To get the big tree to fit, I will have to make a large hole in my ceiling right through my roof.
Anyway, I'm jealous that you're having a great time while my life is so ordinary, but I'm also happy to see you smiling in the photos your mom sent us.
Tell your friend from Rockland that we lived in a town in Rockland called Nanuet for almost 20 years. That's true. Which town does she live in?
Next time, I'll tell you about the unicorn I ride to work, if you want.
Love,
Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby –
OMG! I am so sorry that I took so long to write my second letter to you --- but I had a good reason for the delay. You see, I was riding to the supermarket on my magic dragon, Puff , when we were attacked by a giant gorilla! I couldn’t fight the gorilla because I didn’t have my ping pong paddle, but Puff managed to breathe fire on the big ape and he ran away crying like a baby.
When I got into the supermarket,I tried to buy some chocolate covered worms but I was attacked by two crazy dancers in “Cats” costumes. I got away from them but then I was delayed because I forgot where I had parked my dragon.
I finally found Puff and we started going home but then we were accosted by a flying monkey who had escaped from the Wicked Witch of the West but who was still mean and angry. I gave him a chocolate covered worm and he became friendly.
I finally got home, parked Puff and wanted to go upstairs to write this letter for you but you’ll never guess what happened! Okay, I’ll tell you. When I got into my elevator, I was greeted by a very hungry and nasty ogre who growled that he was Shrek’s cousin. Well, guess what I gave him to eat? Correct! A worm.
Then I finally got to my computer and wrote this letter. So, did anything interesting happen to you in camp in the last few days? You can answer by email but if you don’t have time to email, I will understand. I just want you to have fun at camp.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby – I was in the cemetery this evening visiting the grave of someone I didn’t know just because I love walking in dark, scary places at night, being scared and crying a lot, when, suddenly, a tall and freaky-looking vampire jumped out at me from behind a large gray --- and very old --- tombstone. He glared at me and said, “Good evening. Do not be frightened. I just want to suck your blood!” He tried to grab me but I am very fast, as you know, so I ran away, calling out, “Leave me alone! I have to write a letter to Abby!” When he heard this, he stopped chasing me, and replied, “Sorry. You should write to her. I’ll go to MacDonald’s instead.”
So I was walking out of the cemetery, listening to the howling of a rabid wolf and not paying enough attention, when I was abruptly attacked by a werewolf dressed like a camp counselor. “He reached for me with long, sharp claws, trying to scratch my eyes out, but I fought him off with my salami sandwich, which had been made for me by my son David, a really good cook. The werewolf smelled the salami and let me get way as I dropped the sandwich on the ground. (I guess the salami smelled tastier than I did.) As I ran, I called out at him, “I must go home and write a letter to my granddaughter Abigail Munshine. “Go ahead,” the werewolf grunted. “I understand but I’d rather eat this delicious sandwich.”
I had to take the train home. As I walked through a dark, gloomy, damp tunnel to get to the train station, 10 zombies started staggering in my direction. There was no way I could escape them so I closed my eyes, waited for the end, and cried a lot. Fortunately, they weren’t interested in me. They were on their way to a concert by a group called The Grateful Dead. I sighed and finally arrived home, sat at my desk and wrote another dull letter to you. I hope you enjoy reading it.
– Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I hope you are having a great time at camp and are into wonderful friendships. I’d love to hear about a really enjoyable day you had. You can write a paragraph at my email address.
As for me, I had a slow and quiet few days. Since I am a spy for the United States government, I really can’t discuss the details of what my last assignment was, but let’s just say it involved rescuing a prime minister of a certain European nation by preventing his or her kidnapping and using a motorboat to rive him or her to safety until the traitors were captured and arrested. (I don’t want to brag but President Biden awarded me a gold medal for leading the rescue effort. Don’t tell anyone.)
After that adventure, I put on my astronaut outfit and flew a secret space shuttle to the International Space Station to deliver several tanks of a specially formulated oxygen that will make the other astronauts who have lived on the ISS for many months have younger bodies than their age. I flew there in the dark of night and I flew back during a hurricane so that I could not be tracked by any nation’s radar. As I said, it was a secret mission (because the oxygen formula must remain hidden from our enemies). For my commendable action, I received another gold medal from President Biden.
Yesterday, I decided to take it easy so I visited the Riverhead Aquarium on Long Island. I wore a disguise as a girl scout so no one would recognize me, and I hid in the broom closet while they were closing. Later, with no humans around (besides me), I went to the large fish tank and, using my latest invention --- a technological masterpiece that translates English into fish language, I had a lengthy conversation with a bunch of flounders and tunas. They told me that they were tired of always being stared at and wanted to go home, so I helped them escape from their prison and brought them in my pickup truck equipped with a giant aquarium made to look like a Mr. Softee truck to Jones Beach, where I was able to drive with them on my motorboat to the deepest part of the ocean and I set them free.
Other than that, I had a boring week. I am jealous that you are at camp having so much fun while I am living such a dull life.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I hope you can get your father to help me. I was working on my HP computer earlier because it was acting funny. OI had to open the case that housed the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and I started washing the motherboard, figuring that the computer would work better if it were clean, when, all of a sudden, sparks began to fly all over the place.
Well, I blew on the part of the interior that was where the sparks came from, hoping to put out the electrical fire, but that only made it worse, so I splashed some Snapple that I was drinking right onto the sparky board, which then made a crackling sound.
When I reached to touch the motherboard, a sudden magnetic force drew me into the CPU and my body became integrated with the computer so that I can only communicate via the keyboard and printer.
I need you to tell your father to get me out of the computer. I’m not scared or bored inside this computer. I entertain myself with the games I have and I watch Netflix and HULU shows. But I am getting lonely. Grandma doesn’t know how to access me. (She’s an iOS user and I am a Windows user. I guess opposites do attract!)
If your father is too busy to come over, it’s all right. I can get used to my new life --- and, most importantly, obviously, I can still write letters to you!
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************Dear Abby,
I have been in the hospital recovering from my adventure inside my computer. I was operated on by a Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who offered to give me a new head, but I refused. I like my own face, I told him. After he stopped crying, he fixed me up with a bandaid and then gave me a lollipop for not crying (even though I really did cry --- a lot).
Anyway, I left the hospital and decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, my favorite museum. I enjoy all the great artwork --- the paintings and the sculptures and even the early American furniture --- but my favorite section is the one on the first floor that contains all that ancient Egyptian stuff. Well, I was walking slowly, trying to recover from my time inside my computer, when I heard a really high, creepy voice call out my name. At first, I thought it was a creature from another planet but it wasn’t.
I looked down and saw a disgusting hand reaching up from the floor. It had twisted gray fingers and long crooked nails, with gobs of blood dripping. I can’t describe it more because I’ll cry again. Do you understand? That’s why I started running away, but just as the hand, which was crawling along the ground following me, started climbing up my pants, it was knocked away by Ramses III, or rather his mummy . You see, this mummy has been my friend for hundreds of years (yes, I am that old) and he protected me from harm. I thanked him and left the museum.
On my way home, a werewolf asked me for directions to the zoo and I told him how to get there, but instead of thanking me, he reached for me and tried to attack me with his claws, but I used my knowledge of karate and defeated him, and he disappeared! I guess you can say that now he’s a WHERE wolf because no one knows where he is hiding from me. By the way, what kind of strange creatures do you have at camp? Are they dangerous? Ugly? Cool? Tell me.
I finally arrived home and took the elevator to my apartment and sat down and wrote you this letter. I like writing to you because I love you but also it reminds me of the summer when I was a counselor at a sleep-away camp. I think it was 1961. I did a good job. I lost only three of the children I was supposed to watch. For some reason, their parents were upset. Stay happy.
Love, Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I told you in a recent letter about my having been a camp counselor in 1961. It’s true: I was one of the counselors in charge of the bunk with 14- and 15-year-old boys. Truthfully, it was a secret experimental camp run by the army and the “boys” were really newly-developed robots with A. I. (artificial intelligence). I was still a college student, and I was being trained by the army to program the robots (We called them automatons because they looked like real humans) to act like actual teenagers, who would then be sent to different homes to protect important scientists who were working on special projects that had to do with getting a person to the moon by 1969, as President Kennedy had promised.
Anyway, as I was remembering this experience, I started reminiscing about the fun we had programming the automatons to play different robot sports, such as catching frisbees by propelling themselves into space to grab them, swimming underwater for half an hour and running one-minute miles on the camp’s track. I missed those days so much that, a few days ago, I built a time travel machine and got into it and, after pressing a number of differently shaped and colored buttons, and hearing the whizzing of the vibrating machine, I felt myself being shot through decades back to 1961 --- to where the camp was located, in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. Fortunately, one of the features of my time machine was that I was invisible, so I was able to roam the camp and watch the events taking place.
I knew that I had only an hour to spend in 1961 (I’m working on longer stays but so far I’ve been able to travel and remain for just one hour), so I took my transparent self around and viewed some of the other robotic campers “doing their thing.” I observed the senior automatons practicing spying from the sky as they glided behind clouds with their jet packs. Those ultraviolet binocular implants enabled them to see through clouds! I also noted a group of androids making believe that they were toasting marshmallows at a campfire and eating them. I wondered what the government had planned for those creatures.
Then I returned to my basement workshop and sat down and wrote this letter to you. I think you should be careful about your friends. You can’t be sure that they aren’t robots, can you? Why don’t you ask them? Now, they may think you’re crazy but that might just be an act.
Anyway, I’m planning my next trip on my time machine. I have some questions and you can help me decide what to do. Here are my questions about my next time trip:
- Should I travel to the past or to the future?
- Should I travel alone or with Grandma?
- Which country or part of the world should I visit?
- If I go to the past, which famous person or place should I try to visit?
Love,
Grandpa Munshine
****************************************************************************************************
Dear Abby,
I am happy that you responded and showed that you are enjoying my letters. That is the report I received after talking with your parents, and I was thrilled to hear that. Right now, I am recovering from a grueling, difficult journey that our government asked me to take to the underworld (commonly known as Hell) to make a deal with the Devil. Very few people can be trusted with this assignment, but our President knew that he could have faith that I would get the job done properly. I have been given special permission to share with you the details of this assignment, so here goes:
One day, the President found out that there was a secret organization made up of the world’s most dreadful people who were determined to use space technology to drop a large dome over the United States and then suck out most of the oxygen from our atmosphere, after which it would freeze all of us and turn us into zombie slaves to work for this world-wide association of bad people called E.V.I.L. (which stood for Enemy Villains International League). The President asked all the heads of our intelligence agencies (like the FBI, Secret Service, Armed Forces, Homeland Security) which American could be most trusted to save us, which person had the skills and the brains to rescue us --- and everyone agreed that I was that person!
After that, a delegation of these leaders came to my door and begged me to save the United States. I agreed to do so provided that they’d make sure YOU continued to have a great time at camp. They agreed and left. I came up with a plan: I would go to Hell and ask the Devil for his assistance. You see, I once saved the Devil from great anxiety when he was in trouble with the tax people (the IRS) and couldn’t pay his tax bill, so he owed me a favor. I took the secret journey down a sewer in the middle of New York City and rowed a specially outfitted fire-retardant boat straight to Hell. As soon as I was greeted by the evil spirits of Hitler, Nero, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Idi Amin and the New York Yankees, word was passed to the Devil that I had arrived in his neighborhood. He came and asked me how he could help. I explained the situation and he came up with the solution to the problem: He would make the dome retractable, which meant that as soon as it was lowered, we could press a big button and the dome would slide open and we wouldn’t lose our oxygen. The plan worked and I saved the U. S. from a zombie apocalypse (with a little help from my fiend the Devil, who really is just misunderstood and does have feelings). Soon after that, our government captured all the members of E.V.I.L. and imprisoned them in the office of the governor of Florida.
Remember, as my reward you will continue to enjoy camp a lot! Say hello to your friends and counselors for me. Perhaps one day, maybe next summer, Grandma and I will visit you at the camp and meet your friends. That would be cool. (Speaking of cool, we spent yesterday with Cousin Angela and Cousin Lexi, seeing them in person for the first time in a year and a half. We hugged, talked, visited a museum, and had a delicious supper together.) Well, I have to go now. My phone is ringing its special ringtone --- the one that means the President is trying to reach me. I wonder why he needs me now!
Love, Grandpa Munshine
I am happy that you responded and showed that you are enjoying my letters. That is the report I received after talking with your parents, and I was thrilled to hear that. Right now, I am recovering from a grueling, difficult journey that our government asked me to take to the underworld (commonly known as Hell) to make a deal with the Devil. Very few people can be trusted with this assignment, but our President knew that he could have faith that I would get the job done properly. I have been given special permission to share with you the details of this assignment, so here goes:
One day, the President found out that there was a secret organization made up of the world’s most dreadful people who were determined to use space technology to drop a large dome over the United States and then suck out most of the oxygen from our atmosphere, after which it would freeze all of us and turn us into zombie slaves to work for this world-wide association of bad people called E.V.I.L. (which stood for Enemy Villains International League). The President asked all the heads of our intelligence agencies (like the FBI, Secret Service, Armed Forces, Homeland Security) which American could be most trusted to save us, which person had the skills and the brains to rescue us --- and everyone agreed that I was that person!
After that, a delegation of these leaders came to my door and begged me to save the United States. I agreed to do so provided that they’d make sure YOU continued to have a great time at camp. They agreed and left. I came up with a plan: I would go to Hell and ask the Devil for his assistance. You see, I once saved the Devil from great anxiety when he was in trouble with the tax people (the IRS) and couldn’t pay his tax bill, so he owed me a favor. I took the secret journey down a sewer in the middle of New York City and rowed a specially outfitted fire-retardant boat straight to Hell. As soon as I was greeted by the evil spirits of Hitler, Nero, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Idi Amin and the New York Yankees, word was passed to the Devil that I had arrived in his neighborhood. He came and asked me how he could help. I explained the situation and he came up with the solution to the problem: He would make the dome retractable, which meant that as soon as it was lowered, we could press a big button and the dome would slide open and we wouldn’t lose our oxygen. The plan worked and I saved the U. S. from a zombie apocalypse (with a little help from my fiend the Devil, who really is just misunderstood and does have feelings). Soon after that, our government captured all the members of E.V.I.L. and imprisoned them in the office of the governor of Florida.
Remember, as my reward you will continue to enjoy camp a lot! Say hello to your friends and counselors for me. Perhaps one day, maybe next summer, Grandma and I will visit you at the camp and meet your friends. That would be cool. (Speaking of cool, we spent yesterday with Cousin Angela and Cousin Lexi, seeing them in person for the first time in a year and a half. We hugged, talked, visited a museum, and had a delicious supper together.) Well, I have to go now. My phone is ringing its special ringtone --- the one that means the President is trying to reach me. I wonder why he needs me now!
Love, Grandpa Munshine
Apartment 6 H
My family lived in the same apartment on the top floor of 1236 Virginia Avenue (literally on the other side of the [elevated] tracks from Parkchester) for 16 formative years of my life. It was from that apartment that I attended P. S. 119, JHS 125 (aka Henry Hudson Junior High School), James Monroe High School and CCNY (aka City College of New York) from 1948 to 1964, prior to my graduating from college and joining the Peace Corps. I love that apartment. The people whom I Ioved most deeply in the world lived there . . . but that was only one of my reasons. I also had so many great memories of those years, and they are indelibly attached to that apartment, my apartment.
It’s tough to determine an absolute starting place. Chronology won’t work. Instead, I will offer a collection of vignettes, slices of memory, associations, and reflections. I hope that as I communicate these memories to you, you will see why this place holds a special meaning in the context of my life, as I am approaching my 81st year in April 2022. It’s true that as one ages, one becomes more and more sentimental and nostalgic.
I recall an early birthday party, soon after we moved into the apartment from our previous one on Vyse Avenue. (My father and brother-in-law had purchased an ice cream parlor on the corner of the building earlier, and finally an apartment became available for us to move into.) The party was full of noise-makers and bright colors and rowdy elementary school kids. My present from my dad was a Lionel Train set, consisting of a large oval inter-locking track set and about four large trains, led by a locomotive that puffed smoke. It wasn’t one of those complicated intricate sets, with multiple trains and mountains and trees and tunnels. In addition to the generator, his one had a small plastic station and a few people, but my imagination filled in the rest. My father bought what he could afford, and I loved that set. In the days and months after the party, I played with it many times. It may have followed a repetitive oval path, but in my mind, it traveled to many exciting destinations where people waited eagerly to board.
During my earliest days in the apartment, my main form of entertainment occurred when, pre-TV acquisition, the family gathered around our giant console radio and listened to various shows together --- shows that featured Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen and other comedians. Each of us also had his or her favorites. My sister Ethel, 10 years my senior, loved her soap operas, such as “The Romance of Helen Trent” and “One Life to Live”. I enjoyed “The Adventures of Superman” and “The Lone Ranger” and a show on Saturday mornings whose name I no longer recall, but I do recollect Andy Devine’ s voice (I think it was called “Andy’s Gang”) as well as the adventures of a boy in India. In 1949, the radio was overshadowed by our acquisition of one of the first television sets in the six-story building, a $500 16-inch (the largest they made at the time) black and white RCA. My greatest memory of this ilk was the anticipation of finally getting to see what the Lone Ranger (and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto) actually looked like. That TV set became the heart of the living room. I didn’t know that black and white would be passé one day. All I cared about was shows such as “Lights Out!” (scary as hell) and all those westerns (“Gunsmoke,” Rawhide,” “26 Men,” Paladin”) and wrestling , which was special because I watched it with my father, as we took turns rooting for or booing Gorgeous George, Gene “Mr. America” Stanley, Antonino Rocca and the like. (This family tradition would one day be replicated, as I would watch the WWF --- now called the WWE --- in the 1980’s, only the names would be Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Andre the Giant, and Bret Hart.) I’d watch sit-coms such as “My Little Margie,” “Father Knows Best,” “Our Miss Brooks” (Is that where I got the idea to become a high school English teacher?), “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show”.
My apartment was also a hide-out for me, comforting me with a security that I needed in the time after my mother passed away. By then, I was living alone with my father; my oldest sister (Ida, 14 years my senior) had moved out since she was by then a newly-wed, and my other sister, Ethel, was now a member of the Navy, a WAVE, and then later a member of the Marines. I was in fifth grade and kept my feelings to myself. What else did I know? So, I took advantage of my father’s working alternating weeks in the family store (different from the one I previously mentioned, this one on Westchester Avenue rather than Virginia Avenue), and when he worked in the morning-early afternoon (a 6 am to 3 pm shift), on those weeks I stayed home and comforted myself with a lot of TV (I clearly recall watching a Little Abner movie) and eating things like ketchup sandwiches on white bread. At the end of each week, I would forge my father’s handwriting and write myself an absence note, which the teacher readily accepted. This went on for weeks. Now I wonder why the teacher didn’t pick up on the fact that I was absent every other week, for one week at a time, but that’s how it went --- until I was finally caught! Now it’s amusing but then it was terrifying. I had taken my week off. Then I actually came down with the whooping cough (I recall gasping for breath as I stood in my bathtub and peered out the bathroom window) and was legitimately absent for the week I would have attended school. The third week in this cycle was my time to be absent again, and all was fine until my Armed Forces sister surprised us with a visit on Thursday, so I pretended to oversleep the next day, but my sister woke me up and demanded that I go to school late. However, rather than go to school, I semi-panicked and hid on the roof, amongst the TV antennas, and came down to the apartment at the time I would have been returning from school. I didn’t know that my sister had gone to the school to explain my oversleeping to my teacher! I had been caught! My apartment could offer me sanctuary but couldn’t work miracles for me. The next Monday, I had to go to the principal’s office, where the fearful giant called Mrs. Guilfoyle awaited, and I was read the riot act. Trust me; I didn’t miss more than a handful of days over the next eight years of public school attendance.
That might have been one of my only two troubled memories of the apartment. More typical were the lasting images that now fill me with nostalgia. For example, our apartment was on the top floor, and that took on meaning when you considered the city summers. We knew nothing about air conditioners for an apartment. In the summers, it was HOT! Very hot. Steaming! We did three things to combat the heat: leave the front door open to get a semblance of cross ventilation, sleep on the fire escape to breathe in the cooler evening air and use our big, heavy, noisy oscillating black fan. I can still hear the slow whining sound of the fan’s engine, as the blades tried to whip up a breeze and the chassis rotated 180 degrees, blowing thick warm air onto us once a cycle. How I waited for that warm flow to hit me --- and then all too soon it was gone (but I took comfort in knowing that its return was imminent, until I fell asleep). As for sleeping on the fire escape, now I tremble at the thought, realizing that I could have fallen to my death! But in those days, it was a pleasant respite from the warm Jell-O air of the apartment whose ceiling was just below the tar of the roof, which sponged the heat all day long. Still, looking back, I smile at our survival. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all.
The phone in our apartment --- there are memories attached to that piece of technology, a black, heavy, solid, wired telephone with the number Talmadge 3 - 6104. At first, when I did try to use the phone to call a friend or my sister Ida, too often I would pick up the receiver only to hear an unknown female voice engaged in a personal conversation (sounded like gossip to me), and I’d be told to hang up. This was what was termed a party line, a telephone line shared by strangers. Each time I would have to lift the receiver and hope that that strange woman’s dialog had ended. Eventually, there was no more party line, as this sharing arrangement became outdated.
I used the phone to daily let my father know, when he called from work, that I was safe and happy, the days of truancy long behind me. More often, I would be making calls to my friends --- Leo, Paul, Norman, etc. --- to arrange for us to get together for a softball, basketball, or street hockey game. The first two we played in the schoolyard of JHS 125; the latter, on the street from sewer to sewer. I was the arranger, the organizer. There, in my hallway outside my living room, sat the phone that connected me to the outside world as defined by the streets that bordered the “neighborhood,” including Virginia Avenue, White Plains Road, Ellis Avenue and Pugsley Avenue, among others.
I should have described my apartment by now. Well, when you walked in, you turned right and there was a long hallway (called the foyer by only us). All the rooms were to the left. We had one living room, then a full kitchen with a dining table as well as the appliances you’d expect, a walk-in closet that contained my father’s toolbox (He had been a carpenter) and my sister Ethel’s mandolin, a full bathroom, our only bedroom, and a hall area outside the kitchen and closet. The major piece of furniture in this area was a combination roll-up desk and bookcase which held classics such as Darwin’s Origin of the Species, interesting books since I was the only member of my immediate family who ever went to college. That book collection was symbolic of our parents’ dream of their children’s future success. That was common among refugees from Europe who came to the U. S. for better lives for themselves and their children.
I can’t brag about the views from the windows, but a couple provided me with real-life entertainment. The most boring view was from the living room. What we saw the few times we peered out of one of the two parallel windows was the brick wall of an opposing section of the building, broken up by windows of neighbors. Also, for historical value I will mention that there was a clothesline that ran from our window across to the other side, for the purpose of hanging clothes to air dry. A more interesting view was from the kitchen window. If I looked down, I could see the pathway leading to my building’s basement. For a snatch of a view into other people’s lives, I could look straight ahead and see the E. 170 Street elevated train station. I remember watching the trains depart or the various people standing on the platform, imagining where they were going or what their lives were like. When I became older, that was the station I used to catch the train to my high school and to arrive home later. On New Year’s Eve more than once, I would be allowed to celebrate at midnight by standing by this open window, waving a lit sparkler in circles. Exciting stuff --- for me at the time.
The view from the first window in the bedroom showed similar sites but also presented the back of the Circle Movie Theater and the back of the local Chinese restaurant (where my father and I ate every Sunday evening, on our way home from having seen a movie in one of three theaters – The Circle, The RKO Castle Hill or the Loews American in Parkchester). The final view was from the window that led to the fire escape. I used this window to initiate daydreaming. I could see right up the adjoining street, Ellis Avenue. There I observed the back yards of a series of private homes, places all my friends and I --- except for Paul --- could only imagine. We were apartment dwellers. Private homes were too expensive for our parents. It was fun to watch the denizens of these cookie-cutter homes as they relaxed in their yards. As I remember it now, the sizes were not impressive and there was more concrete than grass, but those yards belonged to them.
All these views had one thing in common: they could be accessed from my own apartment. Let me get back to my living room now. It was a welcoming place. I partied there. I was entertained there, from the TV shows in the evening to the home double-headers my Yankees played many Sundays and holidays. I slept there (convertible couch). Occasionally, I would take it upon myself to add a personal touch to the room. For example, one day my sister Ethel and I decided to paint the walls --- not the entire walls but each section had a rectangular panel (maybe two inches wide and protruding from the wall) around it and we thought we’d surprise our father and please him by painting those panels. Of course, to fulfill the surprise, we had to finish before he returned from working his 3 pm to 11 pm evening shift in the family store. We really tried but the job was too much for our combined skills. When Dad arrived, he saw the unfinished mess and the loving attempt. Fortunately, he was handy, and he hardly ever got angry, so we were excessively relieved when he finished the paint job --- and it looked great! At least we had had a good idea. Then there was the time I discovered installment plans. I surprised him with a treasure, a reclining chair. (Remember, this was the 1950’s.) I was to pay $10 a month for a year or so. I was able to make one or two payments and then he took over the rest of them and I was greatly relieved. He was special.
The kitchen had more than one purpose. Of course, there was the cooking and the eating (I have vivid memories of my mother using a wooden bowl to prepare her own chopped meat and gefilte fish), but it was also the place, in the late ‘50’s, where I did my high school homework, often to the accompaniment of rock and roll music on my transistor radio. My favorite show in the afternoon was Peter Tripp’s “Your Hits of the Week,” during which the DJ would play the top 40 records, one at a time, from number 40 down to the top song of that week. I didn’t know or care how those lists were determined and then a strange word “payola” entered my vocabulary. I’m not saying that influenced the songs Tripp played. I never did learn what the lists were based on, and I’d like to think there was no hanky-panky involved. I was still recovering from the TV quiz show scandal. I also have to admit that once in a while I interrupted my homework to go into the living room and watch Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” on the TV.
That apartment holds other memories that weren’t so pleasant, but they happened. I remember that when I started college, I bought an Olivetti portable typewriter from the CCNY bookstore (paid for in installments --- without my father’s help). I continued the practice of doing my homework in the kitchen (when I wasn’t reading in the living room) and one day my downstairs neighbor couldn’t take the noise of my typing and knocked up (her ceiling; my floor) with a broomstick. It wasn’t the first time that happened, and whenever we met in the elevator, it was an uncomfortable ride. Eventually, she moved and was replaced by a young former soldier and his wife. His short-wave radio broadcasts would interfere with my TV watching as his radio conversations could be heard via my tv, especially on Sundays. We straightened that out; he avoided evening broadcasts. He was a decent neighbor until he disappeared one day. I found out that he had been arrested by the FBI, but I still have no idea why. Then there was the Friday when I came home from college and saw my father staring at the TV set, saying nothing. I joined him and watched the coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination.
What else can I tell you about Apartment 6H? There is the memory of my mom kissing me when I was sick and my dad bringing me comic books to read every week. There was the weekend when I read my first novel at the last minute before I had to write a book report in class --- a novel by Frank Yerby called The Treasure of Pleasant Valley, a western. There were the annual evenings of worry (that it might rain) and anticipation when I was going with my fellow crossing guards in P. S. 119 to see the Bronx Bombers play at Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Allie Reynolds, Joe Di Maggio, Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling, Johnny Mize and the rest of the team --- led by Casey Stengel --- that won five consecutive World Series from 1949 to 1954.
So many memories --- so many good times dotted by the occasional not so happy moment (I remember being in bed when the phone call came from the hospital informing my father that my mother had passed away and I knew instinctively and deduced from the subdued tone of his voice what had happened.) That apartment was and always will be a part of me, just as many of you have your own apartments that hold a special place in your hearts.
My family lived in the same apartment on the top floor of 1236 Virginia Avenue (literally on the other side of the [elevated] tracks from Parkchester) for 16 formative years of my life. It was from that apartment that I attended P. S. 119, JHS 125 (aka Henry Hudson Junior High School), James Monroe High School and CCNY (aka City College of New York) from 1948 to 1964, prior to my graduating from college and joining the Peace Corps. I love that apartment. The people whom I Ioved most deeply in the world lived there . . . but that was only one of my reasons. I also had so many great memories of those years, and they are indelibly attached to that apartment, my apartment.
It’s tough to determine an absolute starting place. Chronology won’t work. Instead, I will offer a collection of vignettes, slices of memory, associations, and reflections. I hope that as I communicate these memories to you, you will see why this place holds a special meaning in the context of my life, as I am approaching my 81st year in April 2022. It’s true that as one ages, one becomes more and more sentimental and nostalgic.
I recall an early birthday party, soon after we moved into the apartment from our previous one on Vyse Avenue. (My father and brother-in-law had purchased an ice cream parlor on the corner of the building earlier, and finally an apartment became available for us to move into.) The party was full of noise-makers and bright colors and rowdy elementary school kids. My present from my dad was a Lionel Train set, consisting of a large oval inter-locking track set and about four large trains, led by a locomotive that puffed smoke. It wasn’t one of those complicated intricate sets, with multiple trains and mountains and trees and tunnels. In addition to the generator, his one had a small plastic station and a few people, but my imagination filled in the rest. My father bought what he could afford, and I loved that set. In the days and months after the party, I played with it many times. It may have followed a repetitive oval path, but in my mind, it traveled to many exciting destinations where people waited eagerly to board.
During my earliest days in the apartment, my main form of entertainment occurred when, pre-TV acquisition, the family gathered around our giant console radio and listened to various shows together --- shows that featured Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen and other comedians. Each of us also had his or her favorites. My sister Ethel, 10 years my senior, loved her soap operas, such as “The Romance of Helen Trent” and “One Life to Live”. I enjoyed “The Adventures of Superman” and “The Lone Ranger” and a show on Saturday mornings whose name I no longer recall, but I do recollect Andy Devine’ s voice (I think it was called “Andy’s Gang”) as well as the adventures of a boy in India. In 1949, the radio was overshadowed by our acquisition of one of the first television sets in the six-story building, a $500 16-inch (the largest they made at the time) black and white RCA. My greatest memory of this ilk was the anticipation of finally getting to see what the Lone Ranger (and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto) actually looked like. That TV set became the heart of the living room. I didn’t know that black and white would be passé one day. All I cared about was shows such as “Lights Out!” (scary as hell) and all those westerns (“Gunsmoke,” Rawhide,” “26 Men,” Paladin”) and wrestling , which was special because I watched it with my father, as we took turns rooting for or booing Gorgeous George, Gene “Mr. America” Stanley, Antonino Rocca and the like. (This family tradition would one day be replicated, as I would watch the WWF --- now called the WWE --- in the 1980’s, only the names would be Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Andre the Giant, and Bret Hart.) I’d watch sit-coms such as “My Little Margie,” “Father Knows Best,” “Our Miss Brooks” (Is that where I got the idea to become a high school English teacher?), “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show”.
My apartment was also a hide-out for me, comforting me with a security that I needed in the time after my mother passed away. By then, I was living alone with my father; my oldest sister (Ida, 14 years my senior) had moved out since she was by then a newly-wed, and my other sister, Ethel, was now a member of the Navy, a WAVE, and then later a member of the Marines. I was in fifth grade and kept my feelings to myself. What else did I know? So, I took advantage of my father’s working alternating weeks in the family store (different from the one I previously mentioned, this one on Westchester Avenue rather than Virginia Avenue), and when he worked in the morning-early afternoon (a 6 am to 3 pm shift), on those weeks I stayed home and comforted myself with a lot of TV (I clearly recall watching a Little Abner movie) and eating things like ketchup sandwiches on white bread. At the end of each week, I would forge my father’s handwriting and write myself an absence note, which the teacher readily accepted. This went on for weeks. Now I wonder why the teacher didn’t pick up on the fact that I was absent every other week, for one week at a time, but that’s how it went --- until I was finally caught! Now it’s amusing but then it was terrifying. I had taken my week off. Then I actually came down with the whooping cough (I recall gasping for breath as I stood in my bathtub and peered out the bathroom window) and was legitimately absent for the week I would have attended school. The third week in this cycle was my time to be absent again, and all was fine until my Armed Forces sister surprised us with a visit on Thursday, so I pretended to oversleep the next day, but my sister woke me up and demanded that I go to school late. However, rather than go to school, I semi-panicked and hid on the roof, amongst the TV antennas, and came down to the apartment at the time I would have been returning from school. I didn’t know that my sister had gone to the school to explain my oversleeping to my teacher! I had been caught! My apartment could offer me sanctuary but couldn’t work miracles for me. The next Monday, I had to go to the principal’s office, where the fearful giant called Mrs. Guilfoyle awaited, and I was read the riot act. Trust me; I didn’t miss more than a handful of days over the next eight years of public school attendance.
That might have been one of my only two troubled memories of the apartment. More typical were the lasting images that now fill me with nostalgia. For example, our apartment was on the top floor, and that took on meaning when you considered the city summers. We knew nothing about air conditioners for an apartment. In the summers, it was HOT! Very hot. Steaming! We did three things to combat the heat: leave the front door open to get a semblance of cross ventilation, sleep on the fire escape to breathe in the cooler evening air and use our big, heavy, noisy oscillating black fan. I can still hear the slow whining sound of the fan’s engine, as the blades tried to whip up a breeze and the chassis rotated 180 degrees, blowing thick warm air onto us once a cycle. How I waited for that warm flow to hit me --- and then all too soon it was gone (but I took comfort in knowing that its return was imminent, until I fell asleep). As for sleeping on the fire escape, now I tremble at the thought, realizing that I could have fallen to my death! But in those days, it was a pleasant respite from the warm Jell-O air of the apartment whose ceiling was just below the tar of the roof, which sponged the heat all day long. Still, looking back, I smile at our survival. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all.
The phone in our apartment --- there are memories attached to that piece of technology, a black, heavy, solid, wired telephone with the number Talmadge 3 - 6104. At first, when I did try to use the phone to call a friend or my sister Ida, too often I would pick up the receiver only to hear an unknown female voice engaged in a personal conversation (sounded like gossip to me), and I’d be told to hang up. This was what was termed a party line, a telephone line shared by strangers. Each time I would have to lift the receiver and hope that that strange woman’s dialog had ended. Eventually, there was no more party line, as this sharing arrangement became outdated.
I used the phone to daily let my father know, when he called from work, that I was safe and happy, the days of truancy long behind me. More often, I would be making calls to my friends --- Leo, Paul, Norman, etc. --- to arrange for us to get together for a softball, basketball, or street hockey game. The first two we played in the schoolyard of JHS 125; the latter, on the street from sewer to sewer. I was the arranger, the organizer. There, in my hallway outside my living room, sat the phone that connected me to the outside world as defined by the streets that bordered the “neighborhood,” including Virginia Avenue, White Plains Road, Ellis Avenue and Pugsley Avenue, among others.
I should have described my apartment by now. Well, when you walked in, you turned right and there was a long hallway (called the foyer by only us). All the rooms were to the left. We had one living room, then a full kitchen with a dining table as well as the appliances you’d expect, a walk-in closet that contained my father’s toolbox (He had been a carpenter) and my sister Ethel’s mandolin, a full bathroom, our only bedroom, and a hall area outside the kitchen and closet. The major piece of furniture in this area was a combination roll-up desk and bookcase which held classics such as Darwin’s Origin of the Species, interesting books since I was the only member of my immediate family who ever went to college. That book collection was symbolic of our parents’ dream of their children’s future success. That was common among refugees from Europe who came to the U. S. for better lives for themselves and their children.
I can’t brag about the views from the windows, but a couple provided me with real-life entertainment. The most boring view was from the living room. What we saw the few times we peered out of one of the two parallel windows was the brick wall of an opposing section of the building, broken up by windows of neighbors. Also, for historical value I will mention that there was a clothesline that ran from our window across to the other side, for the purpose of hanging clothes to air dry. A more interesting view was from the kitchen window. If I looked down, I could see the pathway leading to my building’s basement. For a snatch of a view into other people’s lives, I could look straight ahead and see the E. 170 Street elevated train station. I remember watching the trains depart or the various people standing on the platform, imagining where they were going or what their lives were like. When I became older, that was the station I used to catch the train to my high school and to arrive home later. On New Year’s Eve more than once, I would be allowed to celebrate at midnight by standing by this open window, waving a lit sparkler in circles. Exciting stuff --- for me at the time.
The view from the first window in the bedroom showed similar sites but also presented the back of the Circle Movie Theater and the back of the local Chinese restaurant (where my father and I ate every Sunday evening, on our way home from having seen a movie in one of three theaters – The Circle, The RKO Castle Hill or the Loews American in Parkchester). The final view was from the window that led to the fire escape. I used this window to initiate daydreaming. I could see right up the adjoining street, Ellis Avenue. There I observed the back yards of a series of private homes, places all my friends and I --- except for Paul --- could only imagine. We were apartment dwellers. Private homes were too expensive for our parents. It was fun to watch the denizens of these cookie-cutter homes as they relaxed in their yards. As I remember it now, the sizes were not impressive and there was more concrete than grass, but those yards belonged to them.
All these views had one thing in common: they could be accessed from my own apartment. Let me get back to my living room now. It was a welcoming place. I partied there. I was entertained there, from the TV shows in the evening to the home double-headers my Yankees played many Sundays and holidays. I slept there (convertible couch). Occasionally, I would take it upon myself to add a personal touch to the room. For example, one day my sister Ethel and I decided to paint the walls --- not the entire walls but each section had a rectangular panel (maybe two inches wide and protruding from the wall) around it and we thought we’d surprise our father and please him by painting those panels. Of course, to fulfill the surprise, we had to finish before he returned from working his 3 pm to 11 pm evening shift in the family store. We really tried but the job was too much for our combined skills. When Dad arrived, he saw the unfinished mess and the loving attempt. Fortunately, he was handy, and he hardly ever got angry, so we were excessively relieved when he finished the paint job --- and it looked great! At least we had had a good idea. Then there was the time I discovered installment plans. I surprised him with a treasure, a reclining chair. (Remember, this was the 1950’s.) I was to pay $10 a month for a year or so. I was able to make one or two payments and then he took over the rest of them and I was greatly relieved. He was special.
The kitchen had more than one purpose. Of course, there was the cooking and the eating (I have vivid memories of my mother using a wooden bowl to prepare her own chopped meat and gefilte fish), but it was also the place, in the late ‘50’s, where I did my high school homework, often to the accompaniment of rock and roll music on my transistor radio. My favorite show in the afternoon was Peter Tripp’s “Your Hits of the Week,” during which the DJ would play the top 40 records, one at a time, from number 40 down to the top song of that week. I didn’t know or care how those lists were determined and then a strange word “payola” entered my vocabulary. I’m not saying that influenced the songs Tripp played. I never did learn what the lists were based on, and I’d like to think there was no hanky-panky involved. I was still recovering from the TV quiz show scandal. I also have to admit that once in a while I interrupted my homework to go into the living room and watch Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” on the TV.
That apartment holds other memories that weren’t so pleasant, but they happened. I remember that when I started college, I bought an Olivetti portable typewriter from the CCNY bookstore (paid for in installments --- without my father’s help). I continued the practice of doing my homework in the kitchen (when I wasn’t reading in the living room) and one day my downstairs neighbor couldn’t take the noise of my typing and knocked up (her ceiling; my floor) with a broomstick. It wasn’t the first time that happened, and whenever we met in the elevator, it was an uncomfortable ride. Eventually, she moved and was replaced by a young former soldier and his wife. His short-wave radio broadcasts would interfere with my TV watching as his radio conversations could be heard via my tv, especially on Sundays. We straightened that out; he avoided evening broadcasts. He was a decent neighbor until he disappeared one day. I found out that he had been arrested by the FBI, but I still have no idea why. Then there was the Friday when I came home from college and saw my father staring at the TV set, saying nothing. I joined him and watched the coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination.
What else can I tell you about Apartment 6H? There is the memory of my mom kissing me when I was sick and my dad bringing me comic books to read every week. There was the weekend when I read my first novel at the last minute before I had to write a book report in class --- a novel by Frank Yerby called The Treasure of Pleasant Valley, a western. There were the annual evenings of worry (that it might rain) and anticipation when I was going with my fellow crossing guards in P. S. 119 to see the Bronx Bombers play at Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Allie Reynolds, Joe Di Maggio, Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling, Johnny Mize and the rest of the team --- led by Casey Stengel --- that won five consecutive World Series from 1949 to 1954.
So many memories --- so many good times dotted by the occasional not so happy moment (I remember being in bed when the phone call came from the hospital informing my father that my mother had passed away and I knew instinctively and deduced from the subdued tone of his voice what had happened.) That apartment was and always will be a part of me, just as many of you have your own apartments that hold a special place in your hearts.
Snow Day
On March 19, 1956. I was in ninth grade but in those days in my area of the East Bronx, and in many other metropolitan NYC neighborhoods, ninth grade, although recognized as the freshman year of high school, existed in a now-extinct entity called junior high school. The term “middle school” might as well have been called Middle Earth.
On that day, I washed and dressed as usual and literally ran down the five flights of stairs that led me to the non-descript lobby of my generic apartment building on Virginia Avenue, on the side of the elevated train station not called Parkchester. My daily routine did not include listening to the news or weather reports or forecasts. I was much more likely to favor rock-n-roll on one of a choice of radio stations, such as 110 WINS or 1050 WMGM or WABC.
So, when I stepped out to begin my six-block walk to Henry Hudson Junior High School 125, I was kind of shocked that I couldn’t find the sidewalk. Instead, there was a ton of snow, enough to make finding the stairs leading down from my lobby level to street level tenuous. The friendly lion statues that daily protected me from danger as I descended those stairs were that morning large blobs of snow. 19.8 inches had fallen.
Still, I walked down gingerly and made the usual left turn and proceeded to forcefully trudge my way through the beautiful, well-packed snow past the series of private homes such as the one occupied by my favorite dentist (like I had a choice). There were no accompanying cars, as I recall. The streets were as blanketed with snow as the sidewalk was. It really was a beautiful sight, all that clean, fresh, immaculate snow . . . not disturbed until the human snowplow made his way toward JHS 125 much as Yeats’ “rough beast [slouched] towards Bethlehem to be born.”
As I walked, my clothing --- especially my pants --- became more and more soaked as well as heavier and heavier, I found myself mentally humming 125’s song (“Henry Hudson, Henry Hudson, loyal we shall be . . .” to the fighting tune of “On Wisconsin”). I was strangely energized as I walked and anticipated an easy school day filled with substitute teachers and not much work. This was how school days were meant to be!
I continued to occupy my thoughts with memories related to this four-year old institution that I was headed for. It was located across the street from P. S. 119, the elementary school I had attended from Grade One to Grade Six. (I had skipped kindergarten; that’s a story for another time.) I clearly remembered the large vacant lot invitingly present, and then suddenly there were all these digging and construction machines and lots of workers, and eventually, the year I was in sixth grade, JHS 125 was opened for business. I started attending the following year. Everything was in such good condition; even the teachers seemed new --- and it was exciting, going from a school where I had the same teacher for every subject each year to a place where there were English teachers, Math teachers, Social Studies teachers - - - you get the idea. There were other nice touches, such as a painted white line down the middle of each hallway and monitors to enforce our walking on the right side of that line so that we wouldn’t crash into each other. I was safe from daily tragedy.
Returning to March 19, 1956, eventually, I arrived at the location which called for a sharp left turn --- and turn I did. I recognized the private house where a classmate lived, and I kept walking. I arrived at my usual entrance, but it was closed. I trudged onward to the main entrance by instinct and was admitted. It was not what I had counted on. No one was headed toward a classroom. Instead, we were congregating in the main lobby and then herded into the auditorium, where it was announced that there were not enough teachers for classes to be held that day.
Instead, we sat down and watched the original black-and-white version of Michael Rennie’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, a cinematic warning that we’d better stop thinking about annihilating each other with nuclear bombs (you know --- the ones we held drills for, crawling under our desks to keep from being cut by the broken glass of the windows when the bombs dropped; no one mentioned the effects of radiation) or ancient aliens would return and put an end to the Bronx Bombers, the supermarkets, movie theaters, our families and ourselves. I watched that movie totally engrossed (“Klaatu barada nikto”).
Later, we were dismissed early, and I was sad to see how dirty the snow had become in my absence. I did learn a valuable lesson that day: Next time it snows that much on a school day, stay home!
On that day, I washed and dressed as usual and literally ran down the five flights of stairs that led me to the non-descript lobby of my generic apartment building on Virginia Avenue, on the side of the elevated train station not called Parkchester. My daily routine did not include listening to the news or weather reports or forecasts. I was much more likely to favor rock-n-roll on one of a choice of radio stations, such as 110 WINS or 1050 WMGM or WABC.
So, when I stepped out to begin my six-block walk to Henry Hudson Junior High School 125, I was kind of shocked that I couldn’t find the sidewalk. Instead, there was a ton of snow, enough to make finding the stairs leading down from my lobby level to street level tenuous. The friendly lion statues that daily protected me from danger as I descended those stairs were that morning large blobs of snow. 19.8 inches had fallen.
Still, I walked down gingerly and made the usual left turn and proceeded to forcefully trudge my way through the beautiful, well-packed snow past the series of private homes such as the one occupied by my favorite dentist (like I had a choice). There were no accompanying cars, as I recall. The streets were as blanketed with snow as the sidewalk was. It really was a beautiful sight, all that clean, fresh, immaculate snow . . . not disturbed until the human snowplow made his way toward JHS 125 much as Yeats’ “rough beast [slouched] towards Bethlehem to be born.”
As I walked, my clothing --- especially my pants --- became more and more soaked as well as heavier and heavier, I found myself mentally humming 125’s song (“Henry Hudson, Henry Hudson, loyal we shall be . . .” to the fighting tune of “On Wisconsin”). I was strangely energized as I walked and anticipated an easy school day filled with substitute teachers and not much work. This was how school days were meant to be!
I continued to occupy my thoughts with memories related to this four-year old institution that I was headed for. It was located across the street from P. S. 119, the elementary school I had attended from Grade One to Grade Six. (I had skipped kindergarten; that’s a story for another time.) I clearly remembered the large vacant lot invitingly present, and then suddenly there were all these digging and construction machines and lots of workers, and eventually, the year I was in sixth grade, JHS 125 was opened for business. I started attending the following year. Everything was in such good condition; even the teachers seemed new --- and it was exciting, going from a school where I had the same teacher for every subject each year to a place where there were English teachers, Math teachers, Social Studies teachers - - - you get the idea. There were other nice touches, such as a painted white line down the middle of each hallway and monitors to enforce our walking on the right side of that line so that we wouldn’t crash into each other. I was safe from daily tragedy.
Returning to March 19, 1956, eventually, I arrived at the location which called for a sharp left turn --- and turn I did. I recognized the private house where a classmate lived, and I kept walking. I arrived at my usual entrance, but it was closed. I trudged onward to the main entrance by instinct and was admitted. It was not what I had counted on. No one was headed toward a classroom. Instead, we were congregating in the main lobby and then herded into the auditorium, where it was announced that there were not enough teachers for classes to be held that day.
Instead, we sat down and watched the original black-and-white version of Michael Rennie’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, a cinematic warning that we’d better stop thinking about annihilating each other with nuclear bombs (you know --- the ones we held drills for, crawling under our desks to keep from being cut by the broken glass of the windows when the bombs dropped; no one mentioned the effects of radiation) or ancient aliens would return and put an end to the Bronx Bombers, the supermarkets, movie theaters, our families and ourselves. I watched that movie totally engrossed (“Klaatu barada nikto”).
Later, we were dismissed early, and I was sad to see how dirty the snow had become in my absence. I did learn a valuable lesson that day: Next time it snows that much on a school day, stay home!
