Me at my aunt Gizella's wedding.
Beginnings
They used to call me Billy.
I was brought up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, notorious at the time for being the principle dumping ground for victims of the mob. Bodies bearing crumbling cement boots would regularly wash up on the shores of Jamaica Bay, a great salt marsh blanketed with five foot high reeds atop black mudflats, only a few miles from where I lived. Few ventured into this desolate quagmire. Corpses decayed unnoticed and undisturbed.
I never encountered any mobsters nor stumbled upon their casualties. Ours was a quiet mostly Jewish community, with asphalt streets lined with narrow sidewalks and London planetrees. Rows of modest four family brick houses were separated by narrow alleyways. A half dozen boys lived on our block. We were all about the same age and we played and fought regularly. Our battleground was the street. Punchball, stickball, and stoopball were our games of choice, and avoiding the infrequent traffic was a skill we learned early.
My home was near the end of the block, the closest one to what we called the “el” – an elevated section of the old New Lots IRT line that snaked from Manhattan through Brooklyn and back, terminating a few stops east of us, just short of the borough of Queens. Beyond the last stop was a depot where sleeping trains were bedded in anticipation of the morning rush hour. A few trains would awaken during the night, and, as if in protest, would grudgingly trundle alongside our house, their metal wheels brightly sparkling and loudly squealing as they clattered along the tracks. I must have become accustomed to their nocturnal din outside my bedroom window at an early age. It was only when I was 15, having left home for a summer job in the Catskill Mountains, that I realized that their clamor wasn’t a feature of everyone’s nightly experience.
They used to call me Billy.
I was brought up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, notorious at the time for being the principle dumping ground for victims of the mob. Bodies bearing crumbling cement boots would regularly wash up on the shores of Jamaica Bay, a great salt marsh blanketed with five foot high reeds atop black mudflats, only a few miles from where I lived. Few ventured into this desolate quagmire. Corpses decayed unnoticed and undisturbed.
I never encountered any mobsters nor stumbled upon their casualties. Ours was a quiet mostly Jewish community, with asphalt streets lined with narrow sidewalks and London planetrees. Rows of modest four family brick houses were separated by narrow alleyways. A half dozen boys lived on our block. We were all about the same age and we played and fought regularly. Our battleground was the street. Punchball, stickball, and stoopball were our games of choice, and avoiding the infrequent traffic was a skill we learned early.
My home was near the end of the block, the closest one to what we called the “el” – an elevated section of the old New Lots IRT line that snaked from Manhattan through Brooklyn and back, terminating a few stops east of us, just short of the borough of Queens. Beyond the last stop was a depot where sleeping trains were bedded in anticipation of the morning rush hour. A few trains would awaken during the night, and, as if in protest, would grudgingly trundle alongside our house, their metal wheels brightly sparkling and loudly squealing as they clattered along the tracks. I must have become accustomed to their nocturnal din outside my bedroom window at an early age. It was only when I was 15, having left home for a summer job in the Catskill Mountains, that I realized that their clamor wasn’t a feature of everyone’s nightly experience.
My mother on the steps of our house in 1940.
My grandfather, Asher, whom we called by his Yiddish title, zayde, was the patriarch of the family. He was the owner of our building, a two story row house with four cramped apartments, a dimly lit hallway, deteriorating linoleum covered stairs that steeply climbed to the second floor, and a dark, damp basement with rough unfinished stone walls and two abandoned coal bins. It had been deeded to him by a shady character who owed my grandfather a considerable sum and, having run afoul of the law, exchanged the house for the debt. After acquiring the property, Zayde proceeded to move his family – a wife, two daughters, a son who suffered from a severe brain injury acquired at birth, and my father – from a tenement on Broom Street on the lower East Side of Manhattan to what was effectively the suburbs. It was a remarkable transition. The contrast with their previous situation was striking: only one flight of stairs; no pushcarts assembled below; each apartment with its own bathroom. My aunts and their husbands occupied two of the apartments, one on the first floor front and the other on the second floor rear. Zayde and his wife, my bubbe, as well as Jakie their son, lived upstairs facing the street.
When my father married, he and his new bride moved into the unoccupied ground floor apartment in the rear of my grandfather's building. It looked out on to a weedy, garbage-laden yard facing the back of several three story buildings twenty yards beyond. It was a move for which my mother never forgave him. She had grown up in the hills of the Bronx – the northern most of New York City’s five boroughs – in an apartment with her widowed mother and three sisters. Right after her marriage, not yet twenty, she was suddenly confronted by two sisters-in-law and a mother-in-law, all in close proximity, all eager to offer unsolicited advice to a newlywed. On the whole, my aunts were kind and helpful, but bubbe and mom argued all the time. Their biggest conflict was over bubbe’s standard of cleanliness, or lack thereof. The whole house smelled of the filth that emanated from the upper floor. The stench was compounded by the fact that at regular intervals a half dozen ancient fowl that were gifted from bubbe’s brother’s chicken farm in New Jersey would scamper around a cage in the small space alongside the stairwell that led to the roof. They were, after proper dispatching, plucking, and a long immersion in boiling water, doomed to become the center piece of holiday celebrations. The holidays were also occasions for another creature to join our family. It was then that a live carp, a future gifilte fish, could be found swimming lazily in my grandparents bathtub. It didn’t smell, but I often wondered whether my grandparents shared the bath with the fish or just didn’t bathe while the tub was being otherwise employed.
When my father married, he and his new bride moved into the unoccupied ground floor apartment in the rear of my grandfather's building. It looked out on to a weedy, garbage-laden yard facing the back of several three story buildings twenty yards beyond. It was a move for which my mother never forgave him. She had grown up in the hills of the Bronx – the northern most of New York City’s five boroughs – in an apartment with her widowed mother and three sisters. Right after her marriage, not yet twenty, she was suddenly confronted by two sisters-in-law and a mother-in-law, all in close proximity, all eager to offer unsolicited advice to a newlywed. On the whole, my aunts were kind and helpful, but bubbe and mom argued all the time. Their biggest conflict was over bubbe’s standard of cleanliness, or lack thereof. The whole house smelled of the filth that emanated from the upper floor. The stench was compounded by the fact that at regular intervals a half dozen ancient fowl that were gifted from bubbe’s brother’s chicken farm in New Jersey would scamper around a cage in the small space alongside the stairwell that led to the roof. They were, after proper dispatching, plucking, and a long immersion in boiling water, doomed to become the center piece of holiday celebrations. The holidays were also occasions for another creature to join our family. It was then that a live carp, a future gifilte fish, could be found swimming lazily in my grandparents bathtub. It didn’t smell, but I often wondered whether my grandparents shared the bath with the fish or just didn’t bathe while the tub was being otherwise employed.
At bat near my home
Dirt was my mother’s enemy; she kept our modest apartment in immaculate condition. It was embarrassing for her to entertain guests because of the miasma that emanated from above. But despite the odors, in-laws, chickens, and my mother’s continual complaints, my parents remained tenants in my zayde’s house for 15 years. They didn’t move because they couldn’t afford to. The rent, subsidized by my grandfather, was $28 per month, a small sum even in the 1940’s. Another reason to stay put was the house’s easy access to the city. The nearby elevated line, which we inappropriately called the “subway”, only became subterranean several miles from our home as it made its way westward into Manhattan where my father worked. For a dime, he could get to his job – he was a furrier – in 40 minutes. When we eventually did move, when I was 14, it was only a few blocks south into a single family row house newly abandoned by a recently arrived Puerto Rican family. Although there were plenty of traffic noises coming from Linden Boulevard, a major thoroughfare a half block away, I missed my old haunts, the clamor of the trains, even the smells of the apartment.
School
Bubbe, Zayde, and me in our apartment.
At the age of six I enrolled in elementary school. PS 182 was an imposing five story building two blocks from my house. Adjoining it was a large schoolyard where we would play punchball during recess. And next to the schoolyard was a garden of equal size where futile efforts were made every year to grow a series of sickly shrubs in the hard packed soil. Isaac Asimov the writer, Phil Silvers the comedian, and the jazz pianist Peter Nero, are noted alumni.
For reasons that are lost in memory, my parents didn’t send me to kindergarten, and I began my academic career in first grade. Mrs. Tuttle, a kindly gray haired matron, greeted me and my mother at the door to my classroom with a gentle smile. We were late, and most of the students were already seated at their desks.
“Class, this is William”, she announced.
Puzzled, I looked around to see who she was talking about. No one had ever called me William before.
For reasons that are lost in memory, my parents didn’t send me to kindergarten, and I began my academic career in first grade. Mrs. Tuttle, a kindly gray haired matron, greeted me and my mother at the door to my classroom with a gentle smile. We were late, and most of the students were already seated at their desks.
“Class, this is William”, she announced.
Puzzled, I looked around to see who she was talking about. No one had ever called me William before.
PS 182 (in the 1950's)
A group of about two dozen of us had been judged “gifted” by virtue of an IQ test administered to us in the second grade. From that time until graduation, so branded, we remained tethered together year after year. Looking back on it, marking us as above average in intelligence was self reinforcing, a virtuous cycle priming us for success. Because we were given more attention, treated more deferentially, and allowed more privileges, we did better than the other kids. And that only led to a greater separation from those who were handled otherwise.
Our group of designated high achievers grew to know each other well, each kid having a place in the hierarchy that develops when children are grouped together for a long time. Steve (he’s in the top row left in our junior high school class picture below, just above Nadine) was the acknowledged leading intellectual in our classes, at least among the boys. He was to be my classmate throughout elementary school, junior high school, college, and graduate school (We didn’t attend the same high school because he moved to an upscale neighborhood after junior high school). There were a number of other kids in the group that did well academically. But prowess in the classroom was not the major way we judged each other. Athletic ability was the coin of the realm. For instance, Jerry (third from the left in the top row), tall and lean, was held in high regard because he could punch the ball further than the rest of us. I probably stood in the upper third of the class scholastically, but I was never any good at punchball, stickball, or basketball, the games we played in the schoolyards and streets of the neighborhood. It lowered my standing in our group and was a continuing disappointment.
Our group of designated high achievers grew to know each other well, each kid having a place in the hierarchy that develops when children are grouped together for a long time. Steve (he’s in the top row left in our junior high school class picture below, just above Nadine) was the acknowledged leading intellectual in our classes, at least among the boys. He was to be my classmate throughout elementary school, junior high school, college, and graduate school (We didn’t attend the same high school because he moved to an upscale neighborhood after junior high school). There were a number of other kids in the group that did well academically. But prowess in the classroom was not the major way we judged each other. Athletic ability was the coin of the realm. For instance, Jerry (third from the left in the top row), tall and lean, was held in high regard because he could punch the ball further than the rest of us. I probably stood in the upper third of the class scholastically, but I was never any good at punchball, stickball, or basketball, the games we played in the schoolyards and streets of the neighborhood. It lowered my standing in our group and was a continuing disappointment.
My JHS class graduation photo.
My days at PS182 were a mosaic; happy moments interspersed with anxious ones, successes interspersed with regrets. Some of my happiest remembrances are of an amorous nature. Because I loved to read, the fairy tales and stories of noble knights and princesses that I devoured as a child primed me for romance at an early age. So naturally, when the opportunity presented, I fell in love. It was the second grade. Her name was Nadine. She had dark curly hair and a captivating smile. She was smart, cultured, with a soft voice, and an artistic bent. I would dream of her while sitting at my desk in school and before I went to sleep at night, imagining myself rescuing her from danger, defending her from schoolyard bullies, offering her my jacket to keep her dry in the rain.
Because Nadine was also in the group judged to be above average intellectually, we moved from grade to grade together throughout elementary school. All through this time, for four more years, I remained smitten. But despite our daily close proximity, ours was a distant relationship. In all the years that we shared the same classroom, I can’t recall speaking to her once. If we did, it certainly wasn’t a long or meaningful conversation. It wasn’t only because I was shy. Rather I thought of her as royalty: inaccessible, a presence on a pedestal. Naturally, I felt unworthy of such a creature. It also might have been because I had little to say to her. At that age, girls were aliens. They didn’t know the names of the players on the Brooklyn Dodgers, giggled a lot, and, except for Martha (she’s standing between Steve and Jerry in the class picture), showed little evidence of athletic ability. Despite our distance, she must have known that I was enamored of her. Certainly, everyone else in the class knew it since I was ever staring at her with a lovesick expression. But because I never overtly expressed my feelings, she largely ignored me and we remained distant.
However, one spring day in the fourth grade on the sidewalk outside the school, in an unpremeditated gesture that surprised us both, I furtively ran up to her and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. Of course, I immediately ran away, laughing as only a nine year old full of himself and who had done something slightly naughty would do. This didn’t change our relationship, at least not at first – the incident was never really acknowledged by either of us. But a few months later, near the end of the school term, while I was seated at my desk daydreaming about playing shortstop for the New York Yankees or some other similar fantasy, Nadine and Belinda approached. It soon became apparent that they were having a dispute. And it was over me! Belinda insisted that I “liked” her. Nadine countered that she was the object of my affection, and, as proof, bragged that I had actually kissed her. Belinda didn’t believe it. She was petite, vivacious, and a ball of lightning and felt - with some justification - that if anyone was going to be attracted to anyone else, it should be to her. She wasn’t to be outshone, even if she didn’t particularly care for me. The two stood before my desk waiting for me to resolve the issue. Who did I like better?
Because Nadine was also in the group judged to be above average intellectually, we moved from grade to grade together throughout elementary school. All through this time, for four more years, I remained smitten. But despite our daily close proximity, ours was a distant relationship. In all the years that we shared the same classroom, I can’t recall speaking to her once. If we did, it certainly wasn’t a long or meaningful conversation. It wasn’t only because I was shy. Rather I thought of her as royalty: inaccessible, a presence on a pedestal. Naturally, I felt unworthy of such a creature. It also might have been because I had little to say to her. At that age, girls were aliens. They didn’t know the names of the players on the Brooklyn Dodgers, giggled a lot, and, except for Martha (she’s standing between Steve and Jerry in the class picture), showed little evidence of athletic ability. Despite our distance, she must have known that I was enamored of her. Certainly, everyone else in the class knew it since I was ever staring at her with a lovesick expression. But because I never overtly expressed my feelings, she largely ignored me and we remained distant.
However, one spring day in the fourth grade on the sidewalk outside the school, in an unpremeditated gesture that surprised us both, I furtively ran up to her and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. Of course, I immediately ran away, laughing as only a nine year old full of himself and who had done something slightly naughty would do. This didn’t change our relationship, at least not at first – the incident was never really acknowledged by either of us. But a few months later, near the end of the school term, while I was seated at my desk daydreaming about playing shortstop for the New York Yankees or some other similar fantasy, Nadine and Belinda approached. It soon became apparent that they were having a dispute. And it was over me! Belinda insisted that I “liked” her. Nadine countered that she was the object of my affection, and, as proof, bragged that I had actually kissed her. Belinda didn’t believe it. She was petite, vivacious, and a ball of lightning and felt - with some justification - that if anyone was going to be attracted to anyone else, it should be to her. She wasn’t to be outshone, even if she didn’t particularly care for me. The two stood before my desk waiting for me to resolve the issue. Who did I like better?
JHS 149 (1950's)
I don’t remember how I responded or even how the episode was settled. I do recall with some shame that I felt proud, not so much because it demonstrated that Nadine had returned my affections, but because I was being sought after by two of the more popular girls in the class.
My almost entirely platonic relationship with Nadine ended in the ninth grade. We continued in the same elementary school classes for two more years, a period covering the fifth and sixth grades. When we graduated, still tied together by a bygone IQ test, we attended the same junior high school, JHS 149, and were placed together in Mr. Goldman’s rapid advance class, meaning that we were among the select few who were to skip eighth grade. As before, we hardly spoke during this time, but I still harbored romantic notions. When we were nearing graduation, I summoned the little courage I had, and asked her to the senior outing. All the students were to take the subway to Coney Island and eat hot dogs and ride the roller coaster. She said yes. But on the day before the event, she informed me that her mother had forbidden her to go. Apparently her parents thought she was too young to go out on a date with a sophisticate like me. They must have thought that I would take advantage of her, although, of course, my intentions were entirely benign. It was a great disappointment. And even though Nadine and I later went to the same high school, and ultimately even to the same college, being stood up broke our connection forever thereafter.
My almost entirely platonic relationship with Nadine ended in the ninth grade. We continued in the same elementary school classes for two more years, a period covering the fifth and sixth grades. When we graduated, still tied together by a bygone IQ test, we attended the same junior high school, JHS 149, and were placed together in Mr. Goldman’s rapid advance class, meaning that we were among the select few who were to skip eighth grade. As before, we hardly spoke during this time, but I still harbored romantic notions. When we were nearing graduation, I summoned the little courage I had, and asked her to the senior outing. All the students were to take the subway to Coney Island and eat hot dogs and ride the roller coaster. She said yes. But on the day before the event, she informed me that her mother had forbidden her to go. Apparently her parents thought she was too young to go out on a date with a sophisticate like me. They must have thought that I would take advantage of her, although, of course, my intentions were entirely benign. It was a great disappointment. And even though Nadine and I later went to the same high school, and ultimately even to the same college, being stood up broke our connection forever thereafter.
My list of class leaders (1953).
A particularly painful experience had occurred some years earlier in the fourth grade which, amazingly, still lingers. Mrs. Schwartz had assigned one student in each row to check a daily log - a brief entry in a dedicated notebook that we had to enter concerning the happenings of the previous day. She picked me. It was a permanent job, lasting the entire academic year. Having been awarded that assignment, each morning I would stalk along the line of worn wooden desks, each bearing an unused inkwell and engraved with the initials of previous inhabitants, and inspect the handiwork of each student. I took the job seriously and was strict with miscreants who had written only a sentence or two, reporting them to our teacher. However, sometime early in the fall, after less than a month or so of classes, I began failing to record anything in my own notebook. After a while, the missing entries became an everyday occurrence. My conscience began gnawing at me, but as I fell further behind, I convinced myself that the lame attempts I made to concoct fictional comments about the weather or family life would be detected as fake. And so I didn't try.
We went on a family holiday that fall, an unusual event since my father usually couldn’t afford to miss work. In our black 1949 Pontiac with its silver stripes down the front and back, we wended our way south from Brooklyn through New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, along the route of the soon-to-be-completed Jersey turnpike. Our destination was Front Royal, Virginia, where the Skyline Drive begins, the entry to the Shenandoah National Park.
It was a wonderful trip, my first real adventure away from home (other than our stay in Florida, an event of a completely different nature. See "Florida and Guns"). We drove along the Skyline Drive and visited the Skyline Caverns. We slept in roadside motels, climbed incredibly steep mountains, and hiked along the park’s well tended trails. We saw wondrous creatures: deer, chipmunks, hawks, and salamanders. We breathed air, fresh and invigorating, that bore none of the acrid odors that permeated Brooklyn. It should have been idyllic. But at night I battled my conscience. I was obsessed with the daily log. I knew I had cheated and I was certain that I was going to have to pay the price. Mrs. Schwartz would collect the notebooks at any moment and my sins would be revealed for the world to see. It troubled me so much that one night I woke up screaming. My father tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. What I had done was so terrible that I couldn’t admit it to my parents or to anyone else. I was alone in my misery.
In the months following, I made some feeble attempts to fill the notebook, but the entries were unconvincing, even to me. In the end, it didn't matter. Mrs. Schwartz never collected our work, even though I lived in daily fear of her doing so. When graduation approached, she announced that she was honoring four students for their academic achievements, two girls and two boys. Steve and a girl name Bette came in first place. Nadine and I placed second. I felt no joy. Not because I had failed to receive the top honor. – I was well aware that Steve was the superior student. It was the notebook. I had cheated, not been caught, yet I had been rewarded, even though it was for second place. My guilt ruined the achievement. The incident taught me a lasting lesson: I had a monster of a conscience that slept on my shoulder, one that would beat mercilessly on me when it was aroused. I realized that I would have to be careful about doing wrong or there would be hurtful consequences.
We went on a family holiday that fall, an unusual event since my father usually couldn’t afford to miss work. In our black 1949 Pontiac with its silver stripes down the front and back, we wended our way south from Brooklyn through New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, along the route of the soon-to-be-completed Jersey turnpike. Our destination was Front Royal, Virginia, where the Skyline Drive begins, the entry to the Shenandoah National Park.
It was a wonderful trip, my first real adventure away from home (other than our stay in Florida, an event of a completely different nature. See "Florida and Guns"). We drove along the Skyline Drive and visited the Skyline Caverns. We slept in roadside motels, climbed incredibly steep mountains, and hiked along the park’s well tended trails. We saw wondrous creatures: deer, chipmunks, hawks, and salamanders. We breathed air, fresh and invigorating, that bore none of the acrid odors that permeated Brooklyn. It should have been idyllic. But at night I battled my conscience. I was obsessed with the daily log. I knew I had cheated and I was certain that I was going to have to pay the price. Mrs. Schwartz would collect the notebooks at any moment and my sins would be revealed for the world to see. It troubled me so much that one night I woke up screaming. My father tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. What I had done was so terrible that I couldn’t admit it to my parents or to anyone else. I was alone in my misery.
In the months following, I made some feeble attempts to fill the notebook, but the entries were unconvincing, even to me. In the end, it didn't matter. Mrs. Schwartz never collected our work, even though I lived in daily fear of her doing so. When graduation approached, she announced that she was honoring four students for their academic achievements, two girls and two boys. Steve and a girl name Bette came in first place. Nadine and I placed second. I felt no joy. Not because I had failed to receive the top honor. – I was well aware that Steve was the superior student. It was the notebook. I had cheated, not been caught, yet I had been rewarded, even though it was for second place. My guilt ruined the achievement. The incident taught me a lasting lesson: I had a monster of a conscience that slept on my shoulder, one that would beat mercilessly on me when it was aroused. I realized that I would have to be careful about doing wrong or there would be hurtful consequences.