The Missing Rink
I discovered it a few years ago on one of my annual
visits back to the East Coast. It was sitting quietly on top of an old dresser,
up in the attic of my Aunt Mildred's house on the
Silver, with red and black trim, and a red plastic
handle. I had given it more of a customized look by spelling out the name
"STEVE" in large gold decal letters, running diagonally across the
front. As a final artistic touch, I had added two, maroon and white, stickers
of flying roller skates from The Fordham Skating Palace. The winged skates
suggested a much greater skating speed than I had ever managed to reach, and
stickers of ripped pants, creative falls, and floor burns would probably have
been a little closer to truth.
Luckily for me, I had no professional
ambitions as a roller skater. It was just something I did for fun on Saturday
afternoons. Even with that, I'm actually a little surprised that I stuck with
it for as long as I did, since, obviously it wasn't my thing. Even after years
of practice, I was still never able to develop anything much in the way of a
skating repertoire. My greatest accomplishment, in fact, probably came when I
mastered the art of skating backwards tentatively. I probably looked about as
relaxed and flexible as Frankenstein did when he got off the table for the very
first time and was asked to skate backwards. Part of the problem was that I
could never really develop the knack of glancing over my shoulder to be able to
see where I was going. As a result, I found myself constantly bracing for a
fall. I was always afraid of being surprised by a stray piece of chewing gum or
a sticky puddle of Coke, and both were pretty realistic possibilities at The
Fordham Skating Palace.
Although I didn't really appreciate it at the time,
learning how to skate backwards probably helped me to learn some really
valuable lessons about life. First and foremost, of course, I learned never to
throw gum on wooden floors, and, as a rule of life, this has always
served
me well. More importantly, I learned a little something about hurtling myself
backwards into the great unknown, and this would
prove to
be excellent training for my later work as a psychotherapist. As a matter of
fact, it almost qualified as my job description.
Putting aside my flashbacks for the moment, I,
excitedly, unlatched the cover and looked inside. The box was filled with
stacks of old love letters from my cousin Carol to her future husband, Perry.
More importantly, however, the lining was still in remarkably good shape, so,
without giving it much thought, I automatically dumped the letters into a
cardboard box.
As I stood
there, insensitively going about my work, I couldn't help being struck by the
timing of it all. Only just recently I had been feeling a strong need for some
tangible links with my past, and now, suddenly, out of the blue, my old metal
skate box turns up. And, here was something that was, finally, light enough for
me to carry back on the plane. My first bookcase and desk could stay behind in
And the skate box was actually in pretty good
shape, all things considered. A little scratched and rusted around the edges
maybe, but hey, who wasn't? I was even beginning to feel a little scratched and
rusted myself. Since l969 I had been working as a psychologist for the
"Fighting Aztecs" of
Sometimes, particularly during the peak seasons for
human agitation, life would start to look like an endless series of crises, and
our office would start to take on the look of an emergency room for the
human
spirit. And things would usually come in
bunches for our clients too. Somehow you just knew that after their
relationship went
belly-up,
that they'd also be having some car trouble in the very near future.
Although most of the time I found the work to be
generally fulfilling, sometimes it could really get to me. Like the cop on the
beat, or the air traffic controller up in the tower, we all knew that we were
paying a price for doing our particular kind of work, we could feel it taking
it's physical and emotional toll. But we were hooked on it. Cops need robbers,
and, apparently, counselors thrive on clients with problems.
But, sometimes, when things would really start to
build-up, I'd really start to wonder where the upside of this business had
gone. It could then become a constant challenge just to keep your perspective,
and not drown in a sea of negativity. Part of the problem for us, of course,
was that there was a major imbalance in terms of what our clients were
bringing-in to talk about. There was a tremendous negative surplus of
confusion, despair, and anxiety, and little in the way of celebration or
positive ritual to balance things off. In some ways, we were almost like
clergymen who only got to do funerals, and never any weddings.
Since my students were usually depressed, they
rarely popped-in to tell me how great they were feeling about themselves or
about how wonderful life could really be. In truth, many of my clients actually
felt constantly shortchanged by life. All too often their rewards felt like
punishments, and their punishments felt like rewards. It was an easy mistake to
make, and one that I was personally very familiar with. Even with all that, I
sometimes found myself wishing that we could change the name of our counseling
center to "Our Lady Of Perpetual Disappointment."
But, sometimes it was really hard not to get down.
These were troublesome times, and rapid change and painful upheaval seemed to
be everywhere. From the global level to
the more personal or human level, nobody seemed immune. Even my old metal skate
box had to go through a few rough times. Since its liberation from my Aunt
Mildred's attic, it had actually been forced to go through a rather difficult
mid-life career change of its own. It was now working as a door stop in our old
Spanish house on
It now stands quietly in our den, holding-open a
double-glazed French door which leads out to our second-story redwood deck. The
large L-shaped deck affords a beautiful view of rolling hills, tree tops, and
colorful drought-resistant plants, while a slatted overhang provides some
welcome relief from the
The whole scene gives us the welcome illusion of
country living, even if it might, technically, be more like the suburbs. But
there are no sidewalks here, only some narrow winding roads, and we don't have
sewers yet, just septic systems. There's even a little wildlife to be found
that you wouldn't necessarily associate with a suburban habitat. We have plenty
of birds, everything from hummingbirds to hawks, and there's no shortage of
lizards either. In some sort of low-budget Darwinian festival, the slowest of
them are systematically weeded-out by the cats who stalk them around our yard.
And, the cats are kind of amazing in their own right. Somehow, through some
unexplained, mysterious process, they are able to intuitively sense that we
humans love to receive decapitated lizards as presents.
And there's a lot of other action around the
neighborhood. Some of our neighbors raise bees, and we seem to be raising ants,
although not intentionally. During the
hot, dry, Santa Anas they invade our
house in their desperate search for water. Seeing giant black swaths moving
into my kitchen propels me into a desperate search of my own -
a search
for Diazanon spray. It goes against my nature to have to resort to chemical
warfare, but these ants don't seem to want to play it any other way. Sometimes
I try leaving them a little drinking water outside the house, but it never
seems to work.
Even if the whole scene might be somewhat of an
illusion, it's still a very attractive and comforting one to us. There's been a
steady stream of people just like us who have also been discovering "
So, at least for the time being, we still had a
little space and serenity, and we appreciated it. My wife, and I had both come
from humble beginnings as apartment dwellers in the
Early Memories
The story actually begins only a few short blocks
from the very same
In many ways the
Although we didn't get to see any cats stalking
lizards, the view from 2401 still had its own share of action and high drama.
There were stickball games, squealing brakes, people screaming, sirens blaring,
and the constant backdrop of horns, traffic, and trains. It was an environment
of concrete, metal, and noise. There was little in the way of softness, an aloe
would not have survived.
I spent a lot of time looking-out on this festival
of sight and sound; contemplating it all. I remember being impressed, almost
astonished, at how everyone was getting-on with the business of life; how they
all seemed to know just what to do. Under the circumstances, they seemed to
have a surprisingly clear sense of purpose. Like drones in the hive of life,
all the players seemed to know their roles. They all seemed to know the ropes
and the routines.
But, as for me, I remember feeling very perplexed
about the whole thing. I just didn't really get it, and a growing uneasiness
seemed to be settling-in rather early in life. Almost as soon as I could think,
I probably began to question it all. How come they all know what to do with
themselves? How do they know what this is all about? Instead of sitting in my
high chair, and quietly eating my mashed carrots, I, apparently, thought it was
important to reflect-on the death-denying quality of much of contemporary
American life.
Other than
being an incredibly deep, and existentially-savvy newborn, like most babies, I
think I also must have been cute. I remember my extreme self-consciousness when
people would make a fuss over me, and how very ill at ease I felt from all the
kvelling and cheek-pinching. Flashbulbs going-off in my eyes startled me. I
felt a little like King Kong - dragged into the city, taken far away from my
natural habitat, and gawked-at by strangers on the other side of the bars. Some
thirty years later I came to realize just how true this really was, and just
how much I still wanted to go home.
I had a small collection of stuffed animals in my
room, and, for a while, I had some glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.
Although I never had a dog or cat in our apartment, at any given time I might
be playing host to fish, turtles, parakeets, or even rabbits. Depending on the
year, there might also be anything from marbles and baseball cards to stamp
collections and chemistry sets. Most of the stock got regularly rotated, but
sporting goods and musical instruments were usually in there somewhere.
Like most kids in those days, I also went through
my cowboy and Indian stage. The Lone Ranger was one my biggest heroes, and I
tried to be just like him, even if they didn't allow horses into our apartment
building. I loved the fact that he wore a mask, and did good deeds anonymously.
And I loved how he would be heading-off into the sunset just as the townspeople
were looking at the silver bullet, and trying to figure out just who that
masked man was, anyway.
My favorite Indian was Straight Arrow.
He could usually be found on the cardboard cards separating the layers of
Nabisco Shredded Wheat. Straight Arrow always seemed to know amazing things
about how to survive in the wilderness, and he could travel through the forest
without making a sound. Even if he was walking on dry leaves, nobody could hear
him coming. When I would try this myself, it sounded like I was walking on
boxes of shredded wheat with microphones in my shoes. Straight Arrow was also
the ultimate wilderness handyman. With only a few twigs and rocks he would,
somehow, be able to construct an entire Indian village and feed it for a year.
I envied his
uncanny
ability to find wooden sticks that were
just the right length, and had notches in just the right places.
Straight Arrow may also have been the one who
inspired us to get into archery. My friends and loved to go into the woods and
shoot our bows and arrows. And once there, we didn't always bother to use
traditional targets either. Sometimes when we were a little bored we might
shoot an arrow into the air, straight-up, directly above our heads. It would
completely disappear into the sky so we'd have to stay alert and try to spot it
before it pierced our skulls or blinded us. It sure was a great way to get the
old adrenaline going, and was probably great preparation for the hazards of
dating.
There was really so much for us to do growing-up in
Converse Allstars were my favorite sneakers. One of
the regular highlights of my childhood came when we would head over to the
local sporting goods store on the Grand Concourse to buy a new pair of
Allstars. We had a choice of white or black in canvas or canvas. For that
customized look you could add a pair of colored laces, and there was sometimes
tremendous anguish on deciding on a color.
The white Allstars looked a lot better, but it was
pretty hard to keep them that way. It was always open-season on any new pair of
white footwear, so, if you chose them, you'd have to be constantly on your
guard. The biggest targets, of course, were any new pair of white bucks.
Show up in some and be prepared to run
for your life if you didn't want them covered with black stomp-marks. In those
days they even sold little bags of rub-on chalk powder to hide the marks and
blemishes on your wounded bucks, and they sold a lot of them.
But, even if your friends did try to step all over
them, it was still nice to get a new pair of sneakers or shoes. I, actually,
felt very lucky just to have them. These
days it seems to take a lot more than that to do the trick. It's not like we
were feeling poor or deprived in any major way. We actually thought of
ourselves as middle-class in those days, much as we still do now. But in those
days we would compare ourselves to the less fortunate ones, on the bottom of
the scale. And, compared to the people in Harlem or
Now, of course, I can still manage to feel deprived
even while owning three cars and living in a mini-hacienda. Now, for some
reason, I tend to envy people who can travel at will, even though I really
don't enjoy traveling all that much, and, at the moment, there's no place
in particular that I really want to go.
I guess it was a lot nicer, and a lot cheaper, when all it took was a new pair
of sneakers to make your day. It appears as though the secrets of human
satisfaction are still a bit elusive to most of us. No matter what we have,
somehow, we always seem to want more.
But, I digress. Turning back to the Converse
Allstars for a minute, once we got them we didn't just sit around worrying
about getting them scuffed-up or dirty. We used them, and we used them for just
about every kind of sport imaginable. .
As younger kids, we'd usually start-out with your
basic rubber ball, the classic pink "Spaldeen", and we'd get a
surprising amount of mileage out of it. It could be used in your room, in the
hallways of your apartment building, out on the sidewalks, stoops and curbs in
front of your house, and down by the handball courts, schoolyard and parks. We
played everything with it from "hit the penny" to stoopball and
stickball.
My baseball
interests died in junior high school, I remember the exact day. My friend
Victor and I had gone up to the school yard to hit a baseball around. I lofted
a fly ball out to him, and he pretended, I thought, to lose it in the sun.
Always the joker, Victor dropped to the ground grabbing his face. After a
minute I realized he wasn't joking, and that he had actually caught the ball
with his nose which was now broken and rapidly losing a lot of blood.
After Victor's nose healed we decided to stick with
bike riding for a while. We enjoyed taking day trips on our 3-speed English
Racers. In the morning we'd buy a roast beef hero from the local German
delicatessen, and head North into
Sometimes we'd get up early and take a ride up to
the cemetery in Tarreytown, the scene of "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow." We'd ride up and down through the cemetery, and try to terrify
each other with sightings of the Headless Horseman. And it didn't, actually,
take all that much to terrify us. We were already quite paranoid about being
unwelcome visitors from the
But, let's face it, if you had to associate one
sport with
I practiced constantly, and the game, eventually,
became the major focus for my energies, and a great outlet for blowing-off a
little steam. At a simple level, the game gave me a much-welcomed feeling that
I was actually good at something; that I had a special skill that I could call
my own. I, also, grew to love the artistic or creative dimension of the
game that involved things like intuition
and teamwork. Over time, this facet of the game became totally intriguing to
me.
Although basketball may have been a
great game, it wasn't always easy getting a court, particularly when you were
younger and smaller. If I got there early enough, or if the weather was
miserable enough, I might get lucky and find a free basket to practice on. But,
once the bigger kids came out, your basketball career would have to be put on
hold for a while. They usually kicked you right off the court without even thinking
twice about it. You and your basketball were a minor annoyance to them, and
they, basically, just treated you like you didn't exist. They'd just begin
playing, and assume that you would be clearing-out momentarily. Depending on
their mood, of course, they might also just fling your ball over the fence into
heavy traffic. It was really nothing personal, just a little jungle etiquette
in action. Every once in a while,
though, you might get lucky. If they were short-handed enough, they might,
actually, let you play with them until one of the elite arrived. It was always
a good idea to try to make the most of the opportunity.
Years later, after moving out to San Diego, I could
never quite get used to seeing all those beautiful schoolyards with all those
empty basketball courts. Perfect weather but no basketball players. And, nobody
seemed to be having all that much fun either, in basketball or in anything
else. All the sports in suburbia seemed to be organized into leagues by adults
who wore high white socks, and emphasized things like healthy competition and
sportsmanship. To me, it’s always seemed like this adult-organizational overlay
took the fun right out of it.
Besides basketball, music was my other main outlet
as I was growing up. I studied the accordion for a number of years and became
fairly proficient at it. This would have been great if I had been living in
Not wanting to live as a social leper, I quickly
switched to the guitar, and took lessons from a fellow named Ronnie Lee, A.K.A.
Ronald Leventhal. He was a terrific guitarist and an excellent teacher, but
after a year or two I was getting tired of playing the pop and classical pieces
that he had been teaching me. So I bought a solid-body electric, and spent
countless hours playing along with records and tapes in my room. I spent a lot
of time playing along with people like Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Little
Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Speaking of Rock and Roll, some of my greatest
boyhood memories came in catching some of those classic acts at the early rock
and roll shows put on by Alan Freed and Murray the K. My friends and I would
get up in the middle of the night, and hop a subway into
Speaking of
tensions and conflicts, sometimes it was hard not to notice some of the other
ones that always seemed to be simmering just below the surface. Just growing-up
watching the local news in
At the neighborhood level, these conflicts and
tensions were often aggravated by bullies or other key players, who had been
significantly tweaked by life. Some of them had a somewhat perverted sense of
curiosity. One kid in my high school was experimenting with tossing burning
objects from his roof when he accidentally set a little old lady on fire.
Gravity had already been discovered, so I'm really not sure what he was trying
to prove. I’m pretty sure that he never experienced any legal consequences for
this act, but he did come out of it with a great nickname - "The
Torch." In
And then there were others who managed
to draw a crowd even if it really took a bit of doing. Occasionally, it might
even come in the form of suicide. Once, while we were on our way to school one
morning, we came upon the police just as they had finished placing blankets
around a major intersection under the tracks of an elevated train. We were
afraid to find-out what was happening, but, as it turned out, the blankets were
all covering the widely scattered parts of an unfortunate soul who had just
been splattered by a train. Even more horrifying was my experience as a young
child while I was waiting for a subway train with my mother. As people
inched-up to position themselves for the doors, the man next to me did a sudden
swan dive into heavy metal and steel wheels.
Not everything was that dramatic, of course, but
even the little stuff tended to add up. There seemed to be no shortage of
people hassling you over one thing or another.
Dr. Brown
Luckily, however, everything wasn't always this
grim and tense.
One of my earliest
Plenty of local color could be found at
the neighborhood delicatessen. You could
hardly find a bad one, and most would probably qualify as state of the art.
Pastrami on club with mustard and coleslaw was always my favorite, topped-off
with a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda and a knish. The waiters, with their black shoes
and smartly contrasting white socks always added nicely to the ambiance. The
rest of the outfit consisted of a small hand towel draped over the arm, and a
very unthrilled look on the face. If any of these waiters had ever said
something like, "Have a nice day," you'd wonder if they had a fever.
And, speaking of unthrilled looks, I was no
stranger to giving them myself. Like many others, I too had my share of
unglamorous jobs, and was probably a lot less gracious in them than the average
deli waiter. For a while I had an after-school job as a stock boy in the local
Daitch supermarket. For a while, at least, it was kind of exciting to actually
be getting a behind the scenes look at any type of operation, but, before too
long, unloading boxes of dairy products and canned goods started to lose some
of its intrigue. On the other hand, it was good to get a feel for what those
kinds of jobs were actually like. People also needed to pay their dues, and the
Daitch job certainly helped me to appreciate why people were always telling you
to stay in school and get a good job.
Although people who know me find it very hard to
believe, I also worked for a time down at Lord and Taylor's in
The View From the Stand
My longest-running part-time job was at my
grandparents’ newsstand. It was just like the ones you saw in the movies, the
only difference was that we didn't give out a lot of tips to private
detectives. Grandpa Herman, my mother's father, was able to get the stand
because he was blind, and my Grandma Sarah was there most of the time to help
him. For a while their stand was located at a bus stop in a tunnel under
After a number of years in the tunnel, they,
eventually, were able to move to another stand which was up at street level in
some daylight and fresher air. The new stand was located at the end of the
elevated line at
Although the green wooden stand
sheltered us from the rain and snow, it could still get damp and bitter-cold
inside. And it wasn't easy making change or rolling pennies while you were
trying to keep your hands warm with fingerless gloves. You had to be fast with
your calculations, and fast with your fingers too, and frozen fingers weren't
always that nimble. The commuters, in particular, were always in a tremendous
hurry. They would all let-off the bus at the same time, and descend on the stand in a giant shock wave,
attacking us with their pennies. They'd grab their papers, and want their
change before they even handed us the money.
There were a few other tensions as well. We might
be huddled around the heater and suddenly hear the loud screeching of brakes
from a truck which was obviously going to crash into us and cripple us for
life. While we braced for the impact, a voice would scream out,
"News!" And, only then would we realize that it was only the Daily
News delivery truck which was already speeding-off into the distance on its
never-ending mission of terror. But, although our lives may have been spared
this time, we still had to bolt-out the door, and rescue the newly bundles of
newspaper from the slush out by the curb. It didn't take long for newspapers to
become water-logged, and our customers weren't really into paper mache.
The attacks of the killer delivery trucks were
almost unrelenting, and they were always tremendously unsettling. Being on the
receiving end had to be the polar opposite of quietly enjoying tea in a
Japanese teahouse. But things, somehow, have a way of evening out. For many
years my father, who handled used trucks and truck parts, made a lot of money
junking old Daily News delivery trucks. The quicker these drivers could destroy
them, the better it was for us.
Also helping-out at the stand was Louie, the old
Macedonian, who was about sixteen
hundred years my senior, and looked a lot like an aging Kojak.
He spoke with a thick Macedonian accent that must have sounded very much like
Alexander the Great's, whom, I'm sure, Louie must
have known personally. An incredibly hearty fellow with the strength of a much
younger man, Louie wouldn't take anything from anybody. If someone
short-changed him a penny, he might leap-up from behind the counter and chase
after the guy, running up hundreds of stairs while screaming, "Stop, stop
you bestit!"
The stand
would quiet down dramatically when it wasn't the rush hour, and during those
slack times, working at the stand gave me a great opportunity to catch-up on my
reading. We carried just about every newspaper and magazine in town, and
eventually there'd be enough time to get to most of them. The stand also
provided an incredible observation point for people-watching. And the variety
pack of life that passed before us ran the entire gamut, in terms of wealth,
achievement, and personality refinement.
For some strange reason, I found myself
becoming particularly intrigued with the successful-looking one's who came down
from
As embarrassing as it may sound, I found
myself becoming almost totally obsessed with this London Fog - New York Times
combination. I sensed that there was
something terribly significant hidden in this, but the link continued to elude
me. And then one day it suddenly dawned on me that I had accidentally broken
the code. Somehow, I had managed to stumble upon the two secret qualifying
events that would automatically guarantee your admission into the world of
success. I wasn't quite sure where they
held the tests, but I became firmly convinced that all they had to do was to
show their London Fog, complete the eight compulsory one-handed maneuvers with
The New York Times, and they would then be set for life. They could then go on to meet all the right
people, travel in all of the right circles, and be able to walk into places
like The New York Athletic Club with total confidence.
When I
wasn't uncovering the secret life of the
Other signs of personal and interpersonal neglect
could also be seen around the bar. One that really stuck vividly in my mind was
the sight of a young father who, on his way to the park with his kids, just
stopped in for a quick beer with the guys. He wound-up spending a few hours
drinking and socializing while his kids were running out of ways to kill time
in the nearby luncheonettes. How many times, I wondered, could this guy
come-out and give them some change for a cone or some Italian ices? Of course
they shouldn't have any doubts as to how special and loved they really were! It
was trauma in the making, and future generations of bartenders, mistresses, and
therapists would be hearing all about it.
Just to make things even more confusing
for me, everyone who passed by the stand wasn't neglectful, abusive or even
depressing. There were a lot of other people who were friendly, considerate,
and basically very nice. Many of
them were just on their way over to Van Cortlandt Park, and had nothing more shady in mind than a
tree. As I pieced things together, it was beginning to look like people were
capable of just about anything, from the very worst to the very best, and with
all of these apparent contradictions it made it tough to reach any firm
conclusions about the human race.
Van Cortlandt Park itself
had just about everything you could want, including a golf course, a lake with
row boats, a stadium and track, handball and basketball courts, and acres and
acres of grassy fields. During the winter, they'd even convert one of the
fairways into a small ski slope, and there was always something incongruous
about seeing people getting-off the subway with their skis and poles.
With vivid images of a broken bone poking through
one of my pants' legs, I never took advantage of the ski slope, but I did play
the golf course at Van Cortlandt whenever I got the
chance. It was usually pretty empty during the week, so playing a quick nine
holes before or after school wasn't all that difficult. And, it was cheap too.
In those days we could buy a golf permit each year, and play on public courses
all around the city for just a token fee.
Of course, you had to remember that this was still
De Witt C.
De
The whole atmosphere at
But, despite some of the animal antics, De Witt
Clinton really wasn't such a bad place to go to school. Although it was easy to forget, many of the
other city schools were, in fact, even rougher, and the education at
As for me, I had been practicing like crazy ever
since I had taken-up the game in grade school, so in my sophomore year I
decided to go- out for the team. But, height, among other things, was a bit of
a problem. A few years later a growth spurt would bring me up to 6'2", but
in my sophomore year of high school I was a lot closer to 5'2". I was
every coach's dream - slow, white, and short. I was the kind of kid that
announcers liked to refer to as an "intelligent" player, meaning that
I had all of the necessary physical tools to become an owner.
The
The coach probably had the best talent in the city
to choose from, but I still managed to feel rejected and ripped-off when he
didn't want me. My ego was crushed as my dreams of glory vanished in five
short, humbling minutes. But, I was surprisingly resilient, and quickly
regained my perspective. Realistically, I had to admit that I came up a little
short in size and ability, and the coach had, actually, made the right
decision.
If I couldn't be Mr. Basketball I
decided that I might as well fall-back on my second glamour career - sports
reporting. Like most of my friends, I followed the world of sports very
closely, reading the sports section in The Post every afternoon, and listening faithfully
to Howard Cosell on the radio. Following in these traditions, my friend Stuart
and I, long since reunited after our forced separation in front of The Garden,
teamed up as cub reporters for the Clinton News. We wound-up covering football
and basketball, but, unfortunately, we found ourselves forced to write in a
style that may have been journalistically correct, but was also incredibly
sterile and uncreative. I guess we were supposed to come-up with something that
looked like a news release on one of the major wire services, and, we routinely
did just that. Eventually, we perfected our journalistic talents to the point
where we were able to make an exciting game sound dull.
But the
glamour of traveling with the team and being part of the De Witt Clinton sports
scene really made it all worthwhile. There were many treasured moments for us,
both home and away. Football games were always the most exciting, probably
because they always had the greatest potential for a large-scale riot. For show
and tell, our students would sometimes see who could come back with the largest
knifed-off piece of an opposing school's jacket.
Basketball games had a similar potential for
volatility, but they were contained in a much smaller area. So, for the
reporter or spectator, it became a question of personal preference. Would you
rather get crushed to death on a football field, or have your head smashed-in
in a gymnasium? Sometimes it was hard to
decide.
On the
whole, Stu and I came to prefer the gym. The games
were great, and the team had more than its share of interesting characters. The
relationship between the players and the coach was also pretty interesting, and
it gave us a lot to not write about. At that particular time in
But, every so often, the coach would get fed-up
with the lack of respect he was getting from his players, and he'd try to take
more of a strong-handed approach with his team. On one memorable occasion,
Charlie, one of his star players had shown-up late for the game, and the coach
had finally had it with Charlie's irritating habits. This time, he decided,
he was, finally, going to put his foot
down, and show them who was really the boss. So, just before game time, the
coach announced to the team that he was benching Charlie for the entire game
for disciplinary reasons. The team responded
with - "Charlie don't play, we don't play man!" Charlie played.
The team probably wondered why the coach
was making such a big deal out of it. Maybe Charlie wasn't your classic
scholar/athlete, but why single him out?
Sure, he could be a little irresponsible at times, or perhaps even
menacing, but he also had his arrogant and pugnacious side as well. Sometimes, in fact, when he would get tired
of picking-on people, Charlie enjoyed throwing liquor bottles out of moving
trains, and he wasn't always that particular about whether or not the windows
were open either. His aptitude tests may have shown that he had terrific
potential as a felon, but, while he was with us at
Their team was composed of sensitive and talented
kids who were kind of like the kids from "Fame''. Unfortunately for them,
our team was kind of like the kids from
But, it was even worse than we had expected. We
rolled over Music and Art unmercifully, scoring almost at will, and pouring it
on in every possible way. It was always nice to see your team win, but this was
starting to get embarrassing. Music and Art had a one-armed center who wasn't
having a particularly good game. In my opinion, he was showing tremendous
courage just by wearing a shirt with no sleeves, and trying to play basketball
with only one arm. But, instead of respecting this guy's guttiness, our center
held his only arm or hand whenever he could get away with it. As a result, he
found himself constantly off-balance and reeling wildly out of control. From the
press box it was a bit like watching someone trying to row a boat with only one
oar. Apparently sports didn't always build such great character.
Another journalistic highpoint came when we were
covering an away game at
Terrified,
and very much fearing for our lives, we made it to the gym and showed our press
cards to a rather unfriendly-looking group of brothers who were guarding the
entrance. Somehow we had the feeling that they would be rooting for Boys High.
Even though we were the only two white guys in the vicinity, race wasn't really
the most important factor. In truth, just being from
As I remember it, the dialogue went something like
this:
-“What you want man?”
-“Er, gulp, Clinton News.
Here to cover the game? Here's our, our press cards?” (I know that these are
statements, but they came out sounding a lot like questions)
-“Your momma!”
-“Ahh. Excuse us I think
we must, must have the wrong entrance.”
The highpoint in our journalistic careers probably
came in covering the city championships
at
The Garden itself had its own mystique, filled with
powerful images of basketball history and heroism. The old wooden floor had
soaked-up the sweat and footprints of all the great ones, and it now radiated
an awesome presence of its own. And, for
Stu and I, our fantasies were in overdrive. Maybe, we
wondered, it really wasn't all that farfetched after all. Maybe we really could
become like
But in our
hearts we knew that this particular dream would be ending shortly. We viewed
journalism as a highly-prized and glamorous field, but one in which jobs only
went to the very cream of the crop. And, neither of us could picture ourselves
in that kind of select company. So the time was ripe to come up with a more
realistic back-up plan. Stu decided to become a
lawyer, but, as for me, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with myself.
Sensing this lack of direction, my mother thought
it would be a good idea to have me tested. So she hired a psychologist who came
over to our apartment and administered some psychological tests. He gave me an
interest test and some aptitude tests, but the one that I remember most vividly
was the intelligence test. As I was taking it, I remember becoming completely
intrigued with the whole procedure, from the stopwatch that he was using to the
test itself. I was particularly fascinated by the jig saw pieces that you were
supposed to make into the shape of a hand, and the cartoons that needed to be
placed in the proper sequence for them to tell a story.
I thought it was absolutely amazing that he could
tell all about a person in just a few hours simply by using these tools. I, on
the other hand, didn't have the foggiest idea about why anyone did anything,
even after I had talked with them for years! From what I could tell, this stuff
was really pretty cool.
When we went over the results from my interest
test, I remember him telling me that my scores on the social service
occupations were a bit low. Actually, my scores fell kind of half-way between
Grizzly Adams and Sonny Liston. I was your basic
hermit who could become belligerent if pushed. It wasn't, exactly, the profile
of your classic "people person".
According to the psychologist, the results suggested that I might not
want to rush into an occupation that involved a lot of personal contact with
other people. It sounded good so far.
He also expressed some concern about my generally
negative attitude towards others. People, he told me, weren't as bad or as
untrustworthy as I thought they were, and he hoped that someday I could learn
to give people more of a chance. I thought it was a nice, well-meaning
sentiment, but I wondered where this guy had actually grown-up.
Even though the test results didn't
really matter all that much to me, it turned out to be a great idea to have me
tested. The most important thing about the whole experience for me was that it
had introduced me to one very interesting occupation. Someday, I thought, maybe
I too could get a stopwatch, and find out what makes people tick. Now, of
course, I realize that I would have been a lot better-off going into watch
repair and trying to find out what made watches tick.
But, even with some of his questionable advice, the
psychologist had still managed to hook me on his profession. When it came time
to fill-in our intended occupations for our senior yearbooks I found myself
filling-in: Psychologist. It had a nice ring to it. I wanted to understand the
secrets of the human mind; I wanted to be all-knowing. And this would be the
path for me to take.
The Rest of the Family
My Grandma Anna lived on the other side of the
Grandma Anna
always seemed very old to me, and always talked like she was on her last legs.
Every time we visited her, she would express tremendous amazement and gratitude
that she had actually lived to see us one more time. After about twenty or
thirty years of this, I finally began to take it with a grain of salt. It was,
after all, a pretty long time to be lingering at death's door. Constantly
defying her own actuarial predictions, she, actually, managed to hang-on for
another forty years or so. And, not only did she live through years of bonus
visits with me, but, eventually, I even brought my own children to visit with
her as well.
It may have been a long time to linger at death's
door, but Grandma Anna could still be pretty convincing. If I was debating
whether or not I should pay her a visit, I'd always picture her as postponing
her own death so we could see each other one more time.
Once, before we got married, Marianne and I were
trying to decide if we should go over there for a visit. It was during a
record-setting cold snap, and the wind-chill factor must have been horrifying.
People were being warned to stay home, if at all possible, for their own
safety. But, after thinking it through, we decided that we had better not risk
staying home. We didn't know how many more visits would be possible, and the
subsequent guilt might be too much for us to bear. As we pulled-up to her
apartment building we were stunned to see Grandma Anna venturing-out into the
bitter cold on her way to a card game. She was startled to see us.
Grandma Anna spent her final years in an old age
home in the
It was very hard to believe that this stage of life
was positive or meaningful in any possible way. It was hard to feel good about
it. The whole process of aging and death seemed like a painful and rather
absurd conclusion to one's life, and if this was the grand finale, it made life
even more questionable than ever. To cap it off, the whole thing also seemed to
place a tremendous financial and emotional burden on the children, and a lot of
the children were senior citizens themselves at that point.
For Grandma Anna, the quality of her life had
deteriorated to such an extent that living had become a curse. Of course, she
had been expressing that opinion for the past forty years, but now she seemed
to mean it more than usual. And who was to say that she wasn't right?
Ironically, she lived to the age of ninety nine.
Thankfully, not all of our visits to the relatives
were as depressing as a trip to the home. Usually they were a lot more
enjoyable, even if we had to fight the traffic on The Garden State to get
there.
My mother's sister, Mildred, and her family lived
in the town of
My Uncle David was a Chiropodist. His office was
downstairs near the front entrance to the house. He smoked cigars, and always
seemed to be in a hurry. He was no stranger to bunions, corns, and calluses.
Quite often he was making a quick run down to the candy store to grab a racing
form, but most of the time he was rushing around trying to make the daily
double at
Once he got out to the track he would race around
checking frantically with his cronies, looking for a hot tip from one of the
trainers. My father, who also liked the horses, would usually go along with him
to the track, but would usually try to sit somewhere else. Uncle David got so
worked-up that he made my father nervous.
Back at the house, we non-horseplayers might be
enjoying ourselves playing a little croquet or maybe just having a catch.
Sometimes we'd shoot a few baskets out in the back yard where a hoop and some
wooden boards had been nailed to one of the big trees. We didn't have a net, so,
after each shot, the ball would usually land on one of the roots and bounce-off
unpredictably in one of ten different directions.
The backyards in the neighborhood were open. No
fences were there to separate them, just some scattered, but permeable hedges.
Many of the houses had large front porches, and they were still used on warm
summer evenings. People seemed a little friendlier in those days, and a lot
less concerned with their own privacy and space.
The boardwalk and the beach weren't too far from
the house, and we'd get over there whenever we could. I loved the smell of the
salt ocean air, and the aroma of grilled hot dogs, corn on the cob, candy
apples, and salt water taffy. You could also detect an undercurrent of rotting
fish, garbage, and creosote drying on the pilings and boards, but it all seemed
to blend together into one very sweet smell.
I loved the penny arcades in
My father Joe, and his twin brother Rubby
(pronounced Ruby) were born in
Uncle Rubby and his family settled in
Sometimes it boggles my mind when I compare Rubby's working environment with his twin brother's. While my uncle was working with Einstein and
other notables my father was lucky if he could find any reliable help to junk
trucks in his yard. And the men that he did have weren't all that sophisticated
or scholarly either. They ate sausage and pepper hero sandwiches, and had dirt
under their fingernails which probably never came out. Many of them had a
minimal knowledge of etiquette and/or English, and they would not have fit-in
very well over at the faculty lounge.
My uncle would sometimes take me over to the lab
and show me the cyclotron in operation. I had the feeling that he actually knew
how it worked. As for me, I was in way over my head, and barely knew what an
atom really was, even after reading all those scientific comic books put-out by
General Electric. Sometimes, while we were over at the lab, my uncle would even
do a little glass blowing. He'd make silly little animals out of glass tubes,
and I found that almost as impressive as being able to operate a cyclotron.
The Princeton campus was quite impressive in its
own right, particularly to a kid from the
Although they started-off in some modest faculty
housing, my aunt and uncle later settled into a beautiful custom home,
overlooking a pond. In the winter, the pond would freeze, and ice skaters would
glide by their picture window. The whole scene was in such striking contrast to
my environment back in the Bronx, that it, literally, seemed like another world
to me, and it was a world in which I, obviously, didn't fit-in. Princeton was
my only point of reference as far as higher education was concerned, so I had a
lot of trouble even picturing myself as a college graduate.
My aunt and
uncle had two daughters. Lissy was the eldest. In the mid 60's she married an
ex-Whiz Kid with a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science. It contrasted nicely
with her own Ph.D. in Linguistics. Clearly they were a couple of academic heavy
hitters. Frannie, the younger sister, now lives about a mile from us in another
part of
Why Is
This Night?
Almost all of our trips out to
Somehow, through all of this, we were supposed to
feel thankful about being redeemed from slavery in ancient
Looking back at it, I realize that part of what was
coming-up for me during those marathon seders were some of my basic, underlying
feelings about being Jewish in the first place. Apparently, I had some very
mixed feelings about the whole thing, and, apparently, they also liked to
come-out and visit me every Pesach.
Although, on the one hand, I was proud that we Jews
were such high-achievers, and, usually, very honest and ethical in our everyday
affairs, we could also be capable of embarrassing displays of materialistic
excess, and an ethnocentrism that bordered on the obnoxious. There seemed to be
some sort of an ill-defined, yet strongly persistent attitude among us that we
were special or better in some way than other people, and this attitude didn't
sit very well with me at all. Certainly, it didn't mesh nicely with the belief
that all people were created equal. On the other hand, these philosophical
differences probably weren't the key elements in all of this for me.
At the heart of the matter was my extreme
sensitivity towards anything that might possibly make us stand-out as
different. And, like with a lot of other
things, there were probably some pretty good reasons for it. Certainly, there
were a number of critical incidents along the way that shaped some of my basic
beliefs and attitudes about being Jewish, and, if nothing else, a lot of this
learning seemed to have started relatively early in life.
One of the first things that I came to learn about
our people was that we were, for the most part, made-up of bright, motivated,
hard-working, and very, very successful individuals. Word had it that we had
particularly good heads for business and science, and this seemed to be the
case.
And, if that weren't already enough, apparently, we
had even been given an impeccable sense of taste when it came to matters of
culture and style. I remember when my parents brought me into
His reactions, of course, didn't put too much
pressure on me, other than calling into question the very legitimacy of my
authentic Jewish heritage. Was this kid adopted, or what? How could he possibly
like a suit like that? To the salesman, it seemed, we were, obviously, the
special ones, who had been chosen because of our monopoly on good taste. To me,
of course, this was a terribly offensive attitude, embarrassing to Jew and
gentile alike. And, not only that, if this belief was right, and we did have a
monopoly on good taste, how would this salesman be able to explain my wardrobe
to the world. To this day, it stands as a silent witness to the blatant falsity
of the belief in this high sense of Jewish style.
Of
course, when you talk about major culprits in shaping some of our negative
attitudes about being Jewish, the subject of
Of course, your parents and other family members
wouldn't necessarily be joining you there. They had other important things to
do. The whole thing made for a nice double message - Your Jewish heritage is
vitally important, but you really didn't have to take it very seriously. As a
matter of fact, when you become an adult you won't have to do any of this
anymore.
So, apparently, one of the most desirable freedoms
that came along with adulthood was this freedom to not have to do things that
were a drag. It may not have been one hundred percent true, but it sure seemed
like none of the adults that I knew about were taking any Jewish classes or
going to services, except maybe on Yom Kippur. If this was such a precious
heritage, why didn't adults seem to practice it? Understandably, it was pretty
hard not to be suspicious or resentful.
So, for the time being, you had to put-up with it,
and it could be pretty uninspiring. For starters, we weren't always glad to be
there, and, to be sure, we weren't always eager to learn. We were tired at the
end of the day from the regular torture that we were getting in public school,
and this was even worse. Instead of getting a chance to get out and play, we
had to sit-through even more brain-washing, and it was a lot less interesting
than what we had been learning in school.
As for me, I was sent to a number of different
Hebrew Schools over the years, and, for the sake of variety, I found myself
alternating between spacing-out and acting-out. My clearest memory, is of
writing and doodling in those funny little blue notebooks that they give you,
but, other than that, I remember surprisingly little about the whole experience.
I do, remember spending countless hours learning the Hebrew alphabet, and maybe
a few things about some of the holidays, but that was, probably, about it. I
guess there was also that story about the coat of many colors, but I don't
think it made that much of an impression. Joseph may have been thrown into a
pit by his brothers, but, as far as I was concerned, there were much worse
things happening in
Finally, at the age of twelve, in one of my prouder
moments I decided to stop being a hypocrite. Why, I figured, should I study all
this stuff just to have a Bar Mitzvah? If that was only going to commemorate my
last visit to a synagogue for a while, why not get it over with? Why should I
accept savings bonds, cash, and fountain pens just for not showing-up. It seemed a lot more honest to just pull the
plug on the whole thing, and drop-out. My parents were pretty accepting about
it, and I felt that it showed a little personal integrity on my part.
Far beyond
There were some other significant images as well,
images of people who were facing much bigger problems than Joseph in the pit or
Steven in the pits at
well
before the era of wide-spread television news, they used to show black and
white newsreels to let people know what was happening out in the rest of the
world. I remember well the early pictures from the concentration camps - the
ovens, the gas chambers, the uniforms, the piles of corpses, and the looks on
the eyes of the living dead. It was all so overwhelming what had happened to
them, and, at some level, I think we needed to disidentify
with them. They were the Jews of Europe, we told ourselves, but we were
different. Sure, we felt bad for them, but still we were different. After all,
it had happened to them, not to us.
Years later, when I was working as a busboy up at
Circle Camp, groups of Holocaust survivors would occasionally show-up for a
weekend in the country. They seemed very Jewish-looking to us, not suave or
cool in any way. They still had their camp numbers tattooed on their arms. We
felt nervous and awkward just being around them.
Even though we were quite unaware of it, I think
that at some level we must have blamed them for what had happened to them.
Their differentness, we probably told ourselves, must
have been a big part of the problem. We wished that they would dress better, or
somehow be able to act more American. In retrospect, we were much too immature
to be able to handle what had happened to them. We gave them pitifully little
respect.
Yichh and Kichh
As long as I'm writing about Circle Camp, I might
as well backtrack a bit to my days as a camper at nearby
Circle Camp and the adjacent
When I first arrived at camp I remember being
instantly traumatized by all this Yiddish writing that was all over the place.
What kind of a camp was I being sent to?
As I later found out, there were, actually, some
good explanations for the signs having
been written in Yiddish. Years earlier, the resort had been put together by
immigrants, who, even if they weren't particularly religious, still valued the
cultural aspects of Jewish life. It was a culture in which they were quite
comfortable, and, they wanted to perpetuate it. Even the type of entertainment
that they would bring-in would reflect this.
If they brought-in a comedian, and you
didn't know Yiddish, you'd find yourself
following a joke for a few minutes, straining to catch most of it, and
then be left utterly mystified as all the old timers in the audience were
suddenly laughing their heads-off all around you. All you'd be able to catch of
the punchline would be something that sounded like "yichh"
or "kichh." To pronounce it correctly you
had to bring-up a little phlegm.
At more of a practical level, many of these
old-timers were also unable to read English, so the Yiddish signs helped them
tremendously. A lot of them didn't read the regular newspapers, and, instead,
read the Daily Forward or "The Fuvitz" as they called it in their
thick Eastern European accents. The Fuvitz was written in Yiddish and printed
in a pale brown ink, which, when combined with the strange-looking alphabet,
really gave me the creeps. To top-it-all-off, they read it from right to left
and from back to front. Clark
Every Friday night it was "Shabbos",
and we would wear our white shorts and
shirts instead of our blue ones. They never, actually, told us just what
exactly Shabbos was, or why it might have been important. As a matter of fact,
everything seemed about the same as any other night except that we dressed in
white, and usually ate roast chicken for dinner. I found the whole thing pretty
irritating, and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why they were making
such a semi big deal out of nothing. It seemed like they were only doing it to
humor some of the old timers, and that didn't really seem like a good enough
reason. I liked my blue shorts better,
and I resented having to dress-up in a costume.
Other than having some problems with the Yiddish
signs and some of the strange customs, summers at camp were, for the most part,
enjoyable ones for me. I made a lot of friends, and we all had a great time
participating in sports and other activities. They kept us hopping, with
everything from racing in war canoes to making plastic lanyards in arts and
crafts. After a while, I was even able to stop feeling like I wanted to go home
whenever I would see a copy of The Fuvitz.
When I got a little older, I worked for a few years
on the adult side of the resort. I started-out as a boatboy, looking after the
rowboats and giving an occasional rowing lesson. The tips were lousy, but I got
a great tan. The following summer I moved up to the dining room where I worked
as a busboy. The tips were a lot better,
and the main problem was, probably, the exhaustion that came from trying to
burn the candle at both ends. We were strongly encouraged to mingle with the
guests and participate with them in volleyball games and other activities. It
was a bit unusual, but they didn't treat the help like they were social lepers
like they did in some of the other resorts in the Catskills. As a matter of
fact. the help was probably treated better than a lot of the guests. Anyone who
was working there usually had to have some connections to get the job in the
first place, so a guest ran the risk of provoking the wrath of someone in the
organizational power structure if he didn't tip your son the waiter handsomely.
Socially it was great to have so many friends, and to be around so many eligible
people of the opposite sex. It was a matchmaker's paradise, and many a couple
got their start at Circle Camp. The relationships and friendships would often
continue well beyond the summer, and would carry-over into our lives down in
the city. As a result, I wound-up dating girls from places like Forest Hills
and the outer reaches of
Speaking of brides, I would be remiss in not
mention something about Jewish weddings, since they could, certainly, color
your thinking about Jewish customs and rituals. For starters, I can safely say
that If I had been uncomfortable with the displays of materialistic excess at
some of the Bar Mitzvahs, this was just child's play when compared to a
wedding. The parents putting on these lavish productions always seemed to be
trying to outdo each other. It became an ever-escalating spiral, a bit like the
cold war, except that the weapons were hor d'ouvres instead of missiles.
Suffice it to say, there was usually enough food. The leftovers could,
probably, have kept thousands of Ethiopians alive for a few hundred years.
They say that things come in bunches, and in the
mid-sixties we found ourselves going to a lot of these affairs, one after the
other, and, before we knew it, we even had to start planning our own. Although I can safely say that I don't regret
the marriage, the wedding was a different story altogether.
I'm told that people had a great time, but, as far
as I was concerned, I felt less like I had a wedding and more like a wedding
had me! Although it was a modest affair by local standards, there were still a
number of highlights and a fairly large
cast of supporting characters.
The rabbi who married us also happened to own the
catering hall, and, seeing him in operation both Jewishly and as a businessman
left a bit to be desired. Although the memory is a bit blurry from distortions
of alcohol and time, one of my favorite scenes involved sitting in a small sideroom
with Marianne before the ceremony. The rabbi/entrepreneur dragged in an old
Jewish man with a beard who proceeded to read a long Hebrew document of some
kind. He read it like he had attended a Hebrew Evelyn Wood course, and, we had
no idea about what he was talking about or why. When he finished we found out
that he had been reading us our marriage contract.
We rented our formal wear from a local rental shop.
We picked the clothes up right before the wedding, and, sure enough, my clothes
didn't fit right, and there was a button missing from my pants. The man behind
the counter told us that he really couldn't do anything for us, but he felt
confident that my vest would be able to cover-up the missing button. Some of
the other garments weren't particularly clean of free of blemish, but it was,
basically, a take it or leave it situation. There was no time to look
elsewhere, so it became the only game in town for us on that particular day.
Of course some of these botched-details were to be
expected, so it paid to just try to relax and be mature about the whole thing.
But it was tough, and we continued to feel irritated and ripped-off whenever we
became aware of our blemished clown outfits.
One of my most vivid memories was the scene in the
store, after the wedding, when we returned the formal wear. My father, a pretty
good-size guy, threw everything down of the floor, including the Hamburgs, and
jumped up and down on them while yelling at the man that they were now a hell
of a lot cleaner than when he had given them to us in the first place.
I'm told the ceremony itself was, actually, very
nice, and from what I can piece together, it probably was. But, whenever people
want to punish me, all they have to do is to threaten to bring-out the slides
from the wedding. Marianne looks radiant, but I have the numbed look of a human
sacrifice.
When we entered the dining hall to be greeted by
the band and our family and friends, we were introduced by the band leader.
"Here they are the new Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Sheer." There was a small
commotion in the room as they correctly ascertained that my name was Steven and
not Stanley after all. There were so many of these small personal touches, that
reflecting back on them is almost like reconstructing the scene of a crime.
The photographer was another major torturer. I was
already very self-conscious about dancing with my new bride in front of all
these people, but, every few steps, the
photographer kept getting us to stop, and pose, and smile. In thinking about
it, the first dance at my wedding was, actually, with the photographer. But I
didn't quite fall in love with him.
Even though
he was obnoxious and intrusive, we figured that it would be worth it. We wanted
to have those cherished memories captured through the lens of a master, so it
was worth a little inconvenience on our part. Unfortunately, however, his lens
had jammed, and his artistic sense had seemingly vanished. None of the pictures
of our friends came out, and many of the others were cockeyed and poorly balanced.
A baboon shooting randomly into a room would, actually, have done just about as
well, and would not have been nearly as intrusive.
One of my final memories involves my late
father-in-law arguing over the bill with the rabbi/caterer. He was feeling
really ripped-off about something, and it might not have been his imagination.
Tragically, a few years later, the catering hall burned to the ground.
Although some of these experiences might
have been colorful or even humorous, their cumulative effect really wasn't.
They seemed to be feeding both sides of my Jewish ambivalence almost
simultaneously. The conflict seemed to be boiling-down to the personal and
ethical aspects on the one hand, verses the religious and cultural aspects on
the other. On the positive side, I continued to feel socially comfortable and
safe with my people, and I preferred to spend my time with them. I still had a
much greater sense of confidence in them when it came to personal qualities
like kindness, understanding, and basic honesty.
But, my attitude towards the rituals and practices
was another story entirely. In my mind, they continued to be associated with
embarrassing displays of excess, and a fairly meaningless tradition. It had
little to do with modern life, and was certainly not worth living for or dying
for.
But, apparently, no matter what you thought about
its basic worth, it wasn't a very easy tradition to walk away from. The bond was, apparently, cemented by something a
lot stronger than simply some Jewish guilt. Somehow that just wasn't enough of
an explanation to account for such a powerful connection. Our feelings about
our Jewish identities ran surprisingly deep, and they couldn't just be
explained-away by some quick throw-away lines by a Jewish comedian.
In the early 70's I had to sit through my nephew
Steven's Bar Mitzvah up in L.A. It was out in "The Valley" (you know
which one). He had memorized his haftarah, and, I guess, like many others, his
goal was to chant it perfectly, without mistakes, and then get on with the rest
of his life out in the normal world. Although I was fond of my nephew, the
whole thing was really rubbing me the wrong way. The service had much too much
Hebrew in it for me, although any Hebrew really would have been too much, and
people were standing-up and sitting-down on cue, like they were playing Simple
Simon in yarmulkes. I'm not sure what percentage of them, had any idea about
what was, actually, going on.
It all, finally, got to me, and I had to leave. I
just had to get out of there, before I started screaming. I walked out in
search of some fresh air, and tried to clear my head. On top of being angry and
upset, I found the whole thing mind-boggling. I couldn't, for the life of me,
figure-out why we went through all of this trouble to hand down this particular
heritage to each successive generation? What was the need for this
inter-generational relay race? My nephew could just as well have memorized an
operetta, why did he have to learn a haftarah? And why, did all of these non-practicing
parents suddenly become obsessed with the idea of putting-on this meaningless
kind of production. It all seemed so hypocritical and empty.
City College
As my stay at De Witt Clinton was drawing to a
close, I had to start thinking about what I wanted to do with myself, and,
although, I really wasn't sure why, college looked like the smart choice. Word
still had it that if you stayed in school you would, probably, get a better
job, so, for that reason alone, it seemed like the thing to do. High school had
already given me some valuable training in learning how to function with
delayed gratification, so maybe I'd be able to handle it. There were also a few
social pressures to consider. By choosing not to attend, you ran the risk of
achieving the social desirability level of a leper.
City
College of New York was the place for hungry minorities and other
achievement-oriented people to study and launch their careers. With its
high-powered faculty and its extremely competitive students it had developed a
reputation as "the poor man's Harvard."
The campus had some imposing gray stone buildings
just like they did out at Princeton, but, through some oversight, they had
somehow forgotten the lakes and trees. The campus was located in picturesque
Spanish Harlem, and most of the students commuted on the subway. A short ride,
and a quick, hyper-vigilant walk through some pretty tough neighborhoods, would
put you right in the heart of the campus. It didn't really give you the classic
experience of campus life, but you couldn't beat the price. In those days I
think the fees ran about fourteen dollars a semester, and the subway fare was
about fifteen cents.
As for the
students, it was really quite the progressive scene. Many of them looked as
though they had just returned from helping Castro win the revolution in Cuba.
Others affected more of a Greenwich Village type of look, with turtlenecks and
corduroys, kind of like poetry-reading night down at the Cafe Wha.
Although the buildings were old, the campus itself
didn't seem to radiate all that much in terms of a sense of tradition. You
didn't get the feeling that you were walking through any hallowed halls. The
great tradition that City College did have, however, was in college basketball.
Back in the early 50's, The Beavers of City College ranked with the best teams
in the country, and even managed to win both the N.C.A.A. and N.I.T. titles in
the same year.
Unfortunately, some of the star players
from that team were later implicated in a point-shaving scandal that made a lot
of money for the gamblers, but gave college basketball a tremendous
black-eye. And, for the basketball
program at City College, it was a lot worse than that. The university reacted
to the scandals by completely de-emphasizing the basketball program. They
stopped scheduling games at Madison Square Garden, and substituted weaker teams
for stronger ones as soon as they had the opportunity. Games against some
strong traditional rivals were eliminated, and replaced by small-time opponents
like Central Connecticut State and Rutgers of Newark. In a few short years, the
program plunged from fame to notoriety to semi-obscurity. But, even with most of the glamour and glory
removed there was still a small group of loyal fans who would continue to pack
the small gymnasium on campus, and generate quite a bit of noise and
electricity.
Since I loved the game as well as the idea of some
possible recognition, I decided to try-out for the freshman team. At that point
I had grown to 6'2", which was a
foot taller than I had been as a sophomore back in high school. This time,
however, I managed to make it, and I even wound-up starting in the back court.
The whole thing was like a dream come true. The coach was a guy named Jerry
Domershick, who kept everyone loose and happy, and the team responded well. I
really enjoyed the whole experience, and my ego loved it when I was,
eventually, lumped-in with some of the bright prospects for the varsity. Of
course, given the varsity's record, anybody with a pulse, probably, would have
been considered a bright prospect.
Between the schoolwork and the basketball, it made
for a pretty demanding routine. When practice was over, I would walk quickly to
the station, ride home on the train, and eat a little dinner. By that time you
could be pretty tired, and it would be hard to concentrate on your studies. New
York apartments can get pretty warm and stuffy during the winter, and some of
the textbooks weren't all that compelling. It was easy to get drowsy or
distracted. But playing ball was also giving me some of the necessary
motivation that I needed to be able to hit the books even when I was feeling
exhausted. The bottom line was that if I wanted to stay eligible, I had to put
in the effort academically, so the whole thing kind of balanced-out, in a funny
sort of a way.
The following year I just managed to make the
varsity as one of the last men on the squad. I realized that I wasn't much of a
threat to Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, so I was stunned and delighted just
to make it. As time went on, however,
this initial sense of gratitude gradually started to wear-off. After putting-in
all of this time and effort, I wanted a little more playing time.
My coach was Dave Polansky, a dapper little fellow
whom I experienced as Napoleonic. Through the magic of our combined negative
chemistry, I wound-up being transformed from a basketball player into a basket
case. I developed a totally negative attitude, and became terrified about
missing a shot or making a mistake in a game. Basketball could be a pretty
psychological game, and, what little confidence I had was rapidly beginning to
evaporate. Needless to say, it was taking some of the fun out of it for me.
So there I was, a pretty deadly jump-shooter, who
had now become afraid to take his shot. The coach would usually only put me out
there for my shooting in the first place, but I knew that if I missed, he
would, probably, figure that I was cold that night, and would bench me for the
rest of the game. If I didn't put-up any shots I wouldn't miss, but, then there really wasn't
much of a point for me being out there in the first place, and, I would,
eventually, be taken-out.
It was one of my first exposures to the wonderful
world of knots, double binds, and vicious cycles, and my frustration and rage
built steadily over the next few years. I stewed constantly, and, most of the
time, found myself just going through the motions. My enthusiasm for the game
that I had once loved became almost
non-existent, and my resentments could barely be contained. I'm sure they
leaked-out in some pretty passive-aggressive ways too. Coincidentally enough, I
became one of the first white basketball players in the city to wear a goatee.
My brain was
turning into a playing field, with all of these unconscious forces holding a
scrimmage of their own in my emotional system.
Looking back at it now, it seems pretty obvious to me that I was doing a
fair amount of acting-out, but, at the time, I just felt like I was muddling
around in the dark. I couldn't really see where I was getting stuck, or how I
could try to get out of it. Pathetically enough, growing the goatee was
probably my clearest attempt at expressing myself, but, as a personal
statement, it was woefully indirect and ineffective.
Essentially, I had become trapped by my own
desperate need to hang onto my identity as a basketball player, but I was
starting to get white knuckles in the process. I was a ballplayer, it was what
I did best, but, in New York City, one of our unquestioned beliefs was that if
you had the chance to play varsity basketball you had to be crazy to even think
about quitting. Socially and personally, it would drop you down so many rungs
in the status hierarchy that you might even be forced to develop a personality.
And, this identity had become such a major part of
my self-image that I felt like if I let it go, I would run the risk of feeling
like a nothing. In retrospect, I probably should have seen a psychologist, but
I didn't think of it at the time, even if I was a Psych major. I'm also sure
that it would have been much too threatening to me anyway. At some level I
think I wanted to stay in the dark a little while longer. At least that way I
could still keep my ballplayer identity as a security blanket.
But, in all fairness to myself, I guess I wasn't
totally in the dark. Eventually, I did start to gain some understanding about
why I felt so trapped, and why I seemed so incapable of walking-away from a
situation that had, clearly, become intolerable. On the positive side, this crisis really
stimulated a lot of personal introspection and soul- searching, that was,
ultimately, for the best. It helped me realize a few things about myself, both
as a ball player, as well as a person.
One of the things that I realized was that it was
the "game" of basketball that I had loved. At the core, there was an
artistic or creative center, that gave the game an essential inner beauty.
Touching it, even momentarily, would be like lightly brushing into joy,
delight, and perfection.
In
the world of college basketball, the
game had now been turned into a competition. A player was supposed to have a
burning, burning desire to win, and a killer instinct to help carry it out.
I came to realize that a big part of my problem with the coach was that I
really lacked that killer instinct. It just didn't seem to be part of my
temperament, and it wasn't particularly easy for me to summon it up. As a
matter of fact, I was only able to reach that level of frenzied competitiveness
if an opposing player would give somebody a cheap shot or would say something
really obnoxious. Then the adrenaline would kick-in and I'd be more than ready
to kill.
But most of the time I really would have been just
as happy to choose-up sides and play a game just for the fun of it. I often
thought that the games would be a lot more interesting that way but, to a lot
of people, particularly coaches, this attitude would be seen as pretty flaky
and, probably, even downright treasonous. This kind of thinking might be nice
if you were in nursery school, in a mental hospital, or under the influence of
LSD, but, in varsity athletics, it was poison. The value on the paramount
importance of winning was not to be seriously questioned by anyone who wanted
to be thought of as normal in our sports crazy society.
Polansky had correctly sensed my lack of
killer-instinct, and, understandably as a coach, he wasn't particularly fond of it. As a
result, I found myself playing about as often as Halley's Comet.
The View From The Bench
On the positive side, sitting on the bench gave me
another great opportunity to study people and to reflect on life. It was
similar, in a lot of ways, to sitting in the newsstand, except that we didn't
get to look at as many commuters or alcoholics. Most of the time we'd just be
checking-out the crowd or evaluating some of the cheerleader talent, but
sometimes our minds would really veer-off, and we might journey-off into other
realms of reality.
During by sophomore year, for example, we were
playing an away game at Fordham. Their coach was Digger Phelps, who later went
on to coach at Notre Dame. He was an excellent coach, and they were heavy
favorites. We knew that a win here could help make our whole season, so we
really wanted it badly.
It was a surprisingly close game, but, in the
middle of all the excitement, my mind started to really drift-off. I found
myself noticing all the priests and nuns who were cheering-away for the home
team. It was a little intimidating, and I found myself wondering if they really
did have any heavenly clout. If they did, I couldn't imagine why they would
ever lose, especially with all this clergy pulling for them. I found myself
starting to see the game as some sort of religious struggle between the Jews
and the Catholics, and, on that particular night, we beat them in a major
upset. The story of Chanukah was coming to life right in front of me. A small
group of Maccabees were defeating the mighty oppressors.
I would often find myself getting philosophical
during our games against Yeshiva University. Their players, of course, all wore
yarmulkes on their heads and seemed so Jewish-looking. Even though we had quite
a few Jews of our own, we tended to see ourselves as more modern, with-it kind
of guys. I admired the fact that they always seemed to get the most out of
their talent. They played the game intelligently, and were very determined, and
gritty. I liked their attitude, even if they made me a little uncomfortable.
Subconsciously, we may have even been rooting for them. Goliath is usually the
heavy favorite, but David has to be the sentimental choice.
The Show Must Go On
Although it's hard to pick a favorite, I think my
junior year had to be the worst. I was barely managing to hang-on as a
ballplayer, and despite all the practice, my skills, actually, seemed to be
deteriorating along with my eroding self-confidence. Most of my energies seemed
to be going into brooding and stewing about the basic lack of playing time in
my life. All in all, things were looking pretty bad, but they were about to
start looking a lot worse. Darkness was coming, and not just for me.
It started after a particularly tough loss on a
cold winter night. We showered and dressed, and dragged ourselves out of the
warm lockeroom, and into the bone-chilling cold. A few of our guys were going
out for some ice cream with their dates, and they invited Marianne and myself
to come along. Not being in a real
sociable mood, I decided to pass. I was just hoping for a little peace and quiet.
As the group was heading-off campus, they were
hassled by some guy in a car who was making crude remarks about one of their
dates. Alex, our captain, who was
already pretty steamed about losing the game, told this guy what he could do
with himself. But, apparently, he didn't want to listen to his advice. At the
next intersection the car came at them, and , and one of our players was hit,
and dragged up the street. It all went-down rather quickly, and when it was over,
Mike Schafer lay dead in the street.
Only a sophomore, Mike was probably the sweetest
and most talented guy on the team. Of all the guys in the world to be cut-down,
it really shouldn't have been him. His death seemed so utterly senseless and
tragic, and, to me, it was further proof that the world was, in fact, a totally
insane place to be.
Later that night, the scene at the police station
was like a madhouse. Family members and friends were giving statements and
trying to console each other. Probably as a result of all the stress and
commotion, Alex's father dropped dead from a heart attack right at the station.
The deaths and the double funerals that followed
left us in shock. But, unfortunately, they fit in, all too easily, with the
rest of the violence that seemed to be sweeping our country. J.F.K. and all the others had now been joined
by two lesser-known victims in the human shooting gallery of life.
On top of the tremendous shock and grief, the
funerals themselves didn't sit particularly well with us. The eulogies were
done by a rabbi who didn't seem to know either the deceased or their families.
Of course, even if he had, his words
would have offered little in the way of immediate comfort anyway.
But the show, of course, must go on,
and, macho guys that we were, we played-out the rest of the schedule. Alex, in
his intense grief, dedicated the season to his father and his friend, and he
became totally obsessed with his mission. He tried to carry the whole team on
his back, but, sadly, he just didn't have the strength or the talent to do it.
We understood what he was going through, but we wished that he could ease-up a
little bit, and maybe even pass-off once in a while.
There's nothing like death to help put things into
perspective, and to us, as ball players, it became a constant struggle to find
meaning in playing ball or winning a game. It was hard to want to kill the
other team when you just got back from a funeral. In the scope of things did it
really matter if we beat Queens College?
What mattered more was that good people were dying before their time.
The Great Race
In addition to hanging around gyms and going to
funerals, I also had my life as a student to contend with. On the whole, I
didn't find my studies to be inherently fascinating, or particularly engaging
for that matter. I can safely say that I was unable to appreciate what I was
learning in the classroom.
When I entered City College, I think I still had
some faint dreams of becoming a journalist, but it still seemed like a
million-to-one shot. But, just to be on the safe side, I decided to take Latin
as my foreign language since they had recommended it for Journalism majors.
Even though these were demanding, five-unit courses, they still managed to hold
my attention. I loved doing the derivations and conjugations. They had an
internal consistency that I found very appealing, and quite logical. Latin
seemed to be one of those rare things that seemed interesting in its own right.
It was worth studying even if I wasn't planning to work at The Vatican.
But, even though I still had a few remaining
journalistic aspirations, I tried to be practical and consider a few things
like supply and demand. In that respect Psychology seemed a lot more promising,
even if I didn't know that much about it yet.
My Introductory Psychology class was taught by a
fellow named Gerry Lucas. I sometimes chuckled to myself about whether or not
he knew who the famous Jerry Lucas was. Jerry had been a great center at
He was also a practicing psychoanalyst in
Visions of being completely seen-through, or having
every last detail of my life analyzed, started racing through my brain. I guess
I was still pretty naive, and thought that analysts could see through anyone
since they knew all the inner secrets of human behavior. Sensing my discomfort,
Gerry suggested that I just pull up a chair instead.
My most outstanding professor at
My Abnormal Psych class was also a memorable
experience. My professor was a Dr. Smith, who certainly seemed to have a good
feel for the subject matter. He used to bring us on field trips to mental
hospitals, and have us observe him as he would put an entire variety pack of
psychotics through their paces. He would ask them about their lives and their
thoughts, and give them ample opportunity to display their pathological wares.
Some of the cases were pretty pathetic, but this first hand glimpse into their
lives gave us a much richer perspective than we were getting from our
textbooks.
But, clearly, Dr. Smith's greatest contribution to
my education had to be when he revealed to us that "life was essentially a
race between physical and mental illness." If one didn't get you,
apparently, the other would.
Even if it had only been an off-handed remark,
apparently it managed to strike a chord. His words caused me to momentarily
stop writing and look-up from my notebook. Maybe he really wasn't going to test
us on this one, and maybe he was just trying to get a reaction, but his theory
did, unfortunately, seem to jive with reality. As a matter of fact, it was
jiving particularly well with the reality of hit and run homicidal maniacs and
funerals that I had been running-into lately.
On the other hand, if life really was just a race
between physical and mental illness, who would you root for? And, as a theory of
life it
offered little in the way of inspiration or purpose. As for Dr. Smith, I'd have
to rate mental illness as the slight favorite.
I would be remiss in not mentioning my Experimental
Psych class with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler. Dr. Schmeidler was one of the first
psychologists to seriously study ESP and other psychic phenomena, and, for
political and academic reasons, she needed to keep these interests discretely
in the background. Unfortunately, she wasn't completely successful in these
efforts, and was referred to as "The Witch" in certain circles around
the department.
We didn't use animals for any of our experiments,
thank goodness, so we always seemed to be out beating the bushes for human
subjects in the cafeterias and the streets. For some strange reason, we somehow
felt better about experimenting on them than we did about experimenting on
rats. We even used human subjects in salivary conditioning experiments. Unlike
Pavlov, who got to use a dog, we had to weigh human saliva that had been
absorbed by cotton balls which our subjects kept in their mouths. It was a
wonderful way to meet people.
Outside of the classroom many of us were starting
to get involved with political protests and sit-ins. One of our first
demonstrations was against the Woolworth’s store in
It was exciting to be caught-up in a larger
movement for social action and human betterment, but it also felt a bit
strange. We really didn't know if it would work, or even how it should work for
that matter. It was still the early 60's, and it was still all pretty new to
us. We would be getting a lot more experience during the rest of the decade.