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According to my mother, in my first year and a half of life, she was always protecting me from an abusive, mentally ill husband stationed at the Rome, New York Air Force base. My father allegedly threatened to throw me out the window. In contradistinction, pictures from this period show me in cute clothes, often with an artist's beret, occasionally swinging in the park with adoring parents units looking on. Just asked him to address these accusations last week and he denied them as incompatible with his feelings. I believe him.
When I was 22, however, I made a visit Geneva, New York, town of my first year of life. Our 2nd floor apartment overlooked Main Street, across from the town fire house. As my mother had warned me, Geneva had the worst tasting water imaginable - putrid.
I had a cat in Geneva, named Clown - and a dog named Baby. They survive in pictures, not in memory. But they must have warmed me up for the many pets I was yet to have, treating them as family. In fact, my mother always seemed closer to her dogs than she was to her children.
The Reinhard family of a pregnant Mom, Johnny, Ricky, and pets moved to Brooklyn, sans father - and closer to Grandma. First to an apartment building on East 12th Street between Avenue P and Quentin Road. After a couple of years we moved a few blocks away, to East 15th Street between Avenues O and P - one block south of Grandma's house. When I was six or so we moved to Quentin Road off of East 13th Street. The next and last move my mother ever made was to East 9th Street between Avenues L and M in neighboring Midwood. All of these Brooklyn locations were within easy walking distance - and close to Grandma, though they spent many years not speaking. Grandma's house located on East 15th Street between Avenues N and O has already been sold. She passed away last month at 86 years old after 2 weeks of excruciating pain. She wanted to have the plug pulled. The hospital thought otherwise. The last time I saw her, she thought I was a nurse. I got her a taste of coffee and massaged her soldiers. She spoke on and on about how I reminded her of her famous grandson, Johnny. I was the fly on the wall, and it was a special experience.
Everyone in the family remembers, and retells the story of how I fell out of my second floor bedroom at Grandma's, falling to the sliver of grass running the center of the driveway, and picking myself up as if nothing had happened. (I can't argue with that assessment.)
Grandpa David was a mean, tall emphysema-conditioned terror for me as a child. I recall few kindnesses while I do remember being chased around the dinner table on occasion. Grandma usually intervened. He didn't hit too often, mainly posing as a grouch. They had a fox terrier named Princess that survived to age 16, outlasting Grandpa David. Princess had the same disposition, tightass and mean. One of my mother's crowning achievements as a teenager was to draw Princess. The framed drawing lasts to this day, and in it, Princess actually looks benevolent.
Most of my memories begin when we moved to Quentin Road off East 13th Street, overlooking Kings Highway, a major thoroughfare of Brooklyn, we were situated on top of a number of stores. The ground level was a department store next to a corner photography store. One flight up was an optometrist and we lived above him, on the top floor.
I've a distinct memory of my Grandma at the bottom of the long stairs coming in from the street and saying "Remember me, I'm your grandmother?" My mother hadn't talked with her for years even though they lived so close to each other. Grandma at 80 years old, extremely sharp and lucid, couldn't recall.
Life on the pulse of Kings Highway was exciting; lots of people, things happening like Robert F. Kennedy and other politicians giving speeches. I recall electioneering for Mel Dubin for congress one year, but don't recall if he won or not.
Somehow I remember being in the country (which is what my brother and I called nature from our urban perspective) at about five years old and falling down a small hill into a bunch of bushes and weeds. Somehow my emotional memory ties this experience to my developed asthma. True or no, I believed this origin of my illness. Just as likely is the explanation that the formidable stress during my upbringing affected a natural inclination for my bronchial tubes to shrink. Being asthmatic since six years old always put a dent into my actions, but over time, I learned to manage it and preferred to think of myself as a human canary within the mines of the world.
My asthma spray was always on my person and I spent much of my elementary school years in an oxygen tent at Coney Island Hospital. The woman who took care of the hospital nursery was the first of a long line of surrogate mothers. (Male role models were non-existent.) For an entire year - at about age seven - doctors gave me ten injections a week to test me for all sorts of allergies. If after a few days my skin demonstrated irritation at the site of an injection, I was deemed allergic and strove to avoid the allergen or risk the penalty of an asthma attack, or worse.
My allergies started to rack up and included: dust, wheat, eggs, cigarette smoke, and penicillin. I grew out of most of these, though doctors never took a chance on penicillin, preferring erythromycin as the antibiotic of choice. Perhaps my fragile physical stature protected me from undue beatings since the risk of getting an asthma attack and being whisked away ambulance to the hospital was quite real. The thrill of being taken by ambulance to the hospital was exciting and the fact that I couldn't breathe well and was in noticeable discomfort did not diminish that fact. Maybe I liked the attention I was getting by medical staff.
Memories at the hospital centered on the friends I made, kids with broken legs, etc. A highlight during my frequent one-week long stays were the Chiller Theater television evenings on Saturday nights. I was hardpressed as to where my real home was. I was able to trick-or-treat as a kid on only two Halloweens, trusting that my brother would share his booty. This he did only under duress.
One vivid memory relating to illness took place following the winter recess of my second grade class at P.S. 238, where I studied from kindergarten through the 4th grade. My teacher, Mrs. Zaharia, a disciplinarian type, demanded to know why my homework was not completed over the holidays. I tried to explain that on the way home from the last day of the school I got sick with asthma and I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. I went back to school directly from the oxygen tent. Unimpressed, she sent me to the Principal, a certain Mr. Oppenheimer, who demanded my mother come to the school, mistakenly expecting her to refute my story.
My third grade teacher, Ms. Nora Kelman, was a blonde beauty and I had a definite crush on her. Life seemed so good following Mrs. Zaharia's pettiness. When Ms. Kelman left school to get married, I was in Ms. Hopp's class which was "all right." Throughout the latter part of my stay at P.S. 238 I was considered the artist of the class. In fact there was a competition in the 4th grade between me and Tony for the class to decide. He drew the Addams Family television personalities and I drew the Munsters. I was quite happy to receive the decision and Tony remained gracious. We continued to play together as friends even after I moved away and went to a new school.
My interests during the elementary years focused on a number of hobbies: baseball card collecting, comic books (mainly D.C.'s Prince Ra-Man, the Flash, and Green Lantern), and to a limited extent, stamps of foreign countries. Before we moved (just before the fifth grade) I had packed all my comics in sequential order and tied them up with string for easy transport. As well, I had all my baseball cards rubberbanded by team neatly placed in rows in a suitcase. My mother tossed them into the garbage at the end of our moving day, afterwards thanking me for the convenience with which I made it possible. As an adult I no longer have any interest in baseball and read only Marvel comics. Mom obviously didn't realize that that stuff would be worth thousands of dollars in 20 years time, nor the extent of my bitterness for her action.
One time a so-called friend named Danny thought he would get some sadistic fun by ripping up my Mickey Mantle card in the safety of his home. I begged him, from the foot of his staircase, please don't do it, warning him of grave consequences if he did. Haughtily, he ripped the precious card in two, and I ripped into him. His family moved out a month after the incident and I always thought it was because they were afraid of me.
My nuclear family was on welfare as far back as I can remember and that didn't change until we moved from Kings Highway when my mother remarried to Josef German Wright, and I began the fifth grade at Public School. 99. Legally, she wasn't allowed to earn money. That there were surprise inspections by welfare officials to insure that everything on the up and up. when the doorbell rang they announced themselves, we would scurry around, hiding the television set and any other appliances that would arouse suspicions.
Actually, my mother earned money any way she could since welfare assistance was very little and actual employment was prohibited. We would go down to the welfare offices to pick up food assistance in the form of powdered milk (which I have always detested), Velveeta cheese, and whatever else was available. I never got clothes that fit me( always expected to grow into them.) Perhaps that's why I never developed an eye for fashion and style in clothes. Rarely receiving breakfast before school, I was "taught" to eat breakfast at 25 years old while working at a summer camp. In fact, I ate out for lunch throughout my life, from elementary school on.
Being on welfare was nothing I was ashamed of. I never felt "poor" in my mind. I received money either by cleaning a synoguge after services for 25 cents, or by handing out travel circulars. I sometimes received a 50 cent allowance, or fortuitously found money in the street. Brother Ricky and I often split money we found together and went for chocolate malteds.
My mother's bedroom actually overlooked Brooklyn's famed Kings Highway. Behind it was the huge, (to us ) bedroom for Ricky and me This proved quite a problem since I always did the cleaning and the immensity of the room was formidable. My overactive imagination often brought to life the illustrations on the wallpaper which consisted of soldiers, and other drawings that threatened at night. Playing with toy soldiers was a common repast for Ricky and me. We would take a blanket and rough it up into a clump and then use it as terrain for the make believe soldiers. "Eeeeeh! You're dead!" was a common expression between us, referencing a perceived action during play. In the street, if we couldn't locate genuine "toy" guns for Cops and Robbers, or Cowboys and Indians, any stick would do.
But nothing was as much fun as playing Chinese handball. Brooklyn had its own set of street games exclusively involving a soft hollow rubber ball that came in two varieties: the Spaldeen and the Pensi-Pinky. The choice of one or the other was comparable to the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Some of the games irregularly played included punchball, stoopball (played off outside stairs), games that didn't have any particular names based on unusual terrain, and my favorite Chinese handball.
Not to be confused with "American" handball, Chinese handball set apart players by the parallel lines that divide blocks in the concrete sidewalks of Brooklyn. One hit, or "sliced" the ball on a bounce to a perpendicular wall with the object of returning it to a competitor's box. "Slicing" was the spin or "English" put on the ball to disorient competitors. We could play as many as four or five to a game, usually on the side of the synagogue on the block or on the outset of Dobney's Department Store. Nothing filled my time with more satisfaction than to lose myself in Chinese handball. Success at it won the respect of much older boys my whole life through. When we moved to East 9th Street, Ricky and I could move the garbage pails away from the brick side of our driveway for games 'a2, that is, when Mr. Moed, the next door neighbor didn't intervene.
Other games were more peculiar, and personal. For instance, I would make hand characters by stretching my pinky between my other fingers, creating a face. Contrastingly, my brother used to revel in the fact that he could split his middle fingers apart in a "V" (which is now known as the Vulcan salute 'ala Star Trek). It took a long time for me to develop that ability. Snapping my fingers also came late (not until I was an adult) and I still can't whistle. I did develop an alphabetic solfeggio: ah, buh, cuh, etc. (with as little vowel sound as possible) while waiting on line to get into school.
Regarding the metaphysical, I thought that if I set a concentrated stare on something on the ground I could make it move. If I closed my eyes I could either fly or become invisible. If nothing else, I have always fully trusted my intuition contrary to most people I have questioned about it.
The first childhood friends I can recall are Deborah and her younger brother Junior, the only black kids on the block. They were the children of the superintendent of the large apartment building directly across from the synagogue. I remember only the very best of times with them, as did my brother. When they moved away, Cadiyah's father became the superintendent of the apartment building they lived in. I always developed friendships with the super's kids, some kind of affinity, I guess. As an adult I continued to develop close friendships with the supers.
An early friend was Cadiyah (and to a lesser extent his older brother Altai) from Turkey. One of my most vivid memories is interacting in a game of Chinese handball on the wall next to the nearest synagogue serving Cadiyah a "sliced ball' in his box. His frustration swelled in what seemed at the time to be a basic macho loss of face. Furiously, he accosted me physically. He grabbed on to the wire fence belonging to the synagogue's Rabbi with both hands, while thrusting his abdomen repeatedly into the fence, with me in between. My thoughts ran something like "This guy is an animal...if I don't do something soon, I'm going to get an asthma attack and die."
I made a decision to fight back at all costs, to give him a piece of my mettle, and to my surprise he broke away from me and putout a friendly hand, all the time complimenting me on my fighting spirit. This turned out to be a very positive experience for I was forever able to respond to bullies and those bigger than I without ever getting beat up. Cadiyah and I never fought again.
I also remember a girl with the same name as a brand of cookies, Stella. I can't remember if it was Deborah or "Stella Doro" that first played "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours." Either way, I was pretty tough in that game and after getting an eyeful, I quickly quit the session. Stella seemed infatuated with me, but she moved away soon after we became friends.
The first girl I became infatuated with was a Hispanic girl named Maria, who lived just around the corner from me on East 13th Street. I remember bouncing on a mattress lying on the street and fantasizing about her just before we made that big 5th grade move to East 9th Street. Years later I found out that she was going to the same high school as I was but she didn't seem to recognize me, so I dropped the possibility of making a re-acquaintance. That had fevered my brain.
Male friends were fairly abundant, too. Living near Maria was William, a tallish Irish guy who, like me, had no father. He still lives there and works as a postman. William was rather likeable. Then there was Pacito, Maria's brother, with assorted smaller brothers and cousins. There was Michael, Mitchell, the Pissgetti brothers (which was not their proper last name), and some guys from around the corner, all of whom played, or tried to play, Chinese handball, or make-believe gun games. My brother and I were typically called the "Rickharts Brothers."
I also had friends on East 8th Street between Kings Highway and Avenue R where my school chum Jesse Hepper lived. Jesse's father was comedian Rick Topper who had been an associate of Al Jolson. Most of this was lost on me at the time. I thought of Jesse, who remained a friend of mine through high school, as a kindly jock who could play chess with me and who also liked D.C. comic books. Being a smallish, fragile kid, it did a lot for my ego to have sports- oriented friends. Through Jesse I got to know Russell, the largest person, physically, that I considered a friend. Russell taught me to ride a bicycle. He put me on a10-speed, 26-inch, which I couldn't even reach the pedals, let alone the ground. After I was placed on the seat he just pushed me off and I glided down the street, stopping by squeezing the brakes and leaning against a car. Amazingly, I didn't get hurt and actually benefited positively from the experience. I lost touch with Russell after he moved. For some strange reason, I received a crank call from him after he had moved to Brighton Beach. Maybe Jesse put him up to it.
Some of things that I used to do with the East 10th Streeters was to bury treasure - usually baseball cards - on the traffic islands of Avenue R. Strangely whenever we tried to dig up our hidden booty, it was always gone. This only added to the excitement. Sometimes my brother joined in, but usually he and I kept apart as much as I could make it possible. My sneaking off to East 8th Street was so illicit that my mother occasionally called the police to look for me there, sirens wailing.
My brother, being 2 years younger than I, was probably more interested in hanging around me and my friends than I was with him. Unless I had the official duty of guarding his safety, I kept my independence. His major disaster in being unsupervised came in a game of hide-and-seek. I was playing Chinese handball when I was informed that Ricky had tried to retrieve a stick from under a parked car when it began to move and crossed over his head. He completely circled the block screaming (practically half a mile) and went in his pants.
Speculation as to the after effects of this accident continued in the family up until his death in 1987. The immediate change seemed to be in his school work, which sunk. Throughout Ricky's life, he would have difficulty spelling words and writing in general. Ricky thought he had clinical dysgraphia. He passed all the credits necessary for a college bachelors degree at State University of New York - New Paltz except for a required English class which he was doomed to repeat and fail.
According to my brother, the psychiatrist who interviewed him for dysgraphia was handpicked by mother who was listening and watching the session through a one-way mirror. Ricky's indignation at this deception was enormous, especially since the doctor said my brother was healthy and normal. Drugs was his entire life for his last ten years, mainly valium and codeine, and occasionally heroin. To my knowledge, he abhorred coffee and cocaine, preferring sedatives to uppers. Only two years before his death, attributed in an autopsy report to chronic drug intake and demonstrated by cocaine injections into his knuckles resulting in flattened lungs, my brother and I had our lives enlightened by our pet cat Putis and another dog also named Baby. Since I didn't remember the first Baby, I had no problems with the name for the new one. My memories of both animals cover 16 years of my life: they were active family. Putis was a black and white neutered male who I always called "she," incorrectly. Whenever I was ill - which was fairly frequent - Putis was there to purr by me and console. As a child, Ricky sometimes did mean things to Putis (like putting her in a pillow case only to drop from the top of a door when someone opened it). This behavior ended as he developed a sense of empathy.
One fun game I could play with both Putis and Baby was catch. If I threw a Spaldeen into the air Baby would try to catch it with her mouth and Putis would try to catch it with her claws. Baby usually won out but Putis made gallant attempt I taught Baby how to sit on command, shake hands, and later on, to roll over using Kellog's corn flakes as a reward. She'd do anything for them. The one thing Baby wouldn't budge on, however, was to have anyone messing with her "private" closet. She always kept a closet for her personal needs, including frequently having puppies. No one could get near it for fear of being bitten. Baby's growling always warned us off.
As a kid, I thought of myself as shy and singular, reading books that younger people read, thinking a lot. I also saw a lot of television and still do (though now I have cable). After being reintroduced to Grandma, I soon spent weekends at her house. There I developed a personal hobby of cutting out all the pictures of the television personalities located in the Herald-Tribune TV guide, pasting them to white paper. I imagined myself an authority on television personalities.
Mom did get me onto 2 television shows: Bozo the Clown and The Chuck McCann Show. In fact, I came in second in Chuck'sKooky Cookie Contest. A group of 20 kids was asked who among them was really smart and somehow I got picked. I already knew about this part of the show and was raring to be a part of it. All the questions Chuck asked me were easy enough until he asked for the capital of New York State. Drawing a blank, I started guessing blindly, starting pathetically with the Empire State Building, and ended even more pathetically with the Statue of Liberty. I had never heard of Albany; however I did get a plastic trumpet as a consolation prize. Learning tunes on the plastic trumpet was my first musical instrument experience.
Around the time I took my first train trip to Manhattan's Chinatown, alone I bought a $10 camera and took pictures of Chinatown and, selling fireworks during the new year. I continued to go alone and unannounced and never felt any danger. For every 5 sold I was permitted one.
Meanwhile, my mother was always hunting for a man who would save her from the pain she suffered. Grandpa David called her a slut (as I'm told) and this apparently closed the door on their ever being cordial. While there were a number of boyfriends, they all ran off when they found out that Mom had two kids. One notable example was the actor Al Ward. He went off to Hollywood and my mother kept her crush alive many on him years after she remarried. My mother and I saw him in the movie Hollywood Babylon at the cinema when I was a teenager. My younger sisters traveled with Mom to California to meet him when she was temporarily estranged from her second husband, Josef.
I never questioned my mother's love for me and Ricky though I remember inconsistencies, like her tying me up on the bed to see what I would do. I fell off the bed and hurt myself and she was amused. Another time she washed my mouth out with soap for no reason, as punishment for something I must have done wrong but that she had missed. At the same time, she drilled me lovingly in the spelling of words and in adding numbers. For that I am grateful. I feel sorry for my brother and his dependency on me. I was too threatened by every day life to be properly considerate. Soon after Mom remarried, vicious sibling rivalry set in and remained unabated until I set off for college.
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