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t would seem that after dealing with a strong minded man like Mark Reinhard, every bit a challenge to my mother, she would now latch on to a weaker, more submissive man. Before Josef married Mom, he lived in his angular attic apartment with a big fluffy dog. Somehow the dog died before the marriage was consummated. I remember the odd shape of the ceilings in the attic, as well as the limited space. In that single visit to his home, we played Rummy and the card game War. It was certainly fun and it gave me a good image of him. That was, however, the last time we ever played cards, or much of anything else.
All my life, my mother repeated to me that our father loved us, meaning Josef. He demonstrated his love by punching us kids in the shoulder while smiling. His many years living under the Nazis had obviously affected him in many way, including the way he treated children born of a different man. Additionally, he had no teeth due to severe malnutrition. He could barely read a newspaper, but he could speak Polish, Yiddish, and German, in addition to deeply accented English.
To me he was a disciplinarian, who would "sick us" on Mom's command . He would chase my brother for endless blocks in a futile chase to catch him. To his credit, he only used his hands for discipline. A more positive memory is the family's regular summer sojourns, usually around Monticello, New York. His card playing apparently earned us the living money we needed to survive financially during those summers.
Josef had saved up a fair amount of money by being naturally frugal. This stash served as the down payment for the mortgage of a new house an East 9th Street in Midwood. Unfortunately for all, the Elegante closed down almost immediately after the marriage. It turned into a steak house and no longer requiring Josef's services. From then on, Dad would be hunting for freelance positions that would take him to the Metropolitan Opera Restaurant, the Yankee Stadium Blue Room, The Chemists' Club, and the Palm Shore Club in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. He retrieved the big Dodge car he had when he got married, trading it for a series of Cadillacs, and later to a variety of used cars. All his cars were bought used at incredibly low prices. He actually bought me a car once, for $50. Its axle broke on a trip to college, requiring the fire department to put out the flames outside of the Washington, D.C. beltway. I sold it a year later in North Carolina, also for $50.
Josef would always be a professional waiter, ridiculing any other possible lifestyle. My mother was full of suggestions, but he seemed to relish the long hours away from the house, driving hard. He enjoyed meeting famous personalities and being in an ethnic mix. He lived on coffee and bread with a keen interest in cold borscht. His physical stature is muscular (lifting large trays of food all day) at about 5' 3" tall. The wedding took place at a Rabbi's private home in an apartment building on Ocean Parkway. There were maybe 5 people total or the minimum required.
After we were all packed up and I said goodbye to all my friends in the Kings Highway area, we loaded up and headed for East 9th Street, only a mile away, though it seemed much more at the time. The front of the house, located in the middle of the block, had a jungle-like look. It was soon denuded of all greenery and covered over with bricks.
After the first night I began to explore the front of the 2-floor attached house only to be jumped by the kid who lived downstairs even before I made it out to the street. He was twice my size and he pelted me with fists. The neighbor moved out soon thereafter. The only explanation I ever got was that he was threatened by our moving in and his losing his territory so he wanted to get even. Later he didn't move far and years later apologized for his poor behavior.
The new people moving in were the Greene family. I would develop a crush on the eldest adopted girl, Jane Lephlin, who would never reward my interest. She was the only one who had any intellectual gifts. Judy Greene was wild and a bit sexy, Mandy Greene was chubby and nice, and Allen Greene was lost in the wilderness. Their father was a bus driver, tall and friendly. I occasionally ride a bus he is driving in Manhattan, completely unplanned.
Their mother Dolly deserves a lot of the credit for bringing me up. She provided me with food - all the time. She helped deal with the increasing craziness of my parents. Whenever I needed anything, she was there to help out. Dolly was a bit overweight, like my mother, with terrible varicose veins. She was always around the house tending to her horde of kids. But it never stopped her from being extremely generous to Ricky and me. When they moved out, about a generation later due to disagreements with my mother, I stayed in touch with them through 2 moves. Guiltily, I must admit I have lost touch at last. I really owe her.
My first day of school at P.S. 99 had me in a big line in the school yard. A beautiful and mature blonde teacher was marching around with a whistle and commanded respect. I wondered, inwardly, "Wow. I wish she was my teacher." And she was to be. Mrs. Heller, an orthodox Jewish woman living on the same block as the school, was the school's main mathematics teacher and though I never liked math as such, she at least taught me to use it well. My grades in mathematics were never higher than they were for her. She got me to continue drawing and develop interests in other fields. We were never friends, like I would become with other teachers, but there was a healthy respect.
The sixth grade gave me Mrs. Lasky who was fairly non-descript (though her focus on Social Studies brought me closer to ancient history and ethnicity). The seventh grade brought me in touch with Mrs. Feinstein, an English teacher who to this day considers my 7th grade English class with her to be her favorite ever, with me being its star. This is not hyperbole, but a direct result of my acting the part Oliver in the class play. I was unanimously chosen by the class to sing and act in (I think) two performances. There were no photographs, no recordings and I am not sure that my parents ever saw it (thought I still have the patchwork shorts my mother sewed). But the school seemed to love it. I will always be grateful to the confidence that Mrs. Feinstein instilled in me.
Classmate Nanine, who signed my little green graduation slam book, and who played the role of Fagan in the musical, congratulated me "from one "ham" to another. Oliver turned out to be my first real encounter with girls. Being quite diminutive, sickly, and relatively new to the school and neighborhood, the girls could care less about me (or so I imagined). I certainly was in synch with them when during the Oliver dress rehearsal, Debbie -- who was always chewing her beads -- tore the string on her necklace and the beads cascaded off the darkened stage. I was sitting on a barrel chirping out the song Where is Love when I started cracking up at the sight and could not regain my composure. We all exploded in laughter and Mrs. Feinstein had to cancel the entire rehearsal for it seemed no one could keep a straight face after that.
Out of the 4 levels for each grade, I was always placed in level 2, the second highest. Level 1 was for the brains, the nerds, the socially accepted, those with clout. Level 2 was for the above average, talented individuals who didn't relish school assignments. Level 3 was for average students, those who had to try a lot in order to keep pace. And level 4 was for the incorrigibles, the delinquent, and the slow.
In writing these memoirs, I finally can officially thank Eileen for letting me copy her homework assignments so that I could pass the 7th and 8th grades without too much fuss. My usual practice was to sit in the back of the class with a comic book and zone out on what was being said. My natural talents allowed me to pass just about anything, and for that reason, homework was a chore to be avoided at all costs. At the end of each semester, I would be asked to produce all the homework assignments at one time. Eileen, one of a number of Chinese students whose parents owned laundry facilities, dutifully produced her assignments on time and then turned them over to me. I would change a few things in the copy and make a few intentional errors so that there would never be any insinuations cast.
The entire 7th grade class elected me to be 7th grade vice president: there was no president position. My 2 opponents were from the 7-1 class. One was a jock named Alan Oumano. The other one, Mike Furling, was the son of a police officer who lived on my block. We were never close friends, but we did play some. He still lives on the block and found religion as a Hasidic Jew. His racist father long ago moved away following his estrangement from his wife. I'll never forget my election motto: "Big things come in small packages," which was a self- deprecatory reference to my size. Humor didn't come too easily to Mike, though. He announced himself by the commercial tag inside his jacket for the auditorium speeches. It was probably worth a few votes.
About the only real benefit to my new position - besides new visibility and a fresh sense of pride - was my travelling with David Groiser, the school genius, to the state final spelling bee in Manhattan, which was sponsored annually by The New York Daily News. David actually won (eventually coming in third in the nation) and I was interviewed on national television as the resident politician. David was a good guy. We would play basketball together in his backyard since we were among the shortest upperclassmen at the school. We used to play the game geography a lot and I would beat him, which seemed to win immense respect from the brain himself.
In Brooklyn, no kids have a bigger effect than those right on your block owing to the huge amount of people that are placed there. Perhaps my longest held best friend was Stanford, my next door neighbor. We would communicate by walkie-talkies, take long bicycle trips to Long Island, Prospect Park, and Marine Park and exchange encyclopedias. All the kids were physical giants in comparison to me, although I got closer to their height in adulthood, but only closer. Stanford, thankfully, was an intellectual. He would tell me later that he was a scientist with an artistic approach while I was an artist with a scientific approach. We would build racing cars out of old fruit crates, treehouses, and fix bicycles (one of my finest skills). As a matter of fact, I had a great uncle on the Reinhard side situated just 2 short blocks away with his own bicycle repair store. He and I never got personal (though I think I got some reduction in prices.)
Barry, after Stanford, was probably the fellow I most interacted with on the block. I am using the term "block" to mean both sides of a street demarcated by perpendicular avenues on either end, and approximately a third of a mile in length. The great majority of people living on the "block" were unfamiliar to me during the 4 years of junior high school, increasingly so when I went off to college.
Barry lived on the southern end of the block. He was huge in comparison to me, and unfortunately, had the propensity to be a bully. Where Stanford was tall, Barry was large - and wild. Stories of actions committed by Barry were numerous, all of which he denied. Most notorious was the dropping of cats out of windows, to see how they land. Barry did "seem" to have a soft spot for stray dogs, befriending them and then teaching them to "sick" people. I'll never forget a beautiful stray German shepherd that I befriended and who would protect me against Barry's dog. (Too bad Mom decided he was too big and sent him off to Bide-a-Wee for a new home.
Barry would join Stan, me and Ricky on bicycle trips all over. We rarely ever fought since it was clearly no contest. Once, Ricky and I did try, at his request, to topple him. He was like a laughing mountain and we were exhausted. Barry came from a reformed Jewish background with a piano in the home, but no father. His older brother was built like Goliath and I rarely saw him. Barry would become a taxi driver, a bouncer, and a pimp. Stanford saw him in the latter roles and relayed the information.
Maxwell lived directly across the street. Everyone on the block was exasperated at how little sports talent he had. Like everyone else, he had no father. His mother worked at home putting together shower curtain connectors by the piece. Maxwell feigned a platonic male- female relationship with Regalia who lived next door. I say feigned because Maxwell (who seem to enjoy my calling him Maxella) was indeed homosexual and began frequenting gay bars in drag in the hopes of finding a husband, according to Ricky.
Regalia was much younger than I was, and quite cute. She was working in a bank when she and her family moved off the block, which was long after I moved on. Though right next door, her family was quite secretive. Her father was a joy for me as I would play music for him in the street and he appeared to enjoy himself. Few people enjoyed my music, due in large part to the fact I was a beginner. When he died, his wife invited her son-in-law Peter to move in downstairs and take up the whole house (which was attached to ours) with her family. My strongest memory of Regalia is a game of Truth-or-Dare. (I have always loved to view the bodies of lovely females.)
Morris lived around the corner, almost directly behind our house, and I could get behind the back fence and go directly to his house. He was a spoiled airhead with no mother, but he had a grand pool table. In general he was a good way to spend some time. But once we got into a terrific argument in front of my house and after I got an asthma attack, he literally pushed me in front of a moving car. End of friendship.
The Patatano brothers lived on the opposite end of the block from Barry. Their father was a house painter and their house always looked great. Paul was older than I was and even better at Chinese handball than I was. Though we played little, I can remember his interest in mooning people during games. Robby, was much younger than I was and he was alright to be around. We could play basketball in his backyard, but I always felt like I was receiving charity from him whenever I played in his backyard. Most memorable was his emotional accusation against all Jews for crucifying Jesus Christ, an act Robby said he could never forgive. It was the first I had heard of it.
Life in Brooklyn's Midwood section was rough and tumble. One always had to prepare for a brawl, to duck a stone or an egg, to cleverly avoid the trap of being "ranked-out." The rank- out session was a constant hammering on a person in order to intimidate him or her. Being quite verbal and quick of wit, I was pretty good at it. People wouldn't mess with me on that tack. And since I was a scrawny runt with a well known health ailment, no bully worth his salt would pick on such a one. With the prestige of my role of Oliver and reputation for rugged independence, I was pretty safe from extreme harm.
There were outsiders that threatened, many of whom were out to get my brother and considered me a natural extension for their aggression. My brother was a fast runner and I was not, so this sometime proved a problem. Unless I have buried much in my subconscious, which I doubt, I fared rather well in a rough environment. The Yustach brothers were feared all over the neighborhood, but other than threats, no action ever came.
Jac Rankowsky once met me after school to beat me up, but I had a broom handle and kept swinging it in an arc to keep him at bay. I had some help from a woman across the street from the school. Big Jac wasn't all bad and I was partly to blame. He was twice my size and had a hare-lip. As most kids can be, I was awfully cruel to him, calling him "Lippy the Lion" after a cartoon character. In retrospect, he was justifiably enraged.
If I was attacked by a group, my tactic was to grab the largest individual and put a powerful bear hug on him. He would typically beg the others to stop so that he could be freed. Another technique was to pull hard on someone's ear and bring them to the ground. After studiously observing professional wrestling on television, I began to use head locks and hammer bolts, etc. Though I was aware that television wrestling was fixed, most of the techniques actually worked. I could recognize all the major wrestlers and continued watching them on TV until adulthood: people like Bruno Sanmartino (heavy-weight champion and good guy), Haystacks Calhoun (at 612 pounds), Argentine Apollo (barefoot, thin, and always jumping), and more recently people like The Mighty Igor (Polish strongman with a comic bone at his side). Wrestling became my self-defense method of choice. Boxing was always brutal to me: besides, I had no reach. If I got hit in the face, it was all over. Wrestling was the charm in that it never initiated an altercation. If I was attacked, then there would always be a limb to be grabbed or a head to bend. When put in a karate class in high school, I left after only two weeks following the instructor's insistence that we poke out the eyes of our assailant with our fingers. My stomach couldn't take it. A full-nelson would subdue the most aggressive bully. Its only problem was that eventually I had to let go, counting on either my speed or the bully's "good will" to escape.
Throughout this period, I was in a metaphorical incubator. Puberty was still far off, as was a serious interest in girls/women. I was just a fun-loving kid who read a lot, drew a little, and watched a lot of television.
[More to Come]
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