“I am at the age, 77, when the death of friends and loved ones is as inevitable and irrevocable as rain. I’ve come to accept that grief will be a major traveling companion in my life until my death.”
I am two years younger than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who penned those thoughts as the opening of a moving eulogy for his “rival, brother and close friend” Bill Walton who died in May (https://kareem.substack.com/p/bill-walton-was-my-rival-my-brother).
His words were still ruminating inside me when an old iPod my son gave me played “Bob Dylan’s Dream” which starts with the following haunting lyrics:
“While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had”
Dylan was reminiscing about friends of his post-teen years. I, on the other hand, keep thinking about the friends I had when my life was mostly confined to the block I lived on as a youngster in Brooklyn—Avenue W between East 18th and East 19th streets.
My family lived in the middle of the block. At either corner were my closest similarly aged friends, Lenny Dorfman at East 19th Street, Richie Posner at East 18th. Except when I left Brooklyn for eight weeks of sleepaway summer camp beginning when I was seven, and several years before that for three weeks in a Catskill hotel with my parents, I played non stop with Lenny and Richie almost every day.
When we were younger our universe was the small plots of grass in front of our attached single family row houses and the spacious T-shaped common driveway behind our homes. The driveway spanned the back of homes on three sides of the streets in our neighborhood (the 600-plus-foot driveway did not extend all the way to Avenue X).
Halfway down that long driveway, Jeffrey filled out our foursome. But his parents sought greener surroundings around the time we were five. They moved to Long Island, giving Richie, Lenny and me our first taste of loss.
It was down that flat driveway that I was traumatized when learning to ride a two-wheel bicycle when I was between around seven years old. My father was running slightly behind me, holding the seat of the bike so I would not fall. I turned my head to tell him something. He was not there. I had been pedaling forward on my own. I panicked. I fell hard on the pavement. I cried. I ran home to seek my mother’s comfort. I never got back up on that bicycle. My parents tried to reassure me, to say my friends had all learned to ride and I would be left behind. I countered that I was a fast runner. I would keep up with them. Of course I was wrong, but I was a child, a child without reason. I didn’t learn to ride until I was 40 years old.
In our expansive backyard common driveway we played all types of games. Ringolevio. Johnny on the pony. Blind man’s bluff. Hide and seek. Punchball. Wiffle ball. Skully. In front of our homes, facing Avenue W, we played Stoop ball, Box baseball, Boxball. And a dangerous game of Territory which required players to stand with feet apart as an opponent threw a pen knife into the dirt they were standing upon. If the blade stood upright, the thrower usurped their territory from its edge to the vertical knife. A winner eventually amassed all the territory. I can recall no one being injured in the process. That same pen knife was used to make us blood brothers. In the 1950s little thought was given to transmittable diseases.
We played with either a pink Spalding (pronounced Spaldeen) or Pensy Pinky ball. If the ball fell down a sewer grate at the corner, as it inevitably would, we used a wire hanger manipulated into an elongated fish hook. Whomever had the longest reach would lie flat above the sewer grate to fish out the ball.
When it rained, play time went indoors. We would combine our Lionel train sets into one large track. We’d play Monopoly, Star Reporter, All-star baseball board game.
As we grew older we were trusted to cross the street to walk to Public School 254 on Avenue Y, and even play in the street. Avenue W had a canopy of leaves from maple and sycamore trees. If during a stickball game a ball was hit into the leaves it was a “hindoo,” a do-over, unless a fielder was agile enough to catch it for an out before it bounced.
Games at PS 254, where Lenny and Richie went to school, were more dynamic. At least eight “home plates” were chalked onto the walls of the school. Most players, like me, just fired fastballs at the plate. Lenny mastered the art of the curve ball. Fences in the outfield delineated singles, doubles and home runs.
The schoolyard even had its own bully—stocky, curly dark-haired Merrill. We never had any money, so he couldn’t shake us down but his mere presence in the schoolyard made it uncomfortable to be there.
After high school Richie and I attended Brooklyn College, Lenny Stony Brook, where he changed his major from engineering to music. To beat the Vietnam War draft Lenny went to Windsor, Canada, to teach music. He returned at the war’s conclusion to teach on Long Island. I cannot recall how Rich stayed out of the military. Perhaps he had a high draft number. Rich pursued an arts degree. I flunked my physical (too underweight for my six foot frame) and became a journalist.
I’ve lost touch with them. A Google search proved useless. Our families no longer live on Avenue W. The street has barely changed, a recent drive-by revealed.
Maybe they will find me through this post. It’s not as strange as you might think.
Two years ago I received email birthday greetings from Lou-Joe Lozitsky. He lived on the corner of East 19th Street and Avenue X. He joined our threesome in play about the time we were 10.
He discovered me through a Google search, finding a eulogy I had written of my dearest friend David Banks, a British journalist.
It was not the first time someone from my past hooked up with me because of something I wrote in a blog. Bernie Kirsner, my high school physical education teacher and coach of our basketball team (he cut me during tryouts as his keen eye saw I could not dribble), contacted me from retirement in Florida. Murray Farber, who hired me for my first reporter’s job at The New Haven Register, reached out from retirement in California.
Perhaps I’m dreaming. I’m okay with that.