School Day Memories

With the beginning of school in most communities I started reminiscing about my early education years at Yeshiva Rambam in Brooklyn.

I started first grade in September 1954 when I was five years old. As my birthday is in March I should have been enrolled in kindergarten, but my mother pressured the school to accept me into first grade or she would take my brother and sister out of the school.

Before I started school I would watch from our dinette window as my siblings boarded the yellow school bus each morning. Now it was my turn. I don’t recall anything from the initial bus ride but the return trip is imprinted in my memory.

First grade ended at 3 pm, 90 minutes before dismissal for my brother and sister’s classes. I would ride the bus home by myself. I stepped onto the bus and walked halfway down the aisle before sliding into a row on the right side. The ride home would take about 30 minutes.

The next thing I recall is waking up back at school. I had slept through the drop off in front of our house. The bus driver apparently thought I had made other arrangements to get home. As my mother worked full time she was not aware of my troubled ride home. Our housekeeper, meanwhile, did not realize I was lying across a bench invisible to the bus driver and her.

I’d like to say I handled the situation as any five-year-old would. Indeed, I did. I started crying. Only upon seeing my brother and sister did I stop.

That was the only time I recall ever sleeping through my stop, even as an adult commuting home for more than 30 years on Metro North.

My first grade teacher was Mrs Malka. She was a cheerful woman. She must have been in her mid 20s. Some 50 years later I recognized her sitting next to her brother in the pew ahead of me in our White Plains synagogue on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. For the next decade I looked forward to seeing her every year.

I would not have looked forward to seeing my second grade teacher. Mrs. Mare seemed to enjoy dispensing corporal punishment. Her two favorite cruelties were pinching one’s nostrils and grabbing a student by the upper arms, pulling them back and sticking her knee into the small of the back.

Naturally, my classmates and I complained of mistreatment but my parents, like all the others, reasoned that we must have done something wrong to warrant such discipline.

In third grade we had separate Hebrew and English teachers. Mr. Ben-Shemer was a jovial, Eastern European Holocaust survivor who wore garters to keep his shirtsleeves up. He played the concertina and would admonish us not to put our feet on the frame of the chair in front of us by saying, “When the feet go up, the brains go down.”

Mrs. Schlesinger taught English. She was a tall, prim woman with a less physical style of punishment. She would banish an offender to a wardrobe closet for an indefinite stand in darkness. She was reprimanded one day for leaving a student in the closet when the dismissal bell rang.

Damn Yankees, For One Night Only

Now I know the joy of rooting against the NY Yankees. Bliss would be one more loss, tonight, against the Tampa Bay Rays followed by New York victories throughout the post-season. But tonight, this die-hard Yankee fan wants his team to lose again to Tampa to give the Rays the opportunity to edge out the Boston Red Sox for the final baseball playoff spot. Boston must play its part in this psycho-drama by either losing tonight or tomorrow in a potential one game showdown against Tampa.

It was a truly weird experience watching the Rays last night turn a near-disastrous bases loaded with Yankees, no out, one-run-already-in situation into a thrilling around-the-horn triple play, and then to cheer when Matt Joyce unloaded a three-run home run to give Tampa a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh. It was even stranger hoping Kyle Farnsworth would record a save against the very same Yanks he so miserably could not perform for during his stint as a set-up man for Mariano Rivera a few years back.

Sports talk radio and the blogosphere are full of the pros and cons of Yankee fans wanting Boston in or out of the playoffs. Only a fool would want his mortal enemy to have time to regroup to fight another day. Don’t those who want Boston to make the playoffs so the Yanks could beat them in the second round (assuming both teams make it there) realize that scenario would mean the Red Sox have righted their slide and defeated either the Texas Rangers or the Detroit Tigers, both formidable foes? When they would play the Yankees they’d have their swagger back.

No, it’s much better to stomp out your opposition when they are down, before they can recover. Abraham Lincoln knew this. That’s why he anguished over the failure of several generals to pursue Robert E. Lee’s forces during the Civil War. It was only when he found a kindred mind in Ulysses S. Grant that Lincoln was confident of victory over the Confederacy.

How strange to be rooting against the Yankees, even for one night. I won’t be watching the game. Gilda has prepared a sumptuous feast for 31 members of our family and friends on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. A Yankee loss, coupled with a Boston loss, would be a grand way to start the new year.

Gifts to Remember

With Black Friday just three days away, the official holiday gift-giving season is upon us. Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes Sunday night he has received four really great presents in his lifetime—a tricycle when he was about five, a $10 bill, a big league baseball autographed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and, recently, a five-pound can of dry roasted peanuts (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7076431n).

No doubt, I received many great gifts as a child. Some were practical—every Rosh Hashanah and Passover my Uncle Willy would come to our home for the holidays laden down with new outfits for my brother, sister and me from his dry goods store on First Avenue off 10th Street in Manhattan. I still recall a snazzy blue suit he brought when I was around 6. In those days, the middle 1950s, boys wore wide brimmed hats, as well. Dressed up in my new suit and hat, I looked like a miniature Don Draper, without a cigarette. And, I think my ears stuck out wider.

I can recall just three really memorable presents from my childhood, none related to a birthday or holiday. The first was a reward for being a good patient. I needed several baby teeth extracted. My mother took me to a specialist in downtown Brooklyn. The oral surgeon propped my mouth open with a short, hard black rubber tube before putting me to sleep. The next thing I knew, a young nurse’s face was circling round and round before my eyes as I emerged from the ether. To reward my good comportment, my mother took me into a nearby store where she bought a six inch, pink plastic school bus hanging in a plastic bag on a display tree. It was kind of a lame toy. Nothing moved on it. It was just an injection molded plastic toy. But then, my mother was never really good at buying presents. As we got older she would simply give us money and tell us to buy whatever we wanted. She was way ahead of the gift-card trend of recent years.

A little earlier, definitely not later than my fifth birthday, we traveled to Philadelphia to visit my mother’s brother. From Brooklyn, we took the ferry across to Staten Island, this being 10 years before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge linked the two boroughs. For some unknown reason, Uncle Sol gave me a toy car. It was about 18 inches long, at least six inches wide, a grey convertible, with doors, hood and trunk that opened, rubber tires that could be taken off with a small tire iron stored in the trunk. All afternoon I played with that car on the parlor floor. I don’t ever recall seeing Uncle Sol again. There was a falling out between him and his four sisters when their mother died. I don’t know if our visit preceded or came right after my grandmother’s death. I only know Uncle Sol never again appeared in my life. We didn’t reach a rapprochement with Sol’s family (his widow, three sons and their families) for nearly 20 years, until Gilda and I married in 1973 and we invited them to our wedding. But that car stayed with me as a favorite toy for many years.

It was either the mumps or chicken pox that confined me to my parents’ bedroom when I was about seven. Mom had returned to full-time work with my father in his factory. I was left in the care of our housekeeper, Jessie. To cheer me up, she gave me an Old West stagecoach. Pulled by two brown horses (with a yellow wheel under their harness to simulate movement), the stagecoach was driven by a grizzled, rubbery man, with Andy Rooney-style bushy eyebrows and a whip in his right hand. The whole outfit was huge—the stagecoach itself had to be at least a foot in length and nine inches high. With the horses attached, the toy was easily 18 inches long. Long after the stagecoach busted up (or was thrown out in one of my mother’s periodic closet cleanings—my baseball card and comic book collections shared a similar fate), I played with the teamster until he, too, outlived youthful play dates.

Handwriting on the Wall

I’ve got a handwriting problem. I can’t always read notes I’ve written down for blog entries.

I walk around with a pad and pen in my back pocket to jot down notes, even to longhand full stories, whenever the muse hits me. Trouble is, my scribble is so hasty that unless I sit down to transcribe it right away I often have a hard time discerning what I wrote.

It was always this way. My illegible handwriting drove my parents crazy, so much so that when I received an “A” in penmanship in fourth grade my father made my mother go up to the teacher to complain her standards were too low. She explained she based the grade on the penmanship of homework reports she assigned. Knowing that, I painstakingly toiled to make these reports works of cursive art. Even at the tender age of eight I knew how to game the system.


I think I might qualify to be a banking executive. Today’s New York Times showcased troubles with the mortgage foreclosure process. One problem involved the signature of an assistant vice president of American Home Mortgage Servicing assigning a mortgage to another bank. As shown in a photo of three documents, the AVP’s signature differs widely in each instance. The clear inference is that three different people signed the paperwork, meaning at least two were forgeries.

That’s the logical conclusion, but if American Home Mortgage Servicing needs an expert witness on its behalf, I’m available. You see, I, too, have multiple signatures, and I’ll be darned if I can remember which one I’ve used for, say, the safety deposit box form, my regular checking account or any other official paper that requires a John Hancock.

It’s always a crap shoot wondering which way to sign and if the people scrutinizing my chicken scratchings will ask for further proof of who I am. When they don’t I silently say, “Fooled them again,” but then I begin to wonder how safe my money and identity are if I am not questioned when my signature clearly does not match the official record.


Does God need a better GPS? It might appear so after last Friday’s weather.

On Thursday, Jews all over the world prayed for rain, part of the annual fall holiday of Shemini Azeret. They were praying for rain in Israel, which, by the way, is enduring a years long drought. Instead, God sent torrential rain up and down the East Coast, with more rain expected this week. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, meanwhile, it’s been nice and sunny.

Perhaps God was confused because there might be as many Jews living on the East Coast as there are in Israel, especially when you consider the number of Israelis who have moved here.


Driving home from Queens the other day, two things occurred to me. First, too often there’s no music I like playing on any of my 12 preset FM radio stations. I don’t do enough driving to invest in satellite radio so I’m stuck with FM fare. Oh well...

Second, why is it during a traffic jam whenever I switch lanes my new lane almost always comes to a standstill and my old lane starts moving faster?


At his town hall meeting at Washington, D.C.’s, Newseum two weeks ago President Obama got an earful about the stalled economy and shattered dreams. One poignant moment came when a woman, a supporter of his, asked, "My husband and I thought we were beyond the hot dog and beans (stage) of our lives. ... Is this my new reality?"

Funny thing, Gilda and I like the occasional franks and beans dinner. But it’s easy to understand why a constant diet of franks and beans would be disheartening. If Obama and the Democrats hope to keep their majority influence in Washington they have just four weeks to convince voters that a Republican/Tea Party victory would guarantee many more franks and beans meals.

Compassionate Conservative is never mentioned these days. Instead, the candidates on the right hammer home a message of lower government spending which can only mean less assistance for the needy. And more tax breaks for the wealthy.

Incidentally, on your next visit to Washington, take time to visit the Newseum. Set aside several hours. There’s lots to see and absorb there.


The regular baseball season ended with Boston denied a post-season slot but gaining some measure of satisfaction by denying the Yankees a first-place finish in their division, though the New Yorkers still qualified for the playoffs as a wild-card entry. It's too early to say if the Red Sox did the Yanks a favor by making them play the Minnesota Twins, and not the Texas Rangers, in the first round.

Over the weekend the Yankee announcers were reminiscing about the 1978 playoff game between Boston and New York, won by Bucky Dent's dramatic three-run home run off Boston's Mike Torrez. They wondered why they had been home to watch the one-game playoff to determine the winner of the American League East crown (this was before the wild card option). They speculated they played hookey from school that Monday, Oct. 2, 1978.

I, on the other hand, easily remember why I wasn't at work. It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah. After we returned from my parents' synagogue and ate lunch, we retired to the TV room to watch the Yankees begin a wonderful year for our extended family, capped by the birth of my son Dan, my sister's son Ari and my brother's daughter Karen. And, oh yes, the Yanks won the World Series that year.