Comedy writer, retired math teacher
(1941– )
I never had a focus or a clear direction as a kid. That was one of my issues, I think. I was always getting into trouble, fooling around, trying to be a little bit of a wiseguy. I used to hear about the gangs, like the Fordham Baldies, but I never saw them or saw the action. Basically, I hung out with a bunch of young Jewish kids, but we would hear these stories and try to be cool and tough ourselves. So we had pompadours, and we smoked cigarettes when we were twelve or thirteen years old, and we wandered around like we were a bunch of tough kids—which we weren’t.
Once in a while, though, we’d get into fights. This is the thing—I was always a very careful person. They were like … Jewish fights. One guy would get hit and the other would say, “I give.” And that would basically be the end of it. And I’d always make sure that the guy I was fighting was someone like Arnold Katz, who is now a physicist, or Jerry Zelinsky, who had thick eyeglasses and looked nerdy. Guys like that. So we’d fight once in a while among ourselves, but no one would get hurt.
Our neighborhood was middle class, but there was one really tough guy there. I’ll never forget this guy. His name was Billy Flanagan. People were terrified of Billy Flanagan, with his perfect pompadour. There were all these stories about him and how he would break people’s heads. One time he was in the barbershop on Eastchester Road at the same time I was there. The barber was literally trembling because he was afraid he was gonna mess up this guy’s hair when he cut that perfect pompadour.
In junior high school, a group of my friends and I decided that we should start our own gang. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s have our own gang! There was some sort of carnival taking place out of our neighborhood. It might have been on Gun Hill Road or somewhere like that. So how’re we gonna know we’re in a gang? By dressing alike and wearing that uniform to the carnival that night. Our uniform was black pants and a white shirt. We must’ve looked like we were going to a school assembly or like we were accountants. Now that I think back on it, me with my black pants, white shirt, glasses, I think I looked like a cross between Arnold Stang and Alfred E. Neuman.
So we’re at the carnival doing the games and walking around in our black pants and white shirts, maybe about five or six of us, when two other kids come up to us. And they looked tough! “We heard you’re a gang now. Wanna fight our gang?” Our guys looked at one another, and within three seconds it was like, “Gang? What’s that? We’re—no, no—we’re a club. A club!” Next thing you know, we’re on the phone with one of our mothers. Get us out of here! At that point, we realized that even though we were trying to be tough, smoking cigarettes, our hairdos—all of that—it really wasn’t for us. When I think back on our Jewish gang, I think we should’ve called ourselves Price Waterhouse or maybe the Accountants.
Fortunately, about a year later, the Beatles hit. As soon as I saw them, even though I thought they were weird-looking with those haircuts, I knew those guys were really good. That’s when my focus changed. I listened to the music and started the shift toward peace and love.