In the fall of 1951 I was sent to P.S. 6 at a new building on 81st Street between Madison and Park. Each morning Nanny laid out my clothes and made breakfast. While I ate, she prepared carrots, celery, quartered tomatoes, and a sandwich, wrapped them in wax paper and arranged the wads in my Howdy Doody lunchbox. Then she took me outside to wait for the van, a vehicle they called the “wagon.” As I got in, a place was made for me in one of the rows. Then the driver collected other kids at their awnings, packing us in like sardines (he said), so that we had to negotiate each other’s elbows, legs, lunch boxes, and smells. Then he drove to P.S. 6 and dispatched our rumpus into the yard.
At the sound of the bell we hurried in and found places, our chatter stilled by a loud buzz. My classroom was on the first floor facing the street. From her position beside the flag Miss Tighe led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Standing in aisles, our hands on our hearts, we recited the words automatically in singsong, “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice….”
I sat in my combination desk and chair watching words spelled and simple sentences sounded out. Our picture book was about Dick and Jane, their dog Spot, a cat Puff. We made the sounds of the letters as a group: “This is Jane. See Puff jump.” After recess in the yard, addition and subtraction were demonstrated on the blackboard.
I became restless. My mind was occupied with adventures in which I hunted for treasures and escaped from enemies. I drifted between daydreams and drones of planes changing pitch, shadows of window casements as they bent from near rectangles to rhomboids and diamonds and crept across the room, pigeons against far rooftops.
I drew penguins playing trumpets with musical q’s rising into double-u birds. I wound two pencils in a rubber band and then into a knot so that they danced weirdly to come undone. Kids at desks around me giggled. I looked at unintelligible combinations of letters in the back of the reader, trying to guess from the pictures what they were.
I was delighted when the single-letter word “a” appeared on an upcoming page. I had been looking ahead to it, wondering what it meant, Miss Tighe not forewarning us. A faint image of that “a” has stood before untranslated text ever since.
During that year our family moved across 96th Street to 1235 on the northeast corner. There, on the sixth floor overlooking a narrow alley, my brother and I shared a room again, our beds contiguous along one wall, Nanny at the opposite corner.
Relatives gave Jonny and me a black globe with a light in it to put stars on the ceiling and a wood-burning kit that released industrial smells as it heated up. We sat on the rug, etching lines on blocks while Nanny warned us about nipping ourselves with the coil.
We got a painted turtle in a plastic bowl, a track for him to walk on, a parasol at its center. Somehow Timothy escaped. We found him only after pulling up carpets and lifting cushions. He had made his way to a corner where his legs plowed against the wall as his head twisted. We returned him to his bowl and poured in dehydrated insects, almost suffocating him. But he left again, and after three weeks Nanny found him dried up under the radiator.
A three-year-old in cahoots with a first-grader, Jonny and I launched more escapades than our nurse could handle. We hid in closets and behind beds and played pranks on her, rearranging her clothes, putting plates and silverware in her dresser, and hiding her medicines. She yelled at us, took our toys and cap guns away, and made us drink our dinner disgustingly in our milk as punishment. She told our mother we were the worst kids she had ever minded.
One morning my brother and I decided to save our BMs as a joke. We stored them under his bed. After just a few days the room stank, but the bed was low-slung, disguising the source.
Our mother collared Mr. Borrig, the superintendent, and he appeared with a plumber in tow. After checking the toilet, the handyman worked his way into the bedroom, yanked the bed forward, and announced, “There’s your problem, lady.”
She stared at me in disbelieving horror. I shook my head in denial.
“It was him,” Jon insisted. “It was his idea.”
My brother was Mommy’s favorite. She boasted to relatives how handsome and spunky he was. Compared to such a boy I was not worth mentioning.
As Jonny got larger he became a real nuisance, strutting and boasting in front of me, appropriating my things, claiming my trucks and boats were his. He had an ornery energy about him, a chippiness, plus a sour, powdery smell that I associated with his banditry. We would shout names and then begin hitting.
“Dumb brat!” I yelled as he showed off his boxing style, dancing from atop his bed to mine.
“Pee face!” he retorted wickedly. His mouth sprayed spit.
It seemed as though he always made his elbows jab, his knees butt on purpose. He never gave ground or let an advantage by me go by, no matter how meager. If I got a step ahead of him in our progress to the door, he had to restrain me by a hard push and get back in front. If I danced around a piece of furniture, he had to dance around it too. So I teased him, leading him in pied-piper chases. By indicating he was a baby or stupid, I riled his quick temper. He charged me and initiated fisticuffs.
Screams and thuds brought Nanny or our parents. They pulled us apart.
“A born instigator,” Daddy said, glaring.
“He put my trucks with his toys! He stuck out his leg and made me trip. On purpose!” I was the picture of righteous indignation. But I knew my dark motives. I wanted to pummel him.
Jonny shook his head and grinned. To this day I can picture him, forcing tears, telling on me, innocent as a lamb.
“You’re older,” Mommy said, “and should know better.”
During one tussle Jonny and I wrestled to a stalemate. I refused to let go, and I couldn’t budge his death grip. Suddenly his fingers caught hold of my ear; he tugged without mercy. I shrieked in pain and bit his forearm as hard and deep as I could. Howling, he reached for a pair of scissors. “I’m going to get you for that,” he shouted, voice quavering. “I’m going to kill you.”
I dove at him, tried to grab away the scissors. By the time our parents arrived he was bleeding from a cut on his cheek. We were both crying. The weapon lay beside us.
I wanted to tell my side of the story, but Mommy socked me on the head—a hard, painful club. Then she smacked with her fists, crouching over and kicking me as I squirmed along the floor. Daddy joined her yelling: “He’s an idiot. Let him crawl into his hole.”
I pulled away, slithering into the closet under the coats.
“You’re the lowest form of creature alive,” Daddy called in, “picking on a harmless child.”
I sat there in a forest of wool and flannel, fascinated by the cadence of my sobs, staring into the patterns inside my eyes, calling for my Nanny. Inside me a strange, dry voice heaved all by itself.
I learned to cry long and deep and sing my own symphony.
Mommy thought if she spanked me and sent me to my room often enough I might change. She didn’t mince words either; she called me “Hitler’s boy” and “the devil incarnate.” I deflected these slanders into nonsense syllables: “Dev-ill, in-car-nate.” Even though I understood (more or less) what the words meant, how unthinkably vicious for a mother to say to a child, I didn’t relate to them; it was more random noise aimed at me.
I may have tuned out her disparagements, but I breathed their field of attraction. The identity of a “knave” blended into my life: I became ugly Richard, diabolic Richard, prankster Richard, conniving Richard, Richard the rogue. “R” was the foulest, sneakiest letter, while “ch” scrunched up my cheekbones into a quailing mask. To this day ancient voices compel me to don it.
Grandpa Harry, a tiny man with a foreign voice, showed up on occasional Sunday mornings with his chauffeur, Joe. His accent and rapid garble made him unintelligible and he always was in a hurry. His sole purpose was depositing boxes of cookies, lox for Daddy, and the same set of fancy chocolate silverware in a flat box covered with cellophane. This included not only knives, forks, and spoons of different sizes, but pushers with sharply bent chocolate ends. Having presented his gifts, he was waving goodbye despite Daddy’s protests that he should stop, break bread, and say a Sabbath blessing.
It was a major victory if he took off his hat and progressed out of the hallway to the nearest chair and occupied it briefly.
At the most unlikely times Uncle Paul, a fat, jolly man, would appear at our front door, exchange greetings with Daddy, and sometimes give Nanny a hug. Best of all, he took me out alone. No one said why, but I assumed it was because I was older.
At F.A.O. Schwartz, the toy emporium downtown, he stood alongside while I picked a wriggling fish from the pool of battery-operated toys. “How about that?” he pointed to the rear of the store. I could scarcely take my attention from the fish; then I did.
Two trains in motion wound through villages on opposite sides of a giant table, past people in cottages. Roving waitresses delivered food to autos, as miniature logs were loaded onto flatbeds. There was a sudden puff of smoke, a light through a tunnel, the engine entering, caboose last. I watched enthralled until, at Uncle Paul’s prod, we returned our attention to the pond where he plucked the electric fish and bought it for me.
At the Penny Arcade we played Skee-ball and got fortune cards from a glass-enclosed gypsy doll. With cork rifles we knocked down prizes and collected our booty in my uncle’s bulging pockets—gum drops, tiny boxes of Oriental cards, puzzle rings, packages of miniature books.
To win coupons, we slid a metal puck down a saw-dusted surface beneath bowling pins that lit up scores on an overhanging screen as they collapsed upward with the passage of the puck. Then, together in a recording booth, out of harmony and tune, we sang my children’s songs into a microphone imbedded in the wall—me and Uncle Paul doing “Frosty the Snowman” and “The Thanksgiving Squirrel.” I alone knew the words, so he slurred syllables to catch up.
Afterwards, we got to hear ourselves through a scratchy speaker; then a record with our voices dropped out a slot for me to take home.
Uncle Paul always concluded our visits by buying me a new game or a boat. He heralded the moment by asking me questions that implied our decision was a serious matter: “How many tugs you got? How many barges? how many canoes? any in drydock? any rafts? any ferryboats?”
One time, he honored my pleas to buy a hard plastic man with answers to questions floating in liquid inside him and visible through a plastic window. Another time, he picked out a game with presidents’ faces on gold coins like real money. The most special present, though, was when he purchased a red motorboat with batteries at F.A.O. Schwartz. I was beside myself with how jealous Jonny would be, that I got it and he didn’t.
After each visit I asked Mommy when Uncle Paul was coming next, but she didn’t want to be bothered by questions about him and, if pressed, got angry. His appearances were so far enough apart that I almost forgot about him each time. He had become a vague memory of something wonderful when suddenly he was back at the door to claim me.
At P.S. 6 Miss Tighe set aside a period each day to practice with me while the other kids were doing lessons. I wanted to stay good and reward her kindness, but, back at my desk, daydreams took over. Then a trickle ran down my legs. Kids smirked, giggled, and hooted, holding their noses when they passed me.
At lunch a boy purposely spilled his juice on me, then yelled, “Wet pants!” I shoved him. He socked me. Soon I was the center of a circle, everyone pointing and teasing.
“Just get up and take this,” Miss Tighe said, pointing to the bathroom key on the wall. “You don’t even have to raise your hand.” What she didn’t realize was that I had no sensation of pee starting, so day after day I disappointed both of us.
One morning, without notice, Mommy packed our suitcases. We were going to Texas, she said, to visit Grandma Sally. In the train Jonny and I kneeled on seats by a window, watching buildings sweep by. Soon it was countryside … then lights in the dark.
We spent the whole night and next day on the train and, when we awoke in Dallas, everything seemed old-fashioned and warm like summer. We had strapped on our holsters and guns but spotted no cowboys in the streets.
Grandma and Uncle Tom’s home was two storeys; it had a yard with a small brambly jungle leading to other yards. Using string, boards, and sticks I arranged a fort from which I spied on activity in all directions. I befriended a stray kitten I named Katey after my Little Golden Book, but she scratched me and I kept my distance after that.
“She feels as bad as you do about it,” Grandma said, and she urged me to make up. I tried, but Katey didn’t want to.
On his way to work, Uncle Tom drove me and Jonny to a school for little kids. No more numbers and letters, it was back to building block villages and painting on easels. At naptime the class lay on fold-out cots, and the teacher read to us from The Wizard of Oz.
Late-afternoon yolk flickered on the wall, as a Lion, a Scarecrow, and a Tin Woodman travelled an enchanted forest: a Scarecrow who had been made only yesterday, a Woodman whose joints creaked because he needed oil, a sad, meek Lion. I adored these characters and was so concerned for the outcome of their quest I could barely wait between installments. Since I was older the teacher took me outside during naptime and read to me under a tree: the jabbering field mice, the winged monkeys and—“Richard, today we meet the Wizard himself!”
One evening Grandma put a surprise at our place settings: look-and-see straws so we could watch our milk spin in spirals around Goofy and Donald Duck. For days Jonny and I found juices, sodas, and punches to sip and watch their colors swirl. Then we sucked Kool-Aid out of a pitcher and began spraying each other. Uncle Tom reclaimed the straws on the pretext they harbored germs.
He took us to a rodeo where cowboys and horses pranced to loud music; men wrestled steers to the ground. He kept asking us if it was exciting enough. Jonny thought so and clapped, but I was sullen and silent, leading him to tease me about being a city boy.
With no more warning than when we came, we got on a train and went through cities into winter. Only when I was older did I learn my mother had left Daddy, then changed her mind a month later and came back.
When I reentered Miss Tighe’s class, everyone had gotten far ahead. I stared at gibberish. I couldn’t do the numbers or read most of the longer words, so I was given separate pages to work on while the others moved ahead.
At the three o’clock bell, we ran down halls into the yard and sorted in clumps for “group”—that was the name for our after-school program: a boys-only day camp. Wagons along the curb represented different companies: mine was Bill-Dave, the same fleet of drivers who picked me up in the morning—a rival group was Leo Mayer’s Champions. Bill was our fat, friendly ringmaster; Dave was the name of a man fighting in Korea.
On the curb we were counted and culled into wagons. I was put in the younger batch with seven- and eight-year olds. From there we were driven to Central Park. A counselor found an empty field where he organized games. These included “Capture the Flag,” bombardment, volleyball, and soccer.
In Capture the Flag, shirts or sweaters were set at the back of enemy territory. We had to run the gauntlet of the opposing team, grab the “flag,” and return with it to our own base without being tagged. If caught, we were put in jail near the flag, but any member of either team could release all his team’s inmates by dashing toward the prison, eluding pursuers by swerves, tagging a prisoner, and shouting some part of the mantra “Ringoleavio! Ally Ally, All Free.”
In bombardment a scratch in the dirt made by a stick separated teams. A fat, blubbery ball was heaved back and forth by those on the other side. If a player was hit, he was “out,” but if the ball was caught, the one who threw it was “out.” The best strategy was to charge the line and make a target of one’s self so as to be in position for a catch. Since a throw had to be from the point of getting the ball—no stepping up to aim!—a close-in dare also allowed a well-targeted return.
I delighted in the smack of rubber in the chests of kids who caught it, the suspense of a sudden toss back among scattering opponents. I wriggled my body, jumping up and down. Sometimes the ball came my way and, once, I surprised myself by snagging it in my stomach and holding on. “Throw it!” they shouted. But I was slow to let my prize go.
More often I imagined that by whirling around I could avoid getting hit. The actual thump always startled me.
Soon after I began Bill-Dave Mommy wanted me to go on Saturday too. She said it would be good for me to be with boys my age. “And anyway all you and Jonny do is fight.”
I had to get up early to meet the wagon downstairs. I felt my innards tingling with their special Saturday weakness as if I were stringy and hollow inside. I wanted to stay home, but the day beckoned too with majesty and depth. I ran among other kids in soccer and football, a chill wind stealing the last ornaments from branches as, to the frustration of Bill, we abandoned plays to try to catch them mid-air.
Some Saturdays Bill held treasure hunts. Sent among fields and copses, we collected colored strings, leaves, clovers, bubble-gum comics, and candy wrappers, to complete a schedule of items. Stray amulets were precious when happened upon, but one had to be cautious in the brush, for we also came upon mushed pinions of pigeon slabs and dead rats: lady’s hats and dolls that weren’t hats or dolls.
My favorite activity was “Hares and Hounds.” In this adventure, a team called the Hares set out across Central Park, drawing chalk arrows on the pavement to signify their real direction, other arrows as camouflage—occasionally sending scouts to leave long false trails ending with suddenly no more arrows. After giving the Hares a fifteen-minute head start, confirmed by a counselor with a wristwatch, the Hounds had to track and catch up to them and, if there was time, become Hares and hide.
As Hares we crossed the park in haste, racing through tunnels and playgrounds, creating labyrinths, dispatching scouts—“Let me! Let me!”—to lead the Hounds to dead ends, waiting till they returned with proud tales of dupery: multidirectional arrows, spoors down remote paths.
As Hounds we followed the Hares’ markings on pavement, dispatching our own scouts to check out forks and see if one was actually the main trail, hurrying to make up ground.
Our counselors took these hunts seriously and discussed strategy with the older kids. They were concerned never to be done in by fellow counselors who had tricked them before. “Remember the time those pricks crossed that meadow with no arrows?” counselor Freddie said to counselor Wally.
“Remember? I’m going to put those jackasses in a corral and throw away the key. They break the fartin’ rules every time.”
Once we spent a whole day looking for the Hares while our counselor cursed and kicked the dust. Every trail, it seemed, was false, the most promising one ending in taunting crisscrosses pointing every which way.
They had hidden in the weather castle on the lake, a path we had discounted as an obvious false trail. The custodian, not realizing they were Hares, invited them in for a tour of the facility. We were hunted down later by howling Hares.
“Not fair!” we shouted when they led us to their hiding place. “The rules say you can’t go indoors.”
But we visited the necromancers’ chamber together. With its spinning globes and glowing dials, in my imagination this castle made the winds; its keepers, standing over maps and drums, decided when to send rain and snow through the City.
In late afternoons counselors acted out stories about “the olden days.” Bill-Dave Group was supposedly founded by a hero named Ranger, but almost from the beginning he was sabotaged and duped by the Bully. Throughout each episode, as Ranger turned the tables and got revenge, we shouted and cheered his feats. The Bully sniggered away, but he’d be back.
These were lazy, priceless times, as I lay with the others in our make-believe fort of rock outcroppings, eyes on horizons of buildings. Raptly following the action, we laughed at imitation voices and clapped or moaned at each turn of fate.
On the way back to the wagon on Fifth, we stopped at the drinking fountain, lining up for our chances. A spout was initiated and cobblestones moistened by pushing in a hard metal knob. I eagerly awaited my time at the oasis, to lean and put lips and palate and tongue into the flow, take cold greedy sips and quench thirst forever.
At the end of the day a short, round counselor named Bert drove people home in a familiar order while teasing and heckling us and giving disgusting accounts of war mutilations: severed arms and penises and other deformities. “You want to talk blood and guts,” he serenaded. “I’ll give ya blood and guts.” He described Japanese and Korean torturers, how they drove stakes through victims’ eyes, cut off hands, and held noses under dripping faucets.
Other times we convinced him to turn the radio to “Tom Corbett: Space Cadet” and “Planet Man.” As our vehicle swerved through traffic, eerie sounds sent rockets zooming to other worlds. One by one, to hoots and distortions of our names, we hopped out at our apartment buildings.
Before dinner I watched television. For the puppet show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie Jonny and I sat alongside each other, charmed by the squawky rumpus of marionettes. Daddy knew Fran, so he brought home a rubber Ollie-dragon glove and Kukla finger-clown after which my brother and I staged our own performances from behind a living-room table.
Although Flash Gordon terrified me, I never missed a show. Night after night I followed his escapades, as his rocket took him to covens of regal and rhinoceroid creatures. One time Flash got imprisoned on an enemy world in an acid shower and was pounding on the door, screaming to get out. I turned the TV off. I didn’t want to watch.
In a similar story on The Cisco Kid Indians wrapped his sidekick in poisoned blankets. The coverlets were killing him, as he shook spasmodically.
My blankets could be doused too. How would I know? Some nights I kicked them clear down the sheets, unable to get the squirming man out of my mind.
Other times as I lay in bed before sleep, my hands changed shape and size on their own, my feet dwindling to beyond my torso. As fingers and lips swelled into fat trees, my legs shot out in the distance, so far beyond that my toes were as remote as a city seen from clouds. Inside my lips and up my arms I felt thick water pulled by a magnet.
I was frightened but curious, so tried staying there long enough to fill with electricity. In ensuing paralysis I struggled to move even a finger. Finally I willed myself to wiggle my left pinky, and the spell snapped as if it had never happened.
Nanny and Mommy didn’t know about these matters and, though I have no idea what they were, I think of them now as migranoid/hypnagogic trances. But they could have been anything. In the mystery that gives us a mind and a body, there are countless unknowns.
Mean kids and bullies at group enforced their authority with sticks and fists, stings from rubber bands and pea-shooters. The only alternative to a fight was being harassed and goaded, called a spastic—“you spazz!”—or worse. My wet pants qualified me as a full-fledged schmendrick, so I was shoved against the side of the wagon or someone stuck gum on my shirt. A kid elbowed me and then turned away, pretending not to notice: “Geez, who would have done that!”
Amused by such antics as if watching chimps at the zoo, our counselors rarely intervened.
My mother presumed that I provoked other kids, but bullies didn’t need provocation.
A wish to retaliate smoldered in me. One time I did swing back. “Oh, the baby wants to fight!” my tormentor goaded as others went, “Woo-woo, nincompoop.” He put up his boxing stance and socked my chest hard, stunning me. They laughed, made faces, and sang:
Richie is a friend of mine.
He resembles Frankenstein.
“You think that’s funny!” I spat, delirious with rage. I punched back.
“Harty-har-har!” he countered, slapping my fist away and knocking me in the face as they finished their rhyme:
When he does the Irish jig,
he resembles Porky Pig.
During winter, dusk came early, and Bill-Dave kids were beans in sweaters and overcoats. Our wagon skidded on snowy streets as we squealed and threw our bodies into one another.
On sunny days we stayed outdoors, sledding, building forts, staging snowball wars that seemed to last a lifetime. I felt like a soldier in an ancient battle of ice. We had to fight our way sector by sector around the rear of an opposing army, gain high ground on boulders and rock ledges, store enough ammunition (piles of hard snowballs), and charge their positions, heaving bullets down on them as they scattered.
We were sometimes surprised from another flank. Snow was stuffed down our collars and backs. We sought shelter behind any bush or tree.
Finally the glow of evening ended the battle. We trooped through the Park, our mittens caked with ice, our bodies throbbing, frost in our pants … past the Museum, past the chestnut man, into the wagons, then home.
On rainy afternoons, Bill-Dave went indoors to a variety of places: a drafty downtown gym where we heaved a basketball at hanging chains; the Metropolitan Museum of Art with its suits of armor, mummies, and stone tombs; the Planetarium where we could read our weights on the Moon (light as a sparrow) or Jupiter (heavier than a whale); the Penny Arcade (handed $2 each in a package of dimes); and a roller rink. I remember working my way around the circle of the dreary ballroom, dodging other skaters, going fast then slow, fast then slow, lumbering toward openings, passing through hot and cold drafts, collecting unexplained ball bearings from the hardwood as piped music played yet another same polka … waiting for the endless day to end.
At the Museum we chased through catacombs, making werewolf faces and moans, while long-dead kings, queens, and their runes watched impassively.
Next door at Hayden Planetarium we took seats in a round theater, a huge legless robot mounted in its center. Celestial music sounded as the ceiling darkened into the New York skyline followed by a starry night at which we let out a collective “oooo.” Soaring into the heavens, we landed on a Martian desert, as the narrator described the world’s bitter cold and tiny red sun; then we watched the planet’s two tiny moons rising and setting. After taking off, we shot farther out as the sun dwindled rapidly in the ceiling. Suddenly we plunged through Saturn’s rings to frigid Mimas. After a tour of its snowy crags we levitated out of our galaxy into violet-tinged nebulae, birthplaces of stars and the whole universe.
We spent many inclement afternoons at the 92nd Street Y. Rows of nuts and nougats sat in windows by magazines in the foyer, their indescribable smells cascading into the room…. Mounds, Oh Henry!, Spearmint Leaves, Butterfinger, Mallow Cup, Clark Bar, Hershey’s Krackle, Goobers, Cherry and Grape gums, Jujyfruits, Chunky, Snickers. These arrays were replicas of eternal events. Each bore some essence of hunger and was capable of filling me with its gist. All afternoon I longed to bite into morsels of their confection, but my allowance, a dime raised gradually to fifteen cents and then a quarter, was long ago spent.
Mallow Cups had a sweet, sticky vanilla cream in hard rippled chocolate. Mounds were pulpy with sugary coconut. Almond Joys were Mounds with nuts imbedded in their chocolate glaze. Butterfingers were a crunchy nougat of chocolate-covered caramel. Mars Bars had a mocha nutty goo. Chunkies were raisins and roasted peanuts in a hard cube of chocolate. Three Musketeers ensconced a whipped fluff, moist and porous to the bite.
Mommy told me to buy only raisins, never candy. That’s what I said I did, but she was uncanny at guessing the truth. She announced one night at dinner that I was destroying my insides with junk.
I sat there, imagining my guts rotting away, plus a twinge of regret at her picturing innocent raisins while I was betraying her.
Yet I went on devouring these chemical bricks as if they were manna, the epitome of culinary pleasure as well as a true resolution to my hunger. Years later I realized that each bar not only had a distinctive flavor but a vibration which activated subtle energies percolating through its congealed sucrose and corn syrup like a stream through a sweet aquifer. The bars may have been dietary frauds, mirages to fill the coffers of sugar pushers, but I was thinking their nourishment too and that made them healthier in the imagination than ingested molecularly.
Large vending machines flanked the Y’s atrium, some with candy bars, some with apples, some with ice-cream cups, some with sandwiches. The alcove was scented with chlorine from a pool we never saw, though we heard distant splashes.
From the atrium we trooped upstairs to our assigned room and piled coats on a table—tight quarters for hyperactive lads. With shouted commands, our counselors ended freelance melees and organized us into games highlighted by Telephone and Snatch the Club.
Turkish carpets decorated the walls; pigeons cooed against a rain-streaked, dust-soiled window, soot dripping and blowing about the alley. We sniggered as nonsense syllables and curse words came out the end of our whispered chains. Then we were divided into teams, bunched at opposite ends, and an Indian club was set in the middle for rounds of pluck and tag.
Light of chandeliers, clatter of play, and gloomy vapors kerned an endemic spell, as I fantasized chocolate-covered peanuts, coated marshmallow bars, black-cherry popsicles. Hunger and sadness ran in a stream together because hunger was so deep it could never be filled and sadness was so vast I could never envelop it.
One snowy day we went for a tour of the Tastee Bread factory. At its end everyone was given a silken white package of bread, warm from the vats of dough. By the time we got home I had consumed the entire loaf, amazed that it fit in me.
Fear remained my close companion. It was the dungeon stairs, poisoned blankets, Dr. Hitzig—and something else: the color of light, the persistence of morning, afternoon, and dusk; the same streets, shop windows, rooms, scenery, day after day, hour by hour, relentless, inexhaustible—these people, this family, their carpets and furniture, plates and cups, meal after meal, the sound of Nanny pushing the carpet sweeper back and forth. No single thing was particularly disturbing, but all these things together, unbroken and unending, were like a death march. I stood alone in the watchtower.
I woke in the dark, terrified and shivering, usually wet, and staggered into their room, willing to ask even them for help. Their husks heaped in murk, Daddy was snoring. As I hovered there whimpering, Mommy separated, jumped out of bed, put on a bathrobe, and herded me down the hall, turning on lights as we went.
She opened a wooden cabinet. Out of a bottle she poured a shot glass of brandy. I didn’t want adult liquor inside me, but she moved my hand and the warm bitter gave such a buzz that I stopped shaking and sat down. The spook was gone; the medicine had worked.
She was so relieved she began laughing. She laughed so hard tears ran down her face.
I wanted to stay with her there in the light forever.
There was another evening when I turned the handle for my bath and watched water surge out of the faucet against the luster of the tub.
Suddenly it came.
Not the gush—its force, if anything, was elating. It was the sheer fact of being there at all, naked, in relief against white stone.
I couldn’t bear it, so I let out a wail.
Mommy and Nanny came running. They looked about in bewilderment. I felt filaments of ice expanding from my throat and belly as if I was about to be blown apart.
“What happened?” my mother shouted.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” A word commanded my mind. It was the only one strong enough. “I have cancer,” I said. I didn’t want any association with the name, but I needed them to know how bad it was.
I had broken her most inviolable taboo.
“Stoppit!” she screamed. “Stoppit this instant and tell me what’s wrong! If you think I’m going to tolerate this nonsense any longer you’ve got another thing coming.”
They put me in my bed and … slowly it faded.
Mommy surveyed me lying there. I said I would never be okay again.
“Did you ever hear such nonsense?” she asked, turning to Daddy.
“Talk some sense into him,” he insisted.
“If you were poor,” she said, “you’d have something to be scared of. If you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from, if you didn’t know where you were going to live the next day…. You do a million and one things any child would give his right arm for and you’re too selfish to appreciate it. How can anyone be so self-centered?”
I tried to say something about how it was difficult at Bill-Dave and P.S. 6. I knew that wasn’t it, but I had to stop the inquisition.
“Why don’t you run away if you hate it so much here? We pay good money for Bill-Dave.”
I said nothing.
“Well, I’ll tell you why: You want attention. You enjoy upsetting me.”
“No.”
“Don’t call me a liar.”
Later I heard it on the victrola—Eddie Fisher singing, “Oh my Papa….”
I recognized this dirge from long ago: “To me he was so wonderful, / To me he was so good.”
“Wonderful”? “Good”? That’s what the words said, but the melody was maudlin and bottomless.
Nanny left, just like that, without ceremony or forewarning. I heard Mommy saying that she was a traitor—she had opened our mail and spied through the keyhole. I missed her, but I felt relief too because Jonny and I no longer had to share our room with a witch.
After my return to first grade I joined a few boys from my class who were also in Bill-Dave. At lunchtime we met in the yard and hiked three blocks up Madison to “Jessie’s Jip Joint” (we knew how to spell “gyp” but we liked the triple “J’s”). There we spent our allowances on M&M’s, chocolate wafers, Hershey bars, and other candies plus occasional packs of cards.
The kids in our gang collected Flash Gordon cards, a nickel pack a day, torn open, viewed, and sorted. We kept our stashes in rubber-banded stacks. I loved to shuffle through mine and check what I had.
Inside Jessie’s disarray of commerce we goofed off axiomatically, a form of worship. We were delighted by the motley parlor of bubble gum, comics, old rubber balls, waxed syrups, tiny prizes in cellophane stapled to cardboard plaudits. Toy- and puzzle-packed shelves and cabinets erased corners at every level.
Our allowances were hardly adequate to such a cornucopia, so our gang stole from other kids in class. I took six quarters and a fifty-cent piece out of a bankbook in a girl’s desk and, with this pirate silver, bought a magical bulb that needed only a copper penny at its base to turn it on. I presented it the next day at “Show and Tell,” but it wouldn’t light, which prompted Miss Tighe to call Jessie and demand he stop cheating the children.
In the tribe at Jessie’s I attached myself to a red-haired, freckled kid named Phil Wohlstetter who was livelier and goofier than anyone else. He could dart around, stop short, and twist the other way so fast that no one could catch him. Phil didn’t fight much, but when he did, he was surprisingly effective, his quickness making up for heft and muscle. He was great at faking punches one way and then sneaking one in under an opponent’s guard. “Made you look!” was his war cry.
By hanging around with Phil, I became a member of his special clique. In fact, I was his sidekick, like Tonto on The Lone Ranger.
Phil called us The Throw Your Lunch in the Garbage Can Club. We’d come tearing out of class at the noon bell, head for the nearest city trash container, open our metal boxes, and artfully dump their contents into the can. We each had similar combinations of white bread and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly, a raw vegetable, maybe a few cookies worth salvaging (since my mother thought peanuts were poison, I got cream cheese and jelly). Phil took particular pleasure in smashing a ripe tomato against the container, some of it invariably splattering the concrete. Once he tossed his cheese high in the air and called out, “Velveeta!” as it burst apart on the sidewalk.
My daydreams at P.S. 6 flowed into a single complicated fantasy. It began when friendly aliens came to the bedroom window and beckoned me into the courtyard. From there, they flew me to a field where they brought down a spaceship big as city blocks. Once they taught me how to use it, they gave it to me. I pressed a button and it shot into the sky. Earth dwindled against the stars.
I zoomed to Mars. After that, I changed to longer needle-like engines and blasted out of the Solar System, rocking my desk gently to simulate acceleration.
With this ship I could go anywhere in the universe. Travelling at speeds well beyond Flash Gordon’s, I kept mental records of the landscapes and creatures I saw, along with the leagues of outer space crossed to reach them. My vehicle moved rapidly but not instantaneously. I could always imagine more territory and stars, so sometimes I would spend five minutes or more supplying the energy in my head, propelling myself, observing minute details of suns and comets as I manufactured them.
My annals of other worlds were comforting and compelling in a way that nothing else was, so I continued to expand and extend their chronicle. That way I had a storyline to return to whenever necessary—during a lesson, in the school wagon, or lying in bed at night waiting to fall asleep.
I took along imagined cohorts, though never Phil and my actual friends. That would have felt ridiculous. I picked other chums to fill out my crew: Joyce who drew a perfect Donald Duck with eyelashes, Andy Pfeiffer because he had a cute smile and I liked his name, Joey because I found myself wishing he was my friend during a game at his birthday party when we chose papers from a hat and, from their instructions, ran each other through gauntlets. My attachment to him was instantaneously erotic, as he slapped my behind on drawing such a lot.
In fact, all my shipmates were kids to whom I was attracted but never turned into real-life friends. Instead, I invented their characters and our relationships.
After escaping atomic war we searched for another habitable planet. We visited worlds with green and blue rain, quadruple and quintuple moons: spiderweb villages, dragon-filled cocoons, yellow oceans, forests of talking birds and hedgehogs, underground tunnels and caves. I tried to drag out each phase of exploration as long as possible, returning to former venues to fill in missing details. We finally chose a home planet, built houses there, and befriended local animals and made up rules for our society. This activity spawned a continuous virgin papyrus for me to emboss and then commit to memory—just keeping track of the names of make-believe animals: Snellems, Hop-Hogs, Mugwums, and the like.
As life on our new world lapsed into squeamish intimacy, I created interlopers with their own plots and machines. I always stayed a step ahead of the story with predicaments for which I had no solutions. Dreaming up perils kept the daydream urgent and pure and gave my mind crises to solve. Just when our plight seemed most hopeless we would discover new regions of our world—deeper forests, further tunnels, abandoned forts—or sometimes fresh powers in our vehicle. Eventually we were forced to flee and go deeper into the universe, so I had to create a new home planet.
The “tale” was with me for all the years of my childhood. In some part of my mind I held the up-to-the-minute situation and map of our universe with a backlog of worlds we had visited and lived on. At any time I could either pick up where I had left off or replenish an old episode.
I especially liked to revert to the setting in which the visitors contacted me and made a gift of their ship. To refine it reinforced its authenticity and essential nature. I never had my benefactors return. I didn’t want that option. They were almighty and inchoate. I needed to be the driving force behind my fantasy, to generate adventures and resolve them from my own deeds. To have gods rescuing us would have obviated the whole basis of the story.
I regularly reenacted our last-minute escape from Earth, mushroom clouds spreading, parts of buildings flying apart, maneuvering the spaceship to get to and save each member of my would-be crew—then our fiery blast-off … tearing through the atmosphere toward the stars—each iteration as suspenseful and gratifying as the original.
The story touched something in me that admitted no other form. It was my chance to fight back against terror, to become a likable boy at last, to make friends with kids whose allure intimidated me. But there was another element, a mystery hard to diagnose.
Rain whipped through a valley of phosphorescent trees. Hedgehogs bounced alongside our gang—they were our telepathic allies. I called to Andy and Jill to help. They brought wood from the ribbony forest. Joey had taken the ship and gone back to rescue Jimmy. The Snellems were searching for us on the other side of the great ocean and soon their warships would be drawing near. A music-like theme built in my mind, a sense of fascination like trance. I was checking star-maps in case we had to escape.
It was heady to look around the classroom and see unaware people accompanying me across the stars.
At night I dug deep into the covers as I kindled my universe into being. Daddy had taught me to say, “Baruch atah Adonai elohaynu melech ha’olam,” so I obediently mimicked the jingle each night as my head dropped onto the pillow. And, though he told me the words meant “Blessed Art Thou, O Lord and God, King of the Universe,” I didn’t know what that meant except someone like my ethereal benefactors. The story bridged the gap between melech ha’olam and sleep. It made there be a King and a Universe and placed me in it too. My spaceship couldn’t be as sacred and important as “Baruch atah Adonai …,” but it was.
At a hint of warm weather in March, Phil brought out a Spaldeen rubber ball and tossed it toward me down 92nd Street. I stabbed at his throw, but it hit my hands and bounced off; I picked it up and heaved it back as best I could. We repeated this ritual wordlessly, as he raced ahead, making leaping grabs.
“Like this,” he said, demonstrating how not to throw like a girl. Then he gestured for me to loft the ball opposite where he was. I tried, but it went sideways, rolling down the street.
He tore after it, stopped it on the run and, after faking a side-arm throw, brought it back. “Up high,” he pointed.
I aimed it away from him; he sped down the sidewalk, leaped, caught it, and threw himself onto the hood of a parked car.
I wanted to be able to do this, yet I flubbed even the easier flips he lobbed my way.
Phil was Bill-Dave’s star athlete and leader of our club that included Freddie, Herbie, Davey, Ronnie, me, and Al. We eyed him for instructions. If the Bill-Dave was marching home in its orderly column he would signal a detour and we would surge behind him through bushes onto dirt, rejoining the main party on the other side of the loop. In tunnels we would answer his howls with our own, kids pretending to be Indians pretending to be animals. We bowed flamboyantly on each pass of Cleopatra’s needle, imitating Phil’s voodoo-sounding gibberish. Most of the other kids ignored us, but a few were provoked to rebut, a quick charge and shove or calling out “Dummies!” as we bowed.
Herbie brought a magnifying glass to school and used it to incinerate ants in the yard—a thrilling demonstration of the power of curved glass to pull the sun’s fire onto Earth. When Phil handed the death ray to me, everyone shouted to get the spider. I held the magnifier over it. Ambling along, it scurried, curled, and melted, squirming in a stream of smoke while my friends cheered. Then Billy burned the wings off a fly. I realized, in sudden consternation, we were imitating Bert’s Korean tortures.
For weeks afterwards I pictured that poor creature just going about his business, reduced to fragments and ash. It is a regret I still have, an unsquared issue between him and me, a stone in my heart. Yet boys do mindless things even as a cat claws apart the wings of a struggling bird.
When a bunch of us visited Phil’s apartment on 93rd Street he sassed his parents (mostly under his breath). His mother called out, “Hello.” Phil said, “Hello, ma’am,” and then, in a whisper to us, “… idiotbrain.”
One afternoon, as we poured from the elevator into the apartment, Phil’s father intercepted him for introductions to adult company. “Good to meet you,” he said with exaggerated politeness, courteously shaking each hand. Then, in front of the grown-ups, he began shaking our hands too: “Good to meet you, Herbie. Good to meet you, Al. Good to meet you, Richie. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” At the conclusion of the charade we galloped into his room for games and comics.
Phil had a peerless collection of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Mickey Mouse, Tubby and Little Lulu, piles of Donald Ducks and Uncle Scrooges. I would grab a stack and shuffle through them, looking for ones I hadn’t read: Bugs and Elmer wrapped to a post with Indians around them, Bugs slicing carrots into a piggy bank, Mickey giving a bath to a yelping Pluto while water splashed all about.
It was an afternoon’s treat to lie akimbo against the furniture, silently zoning out, periodically exchanging fascicles, as we gorged on Wohlstetter cookies and ice cream. There was something about the images and blurbs that made them irresistible, especially when ingested with good food. They were so clean, simple, and bright. The trees were bushy, the carrot wedges tangerine orange, the lightning jagged gold, Donald’s eyes so wide, his aura so yellow, the snow so creamy.
Stories sprang up instantly: an old map with a bit of shoreline, a ship at sea, an iceberg, Crash!, black sky, green waves. Donald’s dream bubble had him sitting on the throne, “King of North America: The Viking Kid,” Olaf the Blue’s gold helmet resting snugly on his head. Lawyer Sharky—a dog dressed as a sleazy man with bifocals—was after the helmet too; he represented Azure Blue, eldest descendant of Olaf, and was claiming North America under a 792 law of Charlemagne. Phil looked over.
“Weirdo Charlemagne,” I said.
“Char-lee-mane,” Phil repeated deliberately. “Charleemane and Shoeless Joe and Minnie Minoso.”
“I’d give the State of California for a hamburger,” a famished Donald told Lawyer Sharky.
“I’d give the state of my underpants for your elixir,” Phil intoned, grabbing Al’s butter pecan.
“Hey,” snapped Al, grabbing the dish back.
Phil had a collection of water guns and rifles. We’d choose our weapons—the rifles contended for because they had greater range and capacity—and then conduct wholesale war, dashing about the apartment. Nothing close to that could ever happen at my home—hot hisses against light bulbs, soaked pillows as shields, everyone shoving for refills at the sink, snacks whenever you wanted.
Phil said that since Jessie, the stubby, growling proprietor of our candy shop who looked like Iggy from Little Lulu, was a crook, it was okay to steal from him. In the commotion around the counter Phil had no trouble making off with several packs from under Jessie’s overtaxed eye.
We watched our friend, not wanting to miss his sly feint while “Iggy” was distracted: up his ladder, counting change, or barking at some kid—he was barely tall enough to see above his own cash register. It was easy as punch, but only Phil had the panache.
One day our leader announced he was going to steal a whole box, an unprecedented ante. We waited outside for him, expecting it to be a bluff, also not wanting to be implicated in a major felony. After a suspenseful span Phil appeared like Bugs Bunny with a mother lode of carrots, the treasure clutched under his shirt: dozens of unopened packs straight from the manufacturer. We spent lunch period tearing open our booty, divvying it up. Of course, Phil got to keep the best ones—and I still don’t know how he did it.
In spring of ’52 wrapped baseball bundles replaced Flash Gordon packs. As usual Phil led the way—he already knew the names of most of the players on the Major League teams. At first, ordinary men seemed a letdown after outer-space landscapes and court interiors, but the insignias, a Tiger or Cub or Cardinal birds in the corner of a card, and the solid colored backgrounds—yellows, oranges, and blues—transcended the athletes. They had the bubblegum dust and lost aroma of newly minted amulets, as they recalled game boards and museum crests.
Every day we competed for prizes from each others’ stashes in duels and tourneys. Kids crowded around the action, shouting, bumping in communion. We mainly “flipped”—the first person putting down a random pattern of heads and tails by floating his cards from a waist-level position, and the second trying to match the combination on the ground—the cards themselves at stake.
It was a suspenseful business, watching a lemon Gene Woodling or red-orange Turk Lown flutter in the air, front and back alternating, one of which would land upright. Four tails was a hard combination to match. Three tails and a head gave a bit of room for error. Two of each was ideal but no guarantee against an unlikely streak of one’s own. If I got to within a card of matching, a pin cushion of nerves watched the final spin. If it showed the right face, I felt a jolt of delight as I reached down and scooped up the jackpot, gathering and neatening the cards, fitting them into my handy cube and wrapping it back under its rubber band.
Flipping was mostly luck, but there must have been skill involved—card angle and height of drop, pressure of hold, jimmy and trajectory of release—because the same kids regularly won. Or perhaps they had mastered Gyro Gearloose’s telekinesis and could send brainwaves to alter spin.
In another contest, with flicks of the wrist we sailed cards up to and against a wall in rotations of two or more players. Anyone who landed a card on any part of another got his own back plus the one he “covered.” This was a game of finesse like tiddlywinks or pick-up-sticks. As card after card travelled with our distinctive spin rates over a landscape left by prior cards, we stared intently, trying to put mental english on the flight. A perfect shot covered an indisputable portion of a card on the ground. Others were too tantalizing to judge from afar, so we kneeled on the ground in serious adjudication, trying to figure out if certain cards were actually touching or just close.
In the spring of 1952 Phil debuted punchball at lunchtime in the schoolyard. With his fist he whacked the Spaldeen high off the fence above the wall, scattering pigeons: it was a home run, circle the bases unchallenged. I swung at the pinky and set it skipping along the ground. Phil shoved me so hard toward the wall (first base) I stumbled, but the ball rolled away, and I got all the way to the pile of coats at second, just ahead of the tag. “Way to go, Towers!”
That Saturday Daddy responded to my tales of the week with a taxi ride downtown. At his advertising account, a store called Miller’s Sporting Goods, he bought Jonny and me gloves, a bat, and hardballs. The next morning, he took us to Central Park where we found an open area. After setting his hat down for home plate, he pivoted my arms with the bat to demonstrate correct form, then lobbed pitches to me.
Gradually I smacked the ball sharper and farther, as my brother ran after my hits and brought them back. Then Jon took a turn with the bat. After that, Daddy set both of us at a distance and floated the ball in the air, calling out my name. I turned and somehow it landed in my glove. “You’re a natural!” he shouted.
As soon as Daddy said those words, I had magical abilities. I imagined that I could run down everything, so I did. I grabbed the next ball in the tip of the webbing while tumbling, clutching it high over my head. “A real natural!” he announced with a delighted grin. “You’ve got the coordination of a pro.” It was as if I had been anointed by a baseball jinni. Only three days earlier I had been lunging and missing. Now I was Phil.
Thereafter I embraced the knitted spheroid and its vectors of flight and ricochet. I played as often as I could—in the schoolyard, at group, on weekends. Nothing before had been as much fun or as real. I loved running at full speed, snaring a hit or toss. When no one was around to play, I lobbed a hardball or Spaldeen as high as I could in the air and caught it where it came back down, or I bounced it off a wall and snared its caroms.
That year Mommy became pregnant again and stayed in bed all spring. One morning I straggled into the kitchen in my PJs and was startled to find Nanny squeezing half-oranges into a pitcher from the whirling juice-maker. I had been told I would never see her again. I ran up and threw my arms around her.
Soon after Nanny’s return we moved to a bigger apartment across the hall. Daddy had to hold Mommy up and walk her a step at a time. Now we lived in 6B overlooking 96th Street’s boulevard. Jon and I still shared a room and there was a nursery behind the kitchen for the baby.
Late one night Mommy left for the hospital and came back several days later with a sister named Deborah. Nanny kissed us goodbye shortly afterwards and never returned. Her macabre landscape faded; in absentia she became a numinous being, vast and sepulchral as life itself.
One afternoon we strolled to the corner of 96th and Central Park where we met a young pretty lady named Bridey. The famous Fifth Avenue wind whipped at our jackets and blew newspapers past like missiles. Bridey held a little hat on with her hand, and Jon and I bounced a ball while she answered my mother’s questions in a brogue. A month later she moved in as our new nurse.
From the day I picked Gil McDougald as my favorite player from a card of a friendly pixie face gazing at far-off sky, I became a Yankee fan and joined Phil in a pact of loyalty.
When I told Uncle Paul about this new thing, he bought me a Yankee history in which I acquainted myself with prior seasons. That opened a legacy as primeval as the Egyptian tombs and labyrinthine as Jessie’s cave. I started at the beginning when they were the Highlanders, then went through eras of Babe Ruth, Herb Pennock, Bill Dickey, Waite Hoyt, Joe Gordon, Joe DiMaggio, and Old Reliable, Tommy Henrich. None of those players were still around, but their photos were pinstriped heirlooms out of which the 1952 squad took the field. Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi pitched; Yogi Berra was their catcher, Charlie Silvera his alternate; Joe Collins played first, spelled by Johnny Mize; Billy Martin was at second, Phil Rizzuto at short, McDougald at third backed by Bobby Brown. Gene Woodling, Mickey Mantle, and Hank Bauer started in the outfield, Irv Noren and Bob Cerv filling in.
These were my ikons, their names indelible. They were fighting Cleveland for first place, the same Indians they had been battling for years. Casey Stengel was the manager. A savvy old-timer who had not been successful with other teams, he surprised the baseball world by leading the Yanks to the pennant in 1949 as they beat the Red Sox in the last two meetings of the season to prevail by a single game. They edged out Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston in 1950. Then in 1951 they ran away from the Indians, and Rookie of the Year Gil McDougald hit a grand slam against the crosstown Giants in the World Series. That was all before my time, the prologue to 1952.
Daddy pulled his old Philco from the back of a closet, a red plastic box with a big square battery. I carried it around the house and on walks, trying not to miss an inning. Now I had a daily narrative of games, a pennant race, to keep me company. Mel Allen’s voice called me into a parallel world: “That ball is going, going, gone!”—pure consummation, the home run that ended discourse in speechless sound, the player who hit it elevated to temporary adulation.
I hurried upstairs from the Bill-Dave wagon, heart beating, to catch the endings of games, though sometimes Bert put the Yankees on the wagon radio. (In the early 1950s only rare Yankee games were on Channel 11, but these were monumental affairs, from pregame home-run contests to postgame interviews.)
A victory by the Yanks would wash out all other sadnesses and disappointments. Like a fairy’s wand it would enhance and color the day, giving it a rhapsodic spark. I would become happier, friendlier, more cooperative, even more attentive in class. Likewise, if the Yanks lost, everything would become glummer and drearier; I would turn sullen and inward. This dance of Yankee highs and lows was a reliable mood-barometer throughout my childhood.
Jonny declared himself a Yankee fan too and picked his own favorite player. So Daddy took us back to Miller’s and bought Yankee caps and pinstriped uniforms. We proudly donned these for our Sunday outings, number 12, Gil McDougald, and number 7, Mickey Mantle, the switch-hitting star.
For years my brother and I routinely carried a Spaldeen and threw it over and under obstacles on the street, widening our range as we hit Central Park. Bridey said we had “ball-itis” because a round object was all that was needed to instigate this behavior. She may not have understood the impulse, but she knew its outcome. Spheroids, however large or small, generated energy fields that ran us around like marionettes. A marble or rounded gob of Silly Putty cast pretty much the same spell.
The way to our hearts was through baseball, so Bridey would tease us by calling me “Richard McTowers” and Jonny “Whitey T.”—she had a particular fondness for the name Whitey Ford and used it on unlikely occasions. Jon appreciated his nickname and, at its summons, snapped imaginary curve balls for her. We tried to get her more involved, telling her scores about which she cared little. “It’s not an Irish game,” she insisted. “And my kinfolk wouldn’t want me rooting for such as Yankees anyway.”
To her mind, we honored the players like priests, and it was sinful to put so much emphasis on mere mortals. If we waxed too euphoric about a Yankee win, she said things like, “Hush now with your idolatry.”
Sometimes Daddy peered in when we were listening and commented on the game, though he was a Giants fan. He had stock lines, like when Eddie Lopat was having a rough outing: “He’s not fooling anyone today, boys.” We laughed, as though he were Casey Stengel remarking to his bullpen coaches.
One afternoon, Uncle Moe made an appearance, kneeled down right beside us, and requested an immediate update. I told him that Johnny Mize had just missed a pinch homer. Jim Delsing dove into the stands to take it away.
“Did he buy a ticket?” Uncle Moe asked.
I stared back at him without smiling. This was not a trivial matter, and I was hardly over my disappointment.
“Why, he can’t go into the stands without a ticket!”
At home I made up my own games. I would divide cards into nine-man teams, set one into fielding positions on the carpet, the other into a batting order, make one of my “doubles” the “ball,” and play nine innings, with the team of cards at bat taking turns swatting the “ball,” card-face against finger-teed card-edge. An out was when the “ball” landed on another card or near an infielder (from where I could flip it onto a part of the first baseman card—or fail for an error). Players took on distinct personalities, as regions of rug became sectors of a diamond. Jon’s and my bureaus were the bleachers: home-run territory. Few pleasures exceeded the feeling of a seemingly solid hit floating across my room and landing smack on an outfielder’s card—or grazing the bureau for a Ballantine blast.
During spare moments at Bill-Dave (or whispered at school) Phil and I played the “Initials” game: L.D., outfielder, Indians?; P.S., second-base, Athletics?; A.S., pitcher, Yankees? (We would never miss a Yankee no matter how obscure.) J.O., infielder, Pirates? Though not a Yankee, Johnny O’Brien was Phil’s favorite, the player he imagined and announced himself as, going into the hole at shortstop, making the throw to get the force play with his brother Eddie at second. It was the “O-apostrophe” of their names, not their abilities, that captivated Phil, for neither O’Brien could hold a candle to Bill-Dave’s all-star shortstop.
En route home Phil and I would sit together in the back of the wagon pretending we were Mel Allen and Jim Woods announcing innings, complete with introductions, disclaimers, and Ballantine beer ads. We would go pitch by pitch: “Reynolds winds, checks second; now he comes to the plate … swung on…. ”
We also had a rendition of Lou Gehrig’s legendary speech. I’d speak it, and Phil would do the echoes:
“I consider myself—”
“… consider myself—”
“… the luckiest man—”
“… iest man—”
“… on the face of the earth—”
“… face of the earth.”
Then we applauded wildly, other kids joining in like the 1939 crowd. It seemed strange that, when he spoke those happy words to a full house at Yankee Stadium five years before we were born, Gehrig was dying of a fatal disease—strange too that we replicated them so lightly, taking on the role of the doomed hero. Yet as I performed them, I felt a sense of honor and reverence—a chill down my spine. More than Abraham Lincoln’s “Fourscore and seven years ago …,” it was the most important speech in the universe or at least the most important that I knew.