Birthday: December 23, 2014

While walking home from school one afternoon -- I was six or seven -- some kid punched me in the stomach. It must have been Fall or Winter because I carry the image of a thick outer jacket with a belt. I can't remember why or what was said but I remember the punch well enough. No pain -- the thick material snuffed the blow -- but blind panic. I bolted away and ran into the street where I was seriously clobbered and dragged by a car until someone pointed out to the driver that there was a kid stuck in his wheel well. I don't remember pain or anything else, but I still have a sense of the angle of the stretcher as it left the ground and slid into the ambulance. My mother was there, I know, but her presence was vague. Apparently, I had taken a beating but all systems were still intact, nothing broken, nothing missing, nothing critical. A month in my parents' big mahogany bed and lots of presents. It could have been much worse, except I was plagued by the thought that I had run like a coward instead of fighting back. Even had the kid hurt me it would never have been nearly as devastating as getting hit by a car. What really hurt was knowing I'd run away. It was humiliating, something that lingers like dog shit on my fingers even after all these years. What was born that day decades ago was the drop dead absolute certainty that such a thing would never happen to me again. I've conducted my life to ensure it. Even today at the age of 74 my guard remains up.  At some point, more recently than you might think, I came to understand that I did not really want to hurt anybody. It was simply that I didn't want anybody to hurt me. I'm sure this also has a lot to do with having grown up in a house where anything not bolted down was a potentially lethal weapon in my mother's hands. Old friends, family, and followers of this blog can attest to this carnage.

I don't know why I'm thinking about this, nor do I know where it's going, but today's my birthday, and this is what's coming out.

So.

And then there was the time I directed my first big musical, "Carousel", at the New Haven Jewish Community Center, right around the corner from the Yale School of Drama where I was a student, circa 1965. Their productions were elaborate and quite good for community theatre, in part because they were always bringing in ringers from Yale in key roles, the director being one of them. This was a plum job, one vied for by the student directors. only I was not a director but got it anyway. The fact that I was a Jewish boy from Baltimore didn't hurt. so, not only did I direct "Carousel" I was fed by every Jewish family in town. Not only fed but I was proposed to three times although I can only remember two of them, both very big ladies. It was a helluva year.

Opening night was a big success, and Mom was there. She was always there at milestone events, even attended my graduation from Parris Island, walked across the parade field, right up to my drill instructor and thanked him for taking such good care of me. "Very nice," she said, and waited patiently for me to walk her back to her hotel as I addressed the cast and gave notes. Very nice. She was quiet on the walk back. When we got to the corner opposite her hotel I said, "OK, Mom, out with it. I know you're dying to tell me something."
            "Not really, darling," she said -- We had a green light but she stayed put -- "Actually, I do have one suggestion. I see you going this way and that way, busy, busy, busy doing what you do very well, I might add. Don't think I'm not proud. A mother's proud but you don't need a mother you need a wife. Somebody pretty. She'll stand beside you, hold your hand, bring you tea at rehearsals..."
            "Are you out of your mind?" I yelped.
            "You asked."
            "I'm not doing this," I said and threw up my hands.
            "Doing what?"
            "Go home. Wait for a green light, go back to the hotel, pack, and go home." With that I turned around, walked away, and left her standing there.

A few days later a letter arrives. It's from Mom. "Dearest Son, Please believe me when I tell you that all mothers truly love their children and are very proud of them, even if those children are mentally retarded. Love and kisses, Mother."

An old friend, gay and now dead once said to me, "With a mother like yours it's a wonder you're not sleeping with me." You can see that Lizzy Hermanson was a serious opponent. Like a good boxer the woman could come at you from many different angles. She was relentless, tireless, always locked and loaded, ready for the next round.  When I was a teen I used to think, "Just be quiet for two weeks, just two weeks, and I'll be what you want." But she never was, and neither was I.

My First Pair of Jeans

                                               

1952 or 3, Baltimore, Maryland.

My father liked characters. He collected them. If he had been a writer it would have been a Damon Runyon, a Ring Lardner, an A.J. Liebling. Ruby was no kind of bandit but he enjoyed keeping track of the small time hustlers who worked the neighborhood: the bag man, the bookie, the street preacher, colored men (known as street Arabs) on mule drawn wagons hawking fruits and vegetables, women sitting on stoops, church women with enormous hats, neighborhood kids running every which way. He owned and operated the Ruby Tire Company (or Rooby Tar as spoken by a native Baltimorean) where he retreaded bald tires and sold new ones in just about the poorest neighborhood in the city. I worked there from the age of eleven until Ruby died in 1963. The world that encompassed Ruby Tire was made up largely of narrow alleyways lined with warrens of row houses built after the civil war. The “place” (which is how the family referred to it) was on Fremont Avenue bordering an alley, and sat back a block from where Fremont intersected with Baltimore Street, a lively though shabby thoroughfare that began deteriorating before I was born. It was lined by small businesses, many of which were already closed and boarded. Gray was the dominant color. Louis the Greek’s was the restaurant just on the other side of Baltimore Street where I ate many, many plates of hamburger steak smothered in onion gravy, with a pick-up stix pile of French fries. Louis had a picture of his son, a wrestler in tights, on the wall above the counter. Up the street a way was a gypsy fortune-teller who was always trying to entice me into her shop. I say entice but, really, she’d pop out of her door and try to drag me in by my arm. She’d also be trying to nick my wallet with her other hand, but I always pulled away from her. It was annoying but it was also funny, a little something to make the walk more interesting.

            On this particular Spring day, somewhere in the really early fifties, I had saved up the money to buy my first pair of dungarees from the Hecht Bros. department store and was walking back to Ruby Tire down Baltimore Street with them on. It was really an act of rebellion (though I hadn’t yet thought of it that way), my first stylistic break with the Ivy League uniform of khakis and button down oxford blue shirts. The only other guys who wore dungarees back then were bikers, gentile guys from tough neighborhoods, and those who worked in cornfields. The new dungarees were very stiff, and I had them folded up to about a one-foot cuff to keep from tripping. The idea was to get into a bathtub with them on, get out and let them dry on you so they conformed to your particular shape and size. Miraculously, my stomach would be firm and my hips would finally be narrower than my shoulders, but, even as it was, I was feeling pretty cool. Then the gypsy jumped out from her doorway like one of those spiders that leap from ambush as an unsuspecting bug strolls by. “C’mere, c’mere,” she said and tried to grab my shirt. I twisted away. “What do you think I’m going to do with you?” she asked.

 “I don’t have any money,” I protested.

             “Who said money?” She made it sound like a command. “Stop. C’mere, You think you look good, kid, but you look stupid.”

“Huh?”

“Come on. C’mere.” She waved me over. I still didn’t move. She sighed and shrugged and got down on her knees right there on the sidewalk then waved me over again, and this time I went. She unrolled my one-foot cuffs and refolded each of them meticulously as a two-inch cuff that she folded up to size until it rested lightly on the laces of my desert boot. “There,” she said and smiled at her work. “Help me up,” she said and used my knee to give herself a boost. That fast she had my wallet out of my back pocket and turned inside out looking for money. When she didn’t find any she tossed it back. “You get a fashion tip it’s worth something. What’s in your pocket?” she asked.

“Nothing,” and turned them inside out to demonstrate.

“You owe me, boy,” she said. “Come back and I’ll tell yer fortune half price. Yer daddy, too.”  I must have looked surprised at that. “Rooby Tar,” she said.”  Yer  Rooby’s boy. I know who you are.”