Sledding on Mersereau and Bowling in Boston

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

March 13, 2006

In the mid 1950’s weather seemed to be a lot worse. Maybe “global warming” hadn’t started to make its inroads on the polar icecaps and the Greenhouse Affect was more about keeping one’s plants germinating is a small backyard improvised hot box. For some reason I remember snow being on the ground all through the winter. Whenever that first snowfall came our way, the weather stayed cold until a January thaw and then our region would get hit again.

During one rotten winter, when I was about 11, I was playing in front of my house at 500 East Prospect Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY and my gold pinkie ring, which my grandfather had given me, slipped off into the snow. I frantically looked for it, but for the life of me I just couldn’t find it in that 12-inch mound of fluff. I have no memory of what happened next, or for a matter of fact, what I said or didn’t say to my mother. My father would have had no clue about the ring at all. The moral of the story is that when the snow finally melted in March, and as I was leaping down our front steps, I noticed a glint of reflected light in the lawn, and lo and behold, there was the ring. I am still wearing it at this very writing, some 50 years later. It had to be re-sized at least twice. In fact, on one of those occasions, it was done by Leonard Perelman, of Talner Jewelers. Leonard, a wonderful guy whose family once owned the Bromley Stores, and was the father of my old friend Lewis. Later on he and his wife Ruth became close friends of my wife Linda and I.

But getting back to those 1950 winters. In those days when a nor’easter blew into town, school was invariably closed, the roads remained basically unplowed for a day or so, and the Department of Sanitation that was responsible for plowing did not have the sophisticated melting agents that are so prevalent today. In other words the hills were alive with sound of sleighing. That was the era of Flexible Flyers, garbage can covers and for the financially challenged, flattened cardboard boxes. On those special days the best streets in my neighborhood to sled were Prospect, Sidney, Esplanade and Mersereau.

On Prospect and Esplanade where there were bigger houses, long driveways and larger garages no one parked on the street, so sledding was a bit safer. Sidney was a bit dangerous because it was very steep but short and it ran into a few other streets. The real challenge was Mersereau, which was a long straight street, but many people parked on both sides of the street. There were scores of kids around in those days of larger families and Mersereau was teeming with potential Olympic hopefuls. If you road your sled feet first, in the “luge” position you were more conservative. If you steered with your hands and therefore went down the street headfirst, this would be considered the “skeleton” position. One of the bolder youngsters who lived on that street was one Jimmy Stark. His name had an onomatopoetic ring to it. In German “stark” means strong and in German and Yiddish a “schtarker” was a “strong one.”  Even though I was not one to duck a fight or open my mouth to many, Jimmy Stark was one I chose to avoid at most times. Well on one of these cold snowy days he took his sled down Mersereau and had the poor fortune to slide out of control and to run his head into the sharp edge of a parked car’s chrome bumper. In retrospect I cannot say that I was terribly unhappy about his misfortune, and to many it seemed like a reasonable case of “divine justice.” Eventually young Mr. Stark came away with a long scar on his forehead and it brought his appearance more in line with his demeanor. I always thought of him as being like Cary Grant’s crazy brother Jonathan in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Of course this was an impression of mind when I was 11 or 12.

As I can recall Jimmy Stark did not attend the public schools in Mount Vernon and I never saw him ever at AB Davis High School so I assume he was not there. Eventually, years later, I did hear his name and saw him strolling in and around the Commonwealth Avenue campus of Boston University. But if we talked I have no recollection.

One day I went to the Student Union with a close friend named Andrew Mandell, now a local Judge from in and around Bolton, Massachusetts, who hailed from Utica, New York. Andy was a top-notch bowler, who scored at a high enough level to compete in the NCAA’s. He wanted to practice at the basement lanes at the Student Union, and I was up for some of the same activity. As we started to bowl I noticed, on the enjoining lanes, a number of women were aggressively practicing. I didn’t pay much attention to them until the next time I accompanied Andy to bowl. Frankly I would have never thought to bowl on my own. Coincidently the same gals were bowling and I recognized one of the girls right away. She was quite amazing. I’m not particularly small, being close to 6’ 2” and then probably weighing 190 pounds. This young lady had to be almost all of my height and was very large on top. In fact she was incredibly buxom and though not skinny, by any sense of the word, was decently well proportioned. One could have easily characterized her as an “Amazon”. She was pleasant looking and as we bowled I was able to make some small talk and I learned a bit about why they were there. She was in the Boston University’s Sargeant College, School of Physical Therapy and was getting credits for an athletic activity. I never learned her name and I was a bit disappointed that when we went back again the next week the girls were gone. Either they changed times or the class had ended. Boston University is a big place, and one could easily not see a person twice in four years.

Some time passed and one evening I drove down to the Newberry Street area where there was a party in a Washington Street townhouse. I parked and walked into a typical railroad apartment jammed to the walls. The air was so cloudy with the haze of cigarette smoke that one could hardly breathe. In fact it was suffocating. After five minutes and a few drinks I became a bit lubricated and ready to bail out of this noxious den on iniquity.

Then as if by magic, out of the haze and on my way out to fresh air I meet my Amazonian friend from the lanes. I said hello and asked if she had the strength to stay? Frankly with her lungs she would have been polluted twice as fast as any one else.  She said “no” and asked me if I had any ideas. I said my car is parked nearby and we could leave and go anywhere she wished.  Once in the car, and out of the blue, she said, “Do you have anything to drink?”  Amazingly I had happened to have a pint of whisky in the car. (There was 21 year old drinking in Massachusetts, wherein New York the age limit was 18 in those days, and I was over 21 in my junior year.) I am positive that since that evening I have never had an “open” bottle of alcohol in any car I had ever owned.  I opened the glove compartment, and handed her the bottle. Without a slip or a hesitation she took the bottle to her mouth took a long straight swig. “Wow!” That was beyond remarkable.  I was astounded! I had never witnessed anything like that before, and frankly have never seen that type of boldness since. I took the bottle form her grasp, and without wiping it off took my own gulp. She took it back from me and without a blink of one’s eye; I asked her if she would like to see my apartment. She agreed and before she could rethink her decision I took off like a “bat out of hell” to Beacon Street. In a few short moments I passed by the 1200 Beacon Motel, turned right onto Saint Paul’s and made a short sharp left to 55 Parkman Street. I parked, escorted my new friend into my place and before long we got quite comfortable. I thought immediately of the old Phil Silvers’ line, when he was playing “Sgt. Bilko” and luck came his way, “Thank you G-d.” But funny things how the G-d’s become fickle and the fates quickly change. I suddenly got white hot in the forehead, my temperature soared and I became violently sick. Talk about the sublime turning to the ridiculous. To make a long story short and against every instinct that I possessed I had to muster up the strength to take her to her dorm. I have never felt so inadequate, but it must have been fated. I unfortunately still never knew her name.

I only saw her once again, and there she was, walking arm and arm, with my old nemesis from the snowy hills of Mount Vernon, Jimmy Stark. We passed like ships sailing in the night and I never looked back.

TE Lawrence, George Santayana and their Advice

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

March 10, 2006

On the day Saigon fell to North Vietnamese troops in 1973, the British writer James Fenton founded a framed quotation on a wall of the abandoned and looted American Embassy: “Better to let them do it imperfectly than to do it perfectly yourself, for it is their country, their way, and your time is short.” The words were from T.E. Lawrence.

That quote is from The Assassin’s Gate, America in Iraq by George Packer.

It definitely tells a story. Of course the tale is an old one and it can probably be traced back to our earliest histories of conquest and occupation. One only has to go back to the Bible’s account of the Roman occupation of the Holy Land or Judea and in the words of Samuel Butler (1612-1680), “As the ancients say wisely, have care of the main chance, and look before you ere you leap; for as you sow, ye are like to reap.”

George Santayana said it and it has been repeated more often than not, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The sands of time are littered with the dust and bones of conquerors that forgot humility and “bit off more than they could chew.”  History has taught a cruel and harsh lesson about Empires and nation state’s that forget its lessons.

We therefore are paying the price in treasure, blood and national stability for an adventure that was not well planned or well prepared for. It is easy to romanticize back to the fictional age of chivalry and think that pushing aside the “bad guy” and rescuing the “damsel in distress” will put the stamp of “they lived happier ever after end” to it all. No, it is the complete reverse. It is more like Cape Fear with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. These struggles can reach ugly and devastating proportions to both sides and ultimately only draconian means can be used to bring them to a close. But even then, the so-called “close” may only be temporary. That temporary could last a generation or two, maybe. But often, especially with the clash of cultures the “loss of face” becomes the paramount issue that even transcends life itself. The suicide bombers in the Middle East are not unlike the young “Dive Wind” pilots of the kamikaze. They are front line combatants in a war for national honor, G-d, the triumph of their culture and their way of life. They represent a view that national or religious dishonor can never be tolerated or accepted. That death is preferable over dishonor.

So as Lawrence, a wise and experienced observer of that part of the world noted, “…for it is their country, their way, and your time is short.”

So what is the answer? What does one do when “the die is cast?” What does a nation state do once they have committed arms and treasure? That is the decision that ultimately must be made. What is the continued “risk, reward?” Can we sustain a never-ending, low-grade infection by treating the body with old cures from the last century or do we use a new concoction of advanced antibiotics? Of course, it again gets back to the commitment. Are the consequences of withdrawal ultimately worse than the constant drain accompanying further engagement?

Many thought the same about the quagmire that the Vietnam War had become. Many felt that we would be encouraging the Communists to strike somewhere else, and that they would eventually bring their social and political revolutions to the New World. The “Domino Theory” was constantly echoed by strategists of that era. Of course in the early part of the 20^th century we quite often heard that that British wanted to be prepared to fight on the banks of the Rhine, not in their backyard. But of course even in the First World War concentrated dirigible attacks on London, foreshadowed the reality that one could not easily keep the fight in someone else’s back yard. The days of fighting in some far off place like the Crimea, or the Sudan, or Dienbienphu, or Peking or at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, without having fear of being struck at home maybe long past. Of course even those actions, mostly forgotten by all except history buffs, had catastrophic political and social implications back home. People do not like to see their sons and daughters killed and maimed. People do not like to see their taxes go up and their debt balloon. People do not like to see their domestic tranquility broken and ruptured by the constant drumbeat of war. Most sane people understand that it can be, and often is, an ugly world with neighborhoods that are worse than others. But does one intentionally go into that bad neighborhood looking for trouble? Or does one step carefully over sleeping dogs as they lie?

As far back as the early years of the 1800’s the United States was faced with problems regarding “freedom of the seas.” This exercise of freedom was being challenged in the Mediterranean by the caliphs of the Algerine, and in 1803 Captain Stephen Decatur, on board the vessel Enterprise, set fire to the captured American frigate, the USS Philadelphia in the Tripolitan Harbor and that action precipitated the bombardment of Tripoli and subsequent land adventures of Lt. Presley O’Bannon and the Battle of Derna.

Eventually that issue was settled by treaty and resolved. So we know that our national long and short-term interests must be constantly weighed against our willingness to sacrifice. Today the stakes are a lot greater than they were at the time of the Barbary Coast and its brigands, but in the same way, as in the past, national interest must be carefully measured and weighed.

We all know that our interest in Iraq is not over sectarian violence, religious squabbles or territorial aggrandizement. It is over oil and more oil. The never-ending issue, regarding the sovereignty of the remaining area of the British Mandate, complicates the issue, but at the heart of it all, if there were no oil, no one would care a fig about the fate of the so-called Palestinians.

The issue at hand is simple; can we succeed there in spite of our miscalculations, mismanagement, under commitment of troops, porous borders, and the lack of cooperation of most of our friends? Have we let our opportunity to succeed slip from our grasp? Or was our effort and grandiose plan always doomed to failure? Right now if we unilaterally pull out today, will be there a civil war and will we have no control over the results? It seems obvious to most that civil war will ultimately break out no matter when we leave. If that is so, are we ever to leave? Just remember our long history in Iran and our doomed relationship with the Shah and his supporters.

There is no doubt that we are being told that eventually a national government of unity will be established, it will strengthen, and it will be supported by an Iraqi army that will bring a close to the chaos and bring order to the country. Will this be done within the context of Democracy? I doubt that anyone really believes that. But for sure our love affair with oil and its long-term implications will continue to drive our policies. We have little or no control over oil production in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Indonesia and other non Middle Eastern lands. We also have little or no control over the increase in worldwide demand that is exacerbated by the emerging economies of China and India the population colossuses.   Therefore this need to keep the Middle East oil production flowing will force us to be a “big player” in that critical part of the world for the foreseeable future. We must not forget that the United States with less then 6% of the world’s population is consuming upwards of 25% of the world’s oil.

Does therefore this mean a never-ending commitment to this effort?

Letter to the Editor:

March 9, 2006

Re “Selig Puts Bonds And Book Under Further Review,” by Murray Chass (column, March 9)

As a life-long baseball fan, who has been watching the national pastime from 1951 until today, I have been disgusted and depressed by the next chapter of the Barry Bonds alleged steroid abuse story. Obviously since the mid 1990’s steroid abuse has changed the face and the veracity of the baseball record book. Any casual fan would know that it was virtually impossible that pitching could deteriorate so quickly that journeymen infielders could hit 25 and 30 homers in a season no less players like Sammy Sosa could suddenly hit an astronomical 292 homeruns in a five-year period from 1998 to 2002. In the five previous years he hit 170 homeruns. One just has to look at any record book and see the same aberrational numbers from Griffey, Bonds, McGwire, Giambi and others. My suggestion is that when the time comes for their potential elevation to the Hall of Fame, that future baseball writers, who are mesmerized by these phony numbers, wait to induct them posthumously. The same holds for Pete Rose. In that way these individuals won’t benefit in their lifetimes by that honor.

Richard J. Garfunkel

The Bridge Café to Gertel’s on Hester Street

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

March 6, 2006

New York City still remains a remarkable place no matter how old I get and how many changes the old town goes through. A few weeks ago we were down at the South Street Seaport Museum to see the macabre and fascinating “Bodies” Exhibition and had a “gift” certificate to eat at the Bridge Café. The cafe is located at 279 Water Street, one of the last remaining cobbled byways in New York City, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Unfortunately the restaurant was not open and we decided to reschedule our visit to this quaint little eatery to another time in the future.

Well the future arrived today, and we arranged with my sister Kaaren, her husband Charles Hale and her married daughter Melissa, who was visiting from her home in Boston to meet us, and old friend Stan Goldmark (MVHS 1963) who was there when we arrived. We waited the few minutes until its doors opened at 11:45 am. Thankfully the morning was clear as crystal and the weather cooperated by moving up into the mid forties. Meanwhile one would think that one could find a parking space in and around that area, but incredibly none was to be had. It seems that there was a rumor that a movie was to be filmed in that same locale, and not was only was every space taken, but a mysteriously epidemic of orange cones were around almost all of the parked cars.

Stan had driven effortlessly over from Cold Spring Harbor and Kaaren and her family found their way down to the bowels of the South Street Seaport by car service. South Street may never be the same since the Fulton Fish Market was transferred up to the Bronx’s Hunt’s Point Market in 2005 after 184 years of continuous service to the fish mongering crowd. Of course it has been only a year since its closure and the stale malodorous memories of mackerel, marlin and other Neptunian delicacies still lingers about as the latent smells waif in and out one’s nostrils. Of course many native New Yorkers may remember Sweet’s and Sloppy Louie’s that used to be landmark culinary watering holes for generations down here on South Street. Sweet’s was destroyed by the December nor’easter that hit the city in 1992, and Louie’s went the way of the wrecker’s merciless and unsentimental ball in 1996.

But the Bridge Café, which is one of New York’s oldest restaurants, dating from around 1790 with its tin ceiling, has survived many changes since Washington was inaugurated in New York and said his famous “Farewell to His Officers” speech in 1783 at the reconstructed Fraunces Tavern, which is located not far away at 54 Pearl Street. (A bomb planted by the FALN, a Puerto Rican ultra nationalist group on January 24, 1975 destroyed Fraunces Tavern, in part, killing four and wounding 50. It has been reconstructed more then restored and currently is still a full functioning eatery.)

Meanwhile back to the meal. Within a few minutes after meeting our waiter, whom I have since learned was really an actor (tress) posing as a waiter, we ordered from the brunch menu and the place was quickly filled to capacity. I had a “hanger steak” and scrambled eggs. Just so you know a “hanger steak” is reminiscent of a Romanian steak that you can still find in some Jewish or Greek diners here and there. Everyone else seemed to opt for the omelets. Before long our drinks arrived, the talk became animated about one thing or another, and the main repast was served. For the life of me I am not sure what we talked about. Usually it is politics, the social order or baseball, but I do recall we touched a bit on the insane cost of higher education. Since Stanley has a daughter still in college, at Syracuse University, it was basically a dispassionate approach from the rest of us whose children have been long out of school.

Well the meal ended successfully, we all strolled out into the wonderful daylight sun of a crisp March early afternoon, where upon I posed every one for a photo. The Hales were off to see my mother and we had other plans. We were going to go to the Brooklyn Museum, but since the meal ran a bit late we decided to stroll around the bleakish South Street Seaport. If it was something special in the past, it certainly no longer holds any real allure. Unlike the restorations in Baltimore Harbor where the Constellation, sister ship to “Old Ironsides”, the Constitution is at birth, the old Philadelphia Naval Yard where the Olympia is docked, and the fabulous Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall in Boston, the South Street Seaport is more like a worn-out shoe.

So after walking around for a few minutes, we parted from Stan and decided to head up to the Lower East Side and look for Guss’s Pickles. We drove north on Pearl Street which becomes the Bowery right after old Delancy Street. Once past Canal we made our way up to Houston and turned east towards Essex. I was convinced that Guss’s was located there. Once on Essex Street we did pass the Pickleman and his barrels, but I was not satisfied and we continued the whole length of Essex until Hester without seeing the famous Guss’s Pickles (85-7 Orchard Street, founded in 1910 by Izzy Guss, a Russian immigrant. The Dutch grew cucumbers in Brooklyn in 1659 and started to pickle the cukes not long after.) Linda had a back up target and that was the famous Jewish bakery, Gertels. Lo and behold as I passed Hester, I looked quickly down the block and there was the old weathered Gertels sign hanging in the breeze a few stores into the block. I stopped, let the young lady out and told her I would circle the block. Just in case I couldn’t do it easily, we both had our cell phones handy. The trip around to Orchard Street and then a right on to Hester not only was effortless, but as if by wizardry, a space opened up right in front of Gertels (53 Hester Street, founded in 1914). As I parked Linda emerged with bag in hand, and was quite fortunate to get the last onion board and rye bread. With a space in hand, we opted to search for the “king of pickles.” Walking up Hester we turned right on Orchard Street, which is still very representative of the old Jewish Lower east Side. I had been down in this area many times in the early 1970’s when I was in the home fashion textile business. I spent many interesting and enlightening hours visiting the now long gone center of Jewish retailing, on and around, Grand Street. It is all Chinese and Asian now with only the ghosts of Shoreland, Eldridge and Penchina Texile lingering about on the old brick facades of the hundred plus year old buildings. Grand Street is now just another commercial street branching off from the heart of Chinatown and its bustling energy. 

Heading down Orchard Street we were “roped” into an orthodox-run men’s store that was right out of the 1950’s. It was an experience to say the least. We had some common ground since the wife of the proprietor was from Boro Park and she shopped at, and knew my friend and customer Gitta Steinmetz and her tablecloth business. I was sorry I didn’t really need anything they had, but we did learn that Guss’s was not far up the block. Within a few more moments the “Promised Land” was reached, Linda was now in charge as I took some more pictures and watched a television interview with one of the current owners. Pickled tomatoes, half-sour and sour pickles and stuffed olives were sealed up tight and packed away. We had achieved our culinary goal. We had traversed both extremes of European culinary heaven. On one hand, we brunched in heart of old Americana with its English style cuisine, and then we found the remnants of the old eastern European Jewish culinary basics, bread and pickles. What could be more delightful? 

Another Republican Declares his Independence From George W. Bush!

(What took him so long?)

by

Richard J. Garfunkel

March 1, 2006

What else is new? But he said that he will never vote for GWB again. When will he have that opportunity, as a member of some future parole board? rjg

So many so-called decent people prostituted themselves for low taxes on the super-rich, the end to inheritance taxes, basically affecting and benefiting the super-rich, the exporting of jobs to help their bottom lines, and their own pocket books. In Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s seminal work on FDR, and in his book the “Crisis of the Old Order,” he documents the economic collapse that presaged the Great Depression, driven by a cacophony of greed and the blindness of the laissez-faire driven Harding-Coolidge-Hoover world. Of course, as in that day, the worship of money and power fed the arrogance of social and cultural superiority. In a sense, Sinclair Lewis in his novel “It Can't Happen Here” described how we could even go the way of the European dictators, as they sought a totalitarian cure to the social and economic ills, emanating from the Depression, that caused unbridled civil unrest. In the United States in the late 1920's this attitude of spending, unlimited credit (the growth and the universality of the “installment plan” of buying), the markets being bloated by stocks bought on “margin” (10% down and 90% borrowed) caused this frenzy of unrealistic optimism. Live for today, and let tomorrow be damned. The Europeans who barely recovered from WWI were dragged down by their false hopes that German reparations would support their economies forever. When the credit markets in first Austria and then Germany collapsed and the debt payments ceased, the gravy train of false hope and expectation ran off the tracks So, in the end, the age of dictators came forth: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, the Soviet Union, Poland to a degree as was the Yugoslavian monarchy, and finally Germany and then their new vassal state Austria. They solved their problems through the “iron fist.”  Who was left? England (GB), France, Czechoslovakia, and the Latvian states, along with the neutrals and the Scandinavian mini-states. But the ultimate clash between the dictators and the democracies fulfilled Oswald Spengler's grim prophecy in his book “The Decline of the West.”

More or less the Great Depression, that was the heir to the past World War and the foolish policies that followed, led to the age of dictatorships, the era of bigger, better armaments, the alliances of convenience and philosophy, and the inevitable coming of the 2nd World War. 

Here we are today in the states with a moronic President and his administration of free-spending pinheads. They have turned a surplus driven government into a saturated debtor economy that has divided itself into rich and poor. It has exported jobs; it has tolerated broken borders to allow cheap labor into the country with the resulting gutting of the wages of the average worker. This attitude of benign neglect serves to satiate the needs of the corporate farm, the big restaurant chains, and the over-bloated debt-ridden hospital empire. And in the meanwhile, have our real costs gone down? No! These onerous costs are seen on the local level, where property and sales taxes are stretching the poor and dropping the middle class into lower middle class status. But Federal taxes remain low, and the administration promises to keep them low. He and his cronies’ promises to allow trillions to pass untaxed into the hands of the next generation of his friends, supporters and sycophants. What are the states left with? We continue to be left with more, and more, un-funded mandates from the Federal government, an over-bloated an ineffective educational system, and an out of control Medicaid debt. And how is this debt manifested and where is the money going? Well it is going down the “money pit” in Afghanistan and Iraq! In Afghanistan alone $76 billion is being used to support 19,000 troops. But where is the spending to rehabilitate the country and to wean the peasant folk away from the Taliban? It is non-existent. And what is the result? There is more and more unrest, poverty, hunger and unemployment. The poppy fields abound, the “law and order” of the villages is administered by the Taliban and the people are more and more comfortable with them (The Taliban) then they are with us, or the bureaucrats in Kabul.  Of course how much of that $76 billion is being looted? No one knows. In the same way that no one knows how much is being looted in Iraq. Iraq is a mess. Their oil is not being pumped, the people are being hardened against us and the government (whether our puppet or not) is incapable of unifying the country. It has the possibility of descending into a civil war with our troops caught in the middle.

But what about what is happening in our fair land? Business as usual, what else is new? New Orleans is still a disaster and still unprotected from the next storm season. The bread and circus of Mardi Gras cannot mask their unhealed sores and wounds. Our ports are being turned over to fellow travelers of our enemies and our trade deficits are approaching $900 billion a year. No wonder foreign governments and their companies can buy up America, What else are they going to do with their mountains of dollars? How are the Feds dealing with our debt? Just look and see how they have raised fees, regarding the National Parks, passports, stamps, and et al, over $47 billion. But they don't call these raising taxes. But whom do these fees fall on the most? The middle and lower middle classes! The bloated Homeland Security Department is no less a domestic “money pit” then our foreign policy adventurism. But while we are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are losing influence everywhere else. The problems of Iran, North Korea, Burma, and the rest of the unstable Muslim world haven't gone away. These problems are worse then ever. On top of this the quality of life in America continues to erode for our progeny and the people caught betwixed and between. Not only does the next generation see a threat to their civil liberties, but also this generation sees our private pension and healthcare safety nets in as much trouble as our public entitlements. The Enron's and WorldCom's may be just a foreshadowing of what's to come.

So I'm glad a GOP stalwart finally awakened when he realized that the UAE was not really our buddy, but a trading partner and client of GWB and his family friends. Maybe now he should wake up to the rest of the disaster sponsored by this poorest excuse of a leader!

WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE…Finally a DEVOUT Republican has come to his senses!   There may be hope for others to finally wake up!!!   The BUSH Dynasty has done horrific damage to our country!!!

Arab Port Whineby Irwin N. GraulichMarch 1, 2006Never trust men wearing long white sheets who hate Jews. Burning crosses and boycotting a tiny, democratic state called Israel are actually part of the same cancer. Not because it is Israel, but because “it is!”Now those United Arab Emirates cry babies, who were born with a silver gas nozzle in their mouth, are crying like spoiled little children. They may not get the big US port toy deal. How sad.They sent out the big guns including the Viagra man, Bob Dole. Every man has to make a living, but Bob please. Viagra is one thing; the hard ons in the Middle East are quite another. Secretary of State Albright just does not recognize evil when she sees it, evidence her bar mitzvah-like toastings with Kim Jong Il and her incredible failures in negotiating with that nation. It is no surprise that she has prostituted herself to this oil rich kingdom, attempting to show Congress what a wonderful, safe “John Emirate” she represents.George W. Bush will never get my vote again, but he does not care what the public thinks. This deal is crazy. You want to talk scandal. Watergate and Lewinsky are small potatoes. On Portgate, every time you turn over another rock, more maggots come crawling out.You have the Carlyle Group involved, a company where Bush Sr. was an advisor. They received an $8 billion investment last year from Dubai International Capital. Neal Bush, the president's brother has been in bed with the UAE for quite some time, including getting backing for Ignite!, his educational software company.The only incompetent Bush brother, after being involved with the scandal ridden S & L's of the 80's, has been a guest of the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, where he lectured on education. Has Neil checked the textbooks which speak quite disparagingly about Christians and Jews? That in itself could be part of the reason for their educational failures.Wait, it gets worse. President Bush chose a Dubai Ports World executive, David Sanborn, to head the US Maritime Administration and the Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, was former chairman of CSX Corporation, a company who sold their port operations to Dubai Ports World. Secretary Snow has gone on record to push this latest Dubai Ports World deal by claiming that “12 American agencies have ruled out security concerns.” Hey John, that is what we call a “Snow job” where I come from in Brooklyn.This is nuts. What is going on here? When Jimmy Carter backs your position, as he “lovingly” spoke of President Bush's port decision on CNN's Situation Room, you better be extremely careful. I never thought I would say this but, “Thank God for Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton,” who are looking very good.However, it is the American people who are the heroes on this one. They will not permit such incompetence to coalesce. The government employees including Bush, Cheney, Snow and the various departments who investigated this transaction only see one thing. Could this deal impact the security at six major ports? Of course an educated answer to that question at present is “No.” However, if all one sees is “port security” in this decision, then you have lost your American soul.The United Arab Emirates continues to rip us off with high oil prices, claiming they are “our partners in fighting terrorism and are kindly (sic) allowing us to use their military bases.” What a scam. If not for our planes and ships in the area, Iran would have done the exact same thing to the UAE that Saddam did to Kuwait. Just check out Iran's claims on that country. The UAE should be paying us for saving their pathetic little lives.It was the UAE that served as an operational and financial base for the 9/11 hijackers and 2 of the hijackers were proud natives. Records show that the UAE has been a transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components bound for Iran, North Korea and Libya. How about this little tidbit–only 5 years ago, the United Arab Emirates was one of only three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan.And yet, there are intelligent people in the American administration who actually believe that this Middle Eastern autocracy should be involved with our port operations. What these intelligent fools never ask, but the American people understand, is why is this deal so important to an oil rich nation of greedy rulers? First of all, buying the London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. by the Emirates state-owned Dubai Ports World is no great moneymaker. There are much better ways to invest $6.8 billion, just ask Goldman Sachs.What the President and every government worker down the line have failed to understand is the simple fact that buying access to our ports is part of the humiliation process that is being attempted against America. The Arab and Muslim world absolutely hates us, and the reasons have little to do with Iraq or even Israel.This mature, old world sees America as a young, highly sexual, undisciplined child who needs to be reigned in due to bad values and sexual mores. However, Arab/Muslim children see MTV and Hollywood movies and want to be part of our incredibly successful, exciting, strong world, that is dominated by Western technology. Well, those chic (sic) Sheikh rulers want to show their people that they can control the Americans by buying them, whether it is through the acquisition of part interest in FOX News, or through this port deal.It is also a way of showing that they really have not remained in the dark ages of hi-tech because they are part of American business operations; and ports–well, pretty important. However, what was the last hi-tech device coming out of the Arab/Muslim world–an abacus?Modern sophisticated electrical devices are viewed as successful “weapons” of the West over this mysterious, religiously obsessed, ancient world. These devices are an affront to the fact that this region is nowhere in the technological revolution.Therefore, the best solution is to buy companies that wind up taking over important operations, through which the Arab and Muslim world will get their prestige and honor. It is the only way they can fight the West. Buying General Motors is out of the question because of SEC regulations, thank God. After all, private industry is much wiser than government.Make no mistake about it. This is not a business move. It is predominately an ego driven, military like move. Very sneaky. The United Arab Emirates comes from a world that is technologically retarded, so they purchase big companies to make them feel important and all grown up. However, there is a contradiction that must be worked out in this religious vacuum.Technological innovation is seen as the Western devil's work, yet welcomed. The rationale is that the West can be defeated, in part, through purchasing them…but then you become part of them. And here comes the real danger which they fear most. When Arabs and Muslims actually move to America, they become Americans first…they become one of us.As virtually every Arab and Muslim family I know says, ” Don't bother me with that religious fanaticism crap. I am taking my family to Disneyworld!” That is absolutely Osama's greatest fear.Irwin N. Graulich – is a regular contributor to JewishIndy. He is a well known motivational speaker on morality, ethics, Judaism, religion and political issues. He is President and CEO of a leading corporate communications, marketing and branding company located in New York City. Irwin considers himself a multi-denominational, serious Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jew. He can be reached at irwin.graulich@verizon.net.

MVHS and AB David Class Letter

February 28, 2006

Dear Friends,

Recently I have been corresponding with some AB Davis people I met over the Internet. I first came in contact with Patricia Nash Ballentine regarding the Class of 1955’s 50^th Reunion. I met her and some of her former classmates at their pre-reunion party in Tarrytown last year. This year I became aware of the AB Davis Class of 1956’s website through Patti and Linda Young Shapiro. Linda was the sister of the late Howie Young, who was in our year, but passed away in 1988. He had left the MV school system to go to Horace Mann. I knew him there in 1959.

Since I do not have your e-mail addresses, I though I would share with you some memories of Mount Vernon that I had just written, and a piece from Doug Garr, MVHS, Class of 1967 and a “Share a Memory” entry from the AB Davis 1956 website- www.abdavisreuinion1956.com . I thoroughly enjoyed going through the website looking for names I knew and siblings of some of our own classmates. I recommend it for all of you to take a look when you have the time.

Meanwhile I will start working on the next Jon Breen Memorial Scholarship Essay contest in the next month or so. We have yet to pick the topic or to schedule my yearly lecture. If you would like to be on my e-mail list and have quicker access to what is happening with regards to our future reunion, please e-mail me at rjg727@optonline.net.

Every once in a while some interesting things come my way. It would be nice if we could put together a similar website, and therefore have the ability to have all of us contribute our own memories, histories, and thoughts on the passing scene.

A Funeral in Scarsdale

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

February 25, 2006

Today was Walter Grossman's funeral at Shaari Tikyah in Scarsdale. This synagogue has combined the Mount Vernon congregations of Temple Emanuel that was founded in 1916, which had merged with the Jewish Center that was founded in 1927, when it then became the Emanuel Jewish Center and the Genesis Hebrew Center of Tuckahoe that was founded in 1936. Warren and I went to the 12 o’clock noon service. Walter Grossman was an integral part of the history and the every day workings of both the Emmanuel congregation and his new home at Shaari Tikyah. Over the past decades Walter had attended almost every 7:00 am minion. Only with his recent health problems had he cut down his attendance to Shabot services. In the words of the Rabbi, Walter was always incredible asset to the synagogue and will be sorely missed. He was a real family man and a mensch in the strictest sense of the word. As a devoted father, he was involved in three core activities and interests; his family, his synagogue and his belief and efforts for charity.

Linda and I made a shiva call this afternoon to the Grossman home in New Rochelle, and I was able to re-connect with some of the long-lost memories of a wonderful childhood. Just to see some of the old photographs, that reflected and recalled our early experiences we had together, thrust me back in time, for a short but pleasant moment.

Walter Grossman, who was born in NYC in 1913 and had graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, had come to Mount Vernon in 1950. A letter was read from Isador Leinwand, who was the then president of Emanuel, officially welcoming the Grossman's to the synagogue. His wife Sylvia, whom he had married in 1939, predeceased Walter in 1994. Walter and Sylvia had three children; Susan, AB Davis Class of 1959 (my sister Kaaren was in the Class of 1959 also), Joel, Class of 1963, and Marsha, Class of 1967. Susan passed away last year following her husband's death five years earlier. They had three children. Marsha and her husband Warren Sherman have two grown children and Joel and his wife Susan have also two grown children. Walter leaves seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren. 

I knew Walter and Sylvia from their earliest days in Mount Vernon when I was a young neighborhood boy. The Grossman's lived four houses up Magnolia Avenue from my house at 500 East Prospect Avenue. Joel and I went through grammar school, first at Wilson, then at Holmes. We both went on to Traphagen Jr. High School and then on to AB Davis. We went to school almost every day together in those years. Both Sylvia and my mother Peggy (who just celebrated her 98th birthday), would make sure that there was always a newly baked upside down pound cake ready for us. We usually consumed about five or more of them a week. That's why we both grew big and strong and we were able to metabolize those calories by being involved daily in sports. One of my clearest memories of the Grossman kitchen was always listening to the Arthur Godfrey morning radio program when I stopped by in the morning on our way to school. I didn’t know much about the “Old Redhead” in those days, but he had pleasant voice and covered social events in a congenial way. Joel and I did everything together and remained close friends through college and the beginning years of our marriage.

When Linda and I were first married, in July of 1969, we bought our bedroom set from Walter Grossman's store, Madison-Walters. Over the years, when I was driving near or on Magnolia Avenue, I invariably stopped by to visit the Grossman's. They were able to meet my children when they were growing up and were always as pleasant as they were when I was a young boy visiting. When I was a senior at Boston University they brought Marsha up to Boston to look at schools and they took me out for a great and memorable dinner at the General Glover's Inn up in past Lynn off rte 93. Over the years, whenever I would stop by their house at 87 Magnolia, the Grossman’s would invariably remind me of that costly dinner and the long meandering trip from Boston up to Swampscott. (By the way Linda, the kids and I got there once again before I believe it closed and had a great time with its legendary roast beef and popovers.)

Walter was a pillar of the Jewish Community of Mount Vernon, and his faith in his family and the importance of charity were solid to the end. His life and passing reflect the closing of another important chapter in the saga of the once vibrant and unequalled Jewish community of Mount Vernon. His life, and how he lived it, should be an important lesson to all of us who knew Walter, especially regarding the high level of dedication that he set for himself and achieved.   

Richard J. Garfunkel

Johnny’s Pizza, West Lincoln Avenue and the MacArthur Circle

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

February 23, 2006

There are a lot of complaints in Johnny’s Pizzeria about the new driving circle at the intersection of Lincoln and Gramatan Avenues. That driving circle was named MacArthur Circle at one time, I assume after the famous General Douglas MacArthur, the Liberator of the Philippines. The circle had been there long before the fall of Corregidor in the spring of 1942 and for sure before General MacAthur accepted the surrender of the Japanese on board the great 16” Iowa Class battleship the Missouri on September 2, 1945, VJ Day, in Tokyo Harbor. Also it was sort of strange to have a circle named for General MacArthur and have a statue of a soldier from the Spanish-American War. All former Hilltoppers know there is a statue of Theodore Roosevelt reclining half way up the steps of venerable AB Davis (now) Middle School. It doesn’t take being an historian to know that Teddy Roosevelt was a hero of that long ago conflict that was precipitated by the sinking of the Battle cruiser Maine in Havana Harbor and William Randolph Hearst’s demand for satisfaction against the Spaniards that controlled Cuba for four hundred years. The famous Frederic Remington, Hearst’s commissioned and intrepid artist, it is said, told Hearst, “There is no war in Cuba” and Hearst replied, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”  Of course much of that was chronicled in Citizen Kane, with Orson Welles, playing Kane making the same claim.

There was another connection with the Spanish-American War with the first General MacArthur. General Douglas MacArthur’s father Arthur, the boy Major and hero of Missionary Ridge in the Civil War, was a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor for that action, a Major of Volunteers in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, a Lt. General, and was later Governor-General of the those same islands. His son Douglas, after graduating number one in his class at West Point, with the highest grades since Robert E. Lee, was billeted there during the three-year Filipino Insurrection that was led by the famous rebel Emilio Aquinaldo.

Of course the United States fought one of its most famous naval battles in Manila Bay. Commodore George Dewey, on May 1, 1898, (47 years and one day before my birthday) addressed the Captain of his flagship Olympia, Charles V. Gridley, which is currently preserved and docked as a naval museum in Philadelphia, and commanded, “You may fire when ready, Gridley” upon the Spanish Fleet. Of course marksmanship wasn’t like it is today with our laser controlled smart bombs and cruise missiles, and Dewey’s Pacific Fleet made good on only about 120 hits out of over 8000 shells that were expended. But that gunnery was enough to rout the Spaniard’s attempt to make the open sea. We suffered only one naval casualty in the battle and the Spanish navy lost over 300 sailors.

By the way, Theodore Roosevelt happened to be the Assistant Secretary of the Navy before his legendary charge up San Juan Hill. While the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. John D. Long took the day off; TR was left in charge of the Navy department for the day. He cabled Commodore Dewey in Hong Kong to assemble his fleet, be fully coaled and be ready for an imminent declaration of war. If that came about, he was to immediately block the Spanish Fleet from leaving the Asiatic Coast and then sail to the Philippines. Of course, Richard Harding Davis, the famous war correspondent for the New York Herald, wrote much of the early history of this war in his reports from the front for Harper’s and Hearst’s New York Journal. The description of this conflict, as “The Splendid Little War,” was attributed to Secretary of State John Hay, who in an earlier time was the one of Abraham Lincoln’s personal and private secretaries. With his colleague John Nicolay they authored the definitive and authorized 10-volume biography of The Great Emancipator. Colonel Roosevelt, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for this action, did charge up San Juan Hill, but most of his men walked, because almost all of their horses were left behind. The Spanish resistance was stiff, and their German smokeless powder Mauser rifles were tough to locate, and were quite accurate. But the Rough Rider’s heroism carried the day. Interestingly only two father and son combinations in our history were decorated with the Medal of Honor, the Roosevelt’s and the MacArthur’s.

Meanwhile, Johnny’s a Mount Vernon culinary landmark with its famous, delicious and expensive pizza (a six-slice mushroom, sausage and cheese is about $16) now is located a block up West Lincoln Avenue on one’s way to Yannantuano’s Funeral Home. Reasonably not every one who goes up West Lincoln is heading there, and for sure not every one going there is in position to enjoy the famous thin crust of Johnny’s pies. But the big conversation at Johnny’s these days is the reconstruction of the traffic circle at the confluence of Gramatan and Lincoln Avenues, and the many detours. In fact it is almost impossible to get West Lincoln unless one is an old veteran of Mount Vernon back roads.

Except for the last sixteen years, Johnny’s was always not there. For decades it was on Gramatan Avenue and before that it was a small hole in the wall on the corner of Third Street and Fourth Avenue. In 1961 or so, I never had the pleasure of eating pizza. For some strange reason my parents looked down at that legendary cuisine, and other then my mother’s lasagna and veal parmigian we never went out to an Italian restaurant and for sure a pizzeria. My more cosmopolitan friends had already been indulging in this forbidden fruit on a daily basis. So one day when we (Warren Adis, Charles Columbus, Jon Breen and I) were traveling west on Third Street with Warren Adis driving, he pulled over to the side of the street and said let’s stop for a “slice.” I said, “Are you crazy, I don’t eat that stuff!” Well they convinced me that I would not drop dead from it, so I acquiesced. The price was 15 cents per slice, (MAD Magazine “cheap”) it was damn good, and that was my start on the road to being a pizza lover. Not long after that wonderful gastronomic experience, my pizza eating career started in earnest at Albanese’s, the unofficial AB Davis watering hole in Eastchester and I never looked back. I never knew the name of that long-gone vest pocket Third Street joint, but today when I told this story to the heir to the Johnny’s Pizza fortune, he told me that it was his father’s place! Small world we live in. ‘

PS: I was already corrected, the play on the corner of 4^th and 3^rd was HI-FI Pizza. The readership out there is still quite bright. rjg

Letter to the Editor and to Rush Limbaugh, conservative blowhard

February 22, 2006 

To: Rush Limbaugh

Just wanted to send you this letter that I have addressed to our local newspaper. I have just listened to your Wednesday afternoon program on February 22, 2006. Your comparisons, regarding the Longshoreman Union contributions to Democrats is pretty laughable. Big business and their friends contribute millions to GOP lawmakers. The amount of money that Abramoff spread around makes the Union contributions look like “chump change.” Your rationalization regarding the Dubai situation is also laughable. It is one thing to have diplomatic and trade relationships, but to have, at this period of time, the UAE owning and controlling six key American ports is ridiculous. Your brain-dead President threatens a veto yesterday, and today he admits that he is clueless about the whole deal. But his handlers want the deal and he is the good soldier doing his duty. It will be pretty funny that when your President is facing a 98-2 vote in the Senate and a 425-10 vote in the House, he will exercise his first veto. This so-called compassionate conservative hasn’t met a pork-barrel bill from this spendthrift give-away Congress that he didn’t adore. He loves inheritance tax giveaways to the super rich. But the record shows that not one family farm or small business was lost to inheritance taxes. But Georgy Boy wants to make sure that his well-healed friends will walk away with trillions while our soldiers are under-armed and under-protected.

But your boy was really cool this week when he sauntered into Golden, Colorado and found out that he was at odds with his home budgeters, who in their brilliance slashed his host’s budget by millions and caused the lay-offs of 32 key people. But, lo and behold, when he found out that he was heading out to do his scripted alternate fuel speech, he found $5 million. Nice pay-off? What principle, what typical hypocrisy?

Now even the usual knee-jerk GOP sycophants, in and out of Congress, are starting to abandon his ship of state. When honest Congressmen and women start to probe the connections between Bush cabinet people and their friends with Dubai and this company the “fur will fly.” Bush and his clique of greed merchant friends have compromised the security of the United States at home and abroad. We are financially threatened by reckless spending, porous borders threaten us, and we are threatened by a trade deficit that is out of hand and trillions of bonded debt in the hands of the Japanese and Chinese. We are threatened by a social disaster in New Orleans. We are threatened by an ongoing black hole swallowing up our men and money in Iraq. We are threatened by dependence on foreign oil. We are threatened by a widening disparity between rich and poor. We are threatened by mandates that are not sensibly funded and tax cuts to the most well off.

In other words it is not a real problem of philosophy or politics, it is a problem of mismanagement, and this pretender from Crawford is the king of mismanagement. If the Democrats take one House in November, their hearings will blow the top off Washington. If they take two Houses, he’ll be impeached.

(See letter below)

This letter will be in the Journal News-

February 22, 2005

To Rush Limbaugh:

The ABCD’s of the Bush Administration!

Today we are facing the ABCD’s of the Bush Administration: Arrogance, Bankruptcy, Corruption and Dubai. The arrogance of the Bush Administration has led us deeper into the morass and “money pit” of Iraq, with our “go it alone” foreign policy, the hypocrisy regarding the “outing” of Valerie Plame, and our disregard of the Bill of Rights. We are drifting towards bankruptcy with our record budget and trade deficits and the administration’s tax giveaways to the super rich. The corruption regarding key contracts in Iraq, the squandering of billions by FEMA, along with the Jack Abramoff and the Indian Casino scandals will probably expose “dirty money” connections right up to the White House. The latest piece of this alphabet soup acronym is Dubai and Bush’s foolish and dangerous support regarding the United Arab Emirates’s effort to take control of the running of six of our key ports. This Administration’s record of cronyism, its failures in New Orleans and the Gulf regarding preparation and recovery, and our crisis with energy and its supply, add up to an ongoing managerial and governmental record of blunder and disaster. We are currently stuck with three more years of the Bush Administration and its long era of mismanagement and abuse of power. Only a change in Washington, coming with the elections this fall, can bring about the proper oversight, investigation and “checks and balances” to help right our ship of state.

Richard J. Garfunkel

Tarrytown, NY 10591

Mount Vernon on a Clear Cold Winter Day

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

February 19, 2006

Saturday I played in my regular tennis game in the bubble over the municipal courts at Memorial Field. I had been playing there for a number of years now as our game meandered down from the courts at Harbor Island, Mamaroneck. It was a cold, dark, and dank day, and though I thought I would take some photos of my old home town, a snow squall erupted with a sudden sense of ferocity and it convinced me that discretion was the better part of valor and I would therefore head home.

Today, I played in Yonkers, and though the day was still pretty chilly the light and air was pristine. Since I had thoughts about looking for some fabric in Mount Vernon I decided to take a drive around my old haunts.

After getting back to Tuckahoe Road, I found the New York State Thruway south entrance and in short order I was exiting at Mile Square Road and Central Avenue and heading east on the Cross County Parkway to Mount Vernon’s first exit at Fleetwood Avenue. Once off the parkway I headed over to W. Grand, North Terrace and North High Streets. I had never been on N. High Street and I had remembered that my friend Mike Rosenblum mentioned that it was near his boyhood home. I also knew that I would like to find the old Charles Nichols Junior High School. I had never really had seen Nichols except from the AB Davis’s ball field. I found Nichols easily and was pretty amazed on how impressive it was as a building. Funny that I had never seen it before with all the times I had been in and around Davis and Gramatan Avenue. After taking a few pictures I headed over to West Lincoln and onto Gramatan Avenue.

The City of Mount Vernon is rebuilding the old circle that sat upon the intersection of Gramatan and Lincoln. Once called the MacArthur Circle, it featured a large statue of a soldier from the Spanish-American War. It’s really an incredible engineering effort. There had been a circle there when we went to high school in the early 1960’s and there is evidence of it in an old post card I have showing Hartley Park and the Columbus School. I ventured over to the Columbus School, built in 1908, and took pictures of the now re-located monument and the unfinished work on the new circle.

In 1994 I had photographed the monument when it was in its then new location on the grounds of Hartley Park. Of course then, across the street from that corner of the park, was a little shopping area where the locally famous Knopf’s Delicatessen had once existed. In fact, after Mr. Knopf died, and his deli counter men Fred and Ted decided to retire, our old 1963 classmate Mike Viggiano took it over. Well not only is Knopf’s gone, but the whole row of stores burned down a few years ago. The wrecker’s ball has reduced the remains to a pile of rubble. Oh how I can still remember those great roast beef wedges inundated with coleslaw and smothered with Russian dressing for 75 cents. I can still conjure up their taste.

I wanted next to go over to Prospect Avenue and my old homestead, so facing south on Gramatan, I drove to Sidney, made a left and headed over to Archer Avenue where I made a right turn. Mount Vernon is a city of one-way streets. Archer was a good cut through to Prospect and since I knew someone who lived on Archer I was happy to go down that old street and take some pictures. Its always fun passing old homes and expecting someone you once knew to pop out and say hello. No such luck today.

Once on Prospect I drove up and down its sloping curves to my old red brick home at number 500. I lived there from 1945 until about 1966, when my parents moved out while I was in college. I never really had a chance to say a proper goodbye. When I came home they were gone and many memories were carted away by the Salvation Army trucks. But I’ve been back on that street, countless times. So it was up and down Sycamore, where I took some more pictures, of the Perleman, O’Hara and Bromley homes, and then I made may way across Lincoln to Sheridan and down to the old Traphagen Junior High School. The old school was replaced by a section of the Cross County Parkway and a new school was erected many years ago at the foot of old Ehrbar and Ellwood Avenues. I drove into the old parking lot and then parked on where our old “no-longer there” basketball courts used to be located. The old retaining wall was still there holding up the backyards of the houses that faced Sheridan. The fence on the top of the wall and the shrubs are still there that used to screen off the noise and the continuous basketball action that dominated that little square macadam for decades. I was there many times with the likes of John van Bargen, Bob Trupin, Make Ansbro, Ken Ackerman, Richie Shapiro, Jack Bromley, Warren Adis, Bobby Danetz, Charlie Columbus, Cary Fields, Barry Berkule, Mal Gissen, Ronnie Rothstein, Mickey Fuchs, and many others. There were some great games as the heyday of Jewish Mount Vernon basketball disappeared from view. There are only now ghostly shadows of a youth that has been lived and the noiseless echoes of times past.

But of course the contingents from AB Davis High School never produced the countless stars like the McCray and Williams Brothers, Earl Tatum, Bill Pleas, and the newest sensation Ben Gordon.

Well another day of memories passed into the portals of history. As Thomas Wolfe said, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” ‘Tis true, it is never really the same. The streets, houses and trees sort of look the familiar. They age a bit differently, but, all in all, it’s the people that come and go that really count. What is life really to us but people? There was loneliness in my car. It was the stark reality that time has passed and that the events of life won’t be repeated. We pass through once, and as we do we come into contact with all sorts of people and happenstance. But like my many trips back to the memories of times past a short drive home brought me back to the reality of today.