Memoir

Richard Keller Simon

Final version, March 2005

Summer 1946 with my parents Rhoda and Si

Tookany Park, near Philadelphia

That’s me over there in the picture, in the dark pants, standing next to Noah. It’s May 2003 and we’re on the Santa Barbara beach.

A few months later

WITH KATHY

Summer

2003

Photo by Bob Edmondson and taken in Bob and Susan Edmondson’s home in Walnut Creek California

I’ve thought about many things in the course of writing this memoir—how to make it interesting, of course, what to include, elaborate on, hint at obliquely, or leave out altogether. I hunted for images on the World Wide Web that made sense to include, and often was surprised at what I could locate. That has influenced the shape of this memoir because much of that material was important for many people besides myself. In the process, I figured out that a memoir like this had to find a balance between the ways I am typical of my generation and the ways I am unique.

I hope you find both aspects of this memoir interesting.

Here I am with Max Simon in September 2003. Max is a few weeks old, and the son of Paul Simon (my brother) and Bonney Lynch and he lives with them in Berkeley California.

Prelude

The average life expectancy for an American male is something like 77 or 78 years, so I figure at best I have contributed 18 years for you guys to divide up as best you can. Maybe one of you can live to 96 on my account, or two of you to 87, or if you want to, 18 of you can each have a year on me.

But regardless, I do wish that all of you will be able to die peacefully at the age of 95, quietly and painlessly in bed, surrounded by adoring family and friends. I’m sorry I missed this goal.

Many people I admired lived a lot shorter than that, even a lot shorter than me. For starters, among the people whose work I admired and used to teach: the novelist Jane Austen (age 41), the novelist Nathanael West (age 37), the painter Reginald Marsh (age 56), the actor Jules (John) Garfield (age 39), not to mention the usual suspects like Mozart. I also lived a lot longer than some of my friends and family—my brother Bill’s wife Cindy (age 43), my college friend Carl Cohen (age 28), my college friend Susan Gadiel (age 42 or so), my…well, you get the idea. This isn’t really a contest. But I take some consolation in not being alone here

Here is the grave of Jane Austen, and this is what is inscribed upon it.

In Memory of JANE AUSTEN, younger daughter of the late Rev. GEORGE AUSTEN, formerly rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this life on the 18th of July 1817, aged 41, after a long illness supported with the patience and hopes of a Christian. The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmth and love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection. They know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm thought humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith, and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her REDEEMER.

Not bad huh? I used to read this out loud to my students in one of my Jane Austen lectures, and point out that none of us was likely to get such an inscription. The fact that she was a novelist is not mentioned on the grave at all, which is in Winchester Cathedral in case you’d like to take a look.

I want my ashes scattered so I am not in the market for such a memorial you understand. Yes, I admit it, with some vanity, I’d like to have had a Ben and Jerry Ice Cream flavor named after me, something in the manner of Cherry Garcia or Wavy Gravy. Kathy claims I can count Chubby Hubby, but that seems more generic of my sex and generation. I’d also liked to have been a question on Jeopardy, or had a star in some walk of fame somewhere. These are I know silly things and what counts is that you remember me in some capacity from time to time. It’s a lot more meaningful.

I wrote the following memoir following my diagnosis with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. I’d like to be remembered for my life and not for my death, so I have only written about mesothelioma at the very end. Meanwhile I would like to thank everyone who has played an important part in my life, named or not named in the memoir that follows. I have always felt loved. Thank you.

This is the view outside our home at 815 Skyline Drive in San Luis Obispo. I walked Skyline once or twice a day in the spring of 2003, as I recovered from surgery. The neighbors often watched my progress. Sometimes I wanted to dress up as the Grim Reaper but Kathy said, Bad Idea.

Top of hill looking down

Me at top of Hill

I also presented the faculty awards in June for the College of Liberal Arts. I was pleased to be able to do this.

TEACHING October 13 2003

These photos of me teaching English 350 were taken by my old friend Richard Doctoroff

Doing My Gig In a Class in the Modern Novel

Asking a Question

Teaching January 2004: Large Lecture

Humanities 320

These photos of me teaching Humanities 320 taken by my old friend Patricia Bauer-Slate

In medias res

I know that you can judge a life by how it is lived, and not by how long it may last. I would have liked mine to have lasted a lot longer, but it seems appropriate here to write about who I was in the time I had. I am standing with Kathy and Noah in front of a real San Luis Obispo sunset. There is no fancy video manipulation involved here, just a gorgeous moment in our neighborhood. It was taken when Noah was a junior in high school.

We came to San Luis Obispo in 1988, when I was hired to teach at California Polytechnic State University (or Cal Poly). Noah was five and a half. Kathy set up a private practice as a clinical psychologist in town. We had a fine life here together. Kathy’s private practice flourished, I rose through the ranks at Cal Poly, became a full professor in my turn, and the chair of a small humanities program, and Noah went to school, played baseball, soccer, and basketball after school, all the usual small town kid stuff. When we struggled, it was with aspects of the small town mind-set. We had, for example, to make up a religion so Noah could stay in the Cub Scouts. (Don’t ask.) Noah solved some of this problem by taking his senior year of high school as an AFS exchange student in New Zealand.

On Pismo Beach shortly before we moved here and were just looking the place over. This became one of my favorite places in the area, especially during low tide south of the pier. I loved jogging on the beach. Photo from early 1988.

When I first started teaching in the late 1960s, I used to ask my students to write out their philosophy of life as a paper assignment. My goal was to design an assignment that my students would actually keep, after the class was over, and it actually was a very successful paper topic. When pushed, 18 and 19 year olds do a decent job on a topic like this. I would quote Socrates’ line to them when explaining what I wanted, that an unexamined life was not worth living.

So what’s to examine? From the perspective of a 60 year old, the assignment seems much harder and much easier at the same time.

I have tried to balance the demands of career and family as best I could, loved and been loved in turn by Kathy, worked with her to raise Noah as best we could. I have tried to challenge and inspire students, to write academic books and articles that were meaningful and important, and to make a contribution in the world. I have been sustained by my sense of humor, and by a healthy skepticism to almost everything in that larger world. I mean really, how can you take most of it seriously?

I’ll start with my career as an academic. I have almost always loved being a teacher. Some of the other stuff that has come along with it has been quite frustrating from time to time, given the nature of universities, but the actual teaching part has been quite rewarding. My goal has always been to have a meaningful impact on the ways my students have thought about themselves and about the world. It’s hard to know exactly how successful I have been but I have been gratified when students have thanked me, or recommended that their friends take classes from me. I certainly also have felt I had the respect of my peers, who awarded me the Cal Poly distinguished teaching award in 1995.

This photo of me in my University of Texas office was taken by my brother Paul while he was a student in the RTF program, and enrolled in a photography class. Date is probably the early 1980s.

My favorite moments in my life as a teacher have been standing in front of a large lecture class full of students and trying to hold the attention of as many of them as I could. Over the course of many years of trial and error, I pretty much figured out how to do this, by always connecting what I am teaching to something that the students already care about. This has led me to teaching movies and television programs, and to understanding the psychological interests of 18-25 year olds. No magic is involved.

During my teaching time at Cal Poly, the largest lecture hall on campus held 220 people, and was nicely configured in a semi-circle that rose sharply from the podium. I almost always felt empowered in that room, especially with the ability to project interesting visuals behind me on a large screen, and especially at moments when I was able to hold almost everyone’s attention. It was my favorite place on the Cal Poly campus.

I’ve taught in a number of very different colleges and universities over the course of my teaching career, and each has had a different kind of student. I started out in the late 1960s, at Northern Michigan University and Western Michigan University, then got a PhD at Stanford where I also taught as a teaching assistant, then went on to the University of California at San Diego, the University of Texas at Austin, and California Poly in San Luis Obispo California. I also taught briefly at a community college in British Columbia. My major trauma in all of this was being denied tenure at Texas in 1985, which Kathy does remind me, I may have brought on myself by teaching pornography in classes on popular culture. She is sure that some parents much have complained to the dean.

What was I trying to prove? That I would act at Texas the same way I would act anywhere else. That universities are places where you examine the difficult materials, and that free inquiry is what an education is all about. Yes and as a result I was unemployed for two years in Austin, but (the silver lining) I got to be Noah’s primary parent and primary care giver from the time he was 3 to the time he was 5 and a half.

I loved to collect and wear hats. My goal was to have enough so that I could wear a different hat every teaching day. Classes at Cal Poly met 4 times a week for 10 weeks, so that meant 40 hats. I never got up quite that high, but I came close.

I’ve also loved writing about literature and I have increasingly loved my major research project into the ways in which popular culture has been critiqued and understood. I’m really sorry that I leave it incomplete.

What I have most loved as a scholar is that moment when I figured out something that no one else had figured out before me. When I wrote my first book, The Labyrinth of the Comic, for example, I was working through George Meredith’s 19^th century novel The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and noticed that his complex plot was an almost perfect copy of the complex plot of Henry Fielding’s 18^th century novel Tom Jones. I felt at that moment that I was in George Meredith’s mind, unlocking a puzzle that no one else had understood before, and it was truly gratifying.

Following the publication of my second book, Trash Culture, I was interviewed in 2000 by a number of radio stations, which was a lot of fun. Kathy and I drove to LA and San Diego and I was interviewed on call in talk show in both cities, and later, by phone, I did the same with a station in Illinois, but nothing came close to the hour I was interviewed by a national radio hook up in Australia, and I got to talk to all manner of Australians. That really was a high. My 15 minutes of fame included getting a review in the New York Times, but regrettably, the reviewer really hated my book.

CHINESE TRANSLATION

In 1995 I won Cal Poly’s distinguished teaching award, attended the graduation in cap and gown (borrowed), and was called to the podium by the University president. Cal Poly students throw tortillas during the graduation exercises so there was kind of a zany but festive mood in the football stadium. I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

I’ve had more than 15 minutes of fame: In 1978, following a series of public lectures I have at the University of Toronto, arranged by my old Stanford friend Mark Freiman, I was filmed by NBC News giving a lecture on advertising at UC San Diego, and then featured on a program called Weekend, which came on once a month in the Saturday Night Live time slot late on Saturday night. I was on for at least 15 minutes (after midnight of course) and did get some fan mail from around the country.

Then there was the crazy moment in 1970 when the national press wrote up the Santa Claus, Miss America, Superman film that I was making with a group of my undergrad students at Western Michigan University, and made me out to be a deranged drug dealer (all of this is described in greater detail in the part of this memoir devoted to my teaching experiences at Northern and Western Michigan Universities, 1968-1971.

Additional materials about my career as a teacher is on a separate document, Dick’s teaching.

MEETING AND MARRYING

KATHY WADDELL

The most significant single event in my adult life was meeting and marrying Kathy Waddell. She came to a lecture I was giving at Stanford in early 1973 on themes in rock ‘n’ roll, and asked if I would speak to the prisoners of war she was working with in a ward of the local Veterans Administration hospital. They had just returned from captivity in Vietnam. I said no. The POWS were pilots who had bombed women and children, but…to Kathy’s credit she didn’t give up on me, asked to borrow books I had used for my lecture, and pretty soon we were dating. By the time I had melted, and decided not to be such a hard ass, Kathy had been moved to a different project in the VA and was no longer dealing with the POWS. So much for the romantic start.

This was the photo we used for our wedding invitation in August of 1974.

And a really great life with Kathy followed from that moment for which I have always been very grateful. Thank you Babe.

Crystal Lake Michigan 1977, with our schnauzer Muff

Philadelphia 1987 about to go to a high school reunion

In Jasper Indiana 1987 about to go to Kathy’s 25^th high school reunion. We won the prize for being the best dancers. Kathy’s mom Rosie is in the distance.

BIRTH OF NOAH

The second most important single event in my adult life was the birth of our son Noah on November 20, 1982, in Austin Texas. I stood in the delivery room, sometimes quite scared because Kathy was screaming louder than I had ever heard her scream. She got through it pretty well, but not unscathed. Our friend Mitzi was the nurse in the delivery room and the doctor handed Noah to Mitzi who must have cleaned him up a bit and wrapped him, and than handed him to me. Jeez. I wasn’t prepared for the moment because Noah, aged 2 minutes, looked calmly at me with a look of intense concentration, like a little adult.

I knew we were in for an interesting time of it and I remember telling Kathy a short time later that our son was going to be curious, intense, and stubborn. All these predictions came true, but that’s a much longer story. After Noah’s birth I remember going to teach a class at the University of Texas and telling my students I had just become a father. I got a standing ovation, which, naturally, I loved.

And so I became a father, and there were constant surprises starting back then in 1982. Noah was a sweet and charming little tyke as the photos will naturally show, but also demanding. Just figuring out how to be a father was something that proved to be difficult in itself.

I’m skipping a lot here, but I do want to write about being a father. My own dad, once I got out of high school and he started to treat me like an adult, was a source of constant strength and support to me—from the time I was 18 to the time he lost it in the haze of the dementia caused by Parkinson’s. But by then I was past 50, so I really had the benefit of a good father for a long time.

I’m really sorry I won’t be able to be supportive in that way to Noah through his adult life. When things were bad my dad was comforting, and when things were good my dad was celebratory. I could write out some comforting and some celebratory things here for Noah to read, depending on the circumstances, but it seems kind of artificial. I love you Noah.

I’m really sorry I won’t be around to help out, to pat you on the back, to loan you the money to help buy your first house, to congratulate you on getting married or having children, or a success in your career, whatever. Hug from the past.

Noah drew this for Late Father’s Day 1995. “My Father chooses to read a book even if other things are going on around him June 1995.

But maybe it’s time to start at the beginning…

Starting Out in the 1940s

I was born on November 19 1944, during the last year of World War II, and lived with my mother and father, and later my brother Bill (born 1947) in the Northcliffe Apartments on north Broad Street above Stenton Ave in Philadelphia. It was a 3 story sandy brick building and we lived on the front end of the top floor, overlooking Broad Street. (The building no longer stands.) We moved out in 1950.

My parents, Rhoda and Si, pose here on the long narrow balcony outside our apartment shortly before I was born. I look at least 6 months old in the other picture, which was taken on the grounds of the Jewish Hospital at Broad and Olney—the nearest park-like area to our apartment.

Location of the Northcliffe Apartment House

Dick

Ration Stamps used during WWII

There was a lot going on in the larger world the week I was born. The November 20, 1944 issue of Life Magazine, for example, reported the election of Franklin Roosevelt to his fourth term as president, and Harry Truman as his vice president, and included detailed accounts of how the British were only partially successfully defending London against German bombs and missiles.

Map of London Blitz

Advertisement in Life Magazine November 20,1944

More ads from Life Magazine November 20 1944

Here I am with my mother, and my grandmother, Hermina during the Spring and Summer of 1945.

The Atomic Bomb explodes over Hiroshima August 1945

August 1945 V J Day in New York. World War II comes to an end.

I was 9 months old.

My earliest memories? My Dad singing me two songs more often than any other.

BUTTON UP YOUR OVERCOAT

Button up your overcoat,

When the wind is free,

Take good care of yourself,

You belong to me!

Eat an apple every day,

Get to bed by three,

Oh, take good care of yourself,

You belong to me!

Be careful crossing streets, ooh-ooh,

Cut out sweets, ooh-ooh,

Lay off meat, ooh-ooh,

You'll get a pain and ruin your tum-tum!

Wear your flannel underwear,

When you climb a tree,

Oh, take good care of yourself,

You belong to me!

Button up your overcoat,

When the wind is free,

Oh, take good care of yourself,

You belong to me!

Boop-boop-a-doop!

STARDUST

Sometimes I wonder why I spend

The lonely nights

Dreaming of a song

That melody haunts my reverie

And I am once again with you

When our love was new

And each kiss an inspiration

Ah, but that was long ago

Now my consolation

Is in the stardust of a song

These songs, for my whole life, have played quietly in the background.

Harry Truman beat Dewey for the Presidency in 1948 but I was not paying attention.

I was playing with tinker toys and Lincoln logs and trying to figure out how to play with my kid brother. I think I have a xylophone stick here.

What do I remember from the 1940s? Not too much.

Walking with my mother down Broad Street to the stores around Broad and Olney, since my Dad had the car for work; playing with the other children who lived on my floor of the apartment house, or next door; my brother Bill, coming home from the hospital when I was almost three, and very considerately presenting me with a printing set; the day my tricycle was stolen, by neighbors across the street; the grumpy building superintendent of the apartment house, whom I tried to avoid; going to Kindergarten at the Pennell School, where my Mom and I were frequently late; and the fun of learning to tell the difference between Chevrolets, Desotos, Studebakers, and Pontiacs. There were a lot of used car lots on our block and my early education in the emblems on the front of cars was a natural.

This is what the late 40s actually looked like to me.

47 Chevy	47 Buick	47 Cadillac
49 Ford	47 Packard	49 Chrysler
1950 Studebaker	50 Dodge	50 Packard

So: My education begins here, to learn how to name all the cars as we walked by, and since I must have been, maybe 3 feet tall, I had a lot of close up views of front ends. My specialty was hood ornaments and insignias and in the late forties cars had fantastic hood ornaments.

But my first real love was the Philadelphia streetcar, shown here in what I hope you will immediately see as its full glory. These were utterly fantastic contraptions, designed and built in the early 1920s and by the time I started paying attention to them in the late 1940s, already equipment that had seen better days.

My first career goal was to be a trolley car conductor. When other kids dreamed of fire engines, I knew better. And as you look over these photographs of actual classic Philadelphia streetcars, I’d like you to imagine the wonders of these machines.

For one thing, they didn’t turn around, but had controls at both ends. When the trolley got to the end of the line (and Mom and I always waited for the 26 at the end of its line, at Old York Road and Chelten Avenue, just a short walk from the apartment house), the conductor took his control levers –I remember two or three wonderful wooden handles—and walked to the other end of the streetcar. His other task was even more impressive. Going outside, pulling the high metal rod down that connected to the electric cable in the street at one end of the car, and then releasing the metal rod at the other end. Bus rides were nothing compared to all this action. And given the fact that the conductor never had to steer the trolley, just make it go faster or slower, and yank on controls that opened the front door or the side door, this didn’t look too difficult. I loved riding in these trolleys, and often Mom and I would hang around just to watch the conductor change from one end to the other. Many seats, as I recall, could be yanked around –the backs were moveable—so they always faced forward.

Ok, so there was eventually some misguided progress and these lovely trolleys were replaced by newer and sleeker trolleys that did have a front and a back, and sometimes by busses.

These trolleys were ok, but nothing like the ones I loved.

KID LIFE IN THE 1940s

But I don’t remember much else. So I asked my Mom to supply biographical information about my life before age 6. This is what she writes. I was called Dickie in these early years.

11/19/44 at Abington Hospital. 14 day stay was standard. By the 10^th day we were allowed to dangle our legs over the side of the bed and totter about on the 11^th day. And so of course we had to have a nurse at home for the first two weeks—Louise Reinohl was our nurse. She lived in and got 4 hours off in the evenings. SI and I were suitably nervous for the first few of these evenings. After she left she wrote Dickie letters beginnning Dear Doll Baby and told Dickie how much she missed him.

We lived in an apartment house with 2 three year old girls on our floor, and so Sheila Coopersmith and Nina Gordon spent a good bit of time in our apartment entertaining Dickie and protesting how much they loved him. When he was old enough to go across the hall to Sheila’s apartment, she entertained him on the balcony fishing potatoes out of the garbage can to feed him.

Dick’s grandmother Hermina became a devoted baby sitter and used to check often in the evenings to see whether we had bundled Dickie up too warmly. Our routine was to walk down Broad St to the park-like grounds of the Jewish Hospital where we met many other parents and children. Some Sundays we used to go to Tookany Creek Park with Si’s mother Pauline, and various of Si’s sisters. I used to pack picnic lunches.

In 1947 Dickie began going to Ida Brodsky’s nursery school, The Little School on 8^th Street. Bill was born in October and Dickie was hugely disappointed in his brother. He hadn’t understood that he wouldn’t be able to play right away, and would take so much of everyone’s time. Dickie stopped eating, mostly surviving on milk and cookies.

Kindergarten: We lived in an area that was about 7 or 8 blocks away from two schools, Pennell and Ellwood, and we chose to enroll Dickie in Kindergarten at Pennell since Miss Gabel the Ellwood teacher had a fearsome reputation. Joan Freilich, who lived next door and went to Ellwood kindergarten, used to throw up regularly when it was time to get ready for school. Mrs Granatt, at Pennell, was a pleasant teacher but we were mostly late getting to afternoon kindergarten because of the necessity of coordinating Bill’s nap schedule, and lunches, since Bill had to accompany us in the stroller.I remember a spectacular Halloween with Dickie as a cowboy.

First Movie: DUMBO, and it scared me to death. Jeez what an emotional roller coaster.

Pennell School Kindergarten Party

Dick as cowboy

This is Nov 1949

The Fifties

Shortly after I turned six, when I was in the middle of first grade, we moved to a very large house in the East Oak Lane neighborhood not too far away from our apartment, 6709 N. 12^th Street, at 68^th avenue, a wonderful home built shortly after the end of the Civil War (full of nooks and crannies and history). The walls on the ground floor were about a foot and a half thick of solid stone. There were 1200 square feet of living space on each of the three floors, along with a pop out kitchen on the first floor, a full basement and full attic, and a detached 2 car garage, originally for horse and carriage. The garage had an attic and when we moved in it still contained an old bedstead and a chamber pot, for the coachman. For much of my time in the house I had the largest bedroom on the right side of the third floor.

EAST OAK LANE

East Oak Lane, a neighborhood of large Victorian and Colonial style homes, is the area to the right of Broad Street. The star is our house at 6709 N 12 Street, with 68^th Avenue dead ending into our driveway. The line marked Philadelphia and Montgomery designates the northern edge of the City of Philadelphia.

I took these photos of the house many years later. Flowers that grew in our yard are downloads from Internet.

Hydrangea

Back of house

My Mom’s garden in the 1970s

6709 N 12 Street

Peonia

Maple

Mock Orange
Peace Rose

Forsythia

East Oak Lane was a wonderful neighborhood, full of similarly large old houses built in the second half of the nineteenth century, and Ellwood, our local elementary school around the corner, was a great elementary school, though small. As you can see from the photograph, during my childhood it was also quite ancient.

I loved biking around Oak Lane as a child, and Bill and I were part of a neighborhood pack of kids who played together after school, building forts, shooting cap guns, and the like. It was the fifties: Milk trucks delivered milk throughout the neighborhood every morning, rain, sleet, or snow, and some neighbors had bread delivered the same way. A farmer used to sell produce from his truck out front of our house in growing season.

My reading of the newspapers was limited to the comics.

Here I am with my Mom, and Bill in the early 1950s

Before television, there were Saturday matinees at the local movie theater, the Lane, where I watched countless Cowboy movies, cartoons, and serial adventures along with other screaming children. And ate candy.

Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes. Hopalong Cassidy and Topper

The lessons of Hoppy and Roy? Greedy bad guys in black hats are waiting to buy up or steal all the free land that honest ranchers need. A few smart cowpokes can outsmart them all the time.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Gene Autry & Champion

Roy and Trigger

And. sometimes it helps if you can sing.

There was other stuff I learned at the movies of course. Take the Flash Gordon serial.

What’s not to love about this stuff?

Ming the merciless here was always plotting to take over the universe, or some part of the universe, but Flash Gordon came through by flying a very small rocket ship that looked like it had a candle wick burning at the end, and fighting off the bad guys. SO much for my education at the movies….

At the movies, I led vicarious adventures against all the bad guys in the universe along with every other kid in the neighborhood. The world was full of great danger. Unless you could sing.

Oak Lane on the other hand was overwhelmingly safe, even though we were part of a big city. It was nuclear war we all worried about and polio. Little kids were getting polio all the time in the early 1950s and there were constant stories in the news.

EARLY PHILADELPHIA KIDS’ TV

There is a story here. This is Willie the Worm, a puppet that showed very old silent cartoons every weekday afternoon, the same classics of people and animals running and running and chasing each other. My brother Bill and I watched this program with great fascination. Willie was an ironist as I recall.

Ozzie and Harriet Rootie Kazootie

My Little Margie

Father Knows Best

I became a writer early on: In the third grade I started writing a sequel to the Mary Norton novel for children, The Borrowers, and read chapters aloud to my class once a week. And by the fourth grade I was composing funny commercials and reciting them to the class as well.

My role models were all the comics on television in the fifties—Jerry Lewis more than any other, but also Eddie Cantor, Steve Allen, Jackie Gleason, Ernie Kovacs etc. I wanted a career doing stand-up and pratfalls but settled for making my class laugh as often as possible…and my brother Bill: my special skill was making him laugh so hard at dinner time that milk would come squirting out of his nose.

Horn and Hardart was the restaurant of my childhood, and it came in waitress, cafeteria and automat varieties. Photos below of the automat, where you put quarters into slots and got plates of hot food. Other photo taken in a New York H and H in 1954.

Still a good corned beef on rye became my favorite restaurant food…

Howdy Doody	The Lone Ranger	Crusader Rabbit
The Honeymooners	Superman	Groucho Marx You Bet Your Life
Jimmy Durante	Eddie Cantor	Jack Benny

MY FAVORITE TELEVISION PROGRAMS AND STARS in the early 1950s

The Howdy Doody Show came on every weekday late afternoon for half an hour and for a number of years I watched it religiously with my brother Bill.

This program continued my education, big time. Howdy had to fight the creepy and nefarious plots of Phineas T. Bluster, the old guy, which was bad enough, but Buffalo Bob never understood the danger until it was too late, and Howdy’s friends all had major problems—Dilly Dally, too empty headed, and Flubadub here, too ditzy. Claribell the clown never spoke and had to communicate by honking on his horn, a truly difficult task, and spraying people with seltzer, which, though fun, never seemed to get to the heart of the problem.

BACK TO REALITY

My parents were part of a Jewish influx into Oak Lane, at the end of World War II, and while there were blocks with non Jewish residents—one a block away that seemed entirely Catholic, with kids going to the local parochial school—the neighborhood connected to the public school was almost entirely Jewish, and middle class. It was a very homogenous, protective environment to grow up in.

Dick in first grade at Ellwood

And Ellwood School was the center of our childhood. The Philadelphia school system was still on the A/B system at that time—first grade, for example, being One A and One B, second grade being Two A and Two B, and so forth. The classes at Ellwood were so small they had to be combined and most of the time my class was always in the same room with the next half grade above us. There were about 20 or so students in my grade, and maybe 10 or 11 in the half grade above. Between first and sixth grade then I went to school with the same 20 or so classmates, in a little protected pocket in the City of Philadelphia. Because many of my Ellwood classmates later went on to Central High with me, I have been able to learn about the later careers of many of the boys. They became professors, dentists, psychologists, engineers.

Of all of my friends from Ellwood, I reconnected with two of them when I looked for my friends from high school: Alan Needleman, who was my very first friend in the first grade, who became a professor of engineering at Brown, and Kenneth Stow, who was my best friend from 2^nd until the 6^th grade and we ran against each other for captain of the safety patrol, and who became a professor of Jewish history at the University of Haifa.

I did win the election and became Capt of the safety patrol, and Alan Needleman was elected lieutenant. While nearly all the other boys in the 5^th and 6^th grade stood on corners near the school, for the half hour before school started and the half hour after school let out, Alan and I got to ride our bikes (or walk in bad weather) from corner to corner making sure everyone was on duty and being a good safety. We got to hand out demerits for poor work, improper dress, and the like. AND we got to salute the principal of the school every time we saw him. Yes, kind of weird, but it was the fifties. Alan and I gave so many demerits to the class bully, Ronald Brown, that he was bumped off the patrol. It was a victory for me, since he had terrorized me in the third grade.

This is what my Mom remembers of my life at Ellwood:

Ellwood shut down for lunch time, and because it did not have a cafeteria, children were sent home for an hour and a half, from 12 to 1:30. Most mothers were stay-at-home mothers in those days, but children who had mothers who worked had to find friends to go home with. Dick’s friend Kenneth Stow came to eat lunch regularly at our house, and at some point in the first grade Dick organized the Firecracker Club, a group of friends from his class who came to our house once a week to eat lunch. The group included Kenneth, Alan Needleman, Eddie Landau, Ronnie Roman, and Bruce Diamond. This lasted through the third grade when Si couldn’t take the food throwing any more. When it was time to return to school, I remember the club leaving the kitchen in single file with each boy putting his hand on the shoulder of the boy in front of him and marching off singing “We’re Off to See the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Dick was quite shy until the third grade when his teacher Miss Klein appointed him to everything she could, including captain of one of the boys’ dodgeball teams. She said he was obviously capable and the logical choice. Dick lost his shyness. Dick and Bill went one summer to art camp at Cheltenham Art Center and Dick did a series of very impressive paintings on newsprint with show card colors. Mr.Goldman the teacher wanted to keep some of them but Si wouldn’t permit it.

Dick had problems keeping Bill out of his room and out of his things and we put up a latch between their two rooms. Bill admired Dick of course and wanted to do everything he did. Because Dick learned how to head and used to read aloud to us, Bill also learned how to read, although we didn’t know it until he read us Make Way for Ducklings after we had read it to him many times when he was 4. And so when he got to Miss Gable’s kindergarten, Bill read her the instructions on the blackboard about what to do during a fire drill (something like—The Kindergarten class will form a line and exit the west door in an orderly fashion and assemble in the yard at the foot of the steps…). And so she used to send Bill around to other classes to read to them and to spur them on to renewed exertions.

I remember that Dick outgrew a bathrobe. He folded it neatly, put it in a gift box, tied it with a ribbon, and presented it to Bill who was overwhelmed with happiness. Dick became a very capable kitchen assistant from the time he was 2 ½. He stood on a chair beside me, with an apron, and added ingredients, stirred, beat, mixed, and shaped things. By the time he was in elementary school he was cooking spaghetti sauce on his own.

At some time in Dick’s elementary school years, the father of a classmate appeared at Ellwood and offered accordion lessons. Dick loved the introductory lessons and practiced diligently, but after these were over it became clear that we would need to purchase a big heavy and expensive accordion. Si went to the recital that Dick and the other children gave at the teacher’s school and came home with descriptions of how the children staggered up the aisle with their 120 key instruments. Si also spoke to someone he knew who played an accordion and he said that all accordionists developed bad backs. So although it made Dick very unhappy, he had to discontinue lessons and return the learner instrument. Dick eventually took up the clarinet and played in the Wagner Junior High School orchestra.

In 1953 Patti Page sang How Much is that Doggie in the Window?

How much is that doggy in the window

Woof woof

The one with the waggly tail

How much is that doggy in the window

Woof woof

I do hope that doggy's for sale

This passed as music. It was the moment before Rock n roll.

Eisenhower beat Stevenson in 1952 but I was not paying attention. By 1954 I had started to pay a little attention to politics, in large measure because some of it started to show up on TV, especially the Army McCarthy hearings which were filled with bad guys and good guys. Mostly in 1954 I read comic books (which politicians worried would destroy my morals)

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Eddie Fisher sings Oh My Papa

Mr. Peepers on TV

And in 1954, not that I noticed, the French were defeated in French Indo-China, and were replaced by the Americans in Viet Nam. I could sing “Oh My Papa” however. Does this count?

Daily Life in the 1950s

My father was very nervous about television sets and the dangers they presented to his children’s mental and physical health. And so we had very strict rules during my childhood: no more than one hour of television watching a day, so our minds would not decay, and a lamp on in the room with the television set, if it was dark, so our eyesight would not similarly decay. I’m not sure how my father picked up these fears, but they were real enough. These were very strictly enforced rules throughout my childhood, although when I think about it now it seems that my brother Bill and I must have found ways to watch more than an hour a day--sometimes at least. Mom certainly ran interference for us. It didn’t help that my father’s business, the wholesale distribution of art supplies, took place from our house and garage, so he really was around a lot.

When my father felt we had watched enough, or tried to watch too much, we would be ordered to read a book. Often of course we could claim we had nothing at home to read, a gambit that never worked. I remember very vividly having to walk to the local library, the Oak Lane branch of the Free Library of Phila, a short block away, with tears in my eyes at the injustice of my father’s rules, sitting down at a table, and reading. It is hard to focus on the words on a page when there are tears in your eyes. A short time later I would hear the phone ring at the librarian’s desk, and would hear her reassure my father that I was indeed sitting down in front of her, reading. When my hour was up, I was allowed to walk home.

This is a much more recent photo of the Oak Lane branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, but it has hardly changed at all since the fifties—the loss of a large tree in front the only thing I notice. It is here that I learned about books as the alternative to TV.

My father’s notion of the library as penitentiary would not seem to have been a good method of producing a child who loved to read, and since I did become a reader by the time I was an adolescent, I have often thought about this moment of nuttiness in my upbringing. Years later my mother and I decided that what made me a reader had nothing to do with this method at all, but the fact that her mother, my grandmother Hermina Weitzenfeld, was a much beloved high school English teacher, and it was her model as a lover of literature, and reading, that led me to become an English teacher and reader in my turn.

I can’t leave the topic of television in the 1950s without connecting it to one more story about my childhood. Ellwood, the elementary school I attended was also one block away, and it occupied a small 19^th century stone building with few modern amenities. Certainly it had no television set, and when the school district broadcast educational programs for the schools, the children at Ellwood would walk to the homes of students who lived nearby and had television sets.

These were high prestige big deal social events, and although I lived closer than anyone else in my class, we didn’t have a television set for the longest time—certainly not until I got into the 2^nd or 3^rd grade. My class thus always walked PAST my house, and around the corner to the home of a classmate with a television. This was always deeply humiliating, and thus when my father broke down and purchased a television, it was a cause for celebration!

My class did start coming to our house, and for many years my parents saved the thank you notes that all of my classmates wrote to my parents, for allowing them to come and watch, and for serving them candy! At some point not too much later the school actually purchased its own television, and while it hurt some, I had had the moment of glory.

This didn’t mean that my father ever came to trust television however, even though he loved watching baseball games and the Friday Night Fights. One day when I was in the 9^th grade the television broke, and my father wrapped it neatly in brown paper and carried it down into the basement where it sat for many years next to the skids of art supplies. I went through high school without television, and while I missed some programs a great deal—mostly the comedy of Ernie Kovacs—I compensated with FM radio and records (I owned by that time a portable record player). It meant I couldn’t talk to my high school classmates about what had been on television the night before, but after a while it didn’t seem particularly important. FM radio was moving into its own, and there was always plenty that was interesting and worth listening to.

We had a Grundig radio that looked exactly like this one.

There was at least one other unusual compensation in our house, the presence of a large number of paintings and prints by local artists, friends and customers of my father who was a wholesaler of art supplies. The walls were covered with original art, most by people I met from time to time, some of whom came to dinner. This added a cosmopolitan note to my childhood, since these artists were always full of talk to trips to Italy or France, critiques of other artists or architects, and explanations of their current projects.

Here are the 3 who were most important: Morris Blackburn, Sam Brecher, and Julius Bloch

Susan by Julius Block Lighthouse by Sam Brecher

Mummer by Leon Karp

Provincetown Mass by Nancy Ferguson

Beyond those personal meetings with accomplished and successful artists, I was exposed to all the arts that Philadelphia had to offer on a regular basis during my childhood: the Philadelphia Orchestra (My grandmother Hermina took piano lessons from Louis Gesensway, a member of the orchestra who was also an accomplished composer); a great many wonderful Broadway plays and musicals in tryouts (on their way to New York); countless art gallery and art museum exhibitions, including of course, those by all my father’s friends. (It was no accident that I became, in college, a playwright for a time.)

Art Museum Academy of Music

Pauline Simon

My father’s mother Pauline lived with us on 12^th street for part of the years between 1951 and 1956 (when she died of breast cancer). The other part of those years, the winters, she spent in Florida with her daughter Esther. My mother writes the following: Pauline moved in with us in April of 1951. This created the opportunity to learn patience, among other things. She liked to hold forth at dinner and thought children should be seen but not heard if grownups had anything to say. Since she was a non-stop talker and needed an audience, we provided it to that extent that Bill once held up a sign at dinner saying “Nice to have mushrooms” and “Can I be excused?” He must have been about seven.

Here I am getting hugged on the front porch of the 12^th Street house with Pauline. I remember that she spent much time crocheting potholders, and once when Mom’s clothing caught on fire at the kitchen stove, Pauline beat out the flames. I used to go to movies with her—Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Lili, Three Coins in a Fountain are the ones that stand out in my mind. She was also the only religious member of our family: she lighted Friday Night Candles, and Mom had to cook kosher food for her. The religion didn’t rub off on the rest of us.

PIPPIN

We also had a dog for some of those years, a sweet beagle named Pippin who lived in the house for a while but was then permanently moved to a kennel in the backyard, and a dog house winterized in the cold months, after my father found a flea in bed. Pippin was a joy—but because she howled, and outside all of the time, began to howl a good deal and annoy the neighbors, my father eventually found a home for her on a farm. And yes, I was heartbroken.

My mom with Pippin in winter. Then Grandma Pauline, Rhoda, and Pippin in front of the garage, along with leading edge of my father’s 1953 Pontiac Station Wagon.

Noble dog

This is pretty close to the actual bike I got in 1955 or 1956, a Schwinn Tiger, which looked nearly identical to the Schwinn Corvette in this ad.I named my bike Weitzenfeld (my mother’s maiden name). It was a great joy to ride around the neighborhood, and made me feel quite special.Yes I probably had an expression like the kid in the picture.

Bike was essential in the 6^th grade at Ellwood when I was captain of the safety patrol. I could not find an image of the Capt badge on the web but I did find an image of the Lt. Badge, and the Capt badge was very similar. Blue rather than red in the middle. Etc. Our safety belts were white rather than yellow, as in the drawing here, and Ellwood did not allow girls to be on the safety patrol either.

Hermina Keller Weitzenfeld

My grandmother Hermina was an important influence on me (and Bill) throughout my childhood and early adolescence. (She died when I was in college). She took me to plays and concerts in downtown Philadelphia, and when I got older, to political rallies as well(for the United World Federalists where I heard Clement Atlee speak; for the kick off campaign for Joe Clark running for the US Senate). We would go shopping, eat in downtown restaurants, and inevitably, someone would stop her on the street and thank her for being a wonderful teacher. (She taught English at South Phila High School for Girls until retiring in the middle 1950s). My own sixth grade teacher, Rose Stow, the mother of my best friend Ken, had been one of Hermina’s students. When Bill and I got old enough Hermina would take us for trips to New York City, to visit her brother and sister, Frank and Regina, and to Albany New York (95 Winthrop Avenue), to visit her sister Sarah and Sarah’s daughter Ethel. All of these members of the Keller family were extremely interesting and loving human beings. Hermina was my model when I became in turn a teacher. I dedicated both of my books to her, as well as to my parents and Kathy. (Second book also to Noah)

Hermina, Sarah, and Ethel, on a boat on Lake George New York. I took this photograph, probably in 1957 on one of my trips to Albany with Hermina

SUMMERS

We spent part of many of the summers of my childhood at Beach Haven, and at other small towns on Long Beach Island, on the New Jersey shore, and also at Atlantic City where my great grandmother Lena lived year round

LONG BEACH ISLAND

The first photo was taken at the “Cake Box” our unusual summer rental in 1952 at Beach Haven. We listened on radio as Dwight Eisenhower won the Republication nomination to run for President of the US.

Barnegat Lighthouse

Here I am in Beach Haven with Pippin, maybe 1957 or so

At Beach Haven, the Lucy Evelyn was a ship set on land and turned into a truly impressive visitor’s site and gift shop.

I loved it

Here I am in 1952 or so, photographed in front of the Lucy Evelyn with my grandmother Hermina, her sister and my great aunt Regina, her brother and my great uncle Frank.

We rented houses at Beach Haven, but in later years stayed in many of the motels, including the Engleside, above, and the Coral Seas, to the left.

Downtown Beach Haven

Morrison’s Seafood Restaurant from the air

ATLANTIC CITY in the 1950s

My grandfather Jacob, my great aunt Ida, my great aunt Rose, and their mother, my great-grandmother Lena Weitzenfeld. On the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

My grandmother Hermina with her mother in law Lena.

Because my great grandmother Lena Weitzenfeld lived in Atlantic City at the Breakers Hotel for much of my childhood, we were there a lot too. A parade of relatives from around the country came to visit Great Grandma and stopped at our house in Philadelphia to say hello

Color Photo from the sixties, a little bit after my prime vacationing time in Atlantic City. Black and White photo is closer to what I remember. Three significant stores: Fralinger’s which had great salt water taffy in many amazing flavors, Gray’s, which had huge corned beef sandwiches and gigantic buckets of pickles and cole slaw on the table, and Planter’s, where a mechanical gigantic Mr. Peanut was the stupendous apparatus in Atlantic City. All of this was only a short walk from Great Grandma’s hotel, the Breakers.

DICK TRAVEL DIARY Saturday August 31 1957

Trip to Atlantic City with my grandmother Hermina Weitzenfeld

Earliest preserved sample of my own writing (I was 12)

“After breakfast we met Great Grandma on the benches near Fralinger’s, Boardwalk at Virginia. We ate at Gray’s.

By 1:30 pm Dick and Hermina were on our way to the Steel Pier, The Show Place of the Nation. We walked into the run down dungeon, looked at the vaudeville program, continued through a dark and dreary alley of concession stands and went to see the “home of the century.” Then to the seal house as we went through a dirty alley with three seals biting each other. Then we saw the outdoor sports show with the high diving horse, a human monkey who scared the audience, 2 tame bears and some divers and acrobats. Then we saw the General Motors exhibit and Ripley’s believe it or not.

We continued on the boardwalk and got caught in Maxwell’s auction (one of many) and we stayed one and a half hours to get our prize. The time was spent listening in which a man insulted everyone including Grandma. Some of the bargains they got rid of are a $1150.00 tea set for $145.00 a $145.00 watch for $19.00 and a $3000.00 dollar ring and a $2000.00 watch both for only $250.00 Finally we got our gift, a relish tray.

We ate at Child’s Plain and Fancy, then we went to the Breakers Hotel and found Great Grandma at the television room, and accompanied her upstairs. This time we had an even harder time disposing of Gr Gr’s gift of smoked fish sandwich (kept cool since breakfast on the bathroom window) two rolls and many antique menus and Jewish institution booklets and appeals. The food we left on a park bench (in a bag). The literature in an overfull rubbish can. Then to bed.”

GREAT GRANDMA LENA WEITZENFELD

Footnote: My great grandmother always took some extra food from the hotel dining room at the Breakers Hotel up to her own room, and kept it warm in winter by placing it on a radiator, or relatively cook in summer by placing it by a window. This food she always tried to push off on visiting relatives, like me. There were of course, in 1957, no such things as small refrigerators that one could have in a hotel room.

Visits to Atlantic City often included a meal at Hackney’s.

Visits also included a meal at Capt Starn’s, and a boat trip out in the ocean from pier.

Rhoda, Me, Bill, and Si--tourists

Boardwalk from a little after my time, but nice sense of the ambiance.

Massive hotels on the boardwalk, from a little before my time

Yes I had at least one memorable meal in the massive hotel.

BASEBALL

Across from Ellwood School was Axelrod’s Drug Store, with a classic soda fountain, and candy counter where my friends and I had cherry cokes, bought Three Musketeers Candy Bars, and endless numbers of packages of baseball cards. We flipped baseball cards endlessly in good weather throughout our elementary school years, even though our team, The Phillies, was almost always heartbreakingly terrible except for 1950 when my friends and I were too young to have paid much attention. The only good player, and our hero, was Robin Roberts, who later made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, proving there is some justice in the world. Up until 1953 my parents mostly rooted for the Philadelphia Athletics, before they picked up and moved to Kansas City.

FERRIS FAIN

Granny Hamner

Shibe Park, later renamed Connie Mack Stadium

1956 TOPPS Robin Roberts card, the one all of my friends wanted more than any other. We flipped cards in 1956, not thinking for a moment about resale value 30 or 40 years later, so all of our cards got really worn around the edges. And then, a few years later, all of our mothers threw all of our card collections out. Alas.

In 1956 I got my first 45-rpm record player (something like this) and started to pay attention to rock n roll, which was in the process of being invented. Elvis showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show. I learned how to play “Love me Tender” on the clarinet for 6^th Grade parties where we played Spin the Bottle and other kissing games.

OK only on TV but

Annette Funicello….the girl all of my friends had a crush on, on the M I C K E Y M O U S E club television show.

ELVIS on Ed Sullivan

SIXTEEN TONS This was MY FIRST 45 rpm record

Some people say a man is made outta mud

A poor man's made outta muscle and blood

Muscle and blood and skin and bones

A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine

I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal

And the straw boss said Well a-bless my soul

You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

Joe Friday and Frank Smith on Dragnet on TV

Calypso music was everywhere

Hy Lit, major DJ for teenagers on Phila rock n roll radio

I learned how to be a teenager by watching Bandstand, a locally produced Philadelphia teen age dance program that eventually got national broadcasting when it was taken over by Dick Clark.

Life of Riley, on TV

Top Hits of 1956

1. Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley

2. Don't Be Cruel, Elvis Presley

3. Lisbon Antigua, Nelson Riddle

4. My Prayer, Platters

5. The Wayward Wind, Gogi Grant

7. The Poor People Of Paris, Les Baxter

8. Whatever Will Be Will Be (Que Sera Sera), Doris Day

8. Hound Dog, Elvis Presley

9. Memories Are Made Of This, Dean Martin

10. Rock And Roll Waltz, Kay Starr

11. Moonglow And Theme From "Picnic", Morris Stoloff

12. The Great Pretender, Platters

13. I Almost Lost My Mind, Pat Boone

14. I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, Elvis Presley

15. Love Me Tender, Elvis Presley

16. Hot Diggity, Perry Como

17. Canadian Sunset, Eddie Heywood & Hugo Winterhalter

18. Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins

19. The Green Door, Jim Lowe

20. No, Not Much, Four Lads

Paul is born in 1956

My parents really had 2 sets of children: Bill and I, and then Paul and Jeanne. Paul was born in 1956, in November, when I had started Wagner Junior High, so I think of my childhood as being with my parents and Bill. Jeanne was born in 1961.

Paul was born in 1956 which meant that by 1959 or so I had a kid brother at home, to help take care of. I remember Mom and Dad waking me up in the middle of the night one day when I was in high school, to take a turn pushing Paul around the house in a stroller because he was very sick and the movement of the stroller comforted him.

I remember putting Paul to bed at night, making up bed time stories about exploding cantaloupes (an actual cantaloupe had exploded on our kitchen window sill), and having Paul assure me, again and again, that he fell asleep with his eyes open.

By 1957 I was paying attention to major news events.

My Best Story December 30 1957

The story of my Bar Mitzvah is the very best story I have, at least with regards to my childhood.

I had a very unusual bar mitzvah but unless you are familiar with the standard kind of bar mitzvah the nuttiness of mine may need a bit of explanation. What you see here are photographs taken during the rehearsal, since photos are not permitted during actual services.

The Rabbi, Alexander Levine, owned the building around the corner from us on Oak Lane Avenue in Philadelphia, which he converted into a synagogue (an unusual relationship, since rabbis are usually hired by congregations). In this case the rabbi owned the entire congregation! In the photo I stand on a small stage at one end of what once was his living room, behind a large white frame. Please note the large painting of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments to my right, which has just slid out of the frame, revealing me holding the torah. The audience always gasped at this moment when the rabbi yanked the pulley system that operated this bit of theatrical theology. The painting, on runners, was copied by the rabbi’s son, from an illustration from the Passover Haggadah that was widely distributed in Phila by Barton’s, a local candy company, and would have been familiar to every Jewish family. One minute it was Moses in the frame, a kind of candy advertisement, and the next minute it was the bar mitzvah boy. It was quite a moment. You can also see that my father doesn’t look real impressed.

Was the rabbi really a rabbi? Locals swore he had been a cantor in a poor neighborhood, but the rabbi claimed his papers had been lost in a fire in the old country. In any event, the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis never recognized him, but he didn’t care, and he did a great service for our neighborhood, since many old Jewish men made East Lane Temple their second home, and for families like my own—not really religious at all—he offered a way for children to be bar mitzvahed with a minimum of Hebrew School. We admired the Rabbi for a number of reasons. During Bill’s bar mitzvah (3 years after mine) Paul was fidgeting and the Rabbi handed him a coloring book in the middle of the service.

The Rabbi had a truly astonishing and extremely expensive Imperial.

The rabbi had originally purchased the old house on Oak Lane in order to do weddings and the like, but because the house was next door to two churches, one Baptist and one I think Methodist, and because these churches objected to the crowds that would come, they held up the rabbi’s application for zoning with the Phila Zoning Board. It was in fact this organization that caused the rabbi to go for a full synagogue instead (apparently different rules apply to a regular house of worship).

For many years, especially when I was in college, the story of my bar mitzvah was my very best story—it kept all manner of college roommates in laughter and they used to urge me to go on stage doing stand-up. Alas—it was really my only good story. I didn’t have any comparable material.

The theatricality of the Moses picture sliding out of the frame surprised everyone’s relations of course, since no one had ever seen anything like this in any other (real) synagogue. But all of us bar mitzvah boys (in 1957 none of the girls I knew were getting bat mitvahed—that came later) knew the trick and tried to sneak back behind the picture without any of the other bar mitzvah boys noticing (they sat in the back). This involved getting down on your hands and knees, holding up your tallis so as not to trip on it, and crawling like crazy, as low to the ground as possible when the rabbi gave you the hi sign—a little twitch of his tallis as I recall. Once behind the picture I had to get up, dust myself off, and wait till the rabbi waltzed back and made various noises pretending to get out a torah (In actuality of course he was giving me the torah to hold).“Just like in Jerusalem,” he whispered to me as we went through the service. He had only one great sermon which he delivered at most of the bar mitzvahs—less bar and more mitzvah. It also was quite a hit with people who only had to hear it once.

The rabbi prospered in this operation and owned a Chrysler Imperial—in 1957 the breathtaking and amazing looking luxury American car. He soon installed a life size photograph of himself (also in a frame) that greeted everyone walking in the front door of the synagogue.

And—he was having a very public affair with a woman with gigantic breasts who always wore a bright red dress—Mrs. Nussbaum. No one could figure out why Mrs. Nussbaum was always there, along with the 8 or so aged Jewish men who tried to make a Minyan (often having to count the torahs, real and imagined, to get up to ten).

My friends at my bar mitzvah and their future careers

Alan Needleman (engineering prof.), Joel Spector (public school counselor), Ken Stow (prof. of Jewish history) Steve Sher (attorney), Carol Adler (don’t know), Eddie Landau (dentist,) and me at back	Carolyn Steinberg (don’t know), Mike Woal, (teacher), Annette Bender (don’t know), Tony Haftel (doctor). Girls are harder to trace, and all the boys went to Central High so I know that way.

The rabbi lived on the second and third floors of the synagogue, with his wife Ethel and their two not too bright teen-age children. Ethel never came down stairs, and after my bar mitzvah I remember the rabbi calling up the grand staircase: “Ethel throw down the schnapps.” And indeed a bottle of something I know my father had paid for came flying down stairs, which the rabbi caught in his flowing black robes.

The rabbi used to want to hear how well I was memorizing my torah portion, of course, so once a week I would walk upstairs and sing to the rabbi. The time I remember most fondly was a day he was taking a bath and I was positioned on a chair outside of the bathroom and asked to sing my torah portion through the bathroom door.

END of the Bar Mitzvah Story

WHERE were THESE FRIENDS in 2003?

Alan Needleman was a distinguished professor of engineering at Brown, specializing in fracturing. He is standing here with his wife Wanda, a psychiatrist in private practice in Providence and their two adult children Daniel, getting a PhD in physics at UCSB and Deborah, an assistant professor of English at the University of North Texas in Denton. I took this photo in front of our house in San Luis Obispo in August 2003

Here I am with Alan on the Santa Barbara beach a year or two earlier, before I got sick.

Kenneth Stow was a distinguished professor of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, with a specialization in medieval Italian Jewish History. He was the author of many scholarly books and the editor of the journal, Jewish History.

Two of Kenneth’s 4 adult children, Roni and Victor, are shown here with Ken, and Ken’s new wife Estela, a professor of Spanish Literature at Smith College

Here I am with Kenneth in my back yard in April of 2003, just as I was recovering from surgery. Below 1966 announcement of Kenneth’s college graduation.

Meanwhile…BACK TO MY STORY

I am once again 13 years old

TELEVISION WATCHING in Junior High

The Phil Silvers Show

77 Sunset Strip

My Life as a Teenager

1958: I am 14 in the photograph, Bill is 11, and Paul is 2. 1960:

I am 16, and on the Atlantic City Boardwalk with my Aunt Ida, Aunt Rose, Great Grandmother Lena, and 2^nd cousin Carol Cohen. My family is matchmaking.

Dick, Paul, Rhoda, Si

Probably 1957 and 1958

Backyard

Living room

Play room which later became dining room, and central hall. Living room and piano in distance.

Beachcomber Swim Club

We joined the Beachcomber Swim Club in Center Square Pennsylvania when I was in junior high, and this became our summer hang out—though it was at least a half hour drive from home, and I never became a good swimmer, in spite of lessons. I am in shadows next to Rhoda and Paul. In back are Si, Bill and Hermina.

Bill at the Beachcomber diving pool.

TOP HITS of 1958

1. Volare (Nel Blu Depinto Di Blu), Domenico Modugno

2. All I Have To Do Is Dream / Claudette, Everly Brothers

3. Don't / I Beg Of You, Elvis Presley

4. Witch Doctor, David Seville

5. Patricia, Perez Prado

6. Sail Along Silvery Moon / Raunchy, Billy Vaughn

7. Catch A Falling Star / Magic Moments, Perry Como

8. Tequila, Champs

9. It's All In The Game, Tommy Edwards

10. Return To Me, Dean Martin

11. It's Only Make Believe, Conway Twitty

12. The Purple People Eater, Sheb Wooley

13. Bird Dog / Devoted To You, Everly Brothers

14. Get A Job, Silhouettes

15. Little Star, Elegants

16. Stood Up / Waitin' In School, Ricky Nelson

17. He's Got The Whole World In His Hands, Laurie London

18. Twilight Time, Platters

19. Secretly, Jimmie Rodgers

20. At The Hop, Danny & The Juniors

Images of the 1950s

The fifties had a certain shape. For me, it was the shape of certain cars, or parts of cars, the fin of the 1956 Cadillac, the front grille of the 1953 Buick Road master, the nuttiness of the 1959 Chevrolet, or the front of this in your face 1959 Dodge.

1959 Chevrolet and the 1960 Imperial

1957 Desoto

The fifties had another set of images of course, more important political ones—politicians, world leaders, missiles, international crises, domestic crises, and I paid attention to these as best I could. But these car forms were on the streets around me every day

In 1959 my father bought a Pontiac Bonneville Station Wagon, that had more horsepower that a Ford Thunderbird. To my mind, it was his single greatest automotive purchase, and while no photograph of the family car survives, I have found these images of similar cars and include them here. This is the car I learned how to drive on, and the car that, on rare occasion, my dad let me drive while I was in high school.

This was a magnificent car, faster than a thunderbird, even though a station wagon. No cars in 1959 had seat belts.

The Apartment with Jack Lemmon 1960

Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe in 1959

Gunsmoke on TV

Central High School 1958-1962

I attended Central High School in Philadelphia from 1958 to 1962. It was a great school, all academic, but also all boys, which meant that I had very limited (almost no) contact with girls during these formative years of my life. Our neighborhood had few kids my own age, and we did not belong to a synagogue. At my mother’s urging I did join Young Judea, a Zionist youth group, for a few years, but never felt really comfortable in the organization. It meant, in terms of my social development, that when I arrived at college in 1962 I had to learn the kind of social skills that everyone else had mastered in high school.

Part of the 218^th advanced class in a 12^th grade English class. From Left: Warren Weinstein, Mike Woal, Alan Needleman, Ken Stow, me, Joe Becker, Ronnie Eisenberg, our teacher Dr Hamm, Don Smolen, Ricky Share, Rick Dietz, Julian Alkon.

The best thing about Central for me was being in the advanced class, and taking virtually all my classes with the same 30 very smart boys. They were a strong influence on my own development. Many were close friends. Sam Bobrow was the closest from the time we did science experiments together for biology, to the times we went into downtown Philadelphia to see plays. In my senior year I was the editor in chief of the school newspaper, the Centralizer, and made as many of my friends editors as I could. We had a great time.