This is my third grade class picture and it's certainly not racially balanced as you can see. Back in that day, there was lots of chatter about schools being integrated. Well, we didn't know what the hell was that. You went to the school where you lived. We lived on the south side of Mount Vernon. There were a lot of Black kids on our end of town. Bingo. You went to school with a lot of Black kids. There was no, ahem, gray area. I guess you can say we were trendsetters. At the end of the day, we did just "all get along."
Of course, there was some natural gravitation to skin pigments. My closer friends were the White kids and you can easily find them in the photo above. You can see me in the second row, third brat from the right. Wearing a purple shirt and what the heck were you thinking, Mother? The boy with the smirk on the end of the row was Russell and he was the kid most likely to be playing at my house on a weekend. Most of the activities involved some variation of military combat. Somebody told me Russell wound up with a career in the Army. I'm happy to report that this life path likely began while he was hiding from the Japanese in my back yard.
Of course, as I look again at our teacher, Mrs. Popper, I am reminded how much she had me comparing her to TV's Laura Petrie. And, of course, what 8-year-old TV nut wouldn't want to be around her?? Perhaps the earliest triggering of my hormones. Meanwhile, in the back row are two of my other grade school friends. Diane is the girl with the glasses next to our teacher. Cheryl is the blonde at the other end.
And that is it. From the second grade until the eighth grade in junior high school, the four of us---me, Russell, Diane, and Cheryl---were in the same class together. Oh, there were other kids/friends who would pop in and out of the equation. But, the core group was really this quartet of moppets.
Why the second grade, you ask? Well, I was technically a year behind the others. But, advanced reading skills by yours truly shortened my stay in the first grade considerably. Mrs. McKnight, my teacher that year, jumped up and down for weeks trying to get me skipped to the second grade. Finally, the principal and the school superintendent relented.
And I was dragged, kicking and screaming down the hall to Miss Baron's second grade class.
I don't want to go, I yelled.
I'm afraid, I hollered.
I miss my friends, I sobbed.
Really, Len? It's not like you knew those first grade kids for very long. But, still, I was petrified. My mom, who was tugging one of my arms as I slid down the hallway of the Grimes Elementary School, had a simple solution to offer.
"Well, these will be your new friends. And you will know them for a long time."
Sure did.
In some ways, kids in elementary school are no different than co-workers who band together against a lousy boss or soldiers hiding in a bunker during a war. There is a bonding that is unique and shared only by you. In the truest sense of the adage, I guess "you really had to be there."
Once I stopped crying several months later, I quickly got acclimated to my new surroundings. And friends that would last, in some cases, a lifetime. We did have the uniqueness of our experience to anchor our relationship.
Miss Baron teaching us for the second grade. I can remember bringing my "101 Dalmatians" cartoon soundtrack for the class to listen to.
The aforementioned cute and perky Mrs. Popper who actually talked with us about that year's Oscar nominations. How cool is that?
For the fourth grade, our teacher was Miss Asciutto, a name better suited to run an Italian deli on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Moving on, we had heard ominous things about the fifth grade and Mrs. Lillian C. Ian. That's exactly how she signed all our report cards. But, as it turned out, she was not the witch that was advertised and even hosted us all for a summer picnic at her house in Pelham Manor, New York.
Our homeroom teacher for the sixth grade was our art teacher Miss Hartmann, but we did all our academic work that year with Miss Lipsius. The name usually wound up as "Lipshits" and it sounded even worse coming out of the mouth of a classmate with a hairlip. Any conversation with that kid came with a 70 percent chance of precipitation.
At Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon, New York, your class celebrated virtually every holiday. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Arbor Day. And, for every occasion, you had "class mothers" who arranged our parties and essentially supplied us with an endless stream of cupcakes. My mom filled this bill several times as did the mothers of Cheryl and Diane. As a result, they became friends just as we had. There would be play dates with the kids in one room of somebody's house while the moms drank coffee and likely gossiped in the kitchen.
Such were our lives.
We left Grimes and headed west five whole blocks to Washington Junior High School, where new kids from other elementary schools were entered into our equation. The classes were sorted ironically by intelligence and, naturally, we were all grouped together at the top of the heap. There were now several marking periods a year and you worked hard to get a B+ or an A so your name would show up on the honor roll printed in Mount Vernon's town newspaper, the Daily Argus.
At Washington, things got harder. The girls had hormones kicking in and really fell for our social studies teacher, Mr. Clarke. The boys had to endure war prisoner-like treatment from our gym teacher, Mr. Carapella, and, with a name like that, you know we managed to turn that into "crap" pretty quickly.
And then there was our homeroom teacher, Mr. Papps. I've written before of our two years with him. The first year-and-a-half was terrific. And, almost overnight, he turned into an ogre. Marching us in military style around the hallways as if we were a road company of "Bridge On The River Kwai." A while after we left Mr. Papps in the rear view mirror, we read in the Argus, of course, that he had died of cancer. He was no more than 40 years old and had two young children at home. Had that single "overnight" been the time he had heard of a bad prognosis for his health? That sounds right to me. But, in his horrible path, he had left a bunch of eight-graders who were now battle scarred. With an experience that none of us would ever forget.
As if bonding over homework and play dates and almost seven years of schooling together wasn't enough, we now had one more memory to hold between us. Forever.
When we all went to Mount Vernon High School, you were now merged with students from all over the city. And we were all separated. In high school, I had only two classes in common with Cheryl. I completely lost track of Diane and Russell. I made new friends but it was never the same. It was always Russian roulette when the school schedule came out for the year. You'd become good buddies with somebody at lunch and then suddenly he was eating two hours before you were. Friendships could be formed but they never seemed to be built to last.
The links of elementary school and then junior high were shattered now. For good.
I never really was completely removed from Cheryl. I would always walk to the Mount Vernon Public Library every Saturday morning and my route always took me past her block, which was 8th Avenue. Somehow, we managed to run into each other frequently. We had twelfth-grade English together with Mr. Bickford and then, almost mystically, found ourselves in the same English class together in our freshman semester at Fordham University. But, that would be the only course we had together for the next four years. She busied herself going to school and working. Me? I threw myself head-long into Fordham's radio station, WFUV, and that would be the focus of my world and the creator of many of my closest friends in life.
Over the years, Cheryl and I stayed in touch. Through Christmas cards which eventually evolved into long letters, we kept up-to-date on the days of our lives. Her marriage and subsequent family, along with her move to Mahopac. My career and ultimate adoption of a bi-coastal existence. Cheryl, her husband Karl, and her son Jason actually visited Los Angeles about a decade ago and we had a wonderful reunion at the Hard Rock Cafe in Universal Citywalk. I probably had not seen her for twenty-five years. But, through our annual correspondence, we really hadn't missed a beat.
Russell likely was captured by the enemy and never resurfaced. As for Diane, I lost track of her at high school and never knew what happened to her.
And then came Facebook. The new town square. And the best way to find anybody these days.
It was embarrassingly easy. I was already "friends" with Cheryl and, on a daily basis, find myself in about a dozen "Words with Friends" contests with her. But, one day, I notice a comment from Diane on one of Cheryl's posts of a photo from a birthday party years ago. I jumped right in. And immediately got a response.
"Hello, Lenny. Do you remember me from 10th Avenue?"
Of course I do. And, oh, by the way, I went from Lenny to Len about the same time Ronny Howard became Ron. Nevertheless, we were back in touch, no matter what I'm called.
We all committed to getting together soon. But, people say that all the time. Yet, somehow, I knew this was going to happen.
And, last July, it did. Cheryl's charming Americana-like home in Mahopac, which looks like it was designed by the same folks who did the sets for the old "Newhart" sitcom, was the perfect venue. Smack in the middle for all of us, distance-wise. We met for lunch in her backyard at 12:30PM and were still sitting around the table at 4:30PM. Over forty years of not talking will do that to you.
We caught up on lives and careers. Spouses and those of us...ahem...without them. Wrong turns and smart decisions. Children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Back when, Diane had gotten into a social group while in high school, got married, and pretty much never stopped working. I learned that her family owned an Italian restaurant and pizzeria. I immediately grilled her on how she makes my very favorite dish, which is sausage and peppers.
Except for Diane's dad, all our folks are gone. But they came alive in our reunion. The ups and downs of their own lives. I sat there and could immediately visualize both their moms. Diane related a very vivid memory of my mother. Standing outside of school, waiting for me, with a cigarette in her hand. Yep, that was my mother. And she smoked to the end.
Meanwhile, Diane couldn't conjure up a memory of my father. That's symbolic and accurate. When it came to school, my dad was not the active parent. He worked nights, slept days, and showed up on just one day. My junior high school graduation.
We compared notes on classmates we could find and others we couldn't. We remembered the good old days just like my grandmother used to sit in her rocking chair and do the same thing. In between eighth grade and that lunch, we had all engaged in life. Yet, somehow, we settled right back into a comfort zone that was warm and engaging. Even though I've had little direct contact with Diane and Cheryl over the past several decades, I looked at them both and thought about how easily we reconnected.
We were still friends.
We thought about the common bond we had. That unique experience that only we shared together. The class trips to the public library. Algebra tests that were harder than we imagined. Co-ed gym classes and who the hell came up with that stupid idea? Mr. Papps and our class marching us around like Nazi storm troopers through the halls of Washington Junior High.
Nobody can say they did that together. Except us. Like survivors of a war or a car accident or a special day. Our lives intertwined are uniquely us. Snowflakes that can, for a brief moment, actually look alike.
Naturally, we felt the need to commemorate the occasion with a photo.
On that day, I drove home and had the Broadway channel playing on the car satellite. Amazingly, it was that little ditty by Stephen Sondheim from "Merrily We Roll Along." I turned up the volume.
Hey, old friend
What d'ya say, old friend?
Are you okay, old friend?
Are we, are we unique?
Time goes by
Everything else keeps changing
You and I, we can
Continue next week, yeah
Or they don't make the grade
New ones are quickly made
And in a pinch, sure, they'll do
But us, old friend
What's to discuss, old friend?
Here's to us, who's like us?
damn few.
Damn few, indeed. I'm looking forward to the next time.
Dinner last night: Bacon BBQ burger at Go Burger.
1 comment:
So when is the 40th anniversary WFUV reunion? I'll volunteer to help.
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