I was two years old in 1938. These were the hard times of the Great Depression, and the WPA was at its peak. My father, Manny, dug ditches during the day, and at night, he worked in the garment district making buttonholes on garments. Still, it wasn’t enough to feed a family of six […]
Read More“Klaatu Barada Nikto.”
Saturday, after the excitement of my first week at SIA, I treated myself to a movie. The Day The Earth Stood Stillwas playing at the Loewe’s Spooner. For me, the most unforgettable thing about that movie was the magic phrase that stopped the giant robot from destroying the girl, and the whole world: “Klaatu Barada Nikto.” […]
Read MoreA Christmas Gone Wrong
Pissing on the hot steam pipe hissed into the hall, creating the acrid odor any kid who grew up in the tenements would never forget. It gave me a feeling of power. It was my way to stink up their lives as they did to mine.
Never looking back, I tear-assed down the worn marble steps, intently trying to hear if anyone was behind me. I escaped through the twisted, black wrought iron and glass doors and out into the street, only to be stopped by a wall of rushing snow filling the air in every direction. My eyes touched the round mounds of softness all at the same time. Not a footprint, not a mark of any kind — and it was all mine.
It was The Bronx of 1942, a winter twilight just before the early rush of workers on their way home from the Simpson Street train station. The streets were not the streets I knew. Their hard, concrete angles had begun to melt away, softened by the rolling snow. […]
Read MoreInto A Black Abyss
We walked under the El across Whitlock to an abandoned public swimming pool. Its buildings and bathhouses had been burned to the ground and lay in rubble. I was the only one who knew how it got that way.
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