From my earliest days I perceived
that there was more to life than meets the eye. While very young I
had a dream that made an impact on me. I 'woke' in my bed looking
out the window at the sky. The stars began to spin and a few small
ones entered the window, and became an angelic being, startling me
and waking me up. Another time, I woke up and walked into the
kitchen, although when I looked back I was still in bed. After a time
I got back in bed and truly woke up. Then, the first time my parents
took me 'to the country', where my great-aunt and uncle ran a
summer vacation resort, I was amazed at the number of visible stars
in the sky. Compared with New York City it was an awesome and
beautiful sight. But one night I saw something in the sky that
disturbed and frightened me, a cross. My dad said it was just a star,
but I don’t think he saw what I did. It was experiences like these
that caused me to become a seeker, asking questions that neither my
parents and teachers, nor my friends could satisfactorily answer.
Seeing a cross in the sky did not
make me think that Jesus was watching me; I knew nothing then of a
connection between Jesus and a cross. It just scared me because it
wasn’t a star or a planet or the moon; it didn’t belong there.
Even at the age of 28, when I dreamed I saw a folding chair collapse
into the shape of a cross, by then knowing of course that it was a
Christian symbol, I still knew nothing of the Roman crucifixion. I’d
never heard of the thief on the cross. I wasn’t just sheltered; I
didn’t care.
When I was very young, old enough
to read but still quite young, my grandmother took me to visit my mom
in the hospital. She had open heart surgery, one of the first in New
York to receive this procedure. I
remember pulling one of those little wooden yellow ducks by a string.
I remember being bored, and my grandma took me to a store where I
purchased two comic books, one of the Old Testament and one of the
New. I hadn’t heard of this new testament, but hey it was 'new', maybe it could be interesting. I glanced at the ‘old’
on the way home, and the next day looked for the ‘new’ one, but
it had been intercepted and thrown away. I threw quite a fit, but was
told “It’s not for us Jews”.
I think I heard about Jesus first
in school, as the Italian kids were very concerned about Him,
considering Him to be G-d. I couldn’t understand how that was
possible. I prayed to G-d, but He wasn’t a person but a spirit. But
I liked to live and let live, so when we were assigned to make a
calendar as homework, I penciled in Jesus’ birthday as January 1st
since that was the 'new' year. It made sense to me; see, I wasn’t
kidding about being sheltered. I was surprised when the teacher (who
was Jewish) corrected my work, informing me that I’d chosen the
wrong date.
Then Jesus was mentioned at the
little Yiddish school I attended daily after public school for an
hour or so. There was one line about Him in our Jewish history texts.
“Little is known about this man, but if he existed at all he was
certainly a Jew”. (I’m paraphrasing as earlier, although I think
I still have the book someplace but am too lazy to look for it.) On
one hand, I thought smugly, so much for the leader of the Catholic
Church. But on the other hand, I was curious to know more. But it was
forbidden to talk of Jesus in our home. What could my parents have
even known, being almost as sheltered as I. They knew it was nothing
to do with us.
My cousin Larry was my closest
relative when I was growing up. He was a few years younger than I,
while his beautiful older sister was my age. But Larry & I mainly
played together, both of us being boys after all, while I had a crush
on my other relative from afar. Larry had a similar experience at
Hebrew school, asking the rabbi who this Jesus person was, and the
teacher freaked out, admonishing him to never say that Name again.
Obviously whoever He was, He was a great enemy of us Jews.
Larry’s grandparents, my
great-aunt and uncle, were the owners of the bungalow colony in
upstate New York where I’d spent a few summers (lucky Larry got to
go every year) and where I’d seen that 'cross' in the sky. It
really was a fantastic place for a city kid to visit. There were
frogs and salamanders to capture and collect in jars, trees to climb,
campfires to roast marshmallows on, a creek to play in, a swimming
pool that I didn’t learn to swim in. There were girls to ogle,
blueberries to pick, roads and hills to hike, and a nearby town to
have fun in and buy stuff. And there was the 'casino', the events
building where the grown-ups would party on the weekends.
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Often these events were all-ages,
such as the Saturday movies, or someone’s birthday or anniversary
party. Many of the relatives on my mother’s side of the family were
there, and the whole place often seemed like one big happy family. A
book could be written about all the adventures at ‘Sam’s Bungalow
Colony’ near Monticello; Larry is the one to do it and I hope he
does some day. There’s the skeleton we found at the fishing hole
across the street (turned out to be that of a dog), the tree-house we
built, the ‘whack-a-smack’ branch at the blueberry patch, the
older men sitting around playing pinochle, Mission Orange soda,
Mel-o-roll ice cream, the 'Indian' caves up the road, the dance I
had my first kiss (well, one of the first), the insect bite that
swelled my lip up to twenty times its size, the girl I injured with
my slingshot, the Chow-Chow Cup truck that brought us Chinese food in
edible bowls, the low-watt radio station I built, the summer that my
kid sister got such a bad sunburn she had to wear a plastic protector
on her nose, the summer we all mourned when Marilyn Monroe died. A
book wouldn’t be enough; a movie needs to be made.
We marched through the bungalow
colony holding the skeleton in the air like primeval hunters
returning with their prey, although we had assumed they were human
remains and we were playing a part in solving a murder. The adults
all panicked, as it’s unlawful for Jews to come in contact with a
dead body (secular Jews pick and choose which laws to keep). I do
remember that we were all forced to bathe.
There were many of these Jewish
playgrounds around the Catskill Mountains, and one-by-one they were
purchased by the uber-religious Jews. Can you picture them running
around in the sun in their black hats and clothing? Like myself,
Larry also chose a life in the entertainment business, and has
produced and/or engineered many record albums that you know. Although
we live 1000 miles apart, we’re still close friends and cousins.
We’re lucky if we see each other once every two years, but when we
do, Sam’s Bungalows will eventually come up in conversation. Then
for a few minutes everyone is alive again in our memories, until it
hurts to continue and the subject changes.
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One year we got home late from
our week or two at the bungalow colony. I was carried to bed while my
mom and dad unpacked our early 50’s Chevy. In the morning, I came
into the living room where my parents slept, and my mom excitedly
asked me if I saw the 'bird'. She said that a bird had taken up
lodging in one of our boxes (we had a single piece of luggage, boxes
for the rest) and was loose in the house. Suddenly a large bat with
full wingspread appeared in the window. Mom and I screamed and my pop
jumped out of bed, grabbed a shoe and beat the thing to death. I
suppose we could have opened a window, but I’m not sure that any of
us had ever seen a bat before other than in horror movies and were terrified.
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My dad’s name is Irving in
English, but everyone called him Irv or Itchka in Yiddish, or
just Itz. He’d never been given a middle name, and in the army was
known as Irving “NMI” Goldberg, for ‘no middle initial’. My
mom likewise had no given middle name and at my prodding picked one
herself, Dina. Our family name had been DeMacher in Poland. When they
made their way across the pond in the early twentieth century, one
relative retained the name using the pronunciation Demosher. But
Zayde was assigned the name Goldberg at Ellis Island, DeMacher (the
doer, the maker) being unpronounceable in English due to the guttural ch sound. One story says that he had a job waiting for him here
working for a man named Goldberg. Many Jewish immigrants either
shortened their names or received entirely new names upon arrival in
New York City. Goldberg was a popular one, and you’d be
hard-pressed to find two Goldberg’s that are actually related. In
my 30’s I changed my name to DeMacher (although my dad suggested
the more continental D’moshe, accent on the “e”. I got checks
and credit cards under the new name, but after a couple of years
tired of having to spell it for everyone and switched back. Even
Goldberg can throw people, who want it to end in 'urg' instead of 'erg'. I’m currently recording a compact disc under the name Lenny 'Tone', but I’d be skipping way ahead to say any more
about it.
On one of our record buying
excursions to Manhattan, my friend and I took shelter from a downpour
in a side-street doorway. A man who was already there approached
saying he wanted to “show us something”. A year or so earlier, my
dad dropped me off at the New York Times building; the subway arcade
beneath it hid the fabulous mess of a record shop known as Times
Square Records. I quickly selected a 45, and ran back upstairs where
Itchka was circling the block. A man approached me with a scary
sexual suggestion; it was a long few minutes until pop rescued me.
The Times Square area was quite wild in those days. So, a year later
I thought, here we go again, but to my surprise the stranger whipped
out... a cartoon tract! He wanted to evangelize us, a welcome and
amusing relief. Of course we told him we were Jewish and to get lost!
My friends and I spent many a
Saturday at the huge New York Public Library researching 'doo-wop' music in old Billboard magazines available on microfiche. We’d then
publish the information in a mimeographed fanzine mainly called Big Beat. A doo-wop fan club grew from this known as KBBA, or Keep the Big Beat Alive, after the Fats Domino song “The Big
Beat”. Articles in a couple of other publications helped to swell
the membership to about 300. In the years before the ‘British
Invasion’, vocal group harmony was quite popular on the east coast,
with hundreds of groups meeting on street corners to sing. Many
famous acts began this way and were discovered by A&R men
from the record labels. When Atlantic Records needed a new Drifters
group in 1958, for instance, they grabbed The Crowns featuring Ben E.
King in this manner. I was even approached once by a supposed agent
who only wanted me and not the rest of my group. Well you already
know that I don’t trust strangers and told him to take a hike. He
might have been on the level, but then again I reveled in my
arrogance and was only too glad to dismiss him in any case. He’d
heard us sing the Joey & the Flips song, “Lost Love”.
One of my favorite doo-wop
memories was running into the other members of my group at 2 a.m.
having all just arrived home on the same train, but in different
cars. We started singing the Little Anthony version of “When You
Wish Upon A Star” in hearing range of the Wabasse apartments, five
buildings each 20-something stories with maybe 24 apartments to a
floor. One by one lights in the apartments turned on and people began
yelling things like “hey I’m trying to sleep here!” We wouldn’t
stop until the end of the song.
While living at Wabasse in my
first and only year of college, my next Jesus experience occurred. It
was the year of the big New York City blackout, although our lights
stayed on as our apartments had their own generator. Swingin’ Slim
played a record on his Times Square Records radio show on WBNX,
urging people to hurry down as he had only one box to sell, 25
records. It was by a group I had seen live once, the Blue Notes,
famous for their regional hit “My Hero” a few years previous, and
ten years before their international fame with Harold Melvin. The
song was “Oh Holy Night” and I’d never heard it before, but it
was the Blue Notes after all, and I gave it my full attention. At the
mention of Christ in the line “the night when Christ was born”, I
got a chill down my back. I rushed down the next day and got my copy,
played it and got the same chill. Jesus had to be someone special,
but who?
I always loved Christmas. While
Jewish folks had a little menorah in their windows for Chanukah, the
gentiles went way out for their Christmas displays. Some houses would
display a big Santa on their roof with reindeer and sleigh, and
music playing, and hundreds of lights. Neighbors would try to outdo
each other. My dad would drive me around the Italian neighborhoods so
I could see the lights. So long as I didn’t put any in my bedroom
window, he would make that concession to me. We had quite a row one
year over Glass Wax glass cleaner. At Christmas time they offered
free stencils of trees, angels, etc. with purchase. I wanted to dab
Glass Wax on some stencils in my window so bad I could taste it. Then
I succumbed and of course Itchka was furious, but it was maybe up one
whole day. All I knew was that Christmas was fun and full of lights,
not just the 8 lights we had, and that only on the final day. What
could possibly be so forbidden about “White Christmas” and
“Winter Wonderland”?
Jesus.
When I was 10 years old, my
parents gave in to my constant requests for a brother or sister. I
suppose they thought it was a good idea as well, and made
arrangements to adopt a baby. On Washington’s Birthday 1958, I
waited breathlessly in the lobby of our building until finally a
worker from the adoption agency delivered Susan Laura to us, born
January 1st of that year to a young Irish-American woman with the
surname Quinn. I insisted on having a nickname for my new sister and
Shepsl,
or little sheep was suggested, a name I still call her today, as she
also still calls me by her name for me, bruth. I was ebullient at the
presence of the new family member, the difference in our ages not
manifesting any serious problems for several years. I’ll note that
my own children were born ten years apart, and they played together
nicely until Shaya left for college. Even afterwards, they often
spoke by IM or on the phone and enjoyed each other’s company
terrifically.
Of course, either of them would probably have preferred a sibling closer in age, but they made do and loved each other much. In my case, it will be no surprise to you to hear that I was a poor brother, and after I’d left home my father forbid me to have contact with her. From scaring her out of her wits with her stuffed panda bear, about Suzie’s size at first, that would suddenly come to life, to yelling at her when she used my record player as a merry-go-round for dolls (I subsequently put a padlock on my bedroom door), to teaching her to smoke pot, Dad could not be blamed for his attitude. In our early adult years, I all but ignored her even after she’d moved to the west coast to live near me. I believe she supposed that this was because she was adopted and was thought to be less than an actual sister. Why else would I treat her with such indifference? But actually I never thought of her as any less of a sister, but I was so consumed with my own life and my own needs. My blasé attitude towards her was no different than my attitude toward any other living person. I had little use for anyone; I was an island, I surmised. When my dad’s sister, my Aunt Dotty, told me I looked like a bum because I had patched a hole in my pant’s knee but not placed a matching patch on the opposite knee, I flipped her off. People were placed on earth to amuse and entertain me, not to offer me fashion or any other advice.
I began high school in 1961 at
the age of thirteen and wanting to hang around where girls might be,
I attended a student/faculty basketball game which was supposed to
culminate in a dance. I’d gone to dances at Montauk previously,
sitting on one side of the room with the boys, girls on the other
side. I’d gaze jealously at the guys on the dance floor who not
only had the nerve to ask a girl to dance, but actually knew how to
dance. They’d tried to teach us to dance in junior high, but I
could never get the hang of the lindy, the dominant dance. Shortly,
the twist, slop and mashed potatoes would come into vogue, and I’d
be able to ace those. Meanwhile I could certainly slow dance or
cha-cha. But mainly I sat and yearned. The basketball game was
punctuated with an appearance by a local doo-wop group. I chuckled
meanly when the lead singer appeared, an overweight teenage girl,
thinking they couldn’t be very good. They sang the Dell’s song
“Why Do You Have To Go”, and were so great, surely one of the
best live performances I’ve ever heard. I’ve been on boards and
in chat rooms trying to find out if anyone else saw them that night,
to no avail. Whoever they were, they ruled.
I did no dancing that evening,
but shortly I started being invited to parties, and managed to land a
date with a gorgeous Italian girl. We had no money to speak of, so
with another couple just sort of walked around the neighborhood. She
told me that she liked Jewish boys and usually only went out with
them. After talking a while, we found a secluded spot in some trees
and began 'making out', a fancy word for kissing, but immediately
I got a severe pain in my groin that would not abate. Was this from
guilt at dating a gentile? Or worse, was it the wrath of G-d? A close
cousin of mine had a similar pain and it turned out to be cancer. I
continued to kiss my date until I could no longer endure the pain, I
apologized and told her I felt ill and had to go home. She said that
she liked me and wanted to see me again.
Itz would not hear of it, angry
enough that I would date her in the first place. But Dad, I
complained, she’s probably going to marry a Jewish guy someday, it
might even be me. He made it clear to me that I’d have to get a job
and move out if I wanted to date outside of our religion. Trying to
make it up to me, he and a cousin 'fixed me up' with a girl from
a bordering neighborhood, who was Jewish, but had an Italian sounding
name. She turned out to be completely sweet and fun to be with, very
pretty but overweight. I don’t know what it is about the slightest
bit of fat on a female that turns me off. This would work against me
in the future as an adult and a new resident of Oakland, California.
I was already open to meeting someone new, and it turned out that a
pretty but slightly overweight gal named Debbie (beginning a pattern
of Debbie’s in my life) liked me. Since her bit of flab made it
impossible, I was not even friendly to her. A year later I ran into
her at a party and she was now totally skinny and in my opinion perfect,
but taken. Nevertheless we were really stoned on angel dust and
started making out although people warned us that her hulking
boyfriend would arrive at any time. I was so high I remember thinking
that I didn’t care if I died right there and then. We managed to
unlock our lips just before he arrived, but it was a good lesson for
me about looking below the surface in relationships. I can't say I learned it, though.
Towards the end of our residence
in Borough Park, I woke up one morning to find that mom was 'missing'. Shortly, Itz came home and told us that she’d had a
nervous breakdown and that 'they' had found her not far from
home. I had just turned 16, and Suzie 6. I couldn’t understand what
he meant. Something had snapped, something to do with her sister
Rochelle’s death five years earlier that she’d stuffed inside.
When Rochelle had needed surgery, my mother suggested the surgeon.
Rochelle died; her older sister blamed herself, never telling this to
anyone, but finally she couldn’t live with it. At the time, mom was
working for a married, older Italian Catholic man at his house in Bay
Ridge doing secretarial work. I had benefited from this by finding
some old 45’s at his house, which he gave me, that had belonged to
his son. But shortly before the nervous breakdown, I’d heard mom &
dad arguing about something that had to do with her working for him.
I wondered what it could possibly be; she was a beautiful woman,
while a bit overweight, with a wonderful personality and sense of
humor. Did this old fellow fashion her? Or was it something else;
perhaps he tried to tell her about Jesus. Years later I hoped this
was it, while realizing that Catholics are not usually so
evangelical. I’ve asked my dad about that argument but he no longer
remembers it.
Mom was in and out of those
horror chambers known as state mental hospitals for the next several
years. I visited her there only once, not willing to endure the
cries, screams, and the sight of the empty shell walking dead in that
place. I visited Teddy in one of those places as well years later. He
was still Teddy and could still laugh, but barely. What a relief to
get out of there; I resolved to never get thrown into one and thought
of this often when I caught myself having my own crazy episodes.
How hard life must have been for
my father. Unlike me, he faithfully visited her at the hospital. They
had already put money down on the new co-op apartment we would soon
move into. I suppose that Dad thought the new place and new
neighborhood could help make a new start for his wife. He was willing
to do anything to help her, for one thing sneaking large doses of
vitamin C into the hospital. He’d read that it was being tried for
schizophrenia, which was now her diagnosis.
One evening after school I
decided to check out the new digs that were still under construction.
Several city blocks of an old Brighton Beach neighborhood bordering
Coney Island had been completely razed for this massive project. It
would soon yield seven giant Trump Village buildings, and five more
to make up Wabasse, with a strip of shopping in the middle. During my
investigation it began to get dark and I was chased by a pack of wild
dogs, somehow making it safely back to the Van Sicklen elevated train
station. When moving day arrived there were no dogs or other hazards,
just an army of mostly Jewish people moving into their spanking new
residences. Perhaps, I thought, this really would be a boon to mom’s
recuperation.
I must say that it was really
cool living a few blocks from Coney Island, being able to ride the
roller coasters any day of the week. It was also fascinating to me to
explore the Coney Island neighborhood where people lived, always
looking for kids to harmonize with. Brighton Beach fascinated as
well, an Italian neighborhood in those days, with the best pizza I’ve
eaten in my entire life at Rocco’s. There was always a hot pie
coming out of the oven, and it was only 15 cents a slice piled high
with that stringy full-fat mozzarella. Good jukebox, too; I remember
listening to “Choosey Beggar” by Smokey and the Miracles for the
first time there.
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