TWO

    I was born February 26, 1948 at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, just over the bridge from our flat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When I turned 50 years old, the hospital mailed me a certificate to proclaim that fact; how they found me, with my unlisted number 3000 miles west of there, is a mystery. As I remember my mother telling the story, it was a very snowy winter, but what really worried her was not whether she could get to the hospital, but whether I’d be born on the 29^th of the month and then only have a birthday every four years. At the hospital I was presented with my very first toy, a rubber Bugs Bunny bought by Grandma Rose. I slept with Bugs, along with many more rubber toys, until I was at least 12, and maybe beyond that! My parents bought a combination radio and phonograph which I destroyed at the tender age of one or two. They never fixed it or replaced it. You can see it in the upper right of the photograph.

Circumcised on the Eighth Day

    In those days, Williamsburg was still a Jewish neighborhood. We lived on the first floor of an old brownstone, my mom, dad and me, and my maternal grandparents and their young daughter. My aunt Rochelle, only eight years older than I, was more of a sister to me, and I idolized her as such. An older couple lived above us, and I don’t remember a basement apartment but there must have been one. Rochelle was no doubt responsible for my early interest in popular, and then rock music. I remember visiting her the first of 1955 and finding her sad over the death of R&B star Johnny Ace, which became the first death to impact my life. A few years later, I would mourn Chuck Willis’ demise as well. These two stars are mostly forgotten these days, while actual churches have sprung up to immortalize and grieve for others like John Coltrane and Nirvana. Johnny Ace met his end purportedly during a game of Russian roulette, a story told in great detail in label mate Bobby Bland's biography. 

    Another time I remember Rochelle & I harmonizing to the Dells’ latest hit record, “Oh What A Night”. I used to sneak in her room just to look at her school music book, a scrapbook of songs that is now in my possession. Another time, she visited me in Borough Park and we walked to Jaynel’s record store together; she bought a 45 of “This Is My Story” by Gene & Eunice, I purchased “Story Untold” by the Nutmegs on a 78 (they were out of the 45).

    But I was already singing Johnny Ray songs, and imitating his style at 2 or 3 years old, as well as listening to the Weavers’ hits. No doubt, this had been mainly Rochelle’s influence, and I’ve been involved with music ever since. My parents were musical as well; I don’t think they ever played any instruments, but they sang around the house constantly. My dad wrote two songs during the war, and later had an audition for the Amateur Hour radio program. In Kramden-esque style, however, when his name was called he completely forgot the lyrics of his song, and so his musical aspirations came to a close. There is a photo of him singing one of his tunes on my radio show on KPFA that is posted below. That hippie in the photo is, of course, myself.

    Rochelle attended Lincoln High, the school that gave us Neil Sedaka and the Tokens. When Sedaka left that group to pursue a solo career, my aunt dated one of them during the brief time when they were deciding on a new name. I remember her excitedly telling us all the funny names they’d considered before choosing Darrell and the Oxfords. Their record, “Picture In My Wallet” became a large regional hit, but they were soon back to being the Tokens and their version of an earlier Weavers song became their biggest national hit, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. But by then, my wonderful 'sister' was no more. After she passed away I dreamed she was sitting in my grandparent's house, and she comforted me by saying she was fine now and not to worry.

    My grandma Rose (they were ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa’ on my mother’s side, rather than the old world zayde and bubbe of my dad’s side) certainly had a difficult and painful life. Rochelle was only 19 when she succumbed to ileitis. My mother, like Elvis, was only 43 when she died. Rose’s father had died young as well, stoned to death by some “Christian” kids who accused him of killing G-d. Yes, stoned, just like in Bible days, back in the “really old” country. Only her youngest child Shlomo (Stanley), who decided at five years old that he would become a rabbi, outlived both his parents. Rose had plenty of her own health problems; I always remember her myriad bottles of prescription medicines, her operations and hospitalizations. But in the earlier, happier days when both my parents were working, looking forward to affording their own apartment, Grandma Rose and Grandpa Shaya were like second parents to me, and we were that close all of their lives. Whatever bitterness they felt due to their hardships was never shown to me. I knew only love, patience, forgiveness and generosity from them, as well as from my parents. Too bad I was born “in Adam”, a sinner according to New Testament theology, or born with “an evil eye” according to Judaism. But so are we all.

    I can’t say what sin, weakness or predilection any of the other characters in my story were born with. Jewish people generally believe that we are born pure, with a “clean slate” so to speak. Somehow, the concept of ‘original sin’, so clear to the Christian, does not appeal to the Jewish sensibility. Perhaps the lifelong struggle of resisting the call of Messiah is challenge enough to any Jew coming into this world, a world that hates the Jew perhaps above anyone else. Why are we so hated, judged corporately rather than individually? Why did Germany under Hitler try to totally annihilate us, and why are the other Middle Eastern nations trying to force Israel out of our G-d given homeland? As a race, surely we have left our mark on the world in medicine, entertainment, technology and education. The Ten Commandments and Jesus Christ are of Jewish origin.

    Noted Bible scholar Arnold Fruchtenbaum explains the hatred this way. Jesus said that He would return at a time when the Jewish leaders would cry out to Him, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the L-rd”, Baruch Habah B’shaym Adonai”. While our enemy ha-satan, the adversary, was defeated by the death of Jesus in the sense that the sins of believing humankind were forgiven at the Cross, if the evil one can stop the Jews from crying out that phrase to Jesus, by killing us all, then Jesus will not come, and Satan will not be thrown into the Lake of Fire. We know from Scripture that, in fact, “all Israel shall be saved” and indeed the end times events will take place as planned. But the Devil certainly is going to give his agenda his best shot. He surely has done an excellent job so far of turning the world against the Jewish people, with this hatred even infecting the church, the “guests” of Israel so to speak, according to Romans chapter 11. From that quarter we presently endure such anti-Semitic indignities as “replacement theology”, amillennialism and preterism that teach, among other things, that G-d has utterly rejected us. Many churches wrongly teach that all the covenants to Israel are now to the church only. To be fair, most Christians are still great supporters of Israel and the Jews, but suffice to say there are other world religions that feel less kindly towards us. But whatever misunderstandings we might share concerning the lofty truths of G-d, we know that Satan, G-d’s most powerful created being, understands theology all too well, and is happy to pit us all at each other’s throats to serve his purpose.

    Now, I’m not a preacher, nor do I hold any office in G-d’s economy. I’m only one depraved sinner from birth who has found grace at the Throne of mercy. I can attest that unlike perhaps some others, I was clearly born in sin, not so much because of my saintly parents’ sin, but because of Adam’s, as the Word declares. To be as polite as possible, I’ll just say that according to my earliest memories (and they go way back) as well as the recollections of the adults in the house, my most particular weakness was an obsession with sex. I imagine that there are those who are liars from birth or gossipers from birth. My problem was lust; the “lust of the eyes” says Scripture, but mainly the lust of the libido. When I hear someone say, “I was born that way” or even “G-d made me that way”, I agree and identify, until they add “so it’s not a sin”. I’ve learned that everything the Bible calls sin, is. From your ox goring your neighbor’s ox, to sleeping with your father’s wife, with cheating, lying, jealousy, pride, (especially pride) and all the rest along the way. The Bible tells us that anyone who says he doesn’t sin (and she, as well), is a liar. That’s so we’re all included; we all sin and all need a savior. Oh, we can change our behavior somewhat; we can change our programming. But we can’t stop sinning, and I’ve done them all (goring excluded), and I’ve specialized in lust. If the weakness you’ve been born with is merely gossiping, I’m jealous; because lust is worse. There I go, the sins of covetousness and pride in the same sentence! I’m only on chapter two and sinning up a storm! A Jew might say to all this, ‘G-d, blessed be He, only expects us to try our best’, to which Rabbi Sha’ul (the apostle Paul) might reply, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of G-d”. If we’ve fallen short, we won’t make it without the Messiah. By the way, “Saul” didn’t change his name to “Paul”. There is no “sh” letter in the Greek alphabet, so they couldn’t write Sha’ul. Either way, he was a Jew that wrote about a third of the New Testament.

    My earliest actual real memory of my life was sitting in my highchair being fed some mush at around a year or so of age. My grandma is saying, “open the hangar, the plane is coming through” and I’m clamping my lips as tight as I can to avoid the sinister ‘banana-ry’ cargo. I could only speak gibberish at that point, but I remember understanding the English language clearly. But the greatest event of those years for me was the arrival, in 1953 if memory serves, of our first television set. I lived for Uncle Fred Sayles “Junior Frolics” program, with its ancient black & white cartoons, Popeye, Felix, Farmer Gray, Koko the Clown and the rest. I suffered through the grown-ups shows like “I Remember Mama” (my cue to find some toys to play with), but I was intrigued by “The Goldberg’s”; I wondered how we got our own TV show, and would we ever be on it? (Once again I’m glad I didn’t use a pseudonym!)

    I was two years old when my parents were swayed to have my tonsils removed, at the recommendation of a doctor. In those days the government was supposedly looking for peacetime uses of nuclear radiation and was experimenting with our armed forces by exposing them to radium. Yes, radium was all the rage, and for several years children were unnecessarily dosed with it after tonsil operations, even those with healthy tonsils. It was said that these were vestigial organs of no use. The doctors and nurses that administered the radium, without proper protection, are long dead. I first heard about all this when one of the editors of an underground comic book died. That was about twenty years ago. I imagine that this was the cause of most of my medical problems; why G-d chose to allow me to live two decades longer than this other fellow I cannot imagine. I was subjected to a lot more radiation in the future, including about 20 CT-scans or PT-scans. I'm amazed that I don't glow in the dark. I can't blame my parents for those scans; perhaps I'm a masochist for placing so much trust in the medical industry.

    The following year my folks got their own apartment at Shore Haven in a new section of Bensonhurst that Jews were moving into. I don’t remember my room there, but I had one, nor do I remember much of our apartment at all, except for the large patio that we shared with our next-door neighbors, the Zimmerman’s. I do remember their apartment somewhat though, as their pretty daughter and I were allowed to take baths together. Whether this is more advice from Dr. Spock or not, I don’t know, but this practice was my best memory of the place, next to the wonderful gift I received for my 5^th birthday, a shiny new, red 20” bicycle. I didn’t learn to ride the thing until eight years later, when amazingly enough, growth spurt be darned I still fit into it. I clearly remember the day my dad took it out of the box and painstakingly (accent on pain) assembled it. At 13, when I rode it into a hedge for the first time, I understood the great gift of freedom and mobility my father had given me. I also got my first stamp album at that 5^th birthday party, and soon afterwards my worst memory of our short dalliance there, the Mumps. I also spent a term at kindergarten; wooden blocks, clay, small containers of milk with cookies and story time. That was the life!

    The next year, we wandering Jews wandered to an old but attractive and well-built, rent-controlled apartment in one of America’s most Jewish neighborhoods of all (and it remains so to this day), Borough Park. We would spend the next ten years there, until my dad would once again venture forth to a new building and a new neighborhood. The building, at the corner of 15^th Avenue and 47^th Street, had the vestiges of a faded glory. The outside was covered in vines, and there was a large empty lobby with a bricked up fireplace. Other buildings in the neighborhood with smaller lobbies still contained some furniture, and we often wondered what exquisite furnishings might have once graced that room. Its front doors were massive things such as those of a palace; the apartment ceilings were high, the walls dressed in fancy moldings. There were electric lamps built into the walls in the shape of candles. The ones in our apartment were painted over in many coats, but we heard that some still worked in other apartments. The walls were thick, and the only outside noise came from the clothesline bedecked courtyard, if your windows were open.

    All of the apartment entrances had mezuzot fastened to the right doorposts, small torah-shaped containers with the Sh’ma Yisroel prayer hidden inside. This would typically be surrounded with stickers denoting a yearly donation to a charity, the Heart Fund, March of Dimes, or more typically Hadassah, (the Hebrew name of Queen Esther) the women’s Zionist organization. Similar to today’s bumper stickers advertising political campaigns of year’s past, but for some reason never removed from car bumpers, these Hadassah stickers, each year a different color, but with the same picture, would remain on the doorposts.

    Another interesting feature of the common hallways were the incinerator rooms where we’d dump our garbage. Occasionally, the fire would be burning, and I loved to watch the flames while the trash door was open. The night deposit drop at our bank reminds me so much of it, but I hope never to see any flames in that thing. Teddy and I, I’ll introduce him shortly, never tired of running around the hallways and roof of the building looking for fun, finding it in the endless task of picking the old peeling lead paint from the walls. “Good pickings over here!” one of us might exclaim.

    On the ground floor with a separate outside entrance was a doctor’s office, in this case an eye doctor. I was an especially shmutzy kid, loving to dig in the dirt, hating to wash my hands. I received a “U” in health at school each quarter for dirty fingernails. Once a teacher asked me “who died”, although I didn’t understand the connection; the black bands on my nails signifying death. This dirt inevitably found its way into my eyes from hay-fever itching, and so visits to the eye doctor to treat the resulting sties were inevitable as well. Once, a sty had grown so large that an entire eye was glued shut with mucous, and had to be pried open by the good doctor. There was a whole lot of crying, and candy bribery, going on that day.

    To the right of our building was the private residence of an esteemed rabbi who’d been rescued from Germany by his followers during the war. On the corner of 48^th Street was another doctor’s office, in a private brick home, well almost every building was brick, where my mother was treated for boils. I recall singing the popular Jerry Vale tune “You Don’t Know Me” in the waiting room, while impatient with the long wait with mom. Some of the patients applauded at the end of the song, I suppose because my whiny arrangement was finally over. The entrance to the building had an inviting “stoop”, and kids would often hang out on it and even play stoop ball in between the coming and going of the building’s clients.

    A “stoop”, incidentally, is a row of usually concrete stairs at the entrance to a building. There might be a store or apartment in the basement, and the number of stairs could vary. On the sides of the stairs there might be concrete lions, flower boxes, flat slabs for sitting, or nothing. Stoop-Ball consisted of throwing a pink Spalding ball against the stairs causing it to pop up in the air and then someone would catch it. If there were more rules than that, I don’t remember them.

                                                        Rochelle at Sam's Bungalows

                                                       Charles 'Yeshayahu' Eisenblatt

                                           Pop singing "Try And Remember" on KPFA

                                                         The beautiful Rochelle

                                                                 Rochelle at 16

                                                 Grandma Rose Eisenblatt in Williamsburg

                      Lenny Fifth Birthday

    Borough Park was an easy hop on the BMT train to Coney Island. My first memory of the place was at a year or two of age. The fireworks scared the life out of me and I cried all through it. But once I realized that they were actually fun, albeit loud, I relished my time on the beach. I loved the peddlers that maneuvered around the tightly packed sun worshipers selling their wares: Shatzkin's knishes (best ever)and orangeade, one hot bag and one cold bag in hand. Connoisseur's argue over which knishes were tastiest in those days, but Shatzkin's, greasy fried on the outside, pillowy inside had no competition as far as I knew. Mrs. Stahl's were a distant second.

    Once I was of age and could travel to the beach with my friends, food took a back seat to the rides. Although a trip to Coney Island was incomplete without Nathan's famous greasy french fries, Steeplechase and the other attractions became the reason for going. Steeplechase had an ancient metal horse race ride; at the exit two clowns were posted and shocked us with cattle prods! George C. Tilyou's amusement park also featured  the mildest of three roller coasters. One of my favorite rides in Coney was the Virginia Reel, another antique that had spinning cars in a roller coaster like setting. I came home with my back bleeding from that one. There were many others that no longer exist and others that have survived, but the rides ruled for sure.