As a kid I’d line up my shoes under my bed at night: neat, like in the military. I made sure they were polished, too. I’m sure some shrink today would say I suffered from ADD or other compulsive behavior disorders and should have been put on a regimen of Ritalin.
I wonder what they’d say about the fact that through most of my youth I wore secondhand pants from dead men. Many of the pants I wore as a preteen came off of stiffs and were cut down to fit me.
Don’t get me wrong: My father was a good man. He ran a small antiques store with mostly nineteenth-century stuff. On the side, at least in the beginning, he sold used goods as well. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do to make ends meet, right? Occasionally, he would go to an auction after a man died and buy the entire estate: the clocks, the dishes, the mirrors—whatever the man had—the pants, the shirts, the whole deal. You get the picture.
Back at the store, as he sorted the stuff for resale, he’d take a closer look at the suit. Once he got a Hart, Schaffner & Marx suit from a dead man. Now, what’s he going to do, toss it in the garbage like they do today? In those days, it wasn’t in him to throw out a good worsted fabric. Instead, he brought home the pants to me.
I remember my father called me to the bedroom and showed them to me like the head tailor at Saks department store. He said, “Now, Michael, get a good look at the fabric.” I wanted to vomit! I got a migraine because I knew what was coming.
“Take a look at the quality of this fabric.” He’s working me like a salesman; he’s unrolling the pants on the bed. I can see it to this day! He unrolls them like he’s selling me a bolt of handwoven cloth. He says, “You can’t get fabric like this just anywhere.”
I wanted to say, “Of course not, Dad. They only sell stuff like that for men who died.”
You know, it was like special clothing for the undertaker.
Even if I had said something, that wouldn’t have changed one thing. He’d go downtown and the pants would come back, “fit” for me, you know—shortened, without the legs taken in properly. They ended up baggy, like an Abbott & Costello pair of pants. Even if they had fit me properly, there was something repugnant about the whole idea.
Like I said, I knew how to make do with whatever was at hand. There’s an old saying, “The man with no shoes complains until he meets the man with no feet.” Years later, the fact that I didn’t have much more than a place to sleep in my first little apartment after college was OK with me—at least I wasn’t wearing dead man’s pants.
Little did I know that one day those awful pants would serve as a metaphor for the shift in my political orientation. You might find it interesting that I wasn’t always an independent conservative. I was raised in a Democrat, blue-collar home. My dad was a Democrat, my mom was a Democrat—most of my relatives still vote Democrat.
To an immigrant family whose parents came of age during the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was “the Great White Savior.” Aside from being the only U.S. president reelected to office three times, he gained lasting political mileage with the relief that his New Deal offered. As you might expect then, my father used to tell me, “Michael, all I know is, the Democrats are for the little guy and the Republicans are for big business.” In a way, his attempt to sell me on the political leanings of the Democratic party was no different than his sales job with the dead man’s pants: He was selling me a failed ideology that should have been buried long ago.
So as a young man, not seeing things as clearly as I do now, I voted as my dad did, since I didn’t understand politics. As I grew older that view would change completely. The turning point in my thinking can be traced back to my first job out of college as a social worker in the Upper West Side of New York. All of my so-called “clients” were minorities. Now, I was a good liberal at the time, having had my brain washed at one of the city universities of New York by a whole slew of European immigrants who, instead of kissing the ground when they got here, urinated on the sacred soil and the flag and immediately sought to instill communist philosophy in the minds of the young.
I didn’t know that at the time. I was just a wide-eyed liberal kid with an eye on changing the world. There I was, fresh out of Queens College. Having minored in sociology, I figured I’d take a job as a social worker to save the “oppressed minority.” I was always an idealist—I still am, as a matter of fact.
But, the abuses of the welfare system that I saw back then nauseated me and started me on my slow road to recovery. Day after day I found person after person who was working, who had a job, but who claimed they didn’t so they could get their government handout. Worse, they knew they were ripping off the welfare system and didn’t bat an eye. How can I be so sure these hucksters weren’t swindling Uncle Sam? I mean, you could argue that they were oppressed and didn’t know the rules: not me. At a young age I learned a valuable lesson on how to spot people who smiled to your face while robbing you blind the second your back was turned. The next story about Sam the Butcher is a perfect example.
Twenty-Seven
Sam the Butcher
WHEN I WAS A KID GROWING UP IN THE BRONX, MY AUNT Bea was a lot like my mother in that she practically lived in the kitchen. There was something about that generation of women who took pride in the way they fed their family. Sure, most of the time they served a cardio-toxic diet designed to kill off all of the men before they turned fifty, but there was almost always something wonderful in the oven. Day or night, I remember Aunt Bea’s home smelled like Thanksgiving morning.
Now, in my day, freezer space was limited to ice cubes, so Aunt Bea would buy her meat fresh from Sam the Butcher. This was during a time when the same guy worked the meat counter his whole life. The butcher always knew your name when you came in. He’d order you a special cut of something, maybe a leg of lamb or whatever. Today it’s some kid with open sores and a nose ring working the meat counter, and every time you go in it’s a different guy. They know you as well as they know where the hamburger they’re selling comes from.
I have to say that Sam came from a long line of butchers, probably dating back to the Mongols. He was this stocky Russian—or maybe Ukrainian—man, with oak stumps for arms, a bloodied white apron stretched tight across his belly, and a missing finger. From time-to-time I’d tag along with Aunt Bea for the entertainment value—you know, just to catch a glimpse of Sam wrestling a 300-pound side of beef in the back. We didn’t have cable TV in those days. You had to get your entertainment where you could find it.
So, off we went to the market: Aunt Bea would study the fresh cuts of meat behind the refrigerated glass case as if picking out a new diamond ring. Sam would see us through the little window in the swinging door to the meat-cutting room. He’d wipe the blood from his beefy hands on his apron as he came out to greet us. He’d mumble something about the fresh this and that, holding up a few meat samples like a Turkish rug salesman offering a closer inspection of the goods. Me? I’m counting the fingers to see if he still had all nine! With a nod, Aunt Bea would point to a roast and ask Sam to cut it into stew-sized pieces. He’d take the meat in the back and return a few minutes later with our selection wrapped in white butcher paper.
We’d get home and she’d toss it in the pot with the spices. I remember one day sitting down to eat, and after one bite, she swore it wasn’t the “good stuff” Sam had shown her from the display case. This happened a couple of times, until Aunt Bea got wise to what Sam was doing. It dawned on her that he would sell her on the prime rib up front but when he got to the freezer, he’d grab something on the order of dog meat. He probably figured she’d never know the difference!
One day I asked, “Aunt Bea, why don’t you just follow him into the back to make sure you’re not getting gypped?” She did. The next time we went to the market in the heat of a summer day, she put on an extra-heavy coat, a scarf, and matching earmuffs, just to stay warm in the freezer where Sam cut up the beef. When she told Sam that she wanted to follow him into the freezer, he didn’t
look too pleased. The toothy smile vanished from his face, but what could he do? He shrugged and grunted, “Just don’t touch anything.”
I had no plans to lose a finger, so I stood there with my arms folded like a mannequin. I’m looking at the meat hooks, the slicers, and the meat cleavers, fascinated by a world I never knew existed. The whole time Aunt Bea studied Sam like a New York City health inspector. This time she made sure we left with the good stuff—and when we got home and she cooked that meat, what a difference!
Twenty-Eight
Coney Island Wax Figures
GOING BACK NOW TO THE BAD KID WHOSE MOTHER BEAT herself on the arm: We liked to go all over New York by subway. When we were twelve or thirteen we went everywhere in Manhattan. We would cruise down in the bowels of the basement of the subways on Forty-second Street, where sleazy merchants were selling soft-core porno magazines. You’d see the old geezers there lining up, looking at the magazines. We’d try to look and—“Kid, get out of here, get out of here”—that kind of thing.
We also used to like to go to Coney Island. They had weird exhibits, mannequins of wax figures. Some of them were frightening. One was of George Metesky, the “mad bomber” of the subway. They were so lifelike that, if you were twelve and you had just been on a New York subway car for an hour and stared at one of those exhibits, the guy looked like he was going to come out of the cell and strangle you.
Well, adjacent to that mad bomber display there was another guy: This scared me. To this day I have nightmares about him. It showed a guy who kidnapped and dismembered girls and women. He was really bad, this one. He looked like an ordinary Joe: white guy, ordinary guy. It was a mad time in New York City. Girls were being found dismembered. Finally, they tracked this nut down to a chicken farm in New Jersey. They found a corpse in a trunk under the bed.
This exhibit in Coney Island shows this guy reconstructed in wax in a little room in the back of a chicken farm with a dismembered girl’s body in a trunk, and he’s got blood on his feet, with a blank stare at you—and they show you the feet and the hands and blood. Today they could never ever display this, but life then was richer as a result. They had freak shows in those days. A genuine freak show is not so bad: the freak had a job. If I went to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, I didn’t go for the horse or the elephant—I went for the freak show in the back: the one-breasted man; the half-bearded woman (in other words, the people who today have become politicians). In my day they were in the back room of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.
Freak shows: half man, half woman; half human, half amoeba. It was wonderful. I liked the whole thing: You eat the popcorn, you walk around, you gape at the freak, you thank God that you’re not like them. But, the truth of the matter is, you think, Well, they’re exploiting the freak. But those who worked in those shows did not feel “exploited.” They made a good living; they were around other abnormal people; they had a little world, a social world; they had sex, some of them, with each other. Today, what? They sit at home watching television on welfare? You think that’s better for a freak?
So, there’s something to be said for going back to the America of the 1950s. Please do me a favor. Don’t bring up the Civil Rights Act. America of the 1950s with a Civil Rights Act—can we move on now? It was a better country. OK, everyone’s equal, but give me back the freak show and give me back the exhibit of the guy that a kid could see was totally crazy. Why should a kid see that? A kid should see that in order to understand there are dangers in the world. Certain people are really crazy and bad.
Twenty-Nine
Louie and His Crazed Monkey
I ONCE READ A STORY ABOUT MONKEYS INVADING THE CAPITAL of India. Just weeks before, the deputy major died after falling off a balcony while fighting off a pack of monkeys. The story I read said that the animals were attacking again, with one woman seriously hurt and two dozen other people given first aid in the East Delhi neighborhood.
So the monkeys are out of control—rogue monkeys running into residences. I guess if I go on with the story I’ll be accused of simian phobia—and I’d be liable to face a boycott from some monkeys around the globe, and I can’t afford that because if the monkeys were to boycott my products there’d be no conservatives left to buy them, I suppose.
Liberalism turns all animals “cute”: a bear is “cute,” a monkey is “cute.” Monkeys are dangerous, with big teeth! This reminds me of the story of “Louie and His Crazed Monkey.” We go back now: Ladies and gentlemen, put on your resting caps. We’re going back in time. We’re going back to the Lower East Side of New York.
Dad owns a small antiques mart. Little ol’ Michael is cleaning bronzes in the store basement, and there’s Louie the Drunk from the bowery. He wasn’t a bum—he worked, but he was an alcoholic. Dad would have him in on the weekends and he’d clean the bronzes—and whatever else he did down there. I loved Louie. Louie was a great guy.
You’ve got to understand, this guy was an alcoholic of the old school: skinny like a rail, white guy, smoked unfiltered cigarettes—but one of the nicest guys on earth. He wore the rubber apron. He cleaned bronze statues with cyanide! Then, of course, I took over because Dad wanted cheap child labor, and where else was he going to get it? As a result, I got to know Louie over the years. He taught me various things. Once we had Louie over to the house—I’ll never forget it—I was so proud that my father took this guy, who I liked, all the way out to Queens and invited him to dinner. I don’t know what came over him. Maybe it was Thanksgiving. Louie had dinner with us at the table, and the guy was surprisingly erudite. He knew things.
After dinner we did games, and Louie the Drunk showed me how to bend nails. He showed me mind over matter by taking a nail and showing me that if you put your thumbs on the center and pull back with your other fingers and focus your mind on it and keep up the pressure, the nail will bend! I was shocked because I was a skinny kid with little hands—and I bent the nail! He taught me mind over matter—but it is all molecular, as a result of constant pressure producing heat, which permits you to bend the nail.
I learned that in life it’s the same thing: It’s all willpower. Now there’s another element to the story. So, Louie is this king of a guy, interesting but an alcoholic. Years go by. He lives alone in Williamsburg. In those days Williamsburg was a slum, zero—you know, oilcloth city; leftover apartments from the last century. No one wanted to be there but the poor. So he lives there alone. He’s very lonely. He gets a monkey—he wants a monkey! Now, nobody in those days had a monkey. Dogs, yes. Cats, yes. Who had a monkey in those days? Louie gets a monkey. Louie didn’t just get a spider monkey, one of the skinny little monkeys. Louie got a woolly monkey. Now, woolly monkeys are really strong: They’ve got a chest on them and strong hands. Louie is in love with this monkey. For a couple of months they’re inseparable. Wherever he goes, there’s the monkey; the monkey’s on his shoulder, while he’s cleaning, and he’s happy.
Now Louie was the kind of guy that if he went to a bar on the Lower East Side he’d throw money in the jukebox, and he would whistle and sing and buy everyone drinks until he was broke. I remember the name of that bar to this day: Hammel & Korn. Whatever money he made from my father, he’d get paid it and two minutes later he’d be in the bar. Later, he’d stumble out into the street. Sometimes he’d sleep on the Bowery and didn’t care. He lived for the booze—that was it—but he had a heart of gold.
So, Louie gets the woolly monkey. Finally he has someone to fill his empty nights. As I said, they were inseparable. Well, as time went on, we got a call: Louie’s in the hospital; he’s in critical condition. “What?” The monkey went crazy in his apartment, attacked him, almost ripped him to pieces. He suffered for six months in the hospital. I don’t know which hospital, probably Bellevue because that’s where they all wound up. The monkey went at him—you don’t know what a monkey’s like when it goes crazy. You try to stop an enraged monkey without a weapon! He ripped his neck; he ripped his face; he ripped his arms; he ripped hi
s legs; he ripped his crotch; he ripped his behind.
Louie was ripped up pretty badly, but we learned that during the fight, he grabbed his pet and threw it out the window. It just shows you that if he hadn’t done it, he’d be dead today. A liberal probably would have tried to talk to the monkey, but Louie knew that the instincts had to kick in: It was him or the monkey. He decided that it was better he live than the monkey. He didn’t consult the liberal playbook on how to deal with a crazed monkey—he just fought with it and killed it. I think that’s what the bottom line is here, but the point is, even a lonely drunk needs companionship at night. In his case, he found the monkey. It was probably the right thing for him to do.
But it goes back to the story I opened with, which is that the monkeys are rampaging in India. Rogue monkeys are breaking into houses, even into the house of the daughter of the ruling Congress party. They broke into the Indian parliament. Trouble boiled over in late October when the city’s deputy mayor fell to his death while driving away monkeys from his home. He waves a stick to scare them away, tumbles over the edge, and boom! He drops dead—falls off the balcony and dies.
So, right now you can see that Louie was a pioneer, in a way, in the sense that he understood that monkeys were dangerous long before they did in India, when they turned it into a sacred animal.
Thirty
End of Day Glass
I REMEMBER LEARNING THIS WHEN I WAS A KID IN MY father’s antiques store: Let me tell you what end of day glass is. Don’t you sometimes enjoy a multitude of stories without the distraction of a logical connection? End of day glass is similar to stream-of-consciousness storytelling. Some of the most colorful glass is variegated glass. You know, all sorts of colors were in those vases made with variegated glass.
A Savage Life Page 12