Just Kids From the Bronx

by Arlene Alda

  It was a bridge from my group of kids who I hung out with, who were totally unmotivated, to this other group who were motivated educationally. So I figured that I could sit in the class with the advanced kids but still have a leather coat, a ducktail haircut, and have lunch and hang out with the other guys.

  I would do their book reports in the cafeteria during lunch. They’d get in line, and I’d say, “Tell me what the book was about.” Like tell me what the basic story was. And they’d say, “Well, it’s about this guy, he got shot and blah blah blah.” So I would construct a page of stuff having never read the book. And the guys I did it for, they very much respected me ’cause I helped them out. That meant that I got respect in the street. I also got girlfriends.

  When you grew up in that neighborhood, as far as a future was concerned, you were either going to take numbers, be a loan shark, or you were going to be an athlete or do some menial job.

  One summer day we were outside. A big black car pulled up in front of my building on Bronxwood Avenue and somebody got out. He had a black bag and was a very good-looking elegant man who then went into the building and disappeared.

  We all knew that one of our friends, Johnny, was sick and wasn’t able to come out for a while. A crowd formed around the building. This Dr. McLeod came out of the building, tipped his hat, and went into the car. Everyone was impressed, because apparently the doctor had diagnosed what was wrong with Johnny. There was a lot of talk and excitement about this guy, this doctor. I was absolutely awed and said, “That looks like something I’d like to be.” So it was then that I got the idea to be a physician. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time.

  I talked to Mrs. Wilson, who was a teacher at P.S. 76. I went to see her because I heard that her son was a doctor. And she said, “You don’t need courage to take care of sick people. You need courage to do your studies. That’s what you need.” It was an impetus for me to change. That and Mrs. Lubell. I needed to get my act together.

  I knew that I wanted to be someone. I didn’t want to be a housepainter or a plumber. I wish I could say that at that point I wanted to help people, but my goal was to “make it” somehow. I was the first one in my large extended family who went to college.

  I wanted to be revered by the family. And that did happen. Not only by my immediate one, but my extended family as well. First cousins, second cousins. They all were so excited when I finished medical school that they had this large party for me. I still have the pictures. Actually, it spawned many other doctors in the family whose fathers said to them, “Forget about being a wallpaper hanger. If Mickey could do it, then you could do it!”

  * * *

  Note: During a commercial break on TV, I saw an ad for Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. Pictures of a Dr. Michael Brescia caught my attention. He had the same name as a boy I remembered from my classes at P.S. 76 and Evander Childs High School, so I wrote to him at the hospital and found out that he was indeed the Michael Brescia I knew from childhood.

  We agreed to have lunch at an Italian restaurant near Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of the Bronx, which is still an Italian neighborhood. I tried to put together the picture of the kid I remembered from school with the face of the mature person sitting opposite me in the restaurant. The pictures fit, but when I heard Dr. Brescia’s stories I realized that, although I could remember him, I actually knew nothing about his childhood. After high school we had lost touch completely.

  EMANUEL (“MANNY”) AZENBERG

  Theatrical producer, educator

  (1934– )

  I told my father when I was sixteen that I didn’t want to be a doctor. It was traumatic. In the Bronx High School of Science, you had to put things on various applications. I put “premed” because I couldn’t put down “pre-nothing” or “I have no idea.” But at sixteen I finally said, “I don’t want to be a doctor.” There were a lot of kids who went to my school who were going to become doctors whether they wanted to or not.

  I joke and tell my students that there were two questions that were asked by my parents when I was a junior and senior in college: 1. What are you gonna do? and 2. When are you getting married? If you woke up at three in the morning there was your mother going, What are you gonna do and when are you getting married? If you didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer, they’d stick their heads in the oven. My parents struggled financially to send me to college, so it was a big deal.

  If you went out on a date with a girl and it cost six or seven dollars, you knew that you had to earn it. You had to earn it. So you had a job. Everybody had a job in the summer. Many of us also had jobs in the winter. If you really wanted to make money during the summer, and if you were diligent, you’d get a construction job. Those guys made real money. And if you had to just make some money, you became a waiter in the Catskills or a busboy or a bellhop there. And if you kind of faked it, like I did, you were a counselor in a camp. So you didn’t make five hundred dollars. You made two hundred dollars. And since everyone had a job the value system of working came with the job. You wound up respectful of work. You put in eight hours you got paid four dollars. If you put in eight hours you went out on a date.

  I joined the ROTC in college and went into the army as an officer right after college. I met people there from Arkansas, Kentucky, or whatever. It was then I began to discover what I had taken for granted—my upbringing, my schooling, living where we lived. It was much more valuable than I had realized. I had a bigger adjustment to the discipline, though, in the military. But once I adjusted I knew my way around because I knew my way around the streets from being brought up in the Bronx. When I got back, I knew that I was going to work in the theater, but truth is I found out what work really was while in the army. And I said, I don’t want to do that!

  I was drunk two times in my life. One of them was when I was in the army, when we got orders not to go to Korea. We were the first company of young officers at Fort Benning who did not go to Korea. The other time was before that, when I was a teenager. I was seventeen at a party. At age seventeen I had never been drunk in my entire life. I never knew what that was. And the Bronx Science mentality of seeing people drunk and out of control made no sense. How do you allow yourself? So I was going to disprove the theory. I hated the taste of hard liquor—so I had eight doubles of Four Roses in thirty minutes. The first twenty minutes nothing happened, and that’s about all I remember except for lying on the floor. The guys took me home on the bus. I was not very happy. I was throwing up and I was moaning at home. My younger sister was frightened. My father understood and said, “Let him alone.” It was a terrible experience. I didn’t like the taste of it, and I was deathly ill, but I got that out of my system.

  My father came from Poland. He had lived in London from 1910 to 1929. Then he immigrated to America. He spoke six or seven languages. He was a very bright man who did what he had to do to make a living.

  I went back for the Bronx Walk of Fame thing. They install a street sign with your name on it. It was a Bronx moment. There I was with my son, and I said, “Do you want to see where I grew up?” So we sat at Franz Sigel Park just looking at the building. It was at 760 Grand Concourse, right near Cardinal Hayes High School. When I looked at my old apartment building it seemed so small. Our apartment itself had two bedrooms. My parents were in one and I shared the other with my sister. The whole apartment was tiny. I think the rent was seventy-six dollars a month. The honor itself, being on the Bronx Walk of Fame, has its own ambivalence. The recognition—what does it really mean? And yet the acknowledgment is wonderful.

  We were in front of the courthouse when they unveiled my name. And that was two blocks from where I grew up. As part of the ceremony, my seventeen-year-old son was going to hold up the sign with “Manny Azenberg” on it. I couldn’t help but think of my immigrant father, who had lived two blocks away. That thought transcended everything else. There was his grandson, who he never knew, who’s unveiling a sign that has his name on it. Azenberg. All I thought of was
if my father could only know that his family name was on the Walk of Fame on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and that I was there with my son, Charlie Azenberg’s grandson. In Hebrew there’s a name for it. Hemshekh. Continuity. It’s continuity.

  AVERY CORMAN

  Writer, novelist

  (1935– )

  The other day, I was watching some children play on the Upper East Side. There were organized groups, some playing Wiffle ball and some softball. Then there was another group I observed on Randalls Island. Parents sign their children up to play, and they pay to have referees, depending on the sport. In one case it was soccer, and in another it was flag football. It’s all organized play. That was so far from my experience growing up in the Bronx that it’s as if we were in two different solar systems.

  The world that I grew up in, in terms of sports, was between 183rd Street and 184th Street on Creston Avenue and Field Place, the actual street where I lived. Those streets were just west of the Grand Concourse. If you went just a few inches south of 183rd Street there was a different group of kids. You didn’t play there. The two blocks I played in were my entire world until the time I moved from that neighborhood, which would’ve been in the midfifties. I don’t know whether the demographics have changed in terms of the numbers of children in the neighborhood. I’ve been back there many, many times. I went back for a novel I wrote. I went back to do articles over the years. I went back with other people who were asking me about my memories. Each time I saw hardly any children in the streets. Now maybe it’s what memory does, but I have a feeling that the actual culture of just releasing your children to play outside has changed as well.

  Our streets backed up to the school yard of the then Bronx High School of Science where there was a basketball court or at least a backboard and a rim. The neighborhood kids co-opted it. The school yard also had a wall, which became a place to play handball. There was a small area that became a place where we played punchball. And there was a little section where we played pitching-in stickball. There was also a side wall where we could play boxball. Playing ball was what we did as often as we could.

  There was a famous basketball player called Bob Cousy. He was legendary. He played for Holy Cross College and then he was a major player for the Boston Celtics. And among the older guys in our neighborhood was Bob Santini. He played for Iona College so he was pretty good. Creston Junior High School was a destination school yard for good ballplayers and Bob Santini, who took a liking to me, would play there. I was small and he was tall, and he called me “Cousy.” Well that was the greatest thing I was ever called in my life. There was nothing more thrilling for me than to play in a game and to be called “Cousy.” We’d be making up sides and he’d say, “I got Couse.” There’d be three-man basketball games, and he’d say, “Nice pass, Couse.” It was around then that I realized I could actually play well enough to play. And that was thrilling.

  Stickball was the most popular and most majestic of the street games. On our street it cut across ages because it was such an enthralling game to play. The older guys could play, and some adults even played with us. Younger kids too. To be honest, it was a game of great elegance played on a very rudimentary skill level because it was hard to strike out. The bases were marked with chalk, if we had chalk. If not, the DeSoto car was first base, the Buick on the other side of the street was third base, and the sewer was second base.

  We had a ritual that was repeated by all. You’d steal a broomstick or a mop stick from your home and then work it on a manhole cover until you could cut the end off. And if it was a good stick, maybe that was your stick. Just the way baseball players have their favorite bats. That was your stick. And it was played with a Spaldeen. It wasn’t tolerated easily by the police and building superintendents because you could break windows with the ball. If the police came by and they caught you, they would confiscate your stick and therefore break up the game. You wouldn’t be arrested, but there was always friction between the kids and the cops. The squad car would drive down Creston Avenue and if somebody spotted it they’d alert the hitter and hide the stick, usually under a parked car. “Chicky—chicky, the cops!” Then we’d pretend to be playing punchball, which was completely implausible, because stickball players could be a city block away and there’s no way we could punch a ball that far.

  And then the street games ended. They didn’t end in the school yards, and they didn’t end on the sidewalks, but we never played in the street again. The Second World War ended, and with that it was as though someone turned a light out on us. During the war there had been gas rationing and there wasn’t a lot of money around. It wasn’t what you’d call a car-owning neighborhood. There’d be no real reason to have one. But then when the war ended and gas rationing ended, we were literally driven out of the streets by the automobiles. Once in a while you might get a stickball game together, but it was impossible because there was so much traffic coming through. My friend Ben Miller had a father who drove down Creston Avenue in a Buick the size of a house, it seemed. And with that Buick it was over. It wasn’t Ben Miller’s father who ended it, but we just couldn’t be in the streets anymore. My street-game universe ended. At the end of World War Two, my ball-playing-street-game life ended.

  I. C. (“CHUCK”) RAPOPORT

  TV and film writer; Paris Match and Life magazine photographer

  (1937– )

  People don’t realize that the Bronx is so hilly, especially where we lived in the Macombs Road area. There was a huge flight of steps going up from the street below to Davidson Avenue, where the entrance to our building was. Our apartment was on the first floor facing the back so because of the hill we were at eye level with the Jerome Avenue el. I was watching the trains go by when I was about five years old. What I saw were subway cars filled with men in uniform. When I asked my mother who they were, she said, “They’re soldiers going off to war.” I couldn’t fully understand this at the time, but she said it with a lot of sadness in her voice. When the war ended in August of 1945, we were away on my bubbe and zayde’s farm in Winsted, Connecticut. My mother told me and my cousins to go up and down the country road so that we could bang on pots and pans with a spoon to announce that the war was over. I was eight years old at the time.

  In the Bronx your neighborhood was also like a small town. You didn’t leave it. If you went downtown, you were going into the city—Manhattan. Or summers you might be lucky enough to go to “the country,” usually meaning someplace in the Catskill Mountains, or in our case my grandparents’ rural cottages, where you were surrounded by the same people. Since my neighborhood was like this small town, I was provincial in my outlook. I was this naive kid. Maybe it was just in our family, but for instance we didn’t listen to music in the house even though I took accordion lessons. We didn’t even listen to music on the radio. We listened to comedy shows.

  There was no library in our house. We had a set of classics but they were never opened. When I finally started writing, I went from illiteracy to writer overnight. And as for my being a photographer, I didn’t want words. Words were the enemy. I was uncultured in an uncultured world as far as my eye could see. Even my friends didn’t talk about books and reading. I had to read for school but I never liked it. Thankfully in high school there were lots of different kids from all over the city. I found out that the whole world wasn’t brought up the way I was. I went to the High School of Industrial Arts. I could draw. I think I got in because my older brother went to that same school. He was a very good artist. They’d always ask me, “Are you related to Mel Rapoport?”

  I had this love/hate thing for my brother. And I definitely wanted his approval so often I’d play dumb so as not to compete with him. I was the good kid and he was the boss over me. My parents would leave us alone without a babysitter. They said that if there was ever a problem to just call the super. My brother and I were jumping from bed to bed and one of the beds collapsed. So we called the super and he jerry-rigged it. When my parents came home, my fa
ther figured it all out—and my brother got blamed. My father hit him with a belt. My brother was about nine years old at the time. I was six. He was humiliated and scared and hurt and he hated me for it. My reaction was don’t get into trouble. I steered away from pushing those buttons, but my brother wasn’t so lucky. Maybe he had ADD, which wasn’t diagnosed in those days.

  When I went away to college in Ohio I was still kind of naive. If you grew up Jewish anywhere in New York, you were still a New Yorker. Jews from Cleveland were different. They had their own midwestern shtick. It was culture shock going away to college. The students drank. In my house while growing up there was no drinking. There was no such thing as social drinking. We had cream sodas or milkshakes. I thank my parents for that.

  Although I was naive and didn’t know about the world, I did have some street smarts. When I was still in the neighborhood, some of the kids got together to form a gang. We had taken an oath where we swore to protect each other. The threat was mostly from the Irish kids in the neighborhood, especially at Easter. That was the brown-shoe, black-shoe period. The Irish Catholics wore black shoes, and when you saw that you knew right away that you were in trouble. They weren’t killers or anything like that. It was mainly humiliation. You ran when you saw them, but sometimes you were cornered. You were made to sing or dance. You couldn’t escape it. Sing the National Anthem, or Say the Pledge of Allegiance. You were stuck there and they’d laugh. We figured out that we had to travel in groups, calling out so other kids in your gang would come running. Sometimes there were fistfights, and eventually adults would break them up. Both sides would split if cop cars came.