by Sid Luft
Every Christmas, W. W. Hawkins threw an elaborate affair. This year he had engaged Ella Logan as the entertainer, along with a big band. There must have been a thousand people at the party. It was very Eastern Seaboard. Ew had an older brother, John, who lived with Richard Halliday in an apartment at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan. Halliday later married Mary Martin, and not long after that, John died.
I was mingling at the Hawkins holiday bash and ran into Beans. McGyver said, “So, how’s the li’l Jew boy?”
I thought, Jesus, this is seven years later. We’re adults, and he’s still talking that crap. I said, “Hey, it’s a big night, let’s not scuffle here, Beans. Let’s go outside.” We went out on the grounds, and a couple of his friends followed. The lawns were frozen solid under layers of freshly fallen snow. An enormous winter moon lit up the icy landscape.
“Beans,” I said, “listen.” I saw he’d been drinking heavily. I’d had one drink. “I don’t want a fight, Beans.”
Beans decided to take off his jacket. We both wore gray pants, rep ties, tab collars, and J. Press jackets. He wasn’t going to listen, and I hit him hard, right in the solar plexus. I saw his tongue fly out of his mouth and his eyes go up. He fell forward onto his knees. My wrath took over. I got hold of his head and I kept hitting him. His friends stopped me. They carried Beans indoors. Guests were milling all over; they thought Beans had passed out from too much booze. A girl came up and asked, “What happened to Beans?” I said, “He got hit by a car.” While they were putting him down I ripped his watch off. I put it in my pocket as a souvenir, the way a soldier takes a dead man’s gun. I was actually scared I’d killed him. I hit him so quick and I was very strong. The end of the vendetta.
Some years later I was told Beans had become a World War II pilot and was killed in action. In the end, he died for the Jews.
When Mother became successful, we moved north across the river to Armour Villa Park. It was up the hill from Bronxville and therefore overlooking the city. There were about twenty other homes in the vicinity. As a kid, whenever I’d walk over the hill and see home, I’d breathe a sigh of relief. There were some wonderful families around the neighborhood. There were the Tuarts; Dr. Tuart, a surgeon, was a single parent bringing up three boys on his own. At Halloween he’d throw a big party in the cellar of their house. He’d pair us off and hand each kid a glove. The right hand would be strapped to the other’s left hand. Two against two—it was a funny game. We’d dunk for apples with money in the water. Dr. Tuart’s son Peter was a close pal; he was a half grade ahead of me and played football. Peter named me the “stalker”: not that different from the “starker,” a Yiddish term some of my Hollywood friends would later call me around the golf course.
Our next door neighbors were the Leos, who owned a coal and lumber company in Bronxville. They were a family of French descent with five kids, four boys and one girl; one of the boys, Johnny, became another good friend. One day Johnny and I went to get a haircut. On Saturday, we usually went to Pete the barber down Pondfield Road. Italian Pete loved to hunt and fish, and the magazines in the barber shop were all about the outdoors, fishing, hunting. After Pete finished my haircut I took him aside, and from deep inside my possum-collared leather jacket I pulled out a loaded revolver. I flipped open the cylinder and there were four bullets in the chamber.
I had bought the gun for a dollar and a half from Woody Sexton, a freckle-faced little guy with a turned-up nose and reddish-blond hair. One day we were playing somewhere and Woody told me about a gun he found. Johnny Leo and I had taken Woody’s gun—we thought it was a starter pistol—put a .22 in it, took it up into the woods, tied it to the fork of a tree, got behind a boulder, and pulled the trigger. We’d seen guys shooting off a starter gun for boat races and track meets. But we didn’t know what this gun was. I was showing off.
Here was my chance to be equal to the Leos. Johnny and his older brother, Charlie, always had guns. Their house, too, was filled with sporting magazines: Field and Stream, the Outdoors. The Leo kids made their own fly rods, their own trout flies. Old Man Leo took them fishing and hunting for quail and pheasant in the Mt. Kisco area, which was blocked off for hunting. My father was dead set against guns. Norbert didn’t go into the local saloon and have a beer with the boys. At best, he would have a shot of whiskey at night. Old Man Leo—well, you could always smell that breath of his. He had a deep cigarette-and-whiskey voice. He sounded like Orson Welles with a twang.
I was impressed by and probably envious of the attention Mr. and Mrs. Leo paid to their children. To me the Leos were the ideal American family. While their kids hunted and fished with their father, had guns and knew how to use them, I had a broken-down fishing reel. My father abhorred killing and violence of any kind. My appetites embarrassed him. The Leo household boasted a kind of bustle alien to the Luft house, where tangos and opera filled the air when Mother and Father were at home.
Johnny and I left Pete’s and walked under the bridge where the Grand Central Railroad goes right through the middle of Bronxville, all the way up to White Plains and beyond. We were leaving the town and returning home. I saw a motorcycle cop come in our direction, but I didn’t pay any attention. He’d spotted us walking through the tunnel. He immediately got off his motorcycle and said, “Who’s Luft?”
“I am.”
“Where’s the gun?”
“What gun?” I weakened.
Pete the barber had turned me in.
“Look kid, I want the gun.” The policeman felt my coat and found the nickel-plated revolver with a white handle, small and neat. “Both of you come with me.” He left his motorcycle and marched us into the nearby Yonkers police station. But not before he had made me dump the bullets.
“Gimme those.” He grabbed my hand. “You,” he instructed, “stay right here.” He went in to call my mother: “We’ve your son here.”
I pictured mother walking across the bridge. It would take her about five minutes. Then he called my father. I imagined them separately leaving their shops to converge in the local precinct. How was I going to get out of this one?
Johnny was allowed to go home. When my father walked in the police station, the first thing he did was to whack me across the face. Leonora shouted, “Stop it,” and she got between us. They were told, “Your son has been carrying a revolver.” It was an emotional scene. I’d begun to cry before the parents arrived. I had been snotty when the policeman arrested me, and I’d also made up my mind that he had called me “a little Jew.”
I was booked on the Sullivan Act. I was well aware it was against the law to carry arms. And there were never any revolvers in the Leo house. There were .22s, shotguns, but not handguns. I used to brag to the Leos that I had shot a cat one night on the fence, but it was a lie, conceived out of my need to feel equal to the Leo boys.
The police sent me home with my parents. I was to appear in front of a junior appellate judge in Mt. Vernon a week later. That night the headline in the Yonkers Statesman read, BOY WALKING ARSENAL.
I was still crying when we returned home, ashamed that I had disappointed my parents. So the family drove to Mt. Vernon after dinner and bought me two pairs of new shoes, and we went to a movie. They were trying to cheer me up, but everything stayed downbeat; we drove in silence.
My father accompanied me the day I was to appear before the judge. The report read that I had kicked the cop. The judge said, “Have you anything to say for yourself?” I said, “I do. I apologize.” I explained that I kicked him because he attempted to lift me up and he called me a “dirty little Jew boy.” But, of course, I’d learned to employ this excuse whenever I got in trouble. It was my way of turning the insult around, putting it to good use. The judge gave me six months’ probation. The incident had a positive result: it pushed me back into my books. I studied hard and the teacher took a shine to me—for a while, at least.
4
WHEN WE MOVED TO Armour Villa Park, we bought a corner lot from an army veteran who owne
d a beautiful piece of property there. We built a large redbrick colonial-style house. The front lawn had a sumptuous cherry tree that flowered in season. The land had been altogether richly landscaped with pine and other flowering shrubs.
Our neighbor was an eccentric man. I have no memory of a wife. It might very well be that nobody but us wished to live next door. For example, on either side of the man’s steps leading to his front door were two tremendous bomb shells, three or four feet high. He was a World War I veteran. Some people have jockeys or pink flamingoes on their lawn. This character had bombs. He was always running his lawn mower and planting trees. My parents were at their respective stores, so I was the one who had the chance to observe. He had a huge aerial like a mast attached to the top turret of his house, and he flew the American flag up there, day in and day out. There were also wires that went down to the ground—for his shortwave radio, a superheterodyne. In those days it was the most powerful radio there was. He could pull in foreign stations with that aerial.
This man had big biceps. You could see his veins when he was pulling out roots and things. He looked about six three, and he never seemed to remove his creased, cloth army cap. Slowly, I perceived that the spiked iron gates around his house were more than decorative, that he was a paranoid type, but we kept up an excellent relationship as neighbors.
From the age of seven on, I’d been fascinated by a big World War I picture book we had on our sunporch. It was filled with sepia photos taken from the New York Times that vividly captured the horrors of war: a French soldier hanging on barbed wire with part of his face shot off, men who suffered terrible burns from mustard gas—in fact, every possible example of destruction to a human as a result of war. I was especially intrigued by the Battle of Verdun, by foreign names, places outside of North America. I’d study the morbid images over and over, scrutinizing the faces of the Belgian troops, the American fighters, and the Germans. The saintly appearance of those Red Cross volunteers in the heat of battle. The aviators with their leather helmets and goggles. As ghastly and unimaginable as war seemed, the airplanes and the pilots looked glamorous. I experienced a great surge of wanderlust. One day, I dreamed, I would actually leave Bronxville and travel, and maybe even become a pilot, see foreign lands, and have all sorts of major adventures. Ripping through those grisly introductions to life, I vowed if there was ever to be a war in my lifetime, I would never see a trench. Those photos triggered dreams of glory, moments of death and destruction, a sense of heroism in goggles and leather helmet, sartorial splendor, aviator chic.
My love affair with engines started about a year later, when my father’s half brother, Israel Rappaport, gave me a one-cylinder steam engine one Christmas. The engine sat there for another year, until I was nine, and then I began to figure out how to use it. It had a little tank that held alcohol to drive the motor. The tank was wedged under the mechanism and the alcohol would heat up the boiler—the same principle as a locomotive engine. I’d light the alcohol with a match, and the boiler produced sufficient steam to make it hot enough to drive. My buddy Peter Tuart’s older brother, Bob, helped me.
I became fascinated by engines of all kinds. I was especially intrigued with building model airplanes, and this interest would develop into a passion for flying. I understood the principle of flight from working on the models, how air flows up a vacuum that lifts the aircraft off the ground, and so on. I’d take the train into Manhattan for pieces of copper tubing at Hammacher Schlemmer to fashion exhaust pipes for my model of the Curtiss Hawk. Yonkers Boys’ Week awarded me a medal for my efforts. I had dreams of owning a boat and a plane. I’d build these models at home and in school. Hours on end I’d be sanding wings to a thousandth of an inch. The contour would have to be perfect; the fuselage would have to be perfect. When the material dried I’d sand it off and paint it again. I was a perfectionist.
I was also sensitive to animals, and I drew and painted them. I had a part–German shepherd mutt I loved, but horses were my favorite. I was captivated by the rhythm and beauty of the horse’s anatomy.
Uncle Israel was a distinguished heart doctor. When he came to stay with us for a few months after his arrival from Europe, he wrote for the American Medical Journal, translating French, German, and Hungarian into English. It wasn’t long before he was able to develop a private practice.
He was a nice-looking man with a thin, straight nose and a mouth that I perceived to be in a perpetual pout. He had piercing dark brown eyes and bushy eyebrows, and an altogether exotic mode of dress. His style was very different from the Bronxville dudes: he wore knickers made of a gray worsted fabric, black silk hose, and highly polished shoes. His jackets were belted in the back, single breasted with leather buttons and elbow patches. Mother thought the outfit stylish; I thought it odd.
Later that year, he married one of five sisters from Romania, and they lived on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The first floor was his office, which he would share with his daughter who also became a physician. The second floor was his study, and the third floor was where the sisters lived. The fourth floor was a custom drapery and curtain business run by his wife and her sisters. None of the sisters-in-law were ever to marry. They had big circles under their eyes and thick black hair. As a youngster, I found this harem of Uncle Israel’s remarkably unattractive. He was more interested in brains than beauty. As a noted physician, he treated Harpo Marx, among others. Eventually he was to diagnose and cure Judy when she hovered between life and death with a life-threatening liver disease.
Uncle Israel was very serious. He never exercised and he had no apparent hobbies: his entire life was devoted to medicine. I’d eavesdrop on my father and uncle talking way into the night about subjects well over my head. I had the sense they were philosophizing. I could tell father looked up to him. Israel was conscious of my hyperactivity. He’d comment to Mother, “This kid is so active, he should do something physical, be a carpenter, a bricklayer.” I didn’t appreciate that, since my sights were set so high. But I was forever climbing, running, rushing to an activity, driving the family nuts with my energy level.
Leonora liked to occasionally tease me: “Remember, Uncle Israel thinks you should be a dockhand.” One of the more salutary effects he had on the Luft family was eventually convincing my mother to let go of fatty foods in our diet. Israel stressed protein, and we entered into a routine of either baked or broiled meals. We rarely ate desserts—only on special occasions. Steaks were consumed every three months. I wasn’t permitted hamburgers. It was fish and fowl and veal, salads mixed with Mazola oil, lemon, and a little vinegar . . . In retrospect, I attribute the family’s general good physical stamina to Uncle Israel’s influence.
In those years I was virtually unsupervised, with both parents hard at work. In a way I had an ideal childhood: so much time on my hands and so much trouble to get into! One day Johnny Leo and I grabbed a block of tar from a nearby roofing job. I had made a barge-like boat out of stolen lumber. The construction was about six feet long and three feet wide. We didn’t know if it would float or not. My idea was to use the tar to waterproof it.
I knew I’d have to melt the tar first. We got the block downstairs near the furnace room, where the maid did the laundry. While I was stirring it and talking to Johnny some tar flew in my face. Boiling tar. I started to scream. Johnny ran over to get his mother. Once tar hits the face it stays there. Mrs. Leo immediately took me down to Bronxville Hospital. On the way I pleaded, “Don’t tell my mom.”
In the emergency room, doctors poured something over the tar and quickly bandaged me up. I peered out of two holes, something out of a horror movie, with an extra hole for the mouth. I spluttered, “Mrs. Leo, please tell Mom it’s not that serious.”
At home mother shouted, “Oh my God!”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Luft, I’ve seen Sid’s face. It’s not that bad.” Mrs. Leo explained how they couldn’t remove the tar or the skin would come off with it. “It’s got to fall off,” Mrs. Leo reassured. Four days la
ter the outer skin began to fall off with the tar and I was fine. The barge, however, did not get down to the river.
Frightening as this experience was, it didn’t deter my appetite for mischief. It also eerily presaged a more dangerous exploit that occurred years later, when as a test pilot I was to suffer third-degree burns.
My parents didn’t bother to educate me about sex or religion. They avoided these subjects. Like most kids of my generation, I learned about the ways of the world from the other boys. But my parents loaded me down with a sense of respect for older people and women. And Mother hated to hear me swear. I obliged by never using four letter words around the house. I wouldn’t dare to call anyone a “bastard.” Later, if I swore around my mother, she’d remark, “Sidney, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Only once did I hear my father swear: he called O’Connor, the chief of police, a “son of a bitch,” and that was radical for my father.
Whenever I was worried or made uncomfortable by Norbert’s disapproval, I’d run out of the house, usually as he was in midsentence. One night he chased after me. It was dark and he couldn’t find me. I slept in the car that night, age nine. The house was locked, but if I wanted I could always climb one of the two pillars and get in a window, which was left open to accommodate my caprices.
We were not a religious family. The nearest synagogue to our house was in Mt. Vernon. And we never attended services. We always had a Christmas tree. My parents thought it was a very American thing to do, and we exchanged presents. Mother’s one nod to Hanukkah was the baking of challah bread. She was not one to cook, but she enjoyed baking. Mother and Father were proud of their Jewish identity, unlike myself. It would take some years for the self-hatred to disappear.