Everybodyhas that time in their life when as a small child they start to developprescience…they start to be conscious of the world around them and they startto remember more…they start to realize what year they’re in, etc…for mostpeople, the period of time when they are born until about the age of 7 is a bigblur…some things are remembered and some are not…I started to really know whatyear it is and develop strong memories in the mid-70s…the early ‘70s are mostlya blur to me…I have some memories from there but most of what I know is what I’veheard from other people…there sure are some stories…some of things I did athome in New York and other things I did at the only other place I’d ever go,Freehold, NJ…which is where my entire family is originally from…
Therewas Halloween at grandma’s old house…I sat on my cousin’s shoulders and theythrew a sheet over us so there was this 7-foot ghost…then when he let me downat one point I was pissing into the street and waving at the cars…and thenthrowing rocks at them…and also flipping them off…I also loved to press thatbutton on the traffic light that pedestrians press when they want to cross…tostop the traffic…I used to think those buttons were fake that they were onlythere to give people something to do while they were waiting for the light toturn green so they could walk…in Manhattan, all the traffic lights are on atimer and so I figured that all traffic lights were that way…so one time inFreehold I was pressing and pressing and pressing that button until I broke thecircuit or something the light on this one street would stay red for an extremelylong time then turn green long enough for one car to make it through…lol…and soI had the traffic backed up for ten miles…people angry…I was a dirty littlebastard I used to do all sorts of bad things…
Therewas the Charleston Chew story…it’s legendary by now…we all went to the beachand my mother bought me a Charleston Chew candy bar…they were just plain whitenougat covered in chocolate…they sold them frozen so you could smack one on theside of a table or something and it would crack up into little bite-sizedpieces when you take the wrapper off…so my mother bought me one…I had it in myhands I was ready to take the wrapper off and eat it, and then my mother tookit from my hands and whacked it on the side of the table…I guess I assumed shedid it for a malicious reason and so in a crowded store full of people eatingburgers and whatnot I shrieked at the top of my lungs, “you broke my fuckinCharleston Chew!!!”…
Iwas in love with fireworks and fire for a while…I would steal matches and lightthem up just to watch them burn…then that became boring so I would take paperfrom somewhere and set it on fire…then that became boring I wanted to go settrashcans on fire but was too chicken, afraid I’d get caught…so I got boredwith the whole pyromania thing…one of my earliest memories was being on theroof of my school in about 2nd grade…not outside on the roof buthaving walked up the stairs of the 3-story building until it stopped…more onthat later, that was another obsession of mine…buildings and stairwells…wherethe stairwells began and ended…basements and roofs…but at this time I was withtwo other kids and I was lighting matches…I was hoping to get caught…I wantedto get caught for small things to get attention but not big things where I gotinto serious trouble…I remember the two kids with me being scared of gettingcaught but I wasn’t scared, I wanted to…I actually got pissed off that noadults happened by so the two kids and I walked down a flight of steps to wherethere were more people and yep, I got caught…then I got pissed cos they didn’ttell my parents…I guess being a little kid I didn’t want to be in school Iwanted to be home so I tried to get sent home…
Throughoutthe ‘70s and ‘80s growing up, I started out wanting to get caught doing badthings…then getting caught became painful so I wanted to do bad things withoutgetting caught…but I always would…and so eventually at some point I hatedgetting in trouble and decided to fly right…but that was well after the 2ndgrade…
Onetime we went to Freehold and we were at someone’s pool…I told my mom I had topee and she said “oh, just go in the pool”…not knowing what she meant, Iclimbed out of the pool, whipped it out and started pissing into the pool infront of everyone…also, idk why but those Styrofoam life preservers, I thoughtthey were something to eat so I bit into one…I guess I pissing issues…I wasalso a bed wetter until a late age…they never thought to get me rubber sheetsso all the time my sheets were wet with piss, lol…
Therewas another time when for whatever reason, just for attention…I climbed up ontop of the hood of my uncle David’s pickup truck and took a leak on thewindshield…when he saw he grabbed me off the hood and threw me to the ground…anothertime, my uncle Billy (who lived with my grandma)…I guess he had just gotten outof the shower and wash shaving…I walked in the bathroom and he had no clotheson, there was his naked ass…idk if he noticed or not but for whatever reason I leftand went and found a belt, came back and whipped his ass as hard as I couldwith the leather belt…I heard it made a very loud noise…next thing my mother inthe other room heard was me screaming as uncle Billy slapped the shit outta me…haha..
Iattended P.S. 163, the Alfred E. Smith school for 1st, 2nd,and 3rd grades…until my mom transferred me…the school was rightdownstairs…I could walk out on my 11th floor terrace and see it…soother than little trips like to see Dr. Moloshok on the east side or up to theGrand Concourse in the Bronx to go to the chiropractor, that block was mylittle world…it was a HUGE block…97th Street through 100thStreet on Amsterdam Avenue had no cross streets…it was a huge block that wasthree blocks long…and so was the street from Amsterdam Avenue to ColumbusAvenue…3 blocks long as were and are all of the east-west blocks on the upperwest side of Manhattan…so that 9 square blocks was my little world most of thetime…the apartment, the school, and the playground next to the school where I wouldplay after school…that was my world in grades 1 through 3….I used to read MadMagazine and the dude on the front every issue’s name is Alfred E. Neuman (“what,me worry?”) and my school was Alfred E. Smith (the dude who ran for presidentagainst Herbert Hoover in 1928)…and so I was kind of like why is that schoolnamed after the guy on the cover of Mad Magazine??...
AnotherP.S. 163 memory I tripped this poor kid named Dan Kirkpatrick…I guess it wasfrom watching too many cartoons which I always did but I got it into my mindthat it would be cool to trip someone running at full speed…and I had myopportunity outside the auditorium poor Dan was bolting somewhere and I stuckmy foot out and he went flying…busted his lip…poor kid had a rough time Iremember a few years later he got beat up by a black kid who was out to beat upwhite kids…there were few white kids in our group…the black kid’s name wasKippy…he went to beat up Michael Petit but the Puerto Rican kids said “no,leave him alone, he’s cool”…then he went to beat me up but the Puerto Ricankids said the same thing…I could tell he wanted to beat me up but he didn’t…hedidn’t like me cos I was white but for other reasons, I’m sure…he looked at meand said something like I’m lucky…and so the only kid left who was white wasDan Kirkpatrick so he bunched Dan in the mouth and it bled and he ran offcrying…if I had had any guts at the time I would have sucker-punched Kippy orsomething…but I was just glad I didn’t get hit…I was such a punk-ass…no oneever taught me how to fight I had to learn it on my own…my parents sure didn’tteach me…damn white liberals…
Iwas a punk-ass…I would antagonize people for attention then get my ass kicked…3rdgrade, this kid named Vaughn…black kid…I pissed him off and he punched me inthe mouth…I still have the scar today on my lower lip…I needed stitches…andVaughn got into a little bit of trouble…he didn’t have any parents he was beingraised by his grandmother and I heard that they made her come into the schooland they told her what happened and instead of being contrite or getting mad atVaughn she was like, “good”, and said I probably deserved it…which I probablydid…
Myfirst grade teacher was Mrs. Fleck…then my 2nd grade teacher’s namewas Mrs. Beck…I was like, “are they all gonna rhyme? Who will I get for 3rd grade?”…mythird grade teacher was a Japanese-American woman by the name of Miss Takagi…Icouldn’t pronounce it so I called her “Mr. Kagi” and people got a laugh…latermy mother worked hard to get me transferred to another school ten or so blocksaway and my 4th grade teacher was Mrs. Karasik…I used to call herMrs. Carrot stick…and so I sure did giggle the adults with my silliness…
Oneother thing I loved to do was curse…teach curse words to other little kids andalso curse out my parents and other adults…my best friend was Chuck Lesch…myother two friends I had were Boris Krugman and William Lee, Billy…all four ofus lived in the same building…nearly all one floor away from each other…Chuckwas in apartment 10D, I was in 11B, Boris was I think 12G…I know he was on the12th floor…and Billy was on the 15th…I used to curse myparents and 15 years before Bart Simpson had the idea, I was calling my motherand father by their first names instead of “mom” and “dad”…
MyNew Jersey and Virginia cousins, almost all of my cousins were and are againstdisrespecting your elders and using profanity and so whenever I was taken toFreehold for a visit I would have to see “The Ghost”…my older cousins all tookme up into the attic which was very dark and scary and they had a sheet with I guessa basketball in it and a face drawn on it and they had a tape recorder in theback with stuff they had pre-recorded, masking their voices…The Ghost was angrywith me, “Terence, why do you use curse words?? Why do you call your parents Norman and Elsie and not mom and dad”…andit WORKED!!...i guess…not really…I was always scared as shit but then when I wasaway from The Ghost, I did care and went right doing what I wanted to…eventuallyI figured out The Ghost was a fake because it was saying the same things overand over again…so I was like, “hey, wait a minute that’s the same stuff I heardbefore”…if my cousins had bothered to update the things that “The Ghost” said,it might have continued working a little while longer…
Soone time Billy and I found this lunch box in the playground, during recess…ithad little pictures and names of all the major American cities…San Francisco,Baltimore, Chicago, New York…and so Billy and I found an open window on theground floor it was to a teacher’s lounge, we saw a bunch of the teachers andstaff hanging out in there and so we started yelling curse words into thewindow…we took the names of the cities and made them into cursewords: “San Fuckcisco!!”…”Shitcago!!”…”Balddickmore!!”…Chuckwas my REAL best friend…I think it’s because his parents and my mom werefriends…my dad only had friends he could drink with, lol…not friends with kids…Billyand Boris I think I just met them at school so we were friends but that’s it…Ihad 3 real friends at that time…I’ve always been that way, even since I was akid…just a few close friends but never one of these people with lots of friends…Istayed that way all they way through grade school, high school, the Navy,Brooklyn Brewery, when I moved to Virginia and all the jobs I’ve ever had…
FinalP.S. 163 memories one time we got a guinea pig, and the 1st gradeteacher, Mrs. Fleck, asked the kids in the class for suggestions as to what toname the guinea pig…my erstwhile friend Kenneth…the one who beat the crap outtame a few years before this…his dog’s name was Tender…so I suggested Tender asthe name…I remember the teacher was amazed…she looked at me like I was a genius…eventhough I didn’t make the name up, it was a dog’s name…she wanted to use that…someof the other kids in the class changed the name and they eventually named theguinea pig Baby Tender Love…after the doll that was popular with little kids inthe mid-‘70s…but I always felt like the guinea pig was MY guinea pig and I usedto call it Tender not that other shit…I used to love the thing, I would pick itup and hold it and someone brought in an old toothbrush and we used it as sortof a comb for the fur…stroke the guinea pig…one time the teacher took a picwith me and the guinea pig and then got it printed on a T-shirt…I think she didthat for all the kids…and to this day I still have the T-shirt…
Themid-‘70s was a magical time for TV…I hate TV now but as a little kid I was Mr.TV…other than cartoons there was All In The Family, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H*,Good Times, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Carol Burnett Show…which alwaysconfused me I wondered why they would start breaking up laughing in the middleof the skits…but the Saturday night lineup from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. was All InThe Family, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the CarolBurnett show…by the time it was over was my bedtime…
Freehold,N.J. was a magical place to me…and the trip there was an odyssey…my dad was themanager of a chain of dry cleaning stores and the chain had a van they used todo deliveries…and my dad used it like a personal vehicle (with the boss’permission) and so we used it to drive out to Freehold…when I was REALL younglike four or something he had this Oldsmobile Cutlass…I guess he got rid of itat some point…you don’t really need a car in the city and it costs money…butthen he got the job with Ned King Cleaners managing all the stores and so wegot to take the van down to Freehold…
Iguess for most kids growing up in a normal, suburban atmosphere, going to thebig city must have been an amazing journey…but for me, growing up in Manhattanit was the opposite…I would go to Freehold and things that are normal were likeWOW! To me…everyone had a car, and a driveway, and a house with an attic andbasement…and there were trees on the streets…and no tall buildings…people tookcars to school…and there were wide-open spaces…and the kids were all whiteunlike where I went to school where most of the time there were only a handful ofwhite kids…
Butit wasn’t just the amazing drive there and being in such a weird place, it wasalso the people…back in New York, nobody liked me except for my three bestfriends…but in Freehold my two cool cousins actually wanted to hang out with me…andso for much of the ‘70s and beyond I idolized them and wanted to be like them…soit was at this early age, in the mid-‘70s, where I got it into my head thatthere were other places to live besides the big city…I didn’t think I’d ever beable to leave New York, and it was another 15 years before I actually found away…a quite amazing 15 years…
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