"Those Were The Days My Friend. We Thought They'd Never End "...

There was a resurgence in unemployment to 25% around 1936.

Hard times had returned, in spades. But my genius immigrant Pop, never seemed to miss a beat. He and my Mom were fabulous parents. We never really knew that the hard times were making their lives very tough. When Monopoly came along we were the first on our street to have the game. That was truly a big fucking deal.

In 1939 it looked as though a high school diploma and me were not to join up with one another. My folks then insisted that I go to an expensive summer school and take a French language course. In New York City, in order to graduate high school, you had to complete a two year language course successfully, something I hadn't been able to do.

So, the summer of 1939 was the Summer of French for me, going to the Rhodes School on the Grand Concourse. Yeah, I finally passed French the following school year having taken fucking French for three years to get two year’s credit. Me and my friends thought that the French were weird because they seemed to speak with a lisp.

My needs when growing up were simple. They revolved around sports and avoiding bringing my report cards home (talk about living with a constant fear of impending doom). Plus if they knew what ADD was when I was in the third grade, I would still be in the fucking third grade.

I once told that to Donald Trump, about Donald Trump.

Trump had the attention span of a moth on a hot light bulb. Except when he was talking. He just loved the sound of his voice. Trump hardly 'heard' anything anyone else was saying. He just waited for the drone of your voice to stop, if he even let you talk, so that he could start talking. While undoubtedly a bright guy he lived inside his own fucking echo chamber. Trump had inadvertently taken the 13th AA step. He was totally powerless over his own bullshit.

Between starting school early and skipping a grade, I graduated from high school at 16.Going to Evander Childs High School on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx wasn't like spending a day at the beach.We had 'Up' and ‘Down’ stairways. And God help you if you were caught going up the down stairway. If you were caught going up the down stairway or vice versa you automatically became a dangerous fucking criminal.
 

Evander High School

The school had 'Flying Squads’ of students who were to see to it that we didn't violate any of the fucking school cockamamie behavioral rules. Those guys were physically feared. To this day it is my conviction that the ‘Flying Squad’ kids became adult thugs and criminals.

We had some 11,000 students and four sessions at Evander. The senior classes started 8:00AM, the freshman at 12:00 noon. Sophomores and juniors at 10am and 11am respectively. Most of the teachers were killing time til retirement. Putting up with street kids who had big mouths and smart ass comments made those teachers about as useful as tits on a boar pig. Ole 'teach' mostly didn't care. Most of the kids were first generation Americans and very street savvy. Drove the teachers nuts.

The Jewish kids were intimidated into trying to get top grades by their immigrant parents who wanted the kids to grow up to become doctors, lawyers and college professors. Dentists didn't make the cut. My parents didn't have a fucking clue what the hell an investment banker was. They pretty much thought that bankers were 'gonifs', not to be trusted.

There was a shack across the street from the school that sold Italian salami sandwiches for a dime. Oh Henry bars were a nickel. We knew we were getting fucked, being charged a penny for a cigarette. That came to twenty cents a pack when you could buy (if you had the money) a whole fucking carton of 10 packs for 50 cents or a nickel for a pack of 20. We couldn't take the cigarettes home. They were an absolute no, no. But we all smoked up a storm, outside of the school when we had the pennies. Didn't inhale, didn't know how to, didn't even think about it.

The neighborhoods supplying students to Evander went downhill in recent years and the school became the first high school in NYC to have metal detectors to monitor the students. Finally closed the son of a bitch down a few years ago.

All my friends were a few years older than me and a few years better athletically. I was tall for my age but short for my friends. Any street smart kid knew that if you brought the basketball, football or baseball and bat you had to be chosen when they picked teams. My Pop understood that rule, so I always had the basketball etc., and so I always got to play. Even in the worst of times my Pop saw to it that I was guaranteed a slot on a team. Whether I was tall or short made no never mind, they had to let me play, if they wanted to play.

Yeah growing up when the streets were our playgrounds has turned out to be a great experience and something to be savored.