Adventures in Reading

The day I entered first grade at Marquette School was the day I learned how to read. I don't remember being read to as a little kid,

but my parents were avid readers and my sister still is. So, by the time I took my

first Dick and Jane primer home from school, I was well on my way.

Picture a six year old me sitting on the front stoop of our home in heat of early September.

 I was so excited, I couldn't keep from yelling aloud. The letters on the page had arranged themselves into words.

Dick was running after Spot, Jane was chasing Puff and I was in heaven!  I think a neighbor lady came by to see what all  the noise was about.,

I told her, "I can read this book." ....and I did. Boy, was she impressed!

From that day on, I knew that all  I wanted to do was read. I read in the morning before school. I read when I came home for lunch. I read during class when I should have been doing math. And I read at night under the covers with a flashlight.

The old fashioned way of teaching reading was with phonics and oral reading. That absolutely bored me to death. Once I acquired a word by sight, it was mine forever. When we had "round robin" read alouds, I would be five pages ahead of the class. I absolutely loved visiting  the school library. I had a wonderful friend in Mrs. Gibbons, our librarian. She kept me supplied with all the books I wanted and encouraged me to start reading science fiction and history in fourth grade.  After awhile, Mrs. Gibbons turned me on to science fiction and fantasy magazines .They didn't have them in our library, but she let my mom know I was interested, and I soon started getting them through the mail.

Our family spent summers by Lake Michigan, but we were kept supplied with library books. I can picture my mom lugging bags of books from our car into the cottage. They were vacation loans, meant to last all summer. After a few weeks, the books went back, and more books magically appeared. The only place we couldn't read them was at the beach. That was ok, because there was a hammock strung between two trees in the front yard that made a perfect shady place to enjoy a book in the early evening.

My buddy, Danny  was just as voracious a reader as I was. We started trading books, and one week-end when I slept over at his house, he showed me his older brother, Alan's collection of science fiction books. I became hooked on Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.


In high school, I took honors English courses and was introduced to Shakespeare, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Wilder to name a few. Say what you will about the Chicago Public Schools, all my high school English teachers were outstanding.


After toying with the idea of becoming a pharmacist, I switched my major to English in college and never looked back. I have found that the joy of reading a good book is only exceeded by teaching it. Books have been my life.

Nabisco Summer

                                                                   A surprise in every box...


 In  1968, the minimum wage was $1.40 an hour, but my  friends and I found a way to  make three times that amount.  The Nabisco Bakery on 73rd and Kedzie was hiring college kids that summer.
Once we joined the  American Bakers and Confectioners Union , passed an informal interview were given  our white uniforms, we were assigned our shifts. Dan and Paul lucked out with the 8 AM to 3PM shift, while I was given  3PM to 11:00 PM . Each shift had its advantages, but it meant I only got to see my friends on weekends. We decided it was worth the money we would make.

My first day on the job, I reported to the Mr. Salty pretzel line. Yes, there actually was a Mr. Salty sign on the door. Imagine a large, white room with rows of pretzel tying machines topped with huge metal hoppers. Men scurried around the room and fed big balls of dough into the hoppers, which were quickly converted into bow shaped pretzels by rotating arms. The tied pretzels were shoved out onto a conveyor belt and whisked into an oven, where they were baked, coated with oil, salted, and spun onto a large waterfall-like machine for cooling. What, I wondered, did I have to do with all of this?
 
It turned out that my job was to  tend the tying machines. I carried large dough balls and dumped them into the hoppers. I did this over and over again until I could barely move my arms. A cheerful young guy about my age named Jose noticed me struggling, and showed me how to lift correctly. For a while, he helped me until I got the hang of it. As we worked together, he filled me in on where he lived, where he had gone  to high school, and that he was a member of the Insane Latin Kings Southside Crew. He pulled up his uniform shirt and proudly displayed the first ever gang tattoo I'd ever seen. At a loss, for words, I complimented him on the artwork.

Jose's job was to tend the dough hoppers and clean the bakery floor. No scraps of dough escaped his big push broom. After a while, we switched jobs, and I made the rounds with Jose's broom and pan.
The foreman didn't seem to mind, so we kept alternating back and forth, talking all the while.

When I finished my shift, I changed out of my uniform, tossed it into a basket, and hurried outside where
Dad was waiting to drive me home. He was curious about my first day. I told him everything, leaving out Jose's tattoos and gang stories. Walking into my house, Mom met me.
  "Take a shower, you smell like pretzels" she said.  Good nose, Mom.

For the next four days, I carried dough balls, swept the floor, and Jose added a few dozen helpful   swear words to my college Spanish vocabulary.  Every night, in my dreams, I was carrying dough and sweeping the floor, over and over again. If this was going to be my summer's work, I would slowly go crazy.

The next week, I was transferred to sandwich cookies. Not, Oreos, mind you, just sandwich cookies. Hundreds and hundreds of cookies that ran down a wide conveyer built and were sorted and scooped into large square trays by a dozen or so women. Once a tray was full, it was my job to hoist it onto a wheeled cart. When the cart was piled ten trays high, I hauled it away, brought an empty cart and the process repeated itself.  What seemed like an easy job soon became difficult. Each tray full of cookies weighed nearly fifteen pounds . Lifting the last five or so trays over my head for was no treat. The foreman showed me how to safely lift, but my arms and shoulders started aching. When quitting time came, I was ready to leave Nabisco for good.

I arrived at work the next day stiff and sore. The union steward met me and told me that I wouldn't have to lift cookie trays any more. He asked me if I was ready for my real job. "Sure,"I said,expecting a trick.
As it turned, out, the college kids were hired for a reason. In the next few weeks, we would learn how to perform a number of different jobs, so that we could relieve workers when they took their lunch and coffee breaks.

For the rest of the summer, I made the rounds of the factory.
At any time, you could find me:

    Packing Saltine crackers into moisture proof tins for shipment overseas.
    Operating a machine that made boxes for Ritz crackers.
    Shoveling  peanut butter icing  for Nutter Butters.
    Inspecting Oreos for structural continuity. (Really!)
    Piling  pallets of Chips Ahoy cookies onto wheeled containers for shipping to stores.
    Eating countless snacks of crackers and "spray cheese" while I rode up and down a freight elevator.

Not knowing what I'd be doing from one hour to the next made the days fly by. The best
part was that I met dozens of really frendly, interesting people, each with their own story to tell.
The absolute best tale came from the man who was in charge of the Fig Newton filling line.
     When he first started at Nabisco, he was a relief guy like me. One day, he took over
     at the Fig Newton line. The  filling was mixed in a huge vat with a motorized
     blade that slowly ground figs, starch and sugar into a gooey, fragrant mess. There was
     a catwalk overlooking the vat, so the operator could start and stop the process.
     Stopping the line, however, meant time and money lost, so the instructions were
      "Don't stop unless there is an emergency."
       One day a worker began talking to the Fig Newton man on the catwalk while bending
       down to tie his work shoe. Don't ask me how, but the shoe slipped off his foot and
       fell into the mixing jam below.  The line was stopped and a foreman came rushing over.
       "What the hell is the problem?" he yelled.
         Looking down, he saw the remains of the shoe disappearing into the figgy filling.
       
        The foreman  scratched his chin and said," Let nature take its course, we're already behind schedule."

      I can't vouch for the truth of this story, but I stopped eating Nabisco Fig Newtons.
           
     
     

All the Trimmings

Classic dress pinstripe- $5.99 (circa 1960)

                                                        

.

Lawn Menswear,. like many other shops of its day, depended on the display in the front windows for advertisement. Our store was on a busy street corner, and frequently customers came in after being attracted to  the windows.

Every few months, late on a Saturday afternoon before closing, the  two window displays  that held boots shoes, work uniforms, casual clothing and other assorted merchandise were systematically emptied, swept, washed and prepared for the man who came on Sundays to trim the windows.

As a stock boy, I needed to get this job quckly, with little help from my parents who were busy on the sales floor. This was a fairly complicated task that took me at least a few months to learn without toppling fixtures, mixing up merchandise , breaking glass or dirtying the white floor display floor.

What could possibly be so hard about taking stuff out of a window and storing it?
 The trimmer had carefully balanced shoes, shirts and slacks on specially designed  adjustable fixtures made of wood, glass and steel. Heavy work boots and rubber overshoes hung on invisible hooks. Sport shirts and sweaters were layered on male mannequins. Fancy fedoras were displayed on tilted shelves.  During the  holiday season, tinsel and snowflakes had been generously applied to to the walls and windows.

All this had to be systematically removed .The merchandise was sorted and placed back into stock or in storage. Each trimming fixture was carefully removed and cleaned with lots of Windex and elbow grease. These fixtures were then lined up at the back of the store in order of height for easy selection the next day. Done, you say? Not nearly.  After that my work really began.

With the display windows bare, came the job of deep cleaning them. Mom's formula for sparkling windows did not include Windex. She mixed  good old fashioned liquid soap and vinegar into a gallon bucket, gave me a brush, a  squeegee and a large supply of old newspapers.. This may sound  antiquated, but it really got the job done. The windows were  washed and all of the sale posters  and holiday glitter was removed in one fell swoop. If any posters remained, I used a single edge razor to take them off. So, you might say I learned to shave before I had whiskers. If the weather cooperated , the same process was repeated on the outside of the windows, with the aid of a stepladder. I had the added benefit of seeing who was passing by on the street, and getting comments like, "You missed a spot" or "How's the weather up there, kid?" Over and over...


Old newspaper had been spread on the display floor to eliminate spillage from the windows and dirt from my shoes. When everything passed  mom's inspection, she looked at the time. If it was close to 6:00 PM, the store would close and I would race  to finish as quickly as possible. However, sometimes  I was slow, and my dad drove my mom home  to start supper.
I would set the alarm and lock myself in.
Putting on heavy wool stockings, I would remove the  paper and use a mop and bucket to carefully wash the floor. While the floor was drying, I would sit just outside the display case and read or listen to the radio. When  I was finished, I called my dad and he would drive back the short distance from our house to pick me up.

One winter evening, I watched steam rise from the manholes on the street as I waited for my ride. From around the corner, a man dressed in a long overcoat walked up to the store window. He seemed confused by the fact that it was empty and the store was dark. After a few moments, he started banging on the door to get my attention. I pointed to the closed sign and gestured to my watch. He ignored me and began banging on the windows ,shouting , "I need that shirt, damnit, let me in."

To say the least, I was scared. What I probably should have done was to call the police. Instead, I pulled out a small key from my pocket  and set off the burglar alarm. Instantly a  monster bell began clanging.  The man looked at me in suprise and  dismay. Two seconds later, he was halfway down the block. I switched off the alarm and called my dad.  After that incident, I was never left to finish the windows alone.

The next morning, Dad would return to the store and  help trim the window. The trimmer was a really interesting character. He smoked expensive cigars that he shared with my father. Also, he brought a small FM radio  always tuned to classical music or opera. As he worked, he puffed his cigar, and conducted the music with a wave of his arm. The windows always turned out beautifully. Invariably, a customer
would  ask for something out of the window. The answer was always no.No one wanted the risk of  upsetting that careful balance our trimmer had created.

Chewing gum and spit..

                                                            
 Music has always played a big part in my life. Growing up, I heard music everywhere in my house. My sister, Judi, had  a large record collection, my father listened to classical music on our big console record player/FM radio, and my mom always had a radio going in the morning in the kitchen. When I got a bit  older, I built a radio kit so I could listen to music at night in bed. That little crystal set was the beginning of my life long interest in all things electronic.

My grandparents had a small record player in their apartment which eventually made its way into our home. I quickly claimed it for my own, and started looking for ways to improve it. First, I wired my little transistor radio to the the record player's speaker, and had rock and roll blasting out of my bedroom.  That wasn't enough for me. My next step was a connection to the console in our dining room. Now there were two speakers going at once. Even though it wasn't really stereo,
it sounded amazing!

When I caught a bad cold and could stay home from school for a day or two, I would lie on the couch in our living room all day. My my grandmother was home,  so I got away  with watching a lot of television.
When mom would come home from work, she first checked me for fever, then would go over to the t.v. set, put her hand on it and say "You've been watching way too much t.v."
How did she always know?

The next time I stayed home, I noticed that the tubes in the t..v were putting out a fair amount of heat. Craftily, I aimed a fan at the back of the set, and mom never found out.  (This actually increased the life of most of the tubes, as well). A stroke of engineering genius!

Until I turned 13, most of my summers were spent with my mom and brother on the shores of Lake Michigan. By that time, I was totally hooked on rock and roll music and made sure  that mom bring at least one radio with us. One fateful morning, I tuned into WLS to hear the latest tunes and only got static. None of the other stations were working either. Was this the end of the world? Luckily, my trusty transistor radio proved that all was well.

I was determined  to find a way to fix our radio. I unscrewed the back and looked at the tubes. They were all glowing. Next, I checked for loose connections. Aha! The internal antenna wire was dangling. How to connect it without a soldering gun?  The answer was in the Dentyne gum I was chewing. I spit it out into my hand, rolled it into a tight little wad, and stuck the antenna wire back on. When my mom came into the kitchen, the radio was working, but in several pieces. She shook her head and said, "I don't even want to know."

   

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Mmm- french toast!

                                                              


Hefting our 20 pound duffel bags over our heads, we ran the full mile to our new home, a compound of gleaming silver aluminum huts on a street of gravel.
Dying of thirst and totally exhausted, we stumbled inside our assigned barracks, where twenty  men would live for eight weeks within a few feet of each other.

Our bunk beds or "racks" had rolled up mattresses balanced on metal springs.
Overhead there were two large ceiling fans, but the air was noticeably hot and sticky Did you think the Army would provide air conditioning  in the Missouri heat?  Down the center aisle ran a floor of shiny concrete which had to be swept, mopped and waxed every single day. At the front of the hut was a small private room for the lucky person who would be chosen as squad leader. It came with a single bed, a desk and its own fan. Hanging from pillars every ten feet were red fire buckets. Finally, at the back of the barracks was an iron cage where our M-14 rifles and bayonets would be secured each night.

Before we knew what hit us, a drill sergeant came bursting into the room Seconds later,  we hit the floor for pushups.  . Sergeant Cheek chose one guy as squad leader, since he had ROTC training and ordered us outside. On the  hot gravel street, a half dozen soldiers  with starched faded fatigues and a private stripe pinned to their collars attached themselves to us and literally screamed themselves hoarse getting us into formation..  They yelled directly into our ears for a while, then got us to go back inside and bring out our duffel bags.

We were ordered  to dump out the contents of their bags onto the gravel. Every single item that wasn't deemed  Army issue was confiscated. Candy, cookies, prescription and non-prescription  drugs, electric razors, magazines, small radios ....everything was taken away to be stored for when we finished training.  We were told that there would be unpleasant consequences for anyone caught with "contraband" after that. I saw one of the privates munching on a Hershey bar a few minutes later. Let the games begin, I thought.

Once we settled into our barracks again, they  kept us busy making our beds, organizing our foot and wall lockers, and then  sweeping, washing ,waxing and buffing the immaculate floor. There were a few minutes of comic relief when one of the privates said he would demonstrate how to use the electric floor buffer.
He confidently turned it on. It dragged him halfway around the room and dumped him on his starched ass. One of the taller recruits who had worked as a janitor showed him how to buff the floor the right way. He was rewarded with the soft job of "buffer orderly". I gotta learn how to do that, I thought.

Then our new squad leader, Jimmy, sneered  thatwe all were all soft and out of shape. Since the first PT test was next week,we were going to practice running around the mile track. We ignored him. Nobody moved.

"That's an  order, you dummies" he screamed. Over his shoulder we could see our drill sergeant watching us. He smiled and started over to Jimmy.
"Let me show you how to handle this,"he said mildly.
"If all you worms are out by the time I count to three, you're gonna
run until you drop. that I guar-an-tee 1, 2..."
The doorway was crowded with green uniforms, all straining to get outside.

Needless to say, our little afternoon run was an adventure. After running once around the track in full uniform and heavy boots, the hot sun began to take its toll. All around me, guys were falling over and puking up their breakfast. I noticed that there were conveniently located culverts next to the track for just that purpose. Not to be outdone, I heaved up scrambled eggs and french toast.
What did I learn from that? Never, ever eat a full breakfast in Basic, because you're gonna lose it a half hour later.  That I guar-an-tee.

You're in the Army now...

 

86th ARCOM U.S Army Reserves

                                                            

In  early 1969,  my last year of college,, I had a tough decision to make. My draft status was 2-S,but that would end if I wanted go on to grad school. My choices were limited to being drafted or enlisting for three years. My father, bless him, had a friend who was a sergeant in the Army Reserves, and through him, I was able to join his medical unit on the southeast side of Chicago. I took a physical and traded in my draft card for a uniform. I was assigned to the 374th Convalescent Center, 86th ARCOM, U.S. Army Reserves.

My commitment to the Reserves was four months of basic and advanced training, six years of monthly drills, and two weeks every summer of active duty. The trade off was that it didn't appear likely that Reservists would serve in Viet Nam.

From February until June of that year, I traveled in from DeKalb one weekend a month. I was classified as a new recruit  and given informal training on a number of boring subjects. Most of the time, I sat and listened to an older guy tell war stories about Viet Nam and Korea. Nothing was really relevant to me. I thought that if basic training was going to be anything like this, I would easily survive.

And of course , I was so, so wrong. In May, right before I was to graduate college, I received orders to report to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for the next four months. There was the little matter of final exams I had to figure out. My professors were really great. I took my exams early, in some cases a few were waived. Without a chance to attend graduation, I took my first plane ride ever from Midway Airport to St. Louis. My brother-in law, Al, met me and we spent a few hours together before I boarded a bus to Fort Leonard Wood.

     When the chartered bus pulled into the stark military compound, I had the sick feeling that I wasn't going to be happy until this whole thing was over. We were
marched into the Replacement Depot and the next few days was a blur of haircuts, fatigue uniforms, stiff new combat boots, and close to 20 pounds of equipment, including a steel helmet, shelter half and a heavy winter field jacket.
We were housed in old wooden barracks and awoke every day at 6:00 to a loudspeaker somewhere in the compound. For the next week, called "Zero Week", we essentially did nothing but busy work. We pulled weeds, cleaned toilets, raked gravel paths and wondered endlessly what the next week would bring. Instead of drill sergeants, there were corporals in charge of our groups. They were fairly benign, and we began to believe that maybe things weren't going to be so bad.

Bright and early the following week, we packed up our gear into duffel bags stencilled with our name and serial number. Our civilian clothing had been stored. Even our underwear was Army issue baggy boxers. We formed up under a merciless Missouri summer sun and waited for the buses that would take us to Basic Training. Three hours later, we were still waiting. Thirsty, hungry and badly sunburned.

Finally, we were herded aboard  buses and a short ten minutes later, arrived at our new home for the next 8 weeks. As soon as  we shouldered our duffel bags and climbed down, we were told to line up in front of what looked like a large loading dock. For a few minutes nothing happened, and then a door opened and out strode a larger than life drill sergeant. He wore a Smokey Bear hat, stripes on his sleeves, a Combat Infantry patch over one pocket  and a gleaming metal drill instructor badge over the other that marked him as a man to be reckoned with. Covering his eyes were the darkest sunglasses I had ever seen.
    After telling us in no uncertain terms that we were the lowest of the low, he started singling out recruits for individual attention. Some were asked questions for which there no possible right answers. When the wrong answer was given, the inevitable penalty was a large number of push-ups. If they weren't done correctly, then they were done all over again.

One recruit who was sweating heavily was asked if he was thirsty. When he said, "Yes, Drill Sergeant," he was told to run across the street and buy a Coke from the vending machine. When he returned, he was given a swallow and the rest was poured on his head.  Eventually, this nonsense ended and we began the mile long trip to our barracks.
   
 

Musical Roots

The album that started it all.

As far back as I can remember, music has always played a big part in my life.
My dad had played the violin and had a great voice. He loved classical music and Hebrew liturgy. My sister, Judi, sang in the high school chorus, loved opera and worked for a while as a record promoter and as a producer for a jazz radio show.  My brother, Bob, played the clarinet in the high school band. My mom had a sweet, clear voice and was my biggest fan.

When I was eight,  my parents decided that I would take accordion lessons, which were popular in those days. Mom took me over to the Carnivali School of Music on West 63rd Street , I was strapped into a small accordion and my first lesson began. My teacher showed me how to work the bellows to get a sound, and had me count to 4 while I pressed a key.
"This kid's got rhythm," he said. And for the next 4 years I learned to play the accordion.

To say the least, I didn't love it My father insisted I practise every day. I thought that all the music I played sounded like a polka. I never really got good at it, but did enjoy learning how to read music. When I entered 8th grade and started preparing for my bar
mitzvah, I was allowed to stop. My beautiful ivory accordion was handed down to my nephew Paul and was never seen by me again. No great loss.

Once I got into high school, I was already singing in our synagogue choir, and  so decided to get into the band. I started  by playing clarinet in the cadet band, and soon realized that everybody and their sister played that instrument. Mr. Olsen , our band director was looking for someone to play bassoon, but I liked the idea of the easier switch to a bass clarinet. In a few months, I had learned enough  to join the concert band.
The next fall, I also learned to play tenor sax and had the time of my life marching at football games and parades. For the rest of high school, the band became my life.
With my parents encouragement, I practised hard and made first chair bass clarinet.
Mom  and Dad were proud of me. They didn't even protest when I played  noisy marches  at hom eDad was a keen critic of our concert band and let me know when it sounded good.  I earned a letter in band and  medals for playing in contests. I made some very good friends in the band, a few of whom I still correspond with today. On the very last day of school, a cute redheaded french horn player kissed me after graduation and said that she liked me. Too late!!

When I was a junior I began a love affair with the guitar that is still  very much alive today. My school friend, Don, had an inexpensive guitar that he wanted to sell. I saved up my allowance and paid him the magnificent sum of $16 for it. I bought a lesson book, and began learning how to play chords and accompany myself to the easy folk songs I heard on the radio on on record albums.
Don then told me that some of our friends were thinking of forming a folk group. That was all I needed to hear. The Kingston Trio, Bob Gibson  and The Limeliters were my idols. I started playing and singing with "Sonny and the Ramblers" and I was hooked. Sonny taught me the chords I needed to know for the songs we sang. I played guitar,he played banjo we both sang lead while Don and Bruce  harmonized. We actually got to be pretty good, playing for money at parties, and a bar mitvah or two. An added benefit was that our playing let us meet a lot of girls.

My senior year of high school, tMy first guitar had been crushed on a school trip to Washington, by a friend who was jumping on a hotel bed and landed on it. My dad wasn't  happy with me, but took me to a studio downtown where we picked up a much better instrument, with the promise that I take good care of it.

  That spring, I performed at a "hootenanny" with two high school friends. The audience packed the hall, and loved all of the acts. From that moment on, all I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. Every spare minute , I practised and got better. At the end of the year, I tried out for the high school variety show. I was chosen as MC, played both a solo and in with my two friend, Donna and Ray.

In senior speech class, I brought my guitar in for an assignment. The teacher was called away from the room for a few minutes and warned me not to play my  while she was gone. My buddy, Ray Pace, also a guitarist, grabbed the guitar from my desk and started playing loud and fast. Of course, our teacher came back in a blamed me for the noise. Never one to let a friend down, I took the blame for Ray and got my first and only detention. Ray still owes me for that one.

When I went away to college, my guitar came with me. My second year, a friend heard me playing, and asked if I would give him lessons. I did this for the rest of the year and saved the money for a new guitar. When I got my first job as a middle school teacher, I used my music in the classroom and for a few years, gave private lessons after school in the nearby neighborhood.

Since then I've had a number of guitars and have continued to play through the years. On one of the first dates with my wife, I cooked dinner for her and played.
I don't really know whether it was the chicken or my music, but it worked!One of my old guitars had gone to  my nephew, Paul. When I visited him in St. Louis, I gave him a few lessons. His playing took off in the next few years and he  now plays in blues bars and clubs.

When my daughter, Julie, was a toddler, I would sit on her bed and play folk songs until she fell asleep. Her younger brother, David, played trombone in middle school, and picked up the guitar a few years later. Now David and I will jam together when he is at our house.

In the last few years, I've been taking private lessons. I have a beautiful acoustic and an amazing Fender Stratocaster. I've gone from just playing by ear to reading  music and tabs. My chord playing has steadily improved and I'm now sight reading.
How far I'll get totally depends on me. As my teacher, Steve, says, "Rock on!"

What's a Nice Jewish Boy...?

Lawn Manor Beth Jacob now is Beth Shalom Bnai Zakan, an Ethiopian synagogue.

I was raised as a Traditional, fairly observant Jew.  At the age of 6, I was enrolled in Sunday school. After a year, I graduated to three days of Hebrew school plus classes on Sunday. I learned to read prayers in Hebrew, and  received instruction in Jewish history, customs and traditions.

I actually enjoyed going to Hebrew school. It meant that I could see my school friends more often. Also, our synagogue was a community center with recreational facilities inside and out.  I can't count the number of times we came to class late from the basketball court or from flirting with the girls out in the hallways.


 In class, we conjugated verbs in tenses I had never heard of, translated parts of the Torah into modern English, and did oral presentations in Hebrew in front of the entire class. At the end of each day, all of the classes got together for afternoon prayers. To this day, I have large portions of these prayers committed to memory from repeating them so often.

Two teachers stand out in my mind for different reasons.  Mr. Fox was my first grade Hebrew teacher. He was a young man with an easy smile and a good sense of humor.  I loved to hang around him. My given Hebrew name was Sander, which Mr. Fox said was really not Hebrew, but Yiddish. Based on my middle name, he changed it to Aharon,after the brother of Moses. I did very well in this class and was promoted to second grade in mid-year.

The second teacher was Rabbi Eisenberg. He was stern, but fair. I learned  a great deal about Hebrew grammar from him. Like many people in those days, he was a heavy smoker, and would watch us work from the classroom doorway while he took a break. As a teacher myself, I am amazed at how things have changed.

A big part of my  life at our synagogue was the choir. At a very young age, I joined my classmates in the Friday night choir. That meant regular attendance at services and choir practice during the week. In addition, I sang in the all male High Holiday Choir, coming in from Michigan during the summer for rehearsals and singing for two days of Rosh Hashonah and one of Yom Kippur. Before I was required to fast, I would run home between services and eat my mom's pastry.
After turning thirteen, I fasted all day long while standing for hours at a time in the un-aircondtioned heat.
There was a convenience store across from our synagogue and after Yom Kippur, my friends and I would gorge ourselves on soda and pretzels until we burst.
Belonging to the choir gave me a lot of experience with reading music, singing in harmony, and on occasion, doing the Hebrew blessing over wine in front of the congregation. I have since sung in other choirs and have often lead parts of the Saturday service.

My Mom and Dad were religious, but that didn't stop them from earning a living. Our clothing store was open on Friday evening until 6, and on Saturdays.
I would work in the store until 5 on Fridays, change clothing, and then walk the short mile to the synagogue.  My parents would go home for a quick supper and then follow me to services.
When I was in grade school, I went to Saturday services on a regular basis. There was a Junior Congregation that I belonged to, and I enjoyed seeing my friends there. Our Rabbi Schultz was very smart about keeping up our attendance, awarding movie passes for kids who came on a regular basis.

After my bar mitzvah, I attended a small study group with a few of my friends where  Rabbi Shultz introduced us to the various commentaries on the Torah. The next year, Don Cohen and I attended Hebrew high school in downtown Chicago. Very soon, we both realized that the studies were far above our heads. Classes were conducted in Hebrew, which apparently was not a problem for other students with a day school education. I was completely lost. The teachers were kind, but really didn't know what to do with me.

 When the rest of my class graduated, I was told I could attend camp that summer to earn my diploma. By then, my brother had joined me at the school, and we both decided that we'd had enough. It was a hard choice for me. I had made many Orthodox friends at the school, and felt at home outside the classrooms. I attended the graduation ceremony so I could say a final goodbye.

Ironically, I would come back to that school when my son, David, was a  college intern with the Jewish United Fund. The College of Jewish Studies was now called the Spertus Institute and had been relocated to much bigger quarters on Michigan Avenue. David worked in their Asher Library Archives, using his considerable knowledge of technology to digitize parts of their collection. In the collection of photos and documents he began to process, David found my old synagogue.

In order to view the collection, I actually had to make an appointment. The next day, David and I spent an hour wearing white gloves, identifying old speeches , menus and photos from Lawn Manor Hebrew Congregation. The greatest find, of course, was a photo of my Hebrew School graduating  class of 1960.

Medicine- Folk and otherwise

 Medicine: Folk and Otherwise

Believe it not, it's still on the market.

Growing up with a dad who had medical training, and a mom who came from an immigrant family  was an adventure.

First,there was my dad's way of dealing with illness. As a doctor, he had access to medications that regular people did not. For coughs, our family took a mixture of codeine cut with a few drops of sweet wine. As kids, we were only given a safe amount. As a teen, I remember getting a full dose and falling asleep for hours.Our family doctor made house calls only if we were too sick to go to his office. He would arrive with a monster syringe and administer penicillin. Dad's medical connections usually resulted in a same day visit.   A few years later, oral antibiotics became prevalent and we were given bitter tasting pills.

If you had bad digestive symptoms, Dad used a mixture of paragoric (tincture of opium) and belladonna to calm cramps and ease the discomfort. For everything else,  Kaopectate, which stopped you up for days and tasted like....crap.

For muscle aches, my dad used a foul smelling salve called Iodex, which I suspect contained iodine and stunk like dead lobsters. For fever, there was children's aspirin, which I loved to chew. And then,  my favorite  cure for when you were really feeling lousy, a concoction from the Old Country called "goggle-moggle"..no relation to Google.  This was a mixture of hot milk and honey laced with whiskey. A glass would go a long way to ease your throat and make you sleep like a baby.

My mom came from a large immigrant Russian -Jewish family and had her share of peculiar remedies. She was a strong proponent of Alka-seltzer, which made sense since it contained aspirin, and if you had a persisent fever, a colonic or enema would temporarily bring it down. There were also alchohol rubs and when you had a bad cold, Mom would put melt an open jar of Vicks in hot water until it liquified. First you would breathe the vapors, then she'd slather it on your chest and cover you with a sweat shirt. You were sent to bed to enjoy the resultant fumes.
One summer, we were staying in Michigan and my maternal gramdmother came out to visit. For a swollen mosquito bite, she insisted that my mother make a poultice of bread to draw out the infection. My mom's leg got much worse. She called my father in the city, and he drove out with  strong antibiotics.
 Sometimes the old ways simply weren't the best.

Lawn Men's Wear

                                      63rd and Kedzie today. Holy Cross Hospital Outreach
                                      spans the first part of the block.

  For as long as I can remember, my mom and dad ran a men's clothing store at the corner of 63rd and Kedzie Avenue. Called Lawn Men's Wear, it was originally an Army surplus store after World War II, and later evolved into a store for  men's work and casual clothing. They sold everything from steel toed, oil resistant boots for mechanics at nearby Midway Airport to insulated jackets and sport coats.

The lives of my family centered around that store. We were open from 9AM to 6 PM everyday including Saturday, and until 9 pm on Mondays and Thursdays. This essentially meant that we didn't see my parents much during the daytime. When we were in grade school, mom didn't leave home until after noon, so she did see us at lunch time. My dad and mom ran the store together, with Mom doing alterations and managing the finances. Dad was a very convincing salesman, so any time a sale looked like it was faltering, Dad would be called in to close it.
Later, my father opened a podiatry practise down the street from the store, and only came in on Saturdays and during the holiday season to help out.

  Everyone in our family worked in the store at one time or another.   At around twelve years old, I started working as a stock boy a few days after school, and when I got into high school, I put in regular hours as a salesman. My parents kept track of my hours, paid me a decent wage, and for every dollar I earned, they matched it in a college fund. When I went away to school, my friend Paul took over my job for a time. After that, my mom hired a high school boy named Bruno who adored her and would bake her carrot cakes.

     High season at our store was from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Like every other shop on the street, we were open every evening until 9:00 PM. One of my jobs was to string tinsel over the merchandise counters, which I hated because I had to get on a stepladder and drag it all over the store.
For the most part, business was good and I was busy waiting on multiple customers at a time, running the cash register, and wrapping packages. A few doors down, a record store played carols on an outdoor loudspeaker. I learned the words to every Christmas song ever written.

During the winter, workmen wore heavy galoshes over their work shoes. My mom taught me to sit sideways when fitting these 4 buckled monsters. One slip and you got a painful kick in the crotch as a Christmas present. The trick was to have the men thoroughly wipe off their work shoes before putting on new galoshes.

We had a small garage in the back of the store for over stock and during the holiday season, it was stacked high with gift boxes.  I made trips to the garage many times a day in the cold.Next door, there was a family style restaurant, with the heavy odor of the hamburgers frying in their kitchen.  Directly behind us lay the Kedzie Avenue trolley depot, where sparks flew overhead  from the north and south bound streetcars.

When the final customer was served on Christmas Eve, we would lock the door and celebrate by going to out for dinner. My parents let us have anything on the menu we wanted ,because the long holiday season was over. Being Jewish definitely had its advantages that night. There was never anyone else in the restaurant. For some reason, my sister would pick chicken livers. For me, it was a burger, fries and a Coke.
 

   Working in a clothing store gave me the people skills that I've used all my life as a teacher. It also afforded me the wonderful opportunity to spend a lot of time with my mom. When business was slow, I'd study in back of the store with Mom around to help me with homework. I also learned that she was a super saleswoman. She had certain customers that would only she could sell. I do believe that there were several men that came in just to see her, and would spend their paychecks on clothing. One man in particular bought three new packages of underwear and sox every month. Mom was sure he was throwing them out rather than washing them.

A major advantage of working in a men's store was  that I always had new clothes and shoes.Anything I needed came from our store, or from  visiting the wholesale district to help my dad pick out new merchandise. If I needed dress clothing, the salesmen who visited our store got them  for me at a hefty discount. When I left for college, I had a trunk full of new shirts, jeans, socks, underwear and shoes. That first winter, Mom and Dad sent me a new wool coat, a heavy knit hat, two scarves and insulated gloves. You could say I was a clothes horse, but I never complained.

My mom planned on keeping the store open forever, but a bad fall on a ladder seriously affected her ability to work. The store closed around 1971.  Dad moved his practice a few blocks away and continued to work until he retired. Some years later, my brother, Bob became an administrator at nearby Holy Cross Hospital.
Today there is a health care center on the site of my parents' store.


                                   

Our House

Our House 

 I was born in 1947, so I guess that makes me a typical baby boomer. I am the middle of three children, the son of a Austro-Hungarian father and a first generation American mother. My dad was a podiatrist, and he and my mom also owned and managed a men's clothing store. Later, she took over running the store and dad opened a practice nearby. For some reason, I never knew my dad was a podiatrist until he insisted that my brother wear brown, ugly shoes for ankle support. (Bob called them his "mental shoes."

                                              Our house today.

My family lived near Marquette Park, on the southwest side of Chicago, in a typical post World War I brick 2 flat. Two families  joined together to buy the building, and we shared the building, the Marders on the first floor, the Holzmans on the second.

Our family was my dad, Sol, my mom, Jean, my older sister, Judi, and my younger brother, Bob. Also living with us was my dad's mother, Helen, and for  many years, my great-aunt Hattie. I never thought of myself as a first generation American, but, I guess I was. English was spoken by everyone, but my parents , grandmother and great-aunt spoke Yiddish, also.

On the second floor were the Holtzmans, Max owned a grocery store and was a skilled carpenter, Alice a housewife. Their two children were Jerry, who loved to tinker with old cars, and Reba, who, as I recall, painted her room black and introduced me to early rock and roll. Both played piano, right above our living room, usually a choppy  version of Chopin's Polanaise or  Chopsticks.

My parents and the Holzmans lived in a sort of uneasy  truce. We complained that the furnace was too hot, and they constantly said they were cold. Also,  our dining room "chandelier" used to shake when they walked above us. It also seemed that it always snowed on the months I was responsible for shovelling the sidewalks, or rained when it was our turn to mow the lawn.

As kids, we got along well with  Reba and Jerry, and occasionally were invited to watch Davey  Crockett and Robin Hood on t.v. with them. I was mildly afraid of the dog, who used to eat in front of the t.v. and snap if you got near her bowl. As far as I remember, her only trick was to lie on her back and beg for tummy rubs.

Our apartment  wasn't overly large. We had a generous living room, dining room and kitchen, but the three bedrooms were rather small. Only my parents' bedroom had a small closet. The rest of us had wardrobes. My brother and I shared a bedroom, with a Hollywood bed and a trundle bed underneath  that I loved because it had a metal pop-up frame and could be played like a xylophone. I also used it to improve the reception of my crystal set radio.

Out the back door,there was a small, enclosed back porch, leading to a yard and down to a half finished basement that I swear was haunted. The store room was full of Passover dishes, canned goods and very old anatomy text books that were mostly about dead cats. If you could ignore the creepy sounds of the furnace long enough, you might unearth old golf clubs and  very old photo albums in bushel baskets and cartons. Part of the basement was finished as a rec room, and the front room held our prized electric train setup.


Our back yard was not the place to be in the spring or summer ,when  T.J., the black and tan cocker spaniel ,used the yard as her toilet. In the spring my mom planted rhubarb and there was a cherry tree which provided the makings of many pies. When the snow melted, bright yellow and red tulips came up near the back gate every spring.  Our neighbors had a coal furnace and put out the "clinkers" or unburned coal in the alley, which we used to toss at each other.

There was also an old unattached garage which held assorted junk, the cars that Jerry Holzman worked on, and my father's old  podiatry chair, which I thought was a barber's chair.  When my brother, Bob, was in  college he bought an exotic powder blue old  English sports car which he housed in the garage.

So, most of our play was in front of the house on cement steps that served as a meeting place and a ledge ball court.  The stoop became my library, where I devoured comic books and science fiction magazines.  We had the attraction of our grade school on the very next block with a ball field, swings, and a hundred places  to play fast pitch with a tennis ball and bat. We spent summer days there playing 16 inch softball, flying kites and setting off firecrackers on the 4th of July.
 I really  only remember our immediate neighbors. Margo and Jordie Rush lived in the next 2 flat.They had a swing set and we played with them often. On the other side was  Shushis family. They were an older couple, but very nice to us as kids. I used  to love to watch Mr. Shushis tuckpoint the brickwork on his apartment. The yard on the side of their house became our miniature golf course..When my father eventually sold their building, we gave a carved table to  Mrs. Shushis, rather than just leave it for the new owner.
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There were only a few Jewish families like us on our block, so I felt very isolated  at Christmas time when we didn't have a tree. I really  enjoyed looking out our window at our neighbors flocked tree that turned blue, white and green from a spinning spotlight. Also, we had   a baby sitter who had a nativity scene in front of her fireplace that caught my eye. Down on the end of the block, one family had a life size Infant of Prague doll in their front window. One Hannukah, mom  and dad had us put out our yamalkes on the coffee table, next to the electric train set that we had just gotten. The next morning they were filled with candy. When my sister's boyfriend came over to take her out, she couldn't get him away from the train set.   Years later, when my dad sold the building, the buyer claimed he never saw he train set in our basement. I know differently.