Authors: Jerry Stiller
As I ducked a left and fell into a clinch, his fist came around with a roundhouse right that caught me in the spine. It was like an electric shock, like voltage going through my entire body. It straightened me up to my full height. Tears stuck in my throat. I could feel pain and humiliation. He hit me again. I refused to give up. I moved forward. I remember hanging onto his two fists as supports. Fat boy tried to separate us to keep the fight going.
I don’t remember much more except that the beating didn’t stop, and the cement on Ralphie’s fists had done its damage. At one point he must have had some mercy, or maybe someone off the street stepped in and stopped the massacre. I was bleeding, and could feel my upper body hanging from my waist.
The crowd started to break up. My shirt was ripped and bloody, and I tucked it into my pants as I made my way down Stanton Street, walking as fast as my body would carry me, trying not to look in the faces of the people staring at me.
I reached Goerck Street and climbed the flights to our apartment. The door was open and I walked straight to my room, fell across the bed face-down, and started to cry. My mother appeared in the doorway.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I was in a fight.”
I lay there, waiting for her to say something.
“I heard about it,” she said. “It was with Ralphie. Why?”
“He stole Arnie’s ring,” I said, as if I had saved the family jewels.
She went into the kitchen and returned with some ice wrapped in a dish towel. She lifted my shirt carefully so as to not tear the skin. I felt her fingers touch my back. She applied the ice to the welts. I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t say a word. I wanted her to hug me, tell me I was brave, make me feel less ashamed of having taken a beating.
She put her face next to my ear and whispered, “Next time you’ll know better.”
She went to get some more ice. I started to cry, then stopped myself. I knew she was right, and I fell into a deep sleep.
Some five years later, I was in basic training at Fort Knox. There was a sergeant in charge of us—Sgt. Ralphie Stolzman, one and the same. He was the most docile guy in the world, so sweet. He got me off KP. After his discharge I think he became a schoolteacher.
Just before my thirteenth birthday, my mother said, “We’re going to get you a nice Bar Mitzvah suit.”
She took me down to Orchard Street. Orchard Street made Baghdad seem like kindergarten when it came to bargains, but my mother’s bargaining skills were honed to razor sharpness.
We passed a few stores. “Let’s try this one,” she said, and led me inside.
“He wants a suit,” she said to the owner, as if this were not her idea. “Have you got a suit for him?”
The store was loaded with suits. There were racks on top of racks. The quiet-spoken man with a European-educated voice asked, “What kind of suit?”
“A wool suit,” my mother said, wool being top-of-the-line material, not to be confused with rayon or some synthetic.
“I’ve got a beautiful suit for him here.”
He reached up with a stick with a handle that worked movable claws, and he took down a brown wool suit from the rack. He showed it to us.
“It’s got knickers, one pair of pants, and a vest. Do you want to try it on?”
“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, unable to control my feelings.
“Then try it on. There’s a fitting room over there.”
My mother took me into the fitting room.
“Don’t say you like it,” she told me.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s going to want more money if he knows you like it.”
“How much will it cost?” I asked.
“Just keep your mouth shut and let me handle this. Try the suit on.”
When I came out of the dressing room, she asked, “Do you like it?”
“Yes, I love it.”
“Don’t tell him that,” she mumbled, giving me a look.
The owner said, “How do you like it?” a smile lighting up his face.
“He says it’s okay,” my mother said in a sullen voice.
“That’s 100 percent pure virgin wool, you know.”
“Yeah,” she said cutting him short. “How much?”
“Thirteen dollars.”
“What? Thirteen dollars!” my mother screamed. “Take off the suit.”
“What?” I said.
She looked at me with that look. “Take it off.”
I went back into the dressing room.
“Wait a minute,” the man said. “That suit costs me thirteen dollars, lady. I’m giving it to you for thirteen dollars.”
“Thirteen dollars? Who’s got thirteen dollars?”
“Okay, how much do you want to give me for the suit?”
“You’re going to have to do better.”
As I changed back into my own clothes, I was listening.
“All right, take it for twelve dollars.”
“Twelve dollars!” Her voice sounded as if she were being strangled. “Come on, let’s go.” She yanked me out of the booth by the hand.
“Where are you going?” the man said.
“Out of here.” She was pulling me. As we hit the street I heard, “Ten dollars.” He had come down three dollars. My mother said: “Keep moving.” I turned to look at the man following us. “Come on,” she said. “Keep walking.”
“What are you doing, lady?” the man cried. “Do you want to kill me?”
He was chasing her.
“I gotta make a living too. All right, nine dollars. Take it for nine dollars.”
“Take it, Ma,” I said.
She hit my shoulder with her hand. “Shut up.”
“Look, how much do you want to give me?”
“I’ll give you five dollars,” she said.
On the street for everyone to hear, he yelled, “Five dollars! Go, get out of my sight.” He was no longer the quiet-spoken man. “Walk. I don’t want to see you again!” he was shouting.
“Come on.” She pulled on my sweater and started to run.
“Ma, why don’t you take it?”
“Shut up,” she said. “And run.”
We were at the end of the block. We’d passed three other clothing stores. Breathless, he caught us. Tears in his eyes.
“Okay, you can have it for seven dollars.”
“Six,” my mother said.
“Six-fifty.”
“It’s a deal,” my mother said.
We walked back to the store. They talked. Suddenly, there was friendship, warmth.
“I would never do this for anyone else. I want you to know I’m losing money on this,” the man said. “You’ll tell your friends?”
“Yes,” my mother said. “I’ll tell the world.”
I could sense she still felt she’d gotten the bad end of the deal. He folded the beautiful suit in a box. Six-fifty, I said to myself. How did she do it? I felt sorry for the man. He got some twine and tied the box.
“What is the suit for?” he asked me.
“My Bar Mitzvah.”
“Wear it in good health. Is this your first suit?” He was searching for some reason for giving the suit away for so low a price. “I want you to know you got a real bargain. I wouldn’t do this for just anybody.”
“You’re a wonderful man,” my mother said. “A sweetheart.”
What she had done was extraordinary, but I could not help feeling she had taken advantage of this poor man. Later I learned that the money for my suit had been borrowed from my Tanta Faiga.
As we walked home, my mother said, “You should’ve listened to me when I told you to be quiet. Do you know how long your father has to work for thirteen dollars? Did you know that fellow was overcharging us to begin with? Look around,” she said pointing to other store windows.
Sure enough, there were suits going for nine and ten dollars, before the bargaining.
“It’s all an act. One day when you have to go to work you’ll know.”
Work?
I thought.
Who wants to work? Someday I’m going to be an actor.
We moved from Goerck Street to the Vladecks about the same time as the New York World’s Fair arrived in Flushing Meadows in 1939. The projects were a dream come true for many families. We had courtyards, elevators, washing machines in the basement, and no more bathrooms in the hall.
By the time I was thirteen, Arnie and I had spent two summers outside New York at summer camps. One was the Boys Club camp, Camp Carey, at the tip of Long Island. The other was the Educational Alliance Camp, also called the Eddie Cantor Camp, at Surprise Lake, on the New York/New Jersey border.
I hated both places. The Boys Club camp seemed totally devoid of Jewish faces, while Surprise Lake had nothing but. Boys Club seemed structured and cold, while Surprise Lake was warm and supervised and full of wonderful food. Much too nice for me. I couldn’t handle it.
At Boys Club, Arnie and I bunked together with ten other kids. When lights-out occurred at 9
P.M.
, the entire camp was expected to obey the rule of silence. The sound of crickets quickly replaced the sound of the human voice. The edict was strictly adhered to by everyone. “Lights-out, no noise.” The order, shouted in the dark by a counselor, put a damper on everything, and was also a little scary.
One night, as the counselor’s voice bellowed, “No noise,” I could hear Arnie’s chatter at the far end of the bunk area.
“Quiet, and I mean it,” the counselor yelled.
Whereupon my brother shouted, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
“Who said that?” the counselor demanded.
“Patrick Henry,” my brother answered.
The bunk exploded with laughter. The counselor was not amused. He ordered Arnie to stand outside. Arnie threw a blanket across his shoulders and obediently walked outside to face the night’s formations of mosquitoes. I asked the counselor if I could join him. I was given permission, and together we stood outside for twenty minutes. After that, I knew I would never return to that camp, and I didn’t.
My father was a part-time driver for the Triangle Bus Company. This was the job he had bought a few years earlier, when my mother and her sister Chaila (Leo’s mother) won the Irish Sweepstakes. My father was able to get off the WPA and through an uncle “buy” a job with the bus company. He stayed with them for twenty years.
The owner of Triangle was a Democratic Party captain in our district. My mother thought political influence would help get me into another summer camp. The Eddie Ahearn Club, a Tammany Hall branch on East Broadway, was accessible to any of the party faithful who might need a favor, and my mother felt my father was owed one of those favors. During the summer months he was asked to “volunteer”—without pay—to drive busloads of loyal Democrats on excursions to Coney Island. In return, the club owed my father a favor, namely to get me into camp. But when it became clear that no help was forthcoming, my mother was livid.
This inspired me to investigate a settlement house on East Third Street known as the Boys Brotherhood Republic. The BBR was at the bottom rung of the settlement-house ladder. It was a renovated six-story tenement run by the boys themselves, a kind of mini-democracy. George Ogourlian, the adult supervisor, was ensconced in a small office. The young members were called “citizens,” and they elected a mayor, a district attorney, a police commissioner, a judge, and ten councilmen. Council meetings were held once a week. Taxes were collected, fines levied in cases of criminal conduct, and court trials of the accused were held every Friday night. “Where Boys Rule” was the motto.
This self-administration created responsibility for boys from seven to
eighteen. The BBR, though a good half-mile from Jackson Street in the projects, excited me enough to walk or skate to East Third Street every afternoon to take part in the activities. I was very comfortable there.
The BBR allowed me to take responsibility for my own life. I ran for city councilman and won. I was elected number-one councilman by a record number of votes. The BBR took me off the streets. I was paid twenty-five dollars to write a story that would be published in Denmark that spoke of my BBR experience. What a thrill. At fourteen I was paid to write. It was a leg up into life. It gave me a sense of self.
Eddie Egan, a former amateur boxing champion, was married to a member of the Colgate toothpaste family. He had visited the BBR and was impressed enough to convince his in-laws to donate land for a summer camp. Camp Colgate was several acres of land near Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. There was no electricity and no counselors, just older BBR boys who took care of us younger ones. Food was prepared by a guy who claimed he could cook. We were like pioneers awakened by a bugle sounding reveille. We had breakfast cooked on a huge coal stove. We all had jobs clearing the land, building the camp. We also had a baseball team that played other camps in the area, treasure hunts that I had a knack of winning, and campfire shows that I started putting on, satires of camp life.
When the two weeks were up, I hated having to go home. When World War Two broke out, two of the older boys, Moishe Bader and Mac Mandel, became flyers. Both were killed over Germany. Ralph Hittman joined the marines and later married Moishe’s sister, Rose. Ralph took over for George Ogourlian as supervisor and remained in charge for forty-three years. We have stayed close to this day.
I had learned pride. The BBR opened me up and made me aware of life’s possibilities.
When I was in high school, I started attending performances of Yiddish theater, which at that time was vying for an already dwindling audience as Yiddish became less frequently spoken. Necessity dictated that I catch a breath of it before it expired. Maurice Schwartz was considered one of the greatest stars of the Yiddish theater, and one Saturday afternoon I headed to Second Avenue, the Great White Way of Jewish theater, to see one of his shows.
The lobby was alive with people looking for one another, husbands looking for wives, wives for husbands. Everyone seemed related—was it possible they were all one family? I felt like an orphan. For one thing, I did not speak Yiddish, although I could understand it.
A man in a dark suit and a felt hat suddenly appeared next to me and asked if I had a seat.
“Dir hust a seat?”
“Nicht,”
I said, trying to affect the Yiddish equivalent of the word “no.” He then told me that some members of his burial society did not show up and I could have a $2.40 orchestra seat next to him. I handed him fifty-five cents and he handed me a ticket. At once, much of the magic of theater disappeared. The theater was supposed to be artistic, above the level of
hondling
. I had often bought a balcony seat and then snuck down to the orchestra, but this was different. I felt Yiddish theater was sacred. Nevertheless, I went into the theater and seated myself next to my benefactor.