Rummaging through some of my dad's writings once again, and found the one that follows about his time at PS 55. I wondered if the school still exists all these years later--if dad were alive, he'd be 99. So it is, perhaps a little worse for wear looking at the picture, but definitely the same building in which my father, when he was in elementary school, wandered the halls in his prepubescent days. I offer his memories of a time gone by.
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I cannot claim some epiphany to account for my change of demeanor from the incorrigible delinquent of my Greek parochial school days to a model of decorum in my new Public School environment.
Perhaps it was the shock of entry into what seemed to me an institution of such profligate opulence when contrasted to the poverty stricken Greek American Institute, a school that could not even provide paper for our examination, where we purchased this necessity, a sheet of lined yellow pad paper for two cents, from the nearby candy store on Eagle Avenue of the Bronx.
I marveled at the orderly desks whose tops one could lift in order to deposit personal property; the Gymnasium with mats to guard against injury in physical activity; ropes that hung from the ceiling where one was encouraged rather than forbidden to clamber up; different classrooms and different teachers for different subjects and, a very undemanding curriculum. It was a veritable paradise.
I wore my glasses and brought all my books to class. I sat at attention, my arms held folded below my desk in the manner prescribed by my previous indoctrination. It was an attitude so uncharacteristic of the students that Miss Mantell, my first teacher, came to my seat, ostensibly to welcome me but paying curious attention to what my hands might have been doing under the desk. She was young and beautiful. I was immediately stricken with love.
The class was unruly. I marveled again that authority was so easily confronted. My sympathy was for this trim, soft-spoken teacher and I longed to destroy Benny Kendler, the class comedian and ringleader in her defense, but she quickly aborted the insurrection by announcing that the class would be kept after school. Then she made the cardinal error of releasing me from opprobrium and allowing me to go home.
I remember three faces turning around, with aspects of disdain, even contempt for this new teacher's pet. They were, of course, Benny Kendler, as well as Oscar Schaeffer and Alex Kuntsevich, the seventh brother of the gigantic "Seven Brothers" furniture movers whose ubiquitous trucks traversed the Bronx streets. Alex was included in the logo of the family business though as a pre-high school student his working days were yet to come. He was still a truncated version of his massive elder brothers, no one less than six and a half feet tall.
Oscar Schaeffer was the organizer of athletic activities during class recesses. He was slim, balding prematurely from a condition he announced to be "Alopecia Areata". He spat out of the side of his mouth, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball statistics and was a Yankee fan who would brook no criticism of his team.
Whatever competition was in contemplation I was never chosen as a team member.
My sudden devotion to learning did nothing to enhance my image. My notebooks were orderly, printed with meticulous effort, the subject titles underlined in red ink, illustrations added from newspapers and magazines. I passed all the examinations of the grade to which I was assigned, including the French class, with no previous knowledge of the language. I asked several classmates if it were possible to skip a class. Oscar took advantage of my innocence of public school matters. He advised me "sotto voce", out of the side of his mouth, "Just go up to Mr. Leng, the home room teacher, and ask him."
"Is that all there is to it?" I asked.
"Sure," said Oscar. "Lots of guys do it." A blatant lie.
Mr. Leng, my home room instructor skipped me two grades to begin at the end of the current semester, sealing forever my fate as a social leper among the other boys, and further antagonizing Oscar, who suggestion was intended to embarrass me.
Estelle Abrams asked me if I would help her with her Biology notebook. Harriet Strauss, who lived a short block from me, invited me to study French with her at her home. Mr. Leng assigned me to stair monitor duty thus introducing me to my first contact with the black student of the thirties.
I knew no black people. Georgia, my sister now at Morris High School, brought a black girl to our house, a teenager named Rowena. She was very uncomfortable. Our early efforts at social integration were clumsy, the ethnic gaffes legion. She did not come again. My only other encounter was when I was captured, while crossing Third Avenue, taken behind a billboard, tied hand and foot and thrown to the ground. It was a pre-teen gang, invading the area on the occasion of Halloween, armed with stockings, some filled with colored chalk, others with the more convincing sand or rocks. I was covered with the multi-colored chalk.
They stood in a ring around me silent for a while, pondering the next step in this early melodrama of the streets. "Let's we piss on his face," offered one of the more venturesome captors. There was universal assent.
"Not a good idea," said a policeman who entered the secluded domain, alerted by I know not who.
The job of stair monitor required that students adhere to a single file during class changes, using the banister on the left side, for order and safety.
On my first day, three or four black students came thundering down on the right side of the stair. When I interposed my fragile body against this manifest flaunting of school decorum, they stopped long enough to advise me that they would see me after school. The power vested in me by school authority seemed very fragile. I quit my job.
Back in Miss Mantel's class, where in a few weeks I would be released into the eighth grade, Alex Kuntsevich was becoming restive and hostile. He would step into line in front of me, bump into me in the hallways, knock books off the desk. I ignored every provocation. Finally, he confronted me in the schoolyard, after class.
"Take off your glasses," he ordered.
I ignored him and he swung a right hand at me anyway
I blocked the blow and hit him a good right hand, flush in his left eye. It was the only blow struck. Alex was in full retreat. Oscar and his athletes were following, offering pugilistic advice. Alex was saved from further humiliation by Miss Mantel, who ended the fight.
I must interpose, here, a little aside. Many years later, I passed a huge truck bearing "The Seven Brothers" legend. A huge young man who had just descended from the driver's seat called to me.
"Connie," came the unfamiliar baritone, "don't you remember me? P.S. 55 where you kicked the shit out of me?" A huge ham-like hand grasped mine. "Alex, Alex Kuntsevich, remember? We sat together in Mantell's class. Think you could do it again?" he smiled.
Indeed we did sit together. There were twin seats in the center of the room. She vacated one pair and arranged that we sit together as a gesture of class harmony and love of the fellow man.
Oscar was now my friend. Though he seemed an anomaly to me, slight and unathletic, he was generally accepted on matters of sports. I accorded to the overtures in that they repaired, somewhat, the damage Miss Mantell had instigated. I was installed as the catcher on the softball team. Benny Kendler and I became challengers for the handball championship.
I do not remember how Benny and I fared, that I did not know until one afternoon, as I sat, many years later, in my office in a City New York agency. An elderly messenger entered, handed me some mail, stared and exclaimed, "Connie, don't you remember me? Benny, Benny Kendler. We won the handball championship in PS 55."
There were some memorable teachers that deserve recording in this little reminiscence. There was, for example, the perpetually hysterical, Miss Hurley. Her class was always in a state of disruption.
I have a theory that every class has several students, who, while not identical in appearance, perform identical roles. I was now two semesters beyond Benny Kendler, but there was always a Benny Kendler clone in the class. That student would usually begin the insurrections and the rest followed enthusiastically.
One day I was astounded to hear Miss Hurley say, "Go on, go on, show your bad manners to Mr. Gochis. At the time I pondered her raising me to a "Mister" status.
On another occasion I relapsed into my "delinquent" status of yesteryear. I rolled bits of paper into tight little arrows, and with the use of a rubberband, pelted several students in the forward rows.s Harold Steckel, who received one of the missiles on the back of his neck, turned round, pointed at me, and shouted, "He did it, Miss Hurley. He did it."
"Nonsense," she replied, "Mr. Gochis would never do a thing like that."
Harold Steckel was short and oval shaped. He was also smart and aggressive in promoting his talent. He would volunteer for any proposed extra assignment, erased the board, and was well behaved. I saw him as an enemy and volunteered every time he did.
As a consequence, we entered into an oratory contest before a full auditorium. I gave an insipid talk on the evils of alcohol; he chose a soliloquy fro Macbeth, to wit:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand. . ."
What better instrument could he have chosen?
I was totally demolished.
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