I shot marbles where grass and even the weeds did not grow on available dirt in vacant lots, or in front of the old, two-story, private houses that lined the leafy side streets. I collected marbles and stored them in small brown paper bags. Plastic bags did not exist. I traded many of my ordinary, multi-colored marbles for what we called purees. I used these clear, sometimes large marbles as a “shooter.” The object was to move as many marbles as possible into a circle in the middle of the box we played in. I held the shooter in the crook of my index finger and with my thumb. Then I sent the marble on its way in a straight line by pushing it forward as strongly as possible. It may not seem so, but it was a skill developed over hours of practice.

I carried a knife. We all carried knives. Mostly these were pen knives that we kept closed in a side pocket. It made no sense. Not really. I did not need a knife. Yet, there were practical reasons. The game of War or Territory was one of them. You flipped, tossed or dropped the knife into a square box carved into the earth. After the knife landed in an upright position – no other position counted — you cut off a piece of territory in the direction of the blade until one of you had more land that the other. The kids who flipped their knife the best usually won the game.

Speaking of knives, though we all owned penknives, for some reason many of us also owned switchblades, knives that opened with the push of a button. Mine had a three or four inch blade and the handle was dark pink plastic. I bought mine for a few bucks from a kid in school. In the late 1940s, switchblades were a big deal. We all had to have one. They cost a couple of bucks, money that I saved from tips I got delivering prescriptions for a local drug store. I kept it with me at all times. I slept with it under my pillow. My parents did not know I owned that potentially lethal weapon. Occasionally when we stood on a street corner in the early evening I would open and close the knife and listen to the clicking sound of the blade as it released from its spring. I never sharpened my knife and it served no useful purpose, but I had one, as did my friends, because it was a thing to have. Gangs did not exist in my neighborhood. I knew where they were but I never ventured into their neighborhood. We were too smart to go looking for trouble beyond our own neat borders. But we had switchblades because we thought we were hep, the word of cool in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the days after World War II, youth gangs were getting a lot of attention. Homemade weapons called zip guns were frontpage news. Some kids made their guns in shop class from iron pipe. These guns could kill. Other kids in shop carefully tooled their guns from solid pieces of wood. We made our version from the wooden joints of orange crates. The gun had a wood handle, a nail on the wood barrel and a nail on the front of the barrel. We took strong rubber bands from our homes. For ammunition, we used sharp-edged pieces of discarded linoleum that we cut into one-inch squares. We fitted the linoleum into the stretched rubber bands and then released the square into the air. Where it would land was anyone’s guess, but land the square did and often with devastating effect. The linoleum ammo sometimes cut a guy’s face. Other times it caused a gash in someone’s arm. Zip guns of whatever make were dangerous weapons and other than some youthful macho thing, I have no idea why we made these, let alone shot them at each other. But we did, and no one got badly hurt, at least in my neighborhood. But there were many stories of the more serious zip guns used in gang fights and even in robberies.

We were not budding gangsters. We stayed where we were and never strayed into trouble. We were harmless, not fighters, would-be lovers — how we hoped — and good kids. Yet, my friends and I felt drawn to the other side. Perhaps it was the mystery. Knowing nothing of the concept, the outlaw was a daring figure, at least in movies, especially in Westerns. The outlaw was someone beyond the normal boundaries of good, a concept preached to us as uplifting and redeeming. Mainly I think it was the idea of a life different from the one we were leading. It reached beyond our stable existence. Most of my friends and I did nothing but dream. We never acted on our impulse. A few of my friends did and became petty criminals. A few even turned into junkies. I never came close.

Instead of beating up people, we continued playing many different games. We played stoopball by slamming a ball against the steps in front of any house that had a stoop. We tried to hit an edge of the step with the ball and send the ball as far as possible out into the street and away from the opposing fielder. We played curb ball on the street. The idea was to hit the corner of the curb to see how far the ball would travel. If we placed the ball anywhere but the corner of the curb it did not go far, the other player would easily catch it and become the next batter. We played punch ball in the street where you tossed the ball into the air and then punched it as hard and as far as possible. If someone caught what you punched on the fly, you were out. The bases were parked cars, sewers in the middle of the streets and another sewer for home plate unless we had chalk and could mark a real batter’s box on the blacktop.

We played these games with loosely configured teams and no referees or umpires. We refereed and umpired ourselves. Sure, we argued decisions. Sure, we growled and yelled, pushed and shoved. But we never went to the mat over what we thought was a bad decision. We liked to think we were in charge. Only weaklings allowed other people to control their destiny. We were strong and young – though we never thought about it too much — so we made our own decisions. Referees and umpires would come later in our lives, and when they did, having them around took away the fun we had judging ourselves.

As most kids, I had a pair of heavy metal roller skates. The skates had cheap leather straps that went around my ankles, and a metal cup for my toes that I tightened with a skate key to make sure the skates did not come apart or fall off my feet while skating. Some kids played street hockey if they could afford a hockey stick. The hockey sticks I had often shattered during a game. It took the fun out of street hockey. Instead, I skated as fast as I could in impromptu races on the streets.

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Cops usually ignored us but sometimes a person complained and the beat cop, a common presence then, would arrive to straighten us out and chase us away. Usually he was overweight, a middle-aged man in blue who carried a sidearm, a Billy club and handcuffs. He wore black shoes that flopped when he shuffled his way through the relatively calm streets. Cops walked everywhere. They twirled their Billy clubs as they slowly trudged through the streets. I never saw one sitting or resting. They looked around, and talked to people in the street. Everyone was friendly, especially the adults. We hardly ever saw a police car.

An old, burly cop struck me once on the back of my thigh with his club because I refused to move from the schoolyard fast enough when ordered. As I started to run away, he caught me by the neck, whacked me hard and sharply on the back of my leg – he knew exactly where to hit me so there would no mark anyone could see – and told me to take off. My thigh hurt for days, but he gained my respect, mainly because I did not want him to hit me again. Usually, after a cop turned the corner, we went back to our games. Either he had other things on his mind, or he really did not care to be bothered again.

I lived in a highly competitive neighborhood with highly competitive kids, many of whom were my age or slightly older. Perhaps the competition came from observing our parents and their friends. Many of my friends were the children of my parent’s friends, and they were usually the same age as me. We were all in the same circle and we had to learn how to survive and succeed within that narrow sphere. The competition showed in the games we played, and how we played them. Mainly, none of us gave an inch. If our parents were strict with us, we were strict with those who were our age.

In my neighborhood, especially on Avenue H, East 19th Street and then Argyle Road, we played games like those elsewhere on the streets of New York. They were variations of games played in the five boroughs. These were city games. These were street games. They were games with rhythms and rules of their own passed down by street lore in ways we never knew. Many of these games had nothing to with skill or finesse. We played King of the Hill, Horse, and Johnny on a Pony almost every day. These were tough, cruel, and perhaps mean-spirited. Did they prepare us for life later? Whether yes or no, we learned never to give in. We punched, kicked, shoved, and jumped on each other’s backs if that is what the game demanded. It is a wonder all our roughhousing did not permanently damage us. Brute force ruled. Power won. The strong survived. The weak suffered defeat.

With King of The Hill, if you were bigger, stronger, taller, with, perhaps, better balance and no fear, you won more times than you lost. Sometimes you perched yourself atop a pile of leaves, stood on castaway furniture, or, in my neighborhood, on an old concrete foundation behind the apartment house where I lived. When you claimed one of those places, you waited for someone to remove you by pure strength. If they did, they became King of the Hill. They stood tall, alone, and supreme.
For Johnny on a Pony, one of us would volunteer to lean against a wall, head at an angle, back parallel to the ground, legs firmly planted, waiting for the other kids to run and then jump onto your back. The more kids who landed on your back, the more difficult it was to hold your position until everyone would come crashing to the ground laughing and screaming with joy, as perverted as it may seem. After we righted ourselves, we reset the pony with another volunteer. Then the jumping and pounding started again, until, exhausted, we tired of the game and went off to do something else.

We played Hide and Go Seek and Ring-a-levio the same way, physical and harsh. In each of those games, freedom from jail after capture was the goal. Once the opposing side got a prisoner, and put him in jail, he stayed there until someone came running full speed and bounded into the designated jail to set him free. Knocking down, or at least pushing aside, the jailor and yelling “free, free,” the prisoners had a chance to escape, which they usually did. Everyone ran fast into hiding. We waited again for someone to capture us, or if not, until the game ended or we lay on the ground out of breath not caring who was the winner.

All was in the spirit of winning. All was in spirit of coming out on top. Oddly, we rarely got hurt. Battered, yes. Always bruised. Never really were we seriously hurt, not in a way that we would admit. Bleeding elbows and knees were part of the game. Scraping again a healing wound was even better because it proved we had the guts to go on. We rarely let a day go by without taking ourselves apart physically for the sake of showing each other we were men. Sure, every time we engaged in roughhouse games, we used up all our excess energy. We were kids. When we played those games, nothing intruded. Nothing except lunch or dinner ended a game. We had to eat to regain our strength. Why we played so hard, and all the time, was never an issue, never a question we asked. We were young so it really did not matter. So we thought. Looking back, it obviously did affect us in ways we did not understand then and probably do not understand now.

We played stickball on the streets using broom handles that we swiped from the apartment where we lived. When my mother, and other mothers, discovered their mop handle missing, they knew where to look. By then, it was too late. The consequence was a whack on my bottom and a caution never to do that again. But I did because the game had to go on. We found other broomsticks in the cellar of the buildings where we lived and where the super stored his cleaning equipment. Playing stickball on a Brooklyn street had many problems. We had to maneuver between the parked cars on each side of the street. We dodged on-coming traffic, angry motorists, and honking cars to survive to play another day. We were in competition with roller skaters and bicyclers. We measured our ability and strength by the number of sewers we could reach by hitting each slow ball thrown on a bounce by a pitcher who used the pink Spalding ball we all chipped in to buy. Unfortunately, the ball often split after only a few games. But the ball was cheap and we were able to pool the few pennies we had to buy a new one when needed.

When I was very young, my parents let me know that they had big ambitions for me. I had difficulty understanding that concept at five or six when their dreams for me were boundless. I was in first grade. My mother dressed me in a white shirt, a clip-on tie, dark short pants and just shined, brown, Thom McAnn lace up shoes. My mother and I walked many blocks to a school where I would take dancing lessons. Only I did not know that was where we were going. We had no car in those days. Taxis were out of the question. Public transportation could not get us to that location. We walked and when we finally arrived, I was very tired and not in the best of spirits. The room, filled with small girls all dressed the same in white blouses and black, pleated skirts, had only a few boys dressed as I. To say I was mortified and humiliated is an understatement. I assume all the boys felt the same. At least I would hope. A woman teacher sat at a highly polished, ebony Baby Grand piano barking instructions to us students for the steps she wanted us to take. I decided quickly I wanted no part of learning how to dance, certainly not in that group. Much to my mother’s embarrassment, I refused to go onto the dance floor. I managed to find a safe haven behind the piano and behind a curtain from where, despite my mother’s pleading, I refused to emerge until the lesson ended and it was time to go.

I don’t know what my mother was thinking. I knew that I would never let that happen to me again. I vowed that my mortification for the sake of someone else’s desire was not what I wanted. I could not articulate this verbally, but by hiding I let me mother know, never again. It produced my first rebellion and it had a permanent effect on my life. The event, though seemingly minor, gave me a deep-seated sense that I would not allow anyone to take advantage of me again. This is not to say it never happened again in my life. It did because there is no escape from people who attempt to control you.

I lived in a mixed neighborhood. We were of various religions and from different ethnic backgrounds. I had many friends on my block, but few close friends in school. We got along well, except for the occasional fight, something that most boys did. I had very high grades in school but I considered it a place between the games we played on the streets where we lived. Busing did not exist. I walked to whatever school I attended. When I lived on Avenue H, I walked each morning to my grade school, P.S 152. I crossed Ocean Avenue and then moved steadily to the right around Brooklyn College until I reached one of the oldest schools in the city. It looked like a castle and was very forbidding for a young child. For a short time when I lived in Brighton Beach, I walked down Ocean View Avenue to P.S. 100. Later, from my house on Argyle Road, I walked to P.S. 217, a brick and concrete pile with no beauty or charm that sat at Coney Island Avenue and Newkirk Avenues like a colorless lump. Inside the school, the classrooms were devoid of anything that would make it a pleasant experience. I did well in school with very little studying. I concentrated in class, and remembered what I needed for tests. School was there, and unavoidable. I went everyday and never complained.

My father wanted me to be a doctor, a typical ambition of many Jewish families that survived the Depression. I accepted his wish without thinking about it. Call it blind compliance, but it is what a dutiful Jewish son did. Because of my father’s desire, I thought, yes, I would be a doctor, or, to be precise, a surgeon. He thought I had the long fingers required of a surgeon. My father said surgeons needed long fingers with which to operate, so I was partly there already. Though I had big hands, thinking of cutting into someone made me ill. I once broke the middle finger on my left hand while playing catcher in a softball game and my father let me know loudly that my career was at its end. I was twelve years old. I never thought much about tomorrow, but as with all kids, what lay ahead of me in life was infinite. Only I didn’t realize it then.

I never played hooky, was a decent athlete, a fair cartoonist, and I could copy maps as if I was making photocopies. I even tried to paint with oils. I failed. Like many kids, I owned boxes of baseball cards and lead toy soldiers. Both collections disappeared when I went to college, a victim of my mother’s penchant for neatness. Along with my monthly supply of books from Max in Chicago, I read everything in sight, not only some of the many newspapers my father brought home each day, but even read the labels on cans and jars of food. Reading consumed me and brought me to places I never knew existed.

Despite my excellent grades, my conduct in school was poor, a problem for my parents and teachers. I became class president in the 6th grade because I was the most popular and maybe the cleanest kid in class. This made my parents happy. It confused my teachers who had difficulty equating my popularity, my conduct and my intelligence. Many people predicted I would have a great future despite the streak in me that made me stand up against authority. I tried to control myself to please the adults but I was not always successful.

When school was out, and before homework or Hebrew school, I hung out with my friends in the schoolyard and on the streets near where I lived. On weekends at P.S 217, we tore a hole in the heavy, mesh, wire fence that surrounded the schoolyard so we could get inside to play without teacher, that is, adult supervision. Monday morning, the school custodians repaired the fence as best they could knowing we would tear open it again come Friday afternoon.

My parents thought they were middle class, and maybe they were. Their ideas about home and family certainly conformed to those of Middle America. It was an understandable aspiration for a family that survived the Depression. But we were not anywhere near middle income. In the 1920s, my father was on the verge of becoming rich when the stock market crashed and changed his life forever. Sadly, like many of his generation, he never recovered from the Crash. The American dream for him and most people changed forever when the market collapsed. My father carried wounds from that event until the day he died at 96 near the end of the 20th Century.

Though my father struggled for years to make a living, I was not aware of his struggles nor how hard he worked. Growing up, I did not know what I was missing. Thankfully, as a family, we did not want for anything. I missed nothing until I went away to college and started to see the wider world beyond the streets of Brooklyn. My friends and I were in the same situation. Where we grew up, we had the same lives. Some of us, but not all, were grateful for what we had. We learned early not to complain. As long as there was food on the table, a roof over our heads and food on the table, life was not too bad. There was an unwritten fatalism about life. We could not control it or ignore it.

After World War II, we moved from a four-story apartment house on Avenue H and East 19th Street into our first real home on Argyle Road and Avenue H in Brooklyn. It had two stories, a screened-in front porch on the second floor where we lived, a high attic, gray asphalt siding, a one-car garage down a driveway in the back of the house, a huge maple tree on the sidewalk, a small grass plot in front and back and full basement. It was a neighborhood with mostly Dutch style, single-family homes each with a small yard back and front on quiet, tree-lined streets. Many houses had thick hedges instead of fences. These were green in summer and bare in winter. Every house had a porch on each of its two floors with one screened in for outdoor, bug-free living.

Living in an apartment house without air conditioning, we were lucky to live on the ground floor because the building had no elevators. Now my life changed. The new house seemed very grand and for us. Used to small apartment living, it was indeed majestic. My patents were homeowners for the first time in their lives and they reveled in it. Living on the top floor we had use of the attic. We rented the main floor to a couple who had no children. My mother and father had to be careful with money. There was nothing excessive in our lives. We had only what we needed.

My mother was a hard working, stay-at-home wife, proudly called a homemaker. She cared for my younger sister and me. Our home being always neat, my mother’s kitchen always in order, the rest of the house buttoned up tightly as if fixed in amber. Essentially shy, she was usually soft-spoken and sweet. Our clothes were neat and clean. Mother cooked and cleaned the house. She shopped carefully and there was always more than enough food on the table. My mother was a wonderful, creative cook, especially with homey Jewish food. She made great soups, such as pea soup and chicken soup. She cooked enough stuffed cabbage to last for a week. Her stews were legendary, especially lamb stew with potatoes, carrots and a delicious, tomato-based gravy. She made tomato sauce from scratch which we put on spaghetti or fresh egg noodles. She made fresh chocolate pudding and allowed us to scrape the pot clean. After roasting a chicken, she made chicken fat by cooking down the skin, taking the residue and refrigerating it until it was solid. We ate the fried chicken skin, called gribben by the spoonful. We then spread the chicken fat onto fresh rye or corn bread, added a touch a salt, and gobbled up a delicious treat. We had no idea how dangerous that was to our health. We ate as a family at a fixed time every day, usually 6 p.m. My mother rarely sat with us, preferring to serve and then stand, to nibble and nosh, rather than to sit and eat a full meal at the table. My mother made sure the family functioned as a family should in those simpler days. Many nights my father cleaned the kitchen. I helped him wash the dishes by hand, place them in a drying tray and then wipe them before putting them in a cabinet until the next night when they would come out again for another meal.

Sunday nights we sat around the kitchen table and ate grilled American cheese sandwiches on white bread. We coated the thick slices with butter and pressed the sandwich to melted perfection using a heavy clothes iron on top of a dish in a frying pan. We ate them with cold milk and listened to radio serials, and fifteen minute newscasts, staple of radio back then. We were a typical family together at mid-century.

During the week and on weekends, my mother saw her friends. They played Canasta, Ma Jong, and gossiped. Sometimes we saw relatives and had a meal together. Once a week my parent’s friends met in someone else’s home where they ate, played cards and talked.

I have thought about it for years. It is a moment that is never out of my mind. Perhaps it defines who I am, the man I have become. Perhaps not. It took place June 18, 1941 about a month before my seventh birthday. That was the night of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn heavyweight title fight broadcast live across the county on radio at 10 p.m. Joe Louis, The Brown Bomber, the icon of the day, a hero to everyone in then racially-divided America, was to fight Billy Conn, the light heavyweight champion for the heavyweight championship of the world. During his championship reign, he transcended race, but as a kid in those days, I knew nothing of race or class nor what it meant to many in America. He was Joe Louis and along with Joe DiMaggio, a figure my friends and I could look up to. I cannot speak for the adults, or my father, but everyone my age wanted Joe Louis to win. My father rarely, if ever, divulged his prejudices. Over the years, we never discussed what happened to me that night nor did we ever discuss the fight. Ever.

We were living in an apartment on Avenue H and East 19th Street in Brooklyn. I did not want to sleep. I wanted to hear the fight despite it being on well after my bedtime. Already in my pajamas, I went to my father and asked him if I could stay up. He said no. I insisted. He said no again. I persisted. He said I was too young. Boxing was something I did not need to know about. He was also sure it would be in the newsreels and when I went to the Saturday movie matinee, I would see the fight then, which was better than hearing it on the radio. In my small boy voice, I told him that was not good enough. I told him my friends would be listening. He said no again. Then, unlike me, I had something of a tantrum. I stamped my feet. I cried. I made a scene. Normally when I went into that rare mode, my father would slam me on the top of my head, and pound me once or twice on by backside with his fist or his open hand. Standing in front of him, I prepared myself for that eventuality. It did not happen. He did not hit me. What he did was in some ways worse.

He finally relented and said that if I wanted to listen to the fight I could. But there was one condition. I would have to stand in the middle of the living room without moving or saying a word. Stand absolutely still, he said. Without hesitating, I said I could do it, not thinking of the consequences. I nodded my head several times in affirmation. He told me to move into the center of the room. I did. My memory of the room is that it was very dark. There was no ceiling light. We had only one floor lamp by my father’s easy chair. There were lamps and ashtrays on the end tables at either side of the couch. A coffee table sat in front of the couch. As a child, I thought the room very dark. Standing in the middle of the room, I realized how dark it really was.

Ten o’clock came. The fight started. Usually in bed at that time, I was very tired. The living room took on the appearance of a dungeon. But nothing would deter me from my mission. Not that I thought of it that way. I was, after all, a nearly seven-year-old boy with a stubborn streak. I thought I had won some sort of victory. I would listen to the fight through the massive floor model, the centerpiece for entertainment in our living room. The next day I would tell my friends what I did. That is all that mattered. I stood in that spot without moving through the whole fight. I did not whimper. I did not cry. I did not shift my position. My legs hurt. My head hurt. I wanted to sleep. I refused to fold. When the fight ended, my father said nothing and waved me to my room. I did with great difficulty. My legs were numb. I managed to move anyway. My kidney’s about to burst, I went to the bathroom and then dragged myself to bed where I fell into a deep sleep.

Until I looked it up I had no idea who won the fight or how long it lasted. For the record, after nearly losing Joe Louis knocked out an overly confident Billy Conn in the 13th round to retain his title. Now that does not matter. I think without realizing it, I vowed that my father would not defeat me. I think he did not but who really knows. Did the incident affect my life? I am sure it did. I cannot say how. In retrospect I would rather, he had hit me. I could have handled that. The moment, though painful, would have passed. The torture he put me through that night was worse. I am sure he knew what he was doing. For that I can never forgive him.

I did not cry that night. Since that incident, it is hard for me to cry at all, ever, unless the moment is so overpowering that it eclipses my early defenses. Understand, I have cried over the years, but never if I could help it. For me to cry, it would have meant defeat. I had little understanding of what was happening, but something inside me recognized that crying in front of my father would undermine my life forever. It was a test of his will against mine. When the battle ended in the middle of the living room, I still cannot say who won. What took place that night was only the first of many skirmishes between my father and me over who would dominate my life. I only regret we never discussed what took place while he was alive. I wonder what he would have said in his defense.

My father was a man of great pride. A white-collar worker who never wanted to get his hands dirty, he wanted the life he believed a pressed suit would bring. Every day he went to work dressed as a banker, his shirt freshly starched and pressed by my mother, his dark tie knotted just so, his shoes shined, his hands washed, his fingernails cut close and clean. He was fastidious. He was of average height and slim. His size allowed his clothes to fit him well. He wore a pencil thin mustache; his hair neatly clipped, with the back and sides, as they used to say, short. Nothing about him seemed out of place. When he arrived home, he immediately untied his shoes, slipped them off his feet and wandered through the house in his stocking feet. I don’t remember if he owned a pair of bedroom slippers. He showed me photos of the way he looked in the 1920s before the Crash. In them, he had about him the touch of dandy. He wore two-toned brown and white Oxford shoes. He wore custom-fitted suits, buttoned vests, and neatly knotted ties. In summer he wore a straw boater and in winter a dark fedora with a snap-brim. It took me years to understand that dressing as he did, even in the worst of times after the Depression and during the years of recovery, gave him the dignity I think he never associated with the work he was doing.

My father owned a small, one-person insurance agency. He had a desk and filing cabinets in a large open room on John Street that he shared with other brokers who were in the same business. I remember going with him to his office by subway and feeling overwhelmed by the tall, imposing buildings in the Wall Street area. I got bored waiting for lunch or the trip home. I sat in his office and drew on the backs of old insurance contracts. I tried to type on old table model Remington typewriters, but I screwed up the keys while getting black ink from the ribbon on my fingers.

My father had a friend named Max who worked for Bantam Books in Chicago. Every month for years, he sent us the paperback books Bantam published. These were mostly novels, Westerns, mysteries, some science fiction, but there were also biographies and history books. I started carrying a book everywhere I went, even in grade and high school. My only escape, it seemed, was reading those books. Some months I read as many as fifteen books. I also read the funny pages in his newspapers, some sports, and almost nothing else.

I grew up in Brooklyn in the late 1940s and into the early 1950s. In 1952, I went off to college and my life changed forever.

I had what I can only call a normal life, at least on the surface. Yet, I always felt no one understood me. Of course, I did not understand myself either. My friends felt the same. First, there was World War II. After the war, we were part of America resettling itself with the threat of what we called “the bomb” hanging over our heads. It was not easy being a child and having bomb drills in class where we hid under our desks until the principal called off the mock attack. Mushroom clouds were deep in our consciousness. Next came the Korean War and more upheaval. We lived in a rapidly changing world that we did not comprehend. Our elders decided that we did not have to understand anything as long as we obeyed their wishes. Only years later did I realize how confused they were and how they found it impossible to explain the world to us. Blind obedience was far better than clarity and understanding.

A few words about my parents are necessary and important to better appreciate, if possible where I come from. My mother and father were not overtly abusive. They were not drinkers. They were not drug or sex addicts. Not the most patient of people, at times they could be rough with me. I was a difficult child for them. Before my mother’s recent death, she admitted to me that I was a hard child to handle. She thought, though I turned out all right. My mind ran in many directions at once. Usually I concentrated on what I wanted, not what they wanted. I wanted to have fun, or at least what I understood to be fun, meaning enjoying doing what I wanted rather than what they wanted. I can define it now as having a free and open imagination, an anathema to my father. My father would not allow me the opportunity to have a mind that was open and free flowing. He made sure I understood his philosophy that fun was for people with no ambition. I had to be ambitious because, he said, that was the only way to be. Growing up Jewish in New York and his being first generation American had everything to do with his ambition for me. Their was constant skirmishing between us and I usually lost. At least then, I lost. After all, I was a kid, and he, my father who ran the family. I depended on him for food, clothing, a roof over my head, shoes, a bed to sleep in.

My father was stern and practical, so stern at times that his face rarely gave anything back to the world around him. His eyes were hazel mixed with gray, soft, not dense, a surprise in a face usually set to take on the world. His moustache was thin, just enough to cover his upper lip. Usually I recognized it was there when he bent to kiss me good night before I went to sleep. He was an insurance broker who insisted I excel in school and, mainly, that I not follow him in his work. He did not want to attach “and Son” to his letterhead. Nor did I. I could not articulate it, but I knew that trudging all over the city 12 hours each day was not the life for me. To his credit, he had other ideas for me, a profession such as medicine, and if not that, at least dentistry or law. He thought teaching, though honorable, paid little, and thus a waste for a bright youngster, me. My father sold what he called general insurance, but hardly any life insurance because, in his later years, he told me, it was hard for him to tell someone they might die someday. Instead, he concentrated on home, theft, fire and auto insurance. He spent long hours traveling by bus, trolley and subway everywhere across New York City to see his many clients. He collected his premiums and, when possible, but not often, he sold them more insurance. It was not an easy life, but, as he said many times, it beat shoveling coal.

At mid 20th Century there were as many as a dozen newspapers published in New York City. My father bought most of them and read every word as he journeyed around the five boroughs. By the time he arrived home at night, there was not much of the day left for him. That, and trips he made to clients after dinner limited his reading time and his leisure. He rarely read a book. He left that pleasure to my mother who never tired of reading best sellers and romance novels that she tried to hide from me in a bottom drawer of her dresser. I spied her secreting her books, and, being curious, when she was not home, I went to the drawer, would open the book, and read a few pages, usually enough to know I did not want to read more. Two books in particular that I recall were “Forever Amber” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Even then, neither held much interest for me.

Television was in its infancy and had little affect on our lives other than when, in groups, we sat around living rooms watching wrestling or boxing on small TV sets. We listened to radio for news, music, soap operas and serials like “The Green Hornet” and “Jack Armstrong.”

My mother was petite and very pretty with a ready smile, very smart, a quick wit and a sudden temper. She was tireless and worked around the house at breakneck speed, cleaning cooking, doing laundry. I know now that my father refused to allow her to work outside the home. They did not allow it in his family growing up and he would not allow it in his family as an adult. As an outlet for her energy, she painted rooms, stained doors, moved furniture, sewed buttons, turned the collars of our worn shirts, cuffed trousers, hemmed skirts, ironed our shirts and hers and my sisters clothing. We changed our outfits every day in our family. It was a great source of pride for my mother to have us all look just so when we went out to face the world.

Both parents had a temper for reasons I did not understand then and to this day, I do not fully grasp. They were quick to anger and I was usually on the short end. Sometimes I suffered a ready and sudden slap with their hands or in my father’s case, a few lashes from his belt, and the threat of the buckle, rather than just the leather, against my flesh. Beating were infrequent. The threat of a slap or punch, however, hovered over me like a sword ready to strike. Mostly I avoided that kind of suffering by limiting what they considered my bad conduct away from his and my mother’s eyes. I believe their quick tempers had to do with their frustration of not realizing their potential because of the Crash, the Depression that followed, and World War II.

As I said there was some physical abuse. I expected that as surely as I awoke each day. Parents hitting children was normal. It was part of life and expected. We compared notes and it was a source of pride, to show each other the nastiest marks on our bodies. But there was abuse of another kind. It was far worse.

“Notebooks, 1954-1961” is my life in diary form from the journals, and notebooks I kept in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Starting with this synopsis, I will post these journals on the Digital Filmmaker Blog in serial form over the next year. The next entries will be the introduction to the book. Once the introduction is online, I will present my journal in the order I wrote it. First, please take a few minutes to read about my early life. And recognize, that as some things change, how we grow up never seems to change no matter the era.

When I started writing my notebooks The Korean War had all but ended. Vietnam, a blip on the horizon, had not yet invaded our consciousness. It is my personal story, but it is in some ways the story of my generation, or at least those of my generation who lived a similar life in the late 1950s and into the next decade.

Many of us then were confused and searching. Through our parents, we were taking a long breath that had started with the Great Depression, and lingered painfully through World War II, culminating with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. We came of age in the so-called Silent Generation when America sought solace in Levittown, freedom from war, and early, blissfully, innocent television. We did not know we were silent. We lived life as it happened, as others before us had, and these memories and experiences define that time for those who lived it with me.

We were similar to youth in any age. Our lives were our own. Our dreams were our own, but they were also universal. I believe my book speaks for a generation once derided as without a voice. It is for these reasons I believe my “Notebooks” will resonate especially with those of my generation and their children as they seek answers. Recall, the fifties were also the age of Dwight Eisenhower, his lean, comforting shadow still hovering over the memories of World War II, then only over ten years. The Korean War, undeclared, ugly and without end, ever a mystery to many why we were there having our youth killed, a floundering blot on our diplomatic and military history. These years were the preludes to the horror we would face after the promise of the disrupted, brief Kennedy era. By the mid-1960s, my life had changed, as had America’s, unsettled by forces beyond our control and dominated by runaway events we still suffer from today.

The book takes me from the relative safety of middle class Jewish life in Brooklyn, to WASP dominated Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, then an all male school of less than 800 students. There, to my disbelief, I had a roommate who had never met a Jew before he met me. In the book, I tell about the difficulties I had in college as I tried to find a direction for my life other than the one laid out by the heavy handed influence and dominance of my father and mother. I eventually break some of their chains and become my own man. You will hurdle along with me through many youthful indiscretions, including heavy drinking, sexual adventure, long nights without sleep, and my many failed romances. I describe the hundreds of books I read that I still revere. I talk of my tastes in jazz and popular music, poetry and collecting words. After graduating Lafayette with a degree in history, I work many jobs before becoming a mail clerk at NBC two years later. That led to my becoming a copy boy at NBC News in an era now long gone once dominated by paper and film. It ends with me going to Washington in 1961 as David Brinkley’s assistant. Five years later, I am in Vietnam as bureau chief for NBC News.

The “Notebooks” is the story of how I came of age, but I was no Holden Caulfield. We may have been from the same time, but we lived in different neighborhoods, stood on different corners, and had different ethnic and religious backgrounds. My attack on life was frontal, direct, all encompassing. I often struggled in my quest. However, I survived to have a long and productive life.

I thought my original notebooks, scraps of paper with times and places and the many pages I typed and scribbled had disappeared. I thought those sleepless nights, and the many bottles of ale and shots of vodka had gone to waste. To my surprise, delight, and even some shock for the memories they jogged, I found more than 50 of the notebooks a few years ago, faded but still intact. With those, I wrote the “Notebooks, 1954-1961.”

Now, please watch the DVN Blog for the introduction to the “Notebooks” due here soon.

“With a click of a button, you open the door in to another world - the one in your mind. That which lurks in shadows now takes a new face, the one inside us all and only unlocked by the imagination. You have fallen into Unknown Realms”

This concerns the launch of the Unknown Realms: Japan channel on various P2P TV and web TV platforms like Vuze, Veoh, iTunes and many others, which coincides with the DVD release of 152 and Rodosha - The Laborer. Finally some of the films that I talked about previously are available on the internet for viewing.

Unknown Realms: Japan is a channel featuring a collection of short films beckoning back to the days of the Twilight Zone, produced by DK PRO (including 152 and Rodosha - The Laborer). The channel explores the mysterious, thrilling and unknown all with a Japanese twist - from psychological mysteries, to stories of haunted train tunnels, to surreal looks at the mundane, including documentaries about hidden aspects of Japan. The channel currently features short films that have screened at various film festivals around the world, including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Italy. It will also feature future films of DK PRO which are currently in production. Attached is a press release for the Unknown Realms: Japan channel with details and links for the channel in all its available platforms as well as details on all the films screening on the channel and 3 films currently in production (available at http://www.dariru.com/unknownrealmspressrelease.pdf). A press kit which includes posters, production stills and images for all films can be downloaded at: http://www.dariru.com/unknownrealmspresskit.rar (14 meg compressed file)

Both 152 and Rodosha - The Laborer are now available on DVD on Amazon.com and all films are currently in negotiation for distribution in addition to being broadcast on Unknown Realms: Japan, so readers would be able to check out the films easily.
sincerely,
Darryl Knickrehm
director DK PRO
http://www.dariru.com

Being tapped to screen your film at one of the country’s top film festivals. That has to be every filmmaker’s dream. The Tribeca Film Festival 2008 runs April 23rd to May 3rd and, newcomer that it may be, after only seven years on the scene, clearly Tribeca has become one of the best places for a filmmaker’s work to be seen. The Digital Filmmaker spoke with a half dozen fortunate filmmakers whose documentaries and animations are among the many kinds of films selected this year. We particularly wanted to know what they hope or expect being included will mean for their film’s future. Call it a look not at the films themselves, but at the filmmaker’s experience. Some filmmakers have been to Tribeca before and are returning with new work. Some are experiencing the festival for the first time. All echo the sentiment of Carlos Carcas, a first timer who is coming all the way from Spain to screen his film “Old Man Bebo”at the festival.
“Just being a part of the Tribeca Film Festival in itself is an honor. As a filmmaker, it’s a wonderful opportunity to showcase one’s work in a prestigious event. When I heard the film had been accepted to compete in Tribeca, I was in a state of shock and euphoria. I always dreamed about participating in Tribeca, and to go with this film is already a prize.”
For information on the festival and its film offerings the festival’s website is at www.tribecafilmfestival.org .

For what the filmmakers have to say, please read on.

Nina Paley “Sita Sings The Blues”

Nina Paley is a returning filmmaker. Two years ago she had a short at Tribeca. One thing she hopes Tribeca will do for “Sita Sings the Blues,” a feature length, animated “breakup film” which receives its North American premiere at Tribeca, is for other festival directors to become aware of it, seeing or hearing of it there. As she explains, it’s a whole lot easier if you know other festival directors are aware of, and also already interested in your work than if you just submit.
“Sita”, which is in what she calls its festival year, screened earlier at the Berlin Film Fesitval, where it had its World Premiere, and “good things came out of Berlin.” Because of Berlin, she was invited to “a whole bunch of other festivals.” Her hope is Tribeca will do the same. And it costs a lot less, she has learned, if they invite you. There are expenses to submitting, for duplication, postage, and so on. These are smaller if festivals ask you to attend.

Paley particularly likes that Tribeca is in New York, where she lives and where she is happy all of her friends can finally see it, in a theater, with other people, in the dark. The way it should be. Being in New York also makes it easier to manage all the work that goes into presenting it. And, she confides, there are a million things to do. As with many filmmakers, money is tight. Trying to get “Sita” out into the world with no money, she can’t, for example, afford p.r. Many a filmmaker will sympathize with that challenge. At least in New York she knows some people in the press. Honor that Tribeca is, she recognizes every great thing creates new problems. She is overwhelmed trying to make all the arrangements, including making sure all the people who helped her get tickets. A friend says of her “She’s like a wolf running through the woods,” trying to do them all.

Paley has a sales rep, but is still looking for a distributor, which she also hopes will materialize because of Tribeca. She knows “Sita” is a tough sell. A niche. It’s animated, but not for kids. Looking for her best deal, the hope is Tribeca will give it “a big push.” She will also tell you she has always made art. She makes the films she does “because I want to see it. When I started I wasn’t thinking about getting into the Tribeca Film Festival. I was just thinking about the film.”
Of course, being one of the filmmakers at a major festival, she is looking forward to seeing others’ work.
What would she say to aspiring filmmakers about themselves applying to Tribeca? Her advice is simple. “Send it in. Who knows how this works. It’s a mystery.” In her words, “Of course, I’ve had more rejections in my life than acceptance.” Basically, she’s saying, all you can do is not get in. And maybe, miracle of miracles, you will.

When the Digital Filmmaker asks Paley what she got out of Tribeca the last time she was there two years ago, she doesn’t hesitate a moment. With great enthusiasm she will tell you, “They gave me a great bag of swag.” What was in it? “Final Cut Pro!” What else was in there? “Lip balm. Sunglasses. A nice bag. Who cares!” Not when the freebie bag has Final Cut Pro!

Alas, the swag bag laws have tightened. Since last she was at Tribeca there’s been a swag bag crackdown, so she doesn’t expect that again.

But a decent distribution deal would be nice.

Robert Drew “A President to Remember”

Famed documentarian Robert Drew brings an intimate look at President John Kennedy to Tribeca in his “A President to Remember.” He has been to many a festival and to Tribeca before. “What this festival and other successful festivals do… Tribeca more than most,” he tells us, “it creates a two week thriving film community. It energizes people. Broadens your viewpoints.”

Like Paley, he is aware when Tribeca selects a film then many of the other major festivals around the world want you to come. They issue invitations. So it has a multiplier effect. The festivals he cares about are the ones that feature documentaries or are all docs. Tribeca is a broad picture. Hollywood is a part of it, but documentaries are given top billing. He feels well treated there. His film gets reviewed at the head of the list.

Furthermore, he has observed, people make a festival. Good people are the secret. This particular group that works behind the scenes at Tribeca, people you never hear about, “is amazing.” A smart bunch. Some might ask, for example, why another Kennedy film. With them, he didn’t have to explain anything. They knew this is a big year for presidential politics.
The last film he had at Tribeca was of his WWII experience. Unbeknownst to him, while it was screening at the Amsterdam festival, one of Tribeca’s top people was seeing it there and when he got back to the United States, before he could call them, she called him. To Drew, that means the folks who run Tribeca are enterprising. Then he has nothing but praise for the way they handled it. They billed it prominently. Gave it good projection. Got a good audience there.

For “A President to Remember,” this year’s entry, Drew explains, this film is meant for people who didn’t experience JFK directly. He is hoping people will realize once we had a history of great presidents. Which, in his opinion, the current administration doesn’t reflect. What Tribeca is doing for him. First, they selected it. Out of the hundreds of films that are submitted, it is “good for the film that it was selected. Good that then they will show it four or five times with excellent projection, good p.r. Hopefully, it will draw crowds.” More importantly, being in the festival “would then accomplish the purpose of the film, which is to remind people of a great president” who held office at a time when we respected and admired the man in the White House. He thinks the film has a job to do. And this festival will help it do that.

We wanted to know the importance of this festival to him when he’s been in so many. And had so many successes. “Yes, I still get excited.” The film he’s working on is always the most important. And Tribeca is “an important boost.”

Dori Bernstein “Gotta Dance”

Dori Bernstein we reached in post-production, putting the finishing touches on her entry “Gotta Dance.” Two years ago, she was at Tribeca with “Show Business: The Road to Broadway, ” where it premiered, and it was “huge, fantastic, the perfect place to launch the film.” Tribeca launched it “on such a high level” and gave them an opening which attracted distributor attention and press attention. They were given a red carpet spotlight premiere. She calls that “a magical night.” The film dealt with Broadway, and as Tribeca is in New York, the Broadway community came. What happened to them at Tribeca was “very valuable to catapulting the film. As a result, we did get theatrical distribution release. It played all around the country. Now it’s out on DVD.”

Also an incredible experience is what Bernstein says was the personal handling. “Tribeca took such good care of us and the film. Even after the festival was over. They continued to be very supportive of their filmmakers.” Bernstein says the festival put word of their film in their online newsletter. Sent email blasts when it was released, telling people where it was playing. Helped to publicize it throughout its life.

Now she returns with “Gotta Dance.” “Gotta Dance” is a world premiere. She is ecstatic that she got in. Especially after only sending in a rough cut. She felt from Day One that Tribeca was the perfect place for her latest film. It was her dream to get in. But she is well aware, “This is a tough one to get into. At the end of the day, either it fits what they need or it doesn’t, even if you’ve been in before.” But she also knows the festival had confidence in her — seeing just a rough cut — “that it would turn out well and be finished on time.”

She wanted to and is thrilled to be at Tribeca, not only because it is such a spectacular festival, but also “because everyone is here.” Meaning everyone in the film is in New York area. Her senior hip hop dancers and the New Jersey Nets, “which is what makes the screening so special. The lights will come up at the end and the cast of the movie is going to be there.” Up on stage. What a moment. Not only will they get to see the film while the audience does, but the audience will get to see her stars.

Her dream is for every distributor to see the film, fall in love with it and want it desperately.

Tribeca makes that possible.

Douglas Tirola “An Omar Broadway Film”

Douglas Tirola is new as a filmmaker to Tribeca, but not new to Tribeca itself. He’s been before, wearing a different hat. Taking pitches in the All Access program, not screening his own film. This is the first doc he’s directed.
For this particular film, “this was THE festival we wanted to go to.” Tirola always pictured it being at Tribeca. For a few reasons. One of which is that “An Omar Broadway Film” takes place almost entirely in Newark and East Orange, right across the river.

Another because, after being involved for six years with the All Access program, he feels a relationship with the festival. “I think they do a great job. They make you feel they are making a long-term commitment to you.” He feels they really want the movie to go where it can go — beyond the festival circuit. Tirola describes a kindness, feeling treated like family, with all the “support for us and for the film.” He thinks that’s unique. He’s been in other festivals. It’s not always that way. “Since the movie was accepted the level of and amount of support from different people at the festival is extraordinary.”

The Digital Filmmaker talked to Tirola the morning after a pre-Tribeca event. What he found remarkable was that questions from the various festival workers went beyond their immediate area of responsibility. Someone in p.r. might ask about distribution and vice versa. People had actually seen the film. Dozens of films are in the festival and he could see they actually knew his movie. Had actually watched more than the first five minutes of his film (and the others). They could talk about the movie. And because they had actually seen it, Tirola feels they will be better prepared to support it.
His takeaway. Instead of solely being concerned with how the festival fares, they seem to care about what the festival can do for the film. Tirola believes the festival people genuinely care and want his movie to “find its home” not only at but after the festival. For him he will always feel “this connection to Tribeca.” For anything that needs being done, “There are six people helping me, far beyond what does happen at the festival itself.”
His expectations beyond the festival? He has a couple.

“We’re just like a lot of movies. We got it made far enough to submit to festivals and because it got accepted, now that it’s in, we went to final production.” Now that it’s in finished form, with that boost from the festival, obviously, he hopes for theatrical distribution. “The goal is to find a distributor who best understands the film and will get it out to an audience.” And here again, Tribeca is a help. Tirola hasn’t “been to all the festivals in the world, but I will say because Tribeca is in New York City, you get the New York industry people.” More of them are here than most other places that hold festivals. Then there is a further wrinkle. The uniqueness of Tribeca being in New York City, plus the support of the people behind the festival, means you get more diversity in the audience — a great mix of industry people, film devotees and just regular folks. People in the business get to see the film at screenings with regular folks, not just the crew who flew out to see the movie, and “being in New York, where the audience and the crowd is a little tougher, if the movie plays in that bit tougher room and a potential distributor sees the audience is on the side of the movie, that’s an advantage.” After all, Tirola is trying to show there is an audience out there for “An Omar Broadway Film.” Being at Tribeca make that happen.

“An Omar Broadway Film” is about, as Tirola puts it, “a guy who is in prison.” So he can’t be there. But another main character is his mother. A woman who lives in a modest house in East Orange, New Jersey — she gets to be there. Tirola says, “If for some reason this is the only premiere the movie ever has, it’s important for us that the mom be there and it be special.” And Tribeca helps make it special, even going so far as to help them find a place after the screening to have a party.

At the end of the day, “It’s a documentary. This is probably the biggest opening and biggest stage it will have.”

Andy Abrahams Wilson “Under Our Skin”

Andy Abraham Wilson is a first timer. Tribeca is the place where he’s launching his doc, “Under Our Skin” and he calls it “the best venue for this film.” Partly that’s because of the subject matter. “Under Our Skin” is about the Lyme Disease epidemic. And New York and the Tri-state area were a hot spot epidemic area. Hence, a perfect place to premiere.
He hasn’t been there yet, but already he feels what the other filmmakers describe, under the heading, “treating us well and they really care.”

Wilson, of course, hopes for sold out crowds. He’s excited about getting this film out to the public. He’s also excited also being asked to be on a panel, Behind the Scenes. Only three filmmakers will be on that panel and he’s the only non-fiction filmmaker.

Being on a panel can only help. As any filmmaker knows, going to a festival is all about visibility and awareness. Wilson takes it further. Creating awareness and buzz about the film is important. “All filmmakers want to create awareness and buzz about their film.” But he also wants to “create buzz and awareness about the issue. The Lyme Disease epidemic.” His sister had it. He thought she was malingering. This film, he quips is “ penance for the way he treated her.” More earnestly, he had a friend who got sick, then sicker and sicker, with a mysterious illness. Eventually she was seriously ill. He was very concerned. She was very concerned. Many wrong diagnoses followed, until, finally, the diagnosis of Lyme Disease. So the film is as much about the issue. And the issue is personal.

So, it seems, even for a newcomer, is the relationship to Tribeca.

“Everyone wants their film to do well, “ he reminds us. “Tribeca is a big festival. Lots of people are coordinating. It feels like they our holding our hands.” Compared to other festivals, “they seem to have an investment… an engagement with the film.”

“It feels like they are holding our hands.” Wilson has been to other festivals. He doesn’t think all others get that treatment. “Under Our Skin” has a prime screening time. He, too, cites the newsletter, tracking the film after its play.
And, of course, there’s that panel discussion.

Eileen Douglas is a broadcast journalist turned independent documentary filmmaker. Former 1010 WINS New York anchor/reporter and correspondent for “ABC-TV’s Lifetime Magazine,” she is the author of “Rachel and the Upside Down Heart,” and co-producer of the films “My Grandfather’s House” and “Luboml:My Heart Remembers.” She can be reached at www.douglas-steinman.com.