Lafayette grade school provided me with many pleasurable memories. My mother, aunts and uncles preceded me there. There were no middle schools. One went from kindergarten to eighth grade in grammar school and then four years of high school.
My social life started in eighth grade. At age thirteen, we had a flurry of parties. A large group of girls and boys would get together to celebrate birthdays and other occasions at various homes (never mine) and about the only memory I have of these events was the great game we played—spin the bottle. With luck, my bottle would end up pointing to Eleanor. At that point you would leave the circle, go into another room (usually the bedroom), and collect your reward—a kiss. Where were the parents I wonder? I never saw Eleanor after the eighth grade, but I think she was my first female interest. Eleanor and spin the bottle would have to do for a very long time. My high school and college career saw no great advance in this realm of activity.
Age thirteen saw another advance, however, in my maturation process. The Bar Mitzvah ceremony. I became a man. We had a synagogue service and a dinner at the Midwest Athletic club with family and friends. This put my mother and father in the same room together, always an uncomfortable time for me.
Since I was a Kohen, the synagogue looked forward to this event, for now they would have a priestly descendent to bless the congregation. This meant that I would be involved in the prayer ritual. Since this was an orthodox synagogue, the principles washed my feet and then I would go up on the stage in front of the Torah and before the congregation. As instructed, I positioned the back of my hands in front of my face with thumbs touching and second and third fingers separated from the fourth and fifth fingers. A large prayer shawl covered my upper body, head, face and hands. The purpose of this was to keep my face hidden from the congregants, for while I chanted the prayer anyone who looked at my face would die on the spot, so they told me. While I was on the stage, I was able to look downward and see the floor immediately in front of the stage. Marching there were my classmates who looked up at me and viewed my face. After the ceremony they said, “We looked right in your face and we’re still alive.” This was a great relief, for the last thing I wanted was to be responsible for the premature demise of my friends.
Now that I was a “man,” I started going to the synagogue with my grandfather every Saturday. After services, the rabbi asked me to escort one of the older parishioners home. He was very short, stooped over, had a long snow-white beard, lived two blocks away, and the trip took one half-hour. He was 103 years old and his method of locomotion was a very slow shuffle. One-hundred and three years old in 1943 meant he was born in 1840, twenty-one years before the Civil War.
I do not remember how many times I made that walk, but I do remember slowly fading out of Saturday services.
Grammar school graduation was another event bringing my mother and father together. The good news was that they would be sitting in the audience, not together, of course, and I would be on the stage. One part of the program was to be a short play and I hoped to get a role. I did not, but they assigned me the task of taking the chairs off the stage after the band finished a few patriotic pieces. That made my part in the graduation ceremony a member of the stage labor force, while my classmates either played their instruments or had an opportunity to demonstrate their theatrical skills. Although my performance in front of my parents was, to say the least, unimpressive, I received my diploma (still hanging on my wall) and would soon move on to Tuley High School.
What else did I do my first thirteen years?
There was a large park across the street from where I lived, and across that park was a large playground and swimming pool. We would spend almost every day in summer swimming in that pool. You would wait on a long group of benches to get your turn for a one-hour swim. It was great exercise and I became a credible swimmer. I actually saved one drowning boy’s life as he sunk and could not ascend. I had completely forgotten this episode, only to be reminded of it at a fifty-year high school reunion when the boy I saved reminded the class of what I had done when he thanked me for “still being here due to Sheldon.”
Also, about a mile from my home on Division Street there was the Deborah Boy’s Club where club members held meetings, played ping pong and basketball. The basketball court was on the second floor and it had a low ceiling necessitating learning how to shoot the basketball in a straight trajectory—no arch. A no arch shot labeled one as a player who learned his craft at Deborah Boy’s Club.
About a mile from the house, in Humboldt Park, there were multiple tennis courts. With a three-dollar tennis racquet, purchased from Walgreen’s by my mother, I learned how to play with fellow friends all learning together from scratch with no instruction except from the older players.
Speaking of Walgreen’s, this reminds me of what could have been the start of a criminal career. At aged thirteen, I started taking trumpet lessons. I would take the streetcar to downtown Chicago’s Wabash Street, take my lesson, go downstairs to the corner Walgreen’s and buy a malted milk. Then I would take a five-cent streetcar ride back home. On one occasion, I took my lesson, went to Walgreen’s, enjoyed my malted milk and reached into my pocket to retrieve money to pay the bill. Lo and behold, all I had was five cents for carfare home. What was I to do? In a panic, I strolled around the store, up and down the aisles, and then headed past the cashier for the door—and I just walked out. Now I am ashamed to say that that was so easy that I did it four more times until my conscience got the better of me. Now as I write this, I have decided to send them payment—belatedly, but better late than never. So thirty-five times five is equal to one dollar and seventy-five cents, times, figure five percent interest for about sixty-four years, equals whatever. Once I can pull out my calculator and figure it out I will send the money to Walgreen’s and finally assuage my conscience. Better late then never.
After grade school I moved on to Tuley High School, where again, my mother and aunts and uncles had preceded me. Today, the high school is a grammar school. A new high school, built at a location several blocks away and named Roberto Clemente High School, is a reflection of the neighborhood’s new ethnic heritage. The old Tuley High School became a grade school.
CHAPTER 6
HIGH SCHOOL
I remember my first day in high school. I arrived forty minutes late. My grandmother awakened me at the wrong time. I think I cried. I know I was distraught. My poor grandmother! The high school was two miles away and I had to take a streetcar ride to get there—if I didn’t walk. I arrived late and watched uncomfortably as the teacher stared me into my seat. Freshman students of Tuley high school attended a separate school called Sabin. The last three years we transferred to Tuley, the school where my mother and all my aunts and uncles attended.
PAUSE
At this point in the book, please be advised that the pause (above) represents five years. Yes, it is five years later and I have not written a word for five years. I’ve been involved with other books, but neglected this one and almost forgot about it. But now that I have no other books in mind, and since I’ve reached the age of eighty-two, I thought I would make an effort to make a change or two and complete this book before I reach the age of eighty-five (if I do) where statistics tell me that I have a fifty-fifty chance of evolving into Alzheimer’s disease. So here I go…before it’s too late…
To reiterate (I mentioned this before), I started high school in 1943 while World War II was raging on. On Pearl Harbor day, Sunday, December 7, 1941, as a twelve-year-old in grade school, I attended a Chicago Bear’s football game at Wrigley Field. When I arrived home, I found my grandmother crying. She told me that we were at war. Her tears were justified; her son, my uncle, Sidney, was already in the United States Army medical Corps. There was a doctor draft at the time, something I would learn about very directly years later. My uncle served a total of six years during which he spent time in the Pacific theater (Aleutian Islands) and