http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E2wBksA7l4   This was our favorite song back then.

While I was stationed in France the Russians began to test our resolve. They blockaded the rail and motor access to Berlin and we countered with a massive airlift to keep that city free from their domination. Then they built the wall. I am sure that our troops in Germany were more apprehensive than us guys in France but we had no less fervor to teach those bastards a lesson if they would be so stupid as to force a confrontation with the USA. They backed off but a side effect was that during this buildup President Eisenhower forbade any increase in the number of American dependents in Europe. Nancy could not join me in France. My tour of duty was extended for four months. When I was finally allowed to return to the States I had to go to Bremerhaven, Germany to board a troopship; it was February and the wind chill was -30°. The first day at sea we passed thru the English Channel (that was okay) but when we turned west into the Atlantic I got seasick, really bad. It lasted only a day and for the next 7 days I played Pinochle and won a bunch of dough. After deboarding at the Brooklyn Navy Yard I had just two days before I had to report to my new duty station in Connecticut. That was good duty as I could get home to the Bronx every weekend. Nancy and I got our first apartment on Spofford Avenue for $53 a month, including a new fridge. My Uncle Steve who lived in Bridgeport gave me a car, a 1950 Dodge and also the means to travel back and forth. These days passed quickly and then I was out of the Service. Now I had to find a job and prepare to start a family. This was the time that I had to grow up, and in a hurry. Within a year Nancy was pregnant and I became a totally new person.

The fall of '56 I began my studies at CCNY (College of the City of New York). I felt so grown up; I bought a jacket with leather patches on the elbows and we were allowed to smoke in class. My original goal was to get a BS in chemistry but my sister's boyfriend who was a senior at that time convinced me to go for a BChE because, he said, the money was in engineering. He got his bachelors in civil engineering and a few years later he became a pastor. Engineering requires more math and I was not up to it. After 3 semesters my guidance counselor advised me to switch to night school or change my degree objective. I was tired of being unable to afford taking my girlfriend out and I quit and got a job. I was hired by the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Bananas) as a lab technician. They advised me to go back to school and get my degree so that I could advance in their organization. I didn't want to go back to school; it felt good having money in my pocket. I bought my first car in 1957; a 1953 Pontiac convertible. My girlfriend at that time was Agnes Speed but everyone called her Nancy. I was shocked to learn that her brother James was dating my ex-girlfriend Kathy and none of us had any prior knowledge of each other. While working at UFC I learned how to make nitroglycerine and made a device which I threw into the Hudson River (UFC's lab was on Pier 7 on the Hudson.) It went off like a depth charge and the Coast Guard came to investigate but it never came back to me. Late summer of 1958 Nancy and I got engaged and that fall James and I enlisted in the Army. Back then they used a 'service' number instead of the present practice of using your social security number. James was ahead of me in line when the numbers were issued and his was 12571255. I immediately grabbed the guy behind me put him in front of me and he was issued 12571256; I got 12571257. His name was Genaro Sirico, sometimes call 'Junior' when he was a bodyguard for Alice Cooper but later became Tony when he played Uncle Paulie on "The Sopranos". After basic training and advanced training I was a qualified auto mechanic and was sent to France. James went to Fort Collins, Colorado. While in France Nancy wrote that she would occasionally allow some guy to take her to a movie or whatever, so I started taking a young French lady who worked in my office, out for the evening for a drink or two. Her name was Lillian Henry; we were friends but never lovers. In August of '59 I came home on leave and after altering my birth date on my drivers license (changing 1939 to 1938; a male needed to be 21 to marry without parental consent) we got married. On my return to France, after announcing my new marital status, Lillian refused to go out with me any more. Good for her - she had scruples.

In 1955 I started my senior year in Stuyvesant High School. I met a girl through our multi-church group named Ellen Harvey. We were very interested in each other but my mother thought that I was too young to be involved in this sort of thing and effectively put an end to it. My mother wanted to visit her family in Germany before her mother died also (her father died in 1953) seeing that she had not been back home since 1933. My parents could not afford the fare for my sister and me to accompany her but allowed us to go if we could come up with the money. I could, from the salary that I had saved from my after school job. To take advantage of the lowest fares, we left a week before my graduation from high school. This was my first time flying; we took a four engine (prop) Lufthansa flight from NYC to Gander, Newfoundland, to Prestwick in Scotland, to Frankfurt, Germany. A smaller plane brought us to Nürnberg and two buses and a street car got us to Eibach, my grand parents home. A short walk from the bus stop brought us to my Aunt Mathilda's house and her daughter Gerti drove us to my Aunt Frieda's house where my Grandmother lived. She was the only one of my grandparents that I ever met. It was hard to get close to this 85 year old lady with whom I could not communicate directly because of the language barrier. After a long hug and much animated speaking, she brought out a bottle of gin and we all had a shot or two. After a long visit Gerti drove us to my grandfather's now vacant grocery store and we moved into the apartment behind it. In the next few days we spent a lot of time with my Aunt Matilda and her husband Georg and their daughter Gerti and her husband Gerd who all lived at the same address and we met my Aunt Helena and Uncle Ludwig and their family, my Uncle Martin and Aunt Margarete, my Aunt Rosa and her son Werner. A few days later we all attended Werner's wedding to Eva. Some 25 years later my daughter Debi met their daughter Doris. Just about that time the whole family gathered to celebrate my 17th birthday. We all had a good time; I think the plan was to get me drunk - it worked.

Fall of '54 I was a junior beginning classes at 8am. I was excited because I could take some college level chemistry courses; the first being Qualitative Analysis. My hobby at the time was pyrotechnics, making rockets, flares and some minor explosives. It was later in this year that I set my lab in the basement on fire and my father threw everything in the trash can. One year earlier I accidently blew up a test tube and got a shard of glass in my eye. I lied about the cause and after it was extracted had to wear a black patch for a month. My lab was spared that time.
I got a job after school (12:30), ate my lunch on the subway heading to mid-town Manhattan. I worked for a music service which had a small retail outlet but a large mail order business. We shared office space with an arranger who had some well known clients, including Marilyn Monroe, whom I met twice. I worked four hours a day five days a week for $1 an hour and saved every penny of it. I still worked for my father on Saturdays for $10. Riding home at the same time every day on the subway after work I met two Hispanic girls. We smiled at each other for a few days until I introduced myself. I assumed that they were Puerto Ricans; the one that I was interested in was named Mercede, which she pronounced Mer' the de, which years later I was told that this was a Castillian dialect that no Puerto Rican had. When I asked her for a date she said that I would have to meet her parents first; no problem. The next day she said that her parents absolutely forbade her to date a non-Hispanic. We still saw each other most days, kissed a few times but that was all. The next school year she was gone.
After supper I did homework; three hours every night, even on Fridays. The school assumed that we could handle this and so made us prove it. When I graduated I had an 87% average; they didn't use GPA way back then. I wanted to succeed and my parents wanted it more. I didn't date much that year but still managed to acquire a girl friend; she was after me. Her name was Kathy Clinch and she attended my church. She was 13 when I was 16, but she was tall. The age difference put me off a bit but a year later when I was 17 and she was 14 it didn't seem to matter as much; maybe because then she had breasts and sadly, bad acne. We were friends, not lovers, and we plodded along for another year. She had an older brother who was the same age as my older sister and so her parents were rather cordial; we all went to the same church. I was just waiting to grow up and Kathy was part of that. My favorite song that year was a very slow one compared to the new rockers like Bill Haley.

Fall of '53 I entered high school as a sophomore. Because Stuyvesant High School was an old school in downtown Manhattan and had twice the number of students that it could handle, they had freshmen and sophomores start at 12:30 pm and go to classes until 5:00 pm (six classes @ 45 minutes each), no lunch period; you ate before you came or after you left. This was the only year that I did my homework in the morning. I was overwhelmed by school that year. My favorite class was chem lab; also took electric wiring, mechanical drawing and my third year of French.
The afternoon schedule sucked though. When I got home every day about 6:00 pm it was time to eat. I didn't get much time to hang out. There was a dance almost every other week at the 'Y', that was the YMHA, and boys and girls danced together but never committed to anything. I envied the guys that would just go up to a girl and ask them to dance. I found a little courage now and then. After my first year in an all boys school I went on staff at the Boy Scout Camp Ranaqua for the whole summer. I don't think that there was even one female in the camp. I looked forward to the coming year; things couldn't get worse so they had to get better. Cigarette pack size transistor radios were the rage; everybody had one. That summer it was:

Fall 0f '52 I entered my senior year in Jr High. This was the year that I learned why I was so unsuccessful in gaining the attention of girls that I liked. They all liked guys that were older than them. Okay, change of tactics; where to look? I was a member of my church's youth group, something our new pastor initiated. We were all 10-14 years old; I was second oldest. There was this girl, Helen Bresnahan, who was really cute. I tried to arrange a date but she kept putting it off. I found out later that it was her brother Jimmy that sort of threatened her if she dated me. Jimmy and I were never friends. Oh well, there were plenty of Jewish girls in my school who did not know or did not care if/that I was a goy.
Jessica Paloma was one of them; she was years ahead in development over her classmates. I actually got to touch them once. We remained friends for years. Then there was Barbara, Brenda, Eleanor, Sheila and Toby. We just sorta hung together at dances but without commitment. I really liked Toby (Klein) and followed her home from school one day only to see where she lived (1600 University Ave). I sent her a 'secret Valentine' It went nowhere.
Spring of '53 we took entrance exams to go to the many special schools that NYC had established. These were based on merit, not on geography. My score was 87% when the cutoff was 83%; I had decided to go to Stuyvesant High School, an all boys school, because of its reputation for graduating top notch college material. I never thought that I had put myself into an even more hopeless situation datewise by going to this school; it was 10 miles from where I lived. I still met new girls at the skating rink near Fordham Road which we went to about twice a month. One girl (Eileen Iskowitz) which both me and my friend Bobby Weiss were interested in asked her out on a date. She accepted both offers but after our second date she asked me if I was Jewish. I think Bobby threw me under the bus. Dating then was just a means of telling your buddies that you would not always choose their company above all else; you were saying that you were growing up. Girls enjoyed receiving compliments; they would even blush occasionally. When I received one I was totally unglued. I thought I was in love every other week.
June of '53 I turned 14 and was eligible to work on staff at our church's camp. I worked there for six weeks for $4 a week digging out a tennis court, then I went to Boy Scout camp for two weeks to unwind. It was a very good year.