Cloakie

I am not dissatisfied with my profession as a psychologist. I believe I have helped people with emotional problems and I continue to do so now. Yet I often wonder about the road not taken.My father, Sam, manufactured women's coats and suits in the grament district of New York City. They were called "cloakies." His business was housed in a ninth floor loft on West 38th Street.Sam made a high priced garment and sold to the better department stores in the city. Summers I helped out, assisting the packing and delivery man. I pushed the carts loaded with fur trimmed broadclothes to middle men or stores within walking distance, took packages to the post office, swept up around the operators and Louie the pressor.Sam made a good living, especially during the war years, but he never wanted me to take over his business. My parents' plans for me were to become a doctor--an aspiration which represented high status and was worry free in their eyes and which I never completely fulfilled. Yet it might have worked out differently.Our neighborhood in the West Bronx was one of the nicer sections of the city. We overlooked the public school and were within walking distance of parks, shopping areas, playgrounds and public transportation. Most of us were second or third generation children of immigrants who had succeeeded economically. My father was unemployed during the Great Depresion but bounced back and was able to start his own business. The children of our neigborhood became physicians, dentists, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and successful businessmen. A block from our apartment house teens gathered alomng Mosholu Parkway and socialized on warm summer evenings. Among the group were two boys who later made it big. Calvin Klein and Ralph Lipshitz, now known as Ralph Lauren. I didn't know either of them but would have recognized them at thew time along the park fence. I've read that Lipschitz returns to the neighborwood frequently to visit his old apartment.When I need to get a rise out of friends who know me well I point out that I, too, might have gone into the garment business and become a "cloakie." I, too, might have become a Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren. "You can't properly match a shirt and a tie," I am reminded "and if you dress well today it's because your wife picks out your clothes."My mother, let her rest in peace, would say, "It was nicht bershert." It was not destined. So be it.
Posted by Psychwrite at 5:25 AM 0 comments

One tooth less

I take good care of my teeth. I brush after meals. I floss. I visit my dentist twice a year. He's a nice guy. I don't have insurance anymore so he charges me reasonably. He has only one fault. He's a sadist. He works on me two hours at a time. He has large hands. I call him Dr. Relentless. He doesn't understand why I complain. I don't know why I keep going to him except that he's been my dentist for twenty years and keeps my teeth in good shape. I wouldn't want him to read this but I know I'm safe. Although he owns a computer, he's never learned to use it.Last week I suffered through an hour and a half scaling and x-rays. Everything looked fine and I thought I was home free until he picked up the pictures of my lower left quadrant. He always says what he thinks:"Oh my God! This is terrible. You've got a bad cavity on the root of your last molar. I can't even get to it. I don't know if I can do this.""You're not inspiring confidence in me. I guess I'll have to get it pulled."No, no. We'll try. It's always good to try.""But it sounds impossible.""Maybe I can save it."He shoved the x-ray in my face. I didn't really need to see it. It was in a food pocket that I can't brush or floss. He jammed a probe into it he area and I elevated."Why did you do that?""I wanted you to see it was really there.""I believed you." Today I went back for what I knew would be an ordeal.His first words after taking a second x-ray to search for an abscessor nerve involvement:"If I can save this it will be a miracle."An hour and a half of drilling without let up.His nurse, Susan, who always arrives late, asked what he was doing to me."Damned if I know," he answered. I can't see in there.Ten minutes later, despite the anesthetic, I became intimately acquainted with my neurons--cell body, axon and dendrites."OK, I've exposed it. It's got to come out. You don't really need that tooth."He walked me over to the next door office of the oral surgeon, who could see me in forty minutes.The surgeon was a kind, gentle man who tried to prepare me for everything he did. I requested a local anesthetic because I don't like being put asleep if there is any other way. (I'm a control freak.) He looked surprised but said he would do whatever I wanted."It's a very difficult extraction. It's right up against another filling in the next tooth. And it's hollow from all the drilling you just had. It's probably going to crack. I've got to drill some more and also cut your gums. You'll need stitches.""I've just heard an hour and a half of difficult. Don't tell me difficult any more. Besides, I'm Dr. G's patient. I'm used to being tortured."The nurse, who knew my dentist, laughed. The surgeon didn't see the humor. It took an hour and a half when finally the last root was removed.He asked me how I was doing so often I finally told him to just do his job and I'll take care of me.As I left the office Dr. G's nurse stopped me. "Do you want to schedule your cleaning?""Susan, leave me alone!"

Bird Altar

Bird altar

I’m not much of a carpenter but I’m a wannabe. I especially like to use old fashioned hand tools. So when we moved to our new home in the country and I I found some old lumber in the garage, left by the previous owner, I was itching to build something. My wife, away on a business trip, had been feeding birds in our old house. On arriving here I had erected her feeders on a hill, adjacent to a wooded area and thick thicket of berry bushes. She was attracting scores of finches, cardinals, bluebirds, jays, grackles, and chickadees. I thought I would surprise her with a bird feeder, similar to one I had seen in a book. In an hour I had completed my project. I nailed it to a wooden stake left on the property line by the builders and erected it on the hill. I could watch it from my porch with a pair of binocular. When I sat down that evening to observe the feeding frenzy I thought would ensue, I gasped at the view. I didn’t need magnification to see that I
had manufactured, not a feeder, but a crucifix. The much too narrow feed-tray made a perfect cross with the upright. It resembled a gravesite. I had killed my spouse and planted her on the hill.

I am Jewish. I have nothing against religious symbols but this made me somewhat uneasy. Furthermore, the birds wouldn’t go near it. I pulled down my creation and redesigned, widening the feed tray. I re-erected it and
added dead braches and brush to disguise the base.

My wife returned the next day and questioned why I had built an altar on the property.
My son thought it looked like the preparation for a Klan meeting. The birds still avoided my offering.
That night, under cover of darkness I removed my masterpiece and relegated to the scrap heap. “Must be Jewish birds” I muttered to no one in particular

Neighborhood

Neighborhood
At a recent dinner party, with couples aged sixty-five, and older someone asked the question as to whether things were better when we were growing up than they are for children today. Most of us agreed that was, indeed, the case. This from people who had been witness to the aftermath of The Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. A recent article in Time Magazine indicated that life expectancy in 1900was about 47 years and is now 78 years. It is projected that children born today have a fifty percent chance of living to 100. Nevertheless the "good old days" aeem to us seniors to be just that.I believe my growing up years were better than those of my children, who were born in the sixties, largely because of location--a residential area of West Bronx v. the suburbs of Philadelphia. 3280 was, and still is, a six story apartment house for perhaps forty families. There was a fenced-in roof "garden" for residents to sit and take the sun. In those days 3280 was predomimnantly Jewish. It sat behind what was then an elementary school and was a block from a large park commnecting two larger parks. Bronx Park housed a Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo. Van Cortland Park had a large lake for skating in the winter. Two major shopping areas, two movie theatres, an Indepndent Subway System station and bus lines were with walking distance. The schoolyard provided recreational activities for thousands of children. Motherts congregated on summer afternoons, sitting on camp chairs and rocking baby carriages. Husbands had their oiwn area where they chatted about businbess and smiked their pipes and cigars. A large playground area surrounded the public reservoir and had football fields, playground eqipment, a wading pool, a running track and bicycle path. Public benches aorund the "Oval" provided respite for people on hot summer evenings. 3280 housed at least half a dozen families with children my age. We would wander from one apartment to the next, moving only when the parents became intolerant of the noise or horseplay and commanded, "Go play sopmewhere else." In the days before television we never lacked for friends or activities to occupy us. A Superintendent,the Super" was there to service the heating system, shovel snow, cut the hedges, and make minor repairs. Schools were free of drugs, teachers commanded respect, and the education provided was good. All of my friends went to college. Subways were safe so that, as adolescents, we were free to travel to other aras of the Broinx, to Manhattan, and, later, even Coney Island by subway. What I am describing here would be called today a "community." We called it our "neighborhood." Aftert VJ Day post-war America entered a peiod of relative prosperty, at least for the middle class. The next step upward from The Bronx was a move to the suburbs where houses had lawns and the area was less crowded. My parents moved to Yonkers. We became lawn mowers and gardeners. No longer convenient to public transportation, my father had to drive to work in Manhattan and pay for parking. When I married we started out in a garden-type apartment in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. The tenants were young families, like ours, with babies and toddlers. As soon as I was able to afford the downpayment we, too, moved to the suburbs. My children had few friends on the block. Pople largely kept to themselves.Shortly before my mother died, my sister and I took her to visit the old neighborhood in the Bronx. 3280 was now occupied by Hispanic people. The old school yard was a parking lot for teachers or others. The area may still be a neighborhood but no longer middle class. We rode the old elevator to the fifth floor but I was reluctant to ring the bell of our old apartment. Thomas Wolf was right. "You can't go home again."
Posted by Psychwrite at 5:31 AM 0 comments
Labels: Community, extended family, neighborhood, suburbs
Saturday, February 20, 2010

Euonomous

Euonimous



One day when riding on a bus
I thought I’d plant euonimous
And so next day without a fuss
I bedded my euonimous.
I named it Marvinonimous
And thus
It also was eponymous.
A neighbor cat strolled by uponomous Devoured my green and white euonimous
Then died of variegated gastro-enteronomous
Ad so this poem is signed ...

Anonymous

My friend Burton

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1930s and '40s was a mostly happy and secure experience. We survived the Great Depresion and World War II, unscathed. High school was a challnge. My friends were bright and most applied to and were accepted by The Bronx High School of Science. I did also by default. Started around 1947 it was an experimental school that prepared kids for scientific and medical careers. Almost everyone went to college and most were succesful in their careers. I lived in a six story appartment building in West Bronx and my best friend, Burton, was one story up. He too went to Bronx Science. Burt was a loyal friend and a very funny guy. His sense of humor, often, self-deprecating, kept me laughing all through hich school. After graduation I went out of town to Cornell and he attended the City College of New York. He worked as a teacher for a while and also a writer for TV comediens. Neither occupation suited him and eventually he pursued a successful real estate career with his brother. Always introspective, he became in later years, a poet and has published three volumes of verse. The last was nominated for a national award. Last month, after receiving an e-mail announcing the 60th reunion of my high school graduating class, I contacted Burt and we both decided to attend. It was a nice affair, only the fouth reunion our class ever held, and my first. Although I enjoyed the event, held a an upscale catering hall in Battery Park, I found most of the attendees more motivated to boast about their own success than to learn of what anyone else had accomplished. All but Burt. He was the same jovial, caring friend I remembered. We got together the day before for lunch with my wife, and renewed our friendship,laughing, reminiscing, and vowing to see each other more often in the future. The master of ceremonies for the event provided a short talk, providing statistics on the large proportion of the class who had become scientists, physicians, lawyers, and other pretigious professonals. Our most illustrious class member won the Nobel prize in physics. Another old friend, Rick, a retired brain surgeon, was quick to point out, "Yes, but I beat him out for the physics award." (I assured him that his prize was by far the more impressive.) Midway through the list of successful attainments Burt leaned over to me, whispering, "He hasn't gotten to my category yet...beggar." I still laugh when relating this remark. Later, as we looked over the group of infirmed septagenerians we had become, he remarked, "The next reunion will have to be a seance."

Back again

Those two of you who followed my blog, www.psychwriter-psychwrite.blogspot.com may wish to continue with me. My Google e-mial was compromised. I can no longer access it. Since my blog is attached to Google I can no longer post blogs. I will continue writing periuodically on this current blog site and will try to transfer the best of my old blogs.
Marvin