I once thought that the World was made up of Italians & Jews. Of course, I knew better, but my second childhood neighborhood was Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. And in the 1950’s, it was. The Italians owned the small private homes. The Jews peopled the apartment buildings. I came to conclude, as I learned about Jewish history, that we had positioned ourselves to make a quick emergency getaway. Apartments could be quickly abandoned, homes were harder to leave, required more time. So I grew up in an essentially safe, architecturally drab/boring community. There was some contact between the two dominant groups, some close friendships, but essentially a functional co-existence. I did hear that there were Italian-Jewish riots at Lafayette High School in the late 40’s, but I personally never witnessed any serious problems. (I did have a Summer Friend - Michael Orlando - from across the street.) He went to St Athanasius, a parochial school, I to a public school, P.S. 177. Many kids would be gone for the Summer. We’d meet at the beginning of July and pal around until about Labor Day. Our annual coming together and separating was understood, it was a “given.” It is one of my life’s regrets. I miss my summer-friend. Oy. 

​

     So I got older. I went to elementary, junior high and high school. By my senior year, I believe I was seriously clinically depressed. More than 60 years later, I am happy & proud to write that I did-something-about-it! I got a job. It wasn’t my first job. It was my second. (My first was a “soda-jerk.” That’s a Story unto itself.) I applied for and got a job as a page at the great 42nd Street Library, the one guarded by stone lions. Why? Because someone I knew was doing it. [One of the things that saved me when I was young, was my mazel at being in classes with intelligent/resourceful people. On my own, I didn’t have a clue. It was why I applied to Brooklyn College. Why I joined a House Plan (a kind of fraternity). Why a lotta things. Even why I got married. And why I became a page at the 42nd Street Library (that before 1911 had been the site of a reservoir). 

It changed my Life. It changed my Life. There were many Italians and Jews. But many Blacks - foreign & domestic, Ukrainians, Irish, Hungarians, Puerto Ricans, etc., etc. (Even a native American and a very wealthy Wasp Episcoplian -) It was New Yoik. 

 

     So I’m taking a break with some of my fellow pages. We have about 15 minutes to snack and talk in the cafeteria. I’m laughing, actively involved in the all-male conversation, feeling good about being one-of-the-guys, feeling good about being alive! Suddenly, I feel some thought, some realization trying to come to the Surface. Then it does!! Not one of the great guys seated around the table is, aside from me, a Jew or an Italian. Most are Black. And the World opens up. I’m not in Bensonhurst anymore. Yay!!!