"...and I'm so glad I'm on his side, that boy in front of me." (Anonymous)

.....This morning I met a former student and athlete of mine at a local bagel place for breakfast. It was 11am; I guess it was his lunch and my breakfast, because I rise late and just cannot eat anything right away. In fact, I'm usually still asleep at 11am. Bob Fox graduated from North Shore H.S. in 1960; so that puts him in his middle 60s or there about. He looks great, and I am flattered that Bob calls me every time he comes to Florida. He does look great, OK, but much larger than he was in high school. Bob has a home in Vermont, a verdant state, but too cold in the winter. While we were finishing our coffee, he said that he and his wife will be retiring next year, and will likely move down to Florida. We discussed other students and teachers we had known--and perhaps still know. Of course, Phil Bergovoy (my soul mate and "brother") was one of these people. Bob said that Phil and I were at opposite poles--I guess he meant politically, but I said Phil has a constitutional right to be wrong, and that our disagreements do not matter to me, and certainly not to him. He's much wiser than I am. He graduated from Columbia College, and I only graduated from Columbia School of General Studies.

.....I suppose I was too old for the college, having just returned from WWII. Either that, or my high school grades were too lousy and I did not have the required college preparatory classes. I took typing and stenography so I could be in a class with 30 girls. I know my way around. Well, Bob and I gabbed for two hours and even left on good terms. I couldn't tell him much about me that he didn't already know, because he does read this blog.

.....The other day I received an e-mail from Cousin Ruth Grimsley in England wanting to know what "stickball" was. I wrote her that it was--and still is--a slum-like version of baseball played in the streets, usually between two tall buildings on either side of the cars parked there. Kids steal a broom somewhere, remove the brush, and what remains, of course, is the "stick". Then with a very sprightly rubber ball, called a "spaldeen" (a corruption of Spalding) they bounce it a few times in front of them, and then attempt to hit it with the stick. It it's hit, it might strike apartment buildings on the left or right of the street, but if it's caught bouncing off the building the batter is "out"; if not caught, the batter runs bases laid out on the street in chalk as in baseball, etc. A few windows may be broken in "stickball", and if a police car is spotted, you yell "Police!" and then you disappear--hopefully with the stick and ball. But it's a very interesting game for kids to play for it takes very little equipment in the "concrete Jungle. Because I got fairly good grades in high school, I wasn't the most popular kid on the block, so in order to gain some measure of respect I became a star stickball player. I used to hit the ball "three sewers" and consequently, I was the Babe Ruth of the block, but also the poorly regarded Einstein. Now, three sewers was a prodigious distance--measured by the distance between the sewer covers in the middle of the street. And I never took steroids.