Chanting and Ranting 

I don’t recall my classmates’ names at this point so, if any of them were added to the list above, I wouldn’t know. But I can describe a few and attribute bits of info about them. I recall there were three Jewish boys in my class, each very interesting. Two of them were preparing for their Bar Mitzvahs for when they turned 13. They occasionally practiced together, reciting their chosen passages from the Torah. I was informed that Jesus studied and read from the Torah as a boy too. The Torah refers to the first five books of the Bible that we know as the Old Testament.

We had a lot in common regarding our commitments to our faiths. I was in training to become an altar boy and had to memorize and recite a few lines of Latin during mass. My confirmation was coming up in the spring and I would be 13 too. It was a time of passage. If I came upon them in the hallway or out in the schoolyard and heard them chanting, I would listen. They would turn, give me a look and say something in Hebrew and we’d have a laugh. They could have said: “Lech lehizdayen,” and I’d have no clue. I probably still would have laughed. One of the boys talked enthusiastically about the Six-Day War that occurred back in June. Egypt, Jordan and Syria got their collective butts kicked by the Israelis. In the process Israel tripled its size after capturing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The boy said Israel was his country too and hoped to pray at the Wall at the Temple Mount. He might even move there someday. Jerusalem was special to me also. Jesus had his last supper there and the Via Dolorosa “The Way of Sorrows” was depicted in the fourteen Stages of the Cross sculpted in their tortuous glory in bas-reliefs lining the walls of our church. 

The third boy was a peculiar sort. He was pale, pudgy, freckled, and wore black horn rimmed glasses. Everyday he sported the same black tie-shoes that he also wore in gym class. He possibly had cooties because girls kept their distance from him. He wasn’t too friendly and occasionally would get irritated and start cursing people. Not foul-mouthed cursing but the hexing, jinxing type. He claimed to be a warlock.

I drew a picture of him in class and gave it to him. Okay, I exaggerated his hair height some and added bolts to his neck. All in good fun mind you.  But he had no sense of humor and promptly crumpled it up, putting it in his pocket. He pointed at me and cursed me quite specifically: “YOU will die in 1976, when the Liberty bell will fall on your stupid-ass head and you’ll be crushed.” 

I actually lived in Philly in 1976 and cognizant of the curse, stayed clear of the Liberty Bell that year.

Samuel S. Fleischer and Gene London

Unlike my warlock classmate, my art teacher liked my drawings and characterizations.  She told me about a Saturday drawing class, also in South Philly, that I had to attend! She had friends there and helped me get registered at Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial on Catherine Street. This historic little art school that has been there since 1906. Fleisher was tuition free and managed by the Philadelphia Art Museum.  It also featured a private art collection of paintings and sculptures next door in a spectacular Romanesque church. It was truly inspirational. It was a privilege to be a student there and I felt at home in this artist community. The encouragement and acknowledgement I received there bolstered my confidence that I would be an artist. The instructor talked about drawing what we see and how we interpret it. As observers, we needed to look at basic shapes, relationships, composition, shadow and form. It was a vocabulary I didn’t speak but totally understood. 

The first drawing I did was of a fellow student, a lovely dark-haired girl who was a little older than me. It was a side view portrait pencil drawing on cream-colored paper. She liked it right off, and asked if she could have it to give her mom. I agreed and got a soft hug out of it, very aware of the oranges in the baskets. And you know I’m not talking about a still life set up in the room.

There was a overkill of children’s shows crammed into the morning hours of TV on the three channels available in Philadelphia throughout the 60’s. Captain Noah, Chief Halftown, Pixanne and Sally Star each featured a pretend character in a colorful costume. The Gene London Show on the other hand was the real thing. Gene (Eugene Yulish) was a wonderful storyteller and talented artist. He was quite colorful in his own right. He’d sing and cry when he told his stories and drew cartoonish characters, many from Disney stories. He had a ”Magic Window” segment where a succession of his drawings would illustrate a story with delightful musical accompaniment.  I didn’t enjoy the kiddie show aspect of his show but was impressed with his drawing ability. He would crank out an elaborate drawing on a large sketchpad and color it in a few minutes. I found out later he drew everything out so lightly ahead of time that the TV camera couldn’t pick it up. Ah HA! That’s why he was so fast. The last four lines of a song he sang went like this: 

And when the story's over

And when we reach the end.

We'll live happily ever after, Where?

In the land of Let's Pretend.

In the 70’s his show disintegrated into a bizarre format featuring an old mansion, ghosts, secret tunnels and UFO’s. After he retired from TV in 1977 he worked as a dress designer in the Fashion Industry in NY. He was renowned for his private collection of 6.000 Hollywood gowns and fashion accessories worn by movie celebrities. He had an obsession for Hollywood starlets and their clothing. Joan Crawford sent him a love letter of sorts then later a two-piece silk jumpsuit with a chiffon cape for his collection. He promptly tried it on but the fit was incompatible, unfortunately. He requested and received her underwear and bra so he’d have a full ensemble.

Burn, baby! Burn!

1967 was also the Summer of Hate. America’s presence in the Vietnam grew to a staggering 475,000 troops and in the states, peace rallies and political protests increased exponentially. There was a spreading discontent with the war in Vietnam. Another war burned angrily, literally, in the city streets across the country. Race riots, looting and urban violence erupted in Boston, Cincinnati and Newark. The issues of civil rights, class conflict, police brutality and the rise of black power mixed together into a maelstrom of disorder and violence. 

In July, the worst riot occurred over five days in Detroit, Michigan. In the poorest black neighborhood of the city, white police raided an unlicensed after hours bar where a community party celebrated the safe return of two black servicemen from their tours of duty in ‘Nam. All 82 patrons were arrested. The baton-wielding cops called their male prisoners “niggers” and “boys”. The excessive police force agitated a gathering crowd.  A bottle crashed through the back window of a police car, and then bricks through storefront windows and widespread looting began.  Chaos ensued as arson-fed fires raged through 100 square blocks. The police and firemen were quickly overwhelmed. Governor Romney declared an emergency proclamation that included a curfew, and a prohibition on sales of alcohol, arms and ammunition and flammable liquids …in that order. Eight thousand National Guard were called in, followed by federal troops and armored tanks. Forty-three people were killed, over a thousand injured and seventy-two hundred arrested. Two thousand buildings were destroyed. 

I was a naïve white boy and quiet observer. I could only cringe watching the nightly news. Images of burning buildings, looting and cops brandishing shotguns flashed across the television screen. I saw it in black and white. It was all about black and white. At the time, I couldn’t grasp what was going on, but knew everyone was really angry. 

Seventh Daze

As summer waned, we braced ourselves for another awkward introduction into a new school. Unlike my brothers and sisters, I would be attending a public school. There was no room at Holy Spirit School in South Philly for another seventh grader.

Sans dark blue pants, white shirt and tie, I wore a stylish multi-colored paisley shirt, jeans and sneakers when I waked into Thomas Junior High School. (Oh, yeah, and pants too.) It was a quick five-minute bus ride from the Naval Shipyard up Broad Street, right on Oregon Avenue, then down to Ninth and Johnston Streets. Along the way I exchanged raised brows and dimpled smiles with friendly girls from the base. My new school was an imposing four-story brick building. The back half was an elementary school that shared an asphalt-covered schoolyard surrounded by a black wrought iron fence.

There were a number of celebrities of note among the distinguished alumni of Thomas Jr. High. They included Bobby Darin, Fabian, Eddie Fischer and John J. Liney Jr., comic strip cartoonist. Joe Niagara, another graduate was a disc jokey who I listened to on WIBG AM radio when I was there in ‘67. 

It was an easier transition going into seventh grade because it was a hodgepodge of pubescent elementary school graduates. Everyone was new, in his or her own way. There were scattered allegiances representing the various schools, various religions and ethnic groups. Packs of menacing cocky boys leered at flush-faced giggling girls as the passed by, clinging protectively to each other, arm in arm. 

Of great interest, discussion and appreciation among the boys was the obvious mammary bloomage going on. These seventh grade South Philly girls displayed an impressive cornucopia of strawberries, lemons, oranges and swollen cantaloupe. 

I was a late bloomer, so it was an awkward time for me. I languished in a physical purgatory as the expectant onslaught of hormones passed me by that year. A lot of the boys were mutating into large, grunting, hairy Neanderthals. In gym class, playing basketball, which I hated, I really felt like a runt. Some of the boys’ legs were super hairy, I thought they were wearing wooly chaps. 

I was so skinny my gym teacher thought I had an eating disorder or a condition of some sort. The school nutritionist interrogated me about my health and diet habits. I was measured, weighed and inspected. My mom filled out a medical history form and wrote a note stating that I ate like a horse and was normal as far as she was concerned. Although the later was debatable, I did eat like a horse. Unless there were onions or celery in it, I would eat anything. Notably, I could plow through a row of Oreo’s and finish-off a large glass of milk in astonishing time. I was also tested by a physical therapist. After doing 15 pull-ups, 25 push-ups and 50 sit-ups without breaking a sweat, I was declared fit. I was just a short, hairless, scrawny catholic kid fascinated by fruit and had a fast metabolism or a voracious tapeworm.

Odd Jobs and The History of Bowling.

I needed money for albums and art supplies and I needed a job. We hadn’t been at the base for too long before I was looking for work. Although there weren’t many opportunities available for a twelve year old, I managed to find work during our stay at the Naval Shipyard.  My brother Joe and I worked in the mornings selling 10-cent newspapers to grizzled ship workers shuffling in to work. We were stationed at the corner of Langley and Broad Streets in the shadow and smells of a large ship. We stacked our piles of Inquirers and Daily News under the roof of a dark blue plywood hut where hot coffee, cigarettes and snacks were sold. It wasn’t much money for a couple hours of work but I was able to save enough to buy a used shoeshine kit and set up shop in the lobby of the movie theater. Officers and sailors on dates, sorting their dress Khakis, summer whites and blues needed their shoes shined.
I set up hand-painted a sign with a fancy-colored lettering: $.25 cents for a shine! My oak wood box had an angled foot rest on top where the shoe rested comfortably while being professionally polished. I had a variety of Kiwi shoe polish colors that included black, brown and neutral for white shoes. With hand daubers I scooped up small amounts of the wax polish and massaged it into the leather then rubbed briskly with wool rag buffers. The last step was finishing the shine with a soft bristled brush.  I was good at it and fast but there wasn’t a lot of time before and after movies so I rarely made more than a few bucks over a weekend. One of the perks was I was allowed to slip in and watch a current movie.
I recall seeing a couple boring long-in the-tooth John Wayne westerns, but enjoyed “To Sir with Love” with Sidney Poitier. Poitier was a cool cat. For a change, a Negro was helping poor white kids. His class was made up of a majority of surly punks and sluts and he taught them self-respect and passed on a few personal grooming tips. Lulu’s song, “To Sir with Love” was the number one song of 1967. 

My dad joined the men’s league at the base’s bowling alley and was a good bowler. He claimed to have had a 188 average, which was very respectable. I wasn’t that familiar with bowling, except for watching Fred Flinstone’s bowling prowess. His twinkle toe approach was a marvel to behold. Monkeys pulled up the remaining pins with their extended tails and re-set them for an inevitable spare. I don’t recall how I got a job there but I would have the monkey job.

The 8 bowling lanes there were old school with manual pinsetters like myself. The mechanical pinsetter was invented in 1936 by AMF, so this alley had been around for a while. We were perched on a shelf above the pin racks. After the bowling ball rolled through the pins and thudded against the pit or back wall, I jumped down into the pit, lifted the ball and rolled it back to the bowler on the return track. It was basically a steep slide that used gravity to get the ball back. After the second roll, I engaged a sweep bar that cleared the fallen pins from the pin deck. Jumping down again, I collected the pins and filled a new rack then engaged the pins for the next frame. Each game had ten frames or twenty rolls, except the tenth frame had a bonus roll or two if you had a spare or strike. The highest possible score was 300, also called a perfect game.

It was hot back there and it could be dangerous when a freak pin would ricochet out of the pit like a 3 lb, 6 oz. missile and could put a hurt on you. Then there was the drunken sailor who would try to take you out with a deadly roll when you were in the pit. So you had to be weary and quick. 

 An anthropologist unearthed primitive bowling artifacts that dated back over 5,000 years in ancient Egypt. Though some historians of the game attribute bowling to a religious rite practiced by German monks around 300 AD. In Medieval England during the 1100’s, a variety of lawn bowling games were played, including half-bowls, ninepins and skittles.
 In the 17th century, Dutch and German settlers brought the 9-pin version of the game to the Americas. It was played in NY State in an area still called “Bowling Green.” Fondly, I recall the story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving where Rip follows the sound of thunder deep in the Catskill mountains and discovers a group of small bearded men in antiquated Dutch clothing playing nine-pins. He drinks their liquor and falls into a deep sleep. So deep, he sleeps through the Revolutionary War and wakes up as an old man. As I mentioned early on, Arthur Rackham beautifully illustrated this story. Bowling was popular during colonial times and endured as an American pastime.

 The hard wood bowling ball was replaced in 1905 by the Evertrue rubber ball. In 1914 Brunswick created the rubber Mineralite ball and now balls are made or urethane plastic and weigh up to 16 lbs. There are sixty-five million bowlers in the United States.

One long weekend I made Thirty-three bucks pin setting.  I was paid with a tall stack of ones. I laid each bill side by side and covered my bed before jumping into the cash pile and literally rolling in the dough.

Plastic Fantastic

I’ll segue into a not-so wonderful experience that occurred at around the same time: 
I met a neighbor boy at a scout meeting on the base. He seemed pretty nice and asked me to come hang out at his place. I’ll call him: Seymour.  The husky kid with glasses lived in the barracks end unit above us. I was taken aback when I went to his home because it was nothing like our place by any stretch of the imagination. He was an only kid, so it was quiet there and it was incredibly spiffy spanking clean. We always lived with constant noise and plenty of clutter. So, I think, I actually gulped when I stepped foot in there. The couches were upholstered in thick clear plastic. The floor mats were also plastic and numerous, making designated walkways from room to room. He kept his head down as we walked by his mom, standing in the kitchen. She was short but her hair was quite tall. She wore an aqua colored apron and matching dishwasher-safe rubber gloves halfway up to her elbows. Maybe she was germ phobic or the family was prone to infection. From my pubescent viewpoint, she was a looker. Lifting a pencil-thin eyebrow, she nodded in response to my “hi!” Not a word.

If that wasn’t odd enough, we went into Seymour’s shipshape bedroom where he closed the door and piled pillows along the bottom. In filthy whispers he shared with me an unpleasant visual he had accidentally walked into the same night, a week previous. Getting home early from the Wednesday evening scout meeting, he found the front room dark and could hear a loud pounding noise from the back bedroom. Opening the door, he discovered his father and mother in an awkward predicament. With his khaki’s pulled down, shiny shoes still on, his father’s buttocks heaved as his mother, sporting a blonde wig, lay stiffly below pinned to the bed. I didn’t really need or want to know this, but good for them! 

Like I said, it was the summer of love. 

I didn’t hang out with Seymour after that and wondered if I needed to go to confession because I couldn’t get the aforementioned titillating romp out of my head for weeks.  Every time I saw his mom, I pictured her naked sporting the blonde wig and those rubber gloves.  Yeah, I should have gone to confession.

Light my Fire

We couldn’t get out of Williamsport fast enough, would be the best way to put it. We received word; FINALLY, that housing became available in Philly. We moved down to the Philadelphia Naval Base when my Dad was transferred there in June 1967. 

It was the summer of Love. While 100,000 hippies gathered in Haight-Ashbury and the Cultural Revolution bloomed simultaneously in the big American cities and across Europe, we reunited as a full family unit again. Our new abode was in a tidy bug and rat- free white multiple-unit barracks on, I think, Intrepid Ave. We shared the block-long building and a massive screened in porch with four other families. Our first floor home had enamel grey painted cement floors with four bedrooms, a spacious living room, a dining room, kitchen and a laundry room.

 There were a couple months to kill before school started and we knew absolutely no one. That was par for the course for us. There were other kids on the base, just a hand full. Most of them were Navy kids; a few were Marine Corps offspring. Some lived in much nicer places depending on the rank of their fathers. Thankfully, none of us had to salute or were concerned with issues of protocol. Joe and I trolled the streets under the constant surveillance of Navy Police and wary mothers. Our initial reconnaissance was on foot but I carried out some fleeting exploration on my dusted-off purple Schwinn Sting Ray steed. It had been in storage for six months and was raring to go. 

The Philadelphia Naval Base, at the time, was a functional shipyard and dry dock. It also moored a collection of decommissioned naval vessels including battleships, frigates and an occasional aircraft carrier. Located at the end of south Broad Street at the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, the segregated 1200 acres accommodated huge warehouses, office buildings, barracks and the college-like campus of the Marine Corps. Towering cranes and rows of gigantic grey ships lined the Reserve Basin docks where my dad had an office in a ship there. There was also an abandoned airfield and a baseball field on the north side. It had its own amenities like a commissary, cafeteria, theater, bowling alley and its own ferry for the Jersey workers’ commute across the Delaware. No mountains or woods there, but plenty to explore. 

Getting integrated into that community as a family was a gradual thing and helped along by our involvement in the church, scouts and school. 

One thing my sister, Karen, and I had in common was our love of music. The music at that time was great, maybe the greatest. That month the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” A critic from the London Times called it "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization." The Beatles were no longer performers; they were tired of the hysteria and touring.  They were artists now. I couldn’t afford the album right then and was content to listen to the songs on radio.  It was a trip.  But a creative one. Any drug references like LSD: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was way above my head. No official singles were released for the album although “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” were released as double-sided singles in February that year for an upcoming thematic album based on their childhoods. The Sgt. Pepper alter ego band theme took the album in another direction, but producer, George Martin, later admitted regret for not including them in the album. Those songs appeared on “Magical Mystery Tour” released six months later. 

Everything was on AM radio, which was dominated by singles, so hearing all of Sgt. Pepper all summer was an anomaly.  I had a transistor radio with a black leather case I carried around, always connected to the sound. At home we had a console stereo that played records and had a built in radio. We searched the dial looking for songs. When I went to the local cafeteria, the jukebox was always on. I recall really liking two songs I heard there for the first time: “Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock and “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” by Procol Harum.  

My sister Karen fell in love with the song, “Light my Fire” by the Doors. Coincidentally, a radio station in Philadelphia had a call in contest for free tickets to see The Doors. My sister’s call got through and she answered a lame brain question and won tickets to the concert.

I spoke to Karen about this experience this past year and she described to a T what Morrison wore that night and recalled the Nazz as the opening act. I recently sent her Googled photos I found of that concert after carefully searching the audience for her face. She was somewhere in the throng and had a good view of the leather-clad poet. I found out this was a rebound concert for Morrison. Two nights before, Jim was disgruntled after the Doors were apparently snubbed for the Monterey Pop Festival that weekend.  Actually the promoters forgot to invite them."

 Before a performance at The Action House in Long Beach, New York, Morrison has the bartender there line up 15 shots of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey and downs them one by one. As the show continued, so did the drinking. After reportedly finishing off 15 more shots he was so drunk he passed out then began to disrobe. The next night, same stage, he was still hung over. Morrison belligerently makes horrible sustained groaning sounds into his microphone until his band mates drag him off. It was their shortest appearance ever.

Their concert in Philly was the next day, Sunday June 18, at 7:30 at The Town Hall. Karen convinced Dad that she was meeting friends there and would be getting a ride home with them afterwards. While she waited for the lights to go on she couldn’t help but stare at a boy in the bleachers with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. He was with a colorfully clad older woman, old enough to be his mother. Which was a fact. Karen met the boy a year later in New Jersey when she saw him performing at a local concert there.

The Nazz, with Todd Rudgren, was the opening act. It was their first public appearance, although they didn’t get credit on the poster for the concert.  Karen had never been to a rock concert and described it like this: “When the Doors came on stage the crowd got very excited. Jim Morrison was wearing tight leather pants and of course, was very handsome. He had this sexual magnetism about him. He took off his shirt and women were throwing flowers and notes on the stage! I think some one may have even thrown a pair of underwear but can't be certain. The music was so great and it was just a totally new and wonderful experience for me.”

The Doors closed the Philly show with an amazing performance of  “The End.” It was grand and would have fit right in at the Monterey Pop Festival. In Frisco, The Who finished their set with “My Generation.” With chaotic panache, Pete Townsend smashed his guitar as smoke bombs exploded behind him. In the unexpected pandemonium, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drums as they walked off stage. The Jimi Hendrix Experience followed The Who and at the end of their last song, “Wild Thing,” Jimi kneeled and lit up his guitar in sacrificial fire then smashed it to bits.  Janice Joplin sang an incendiary version of “Ball and Chain.” For each of them it was their first national venue and established their legendary status as cultural phenomena

Paula’s Dilema

Miss Lily came to our house a month later and just maybe, saved my sister Paula’s life. Well, what happened may not have actually killed her, but if Lilly hadn’t been there, it would have put a serious crimp on Paula’s ability to eat properly, chew or speak. Not sure how the Appalachian looking, leathery-faced smoker found out. Could have been my mom’s hysterical pleas that drew her in, or she happen to be walking by at the right time. Don’t recall. But she came upon an odd dilemma involving my sister getting her tongue stuck in a coke bottle. What the circumstances were remains a mystery.

Here’s my hypothesis: I do know physics was involved. Let me explain. It has something to do with pressure being proportional to the product of density and temperature. Forcing her folded tongue inside the bottle opening, Paula sucked out the air, producing pressure inside the bottle. Creating a seal, the inside pressure dropped to below the atmospheric pressure, thus, creating a vacuum.

I heard the commotion in the kitchen and ran in to see Paula standing in the middle of the room clutching a coke bottle connected to her distended purple tongue. She appeared to be in a panic state, her eyes were bulging; she was very sweaty and mumbling, making incoherent animal-like sounds. I stepped behind the safety of gathered siblings when I saw Miss Lilly rush into the room, via the back door.

“Good Lord, Jesus!” she drawled before flicking her cigarette deftly into the nearby sink.

“Uhhnngawww,” Paula moaned.

“Get me a hammer and a towel!” Lilly ordered.

A minute later, Paula was on her knees, her head wrapped tightly in a towel lying across the hard wood chair seat. Lilly stood with her back facing me, her fist around a hammer swaying by her side. The scene reminded me of an executioner at a beheading. I could see that Paula’s blue tongue and coke bottle were exposed on the chair’s seat.

“Ready girl? I’m gonna count to three,” Lilly said. “One…”

“WACK!”

The bottle exploded into a carbonated concoction of caramelized beverage and shards of green glass.

“Two, three,” Lilly continued, then laughed.

Paula, although traumatized, emerged unscathed and was truly grateful for the neighbor’s quick thinking and hammer skills. Lilly didn’t stick around and left shaking her head.

I guess we were a bunch of dumb asses! We Adams have a history of stupidity involving orifices that defies human logic.

One time, my brother Joe got a marble stuck up his ass after filling the bottom of one of those huge cast iron claw foot tubs with marbles. He rolled back and forth for a ride and somehow lodged one of the glass spheres into his rectum.

Years later, during summer break, when I was in high school, I mowed acres and acres of lawn at Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport. During a lunch break I got high with a friend. I can’t explain, except to say it just happened, but I managed to get an acorn stuck in my ear. It was agonizing as my stoned co-worker tried unsuccessfully to pry it out with various sized sticks. Resorting to a pocketknife, he partially skewed the thing and flung it out.

In the late seventies, my sister Karen became an RN. She was ordered to give an elderly patient an enema. The old man was embarrassed about the procedure and talked my sister into letting him do it himself. Having had them before, he would do it if that would be OK. Karen, God bless her heart, left the room and the man to his privacy. Returning five minutes later, she found the man covered with sheets, facing away from her. To their mutual horror, things had gone terribly awry. The old man had been successful with the enema bit but had forgotten to take the cap off and shot it inside! Much worse than removing an acorn, Karen spent ten minutes digging the cap out from the man’s buttocks.


If we learned from our stupid mistakes, I guess we’d all qualify as geniuses.

The Widow's Web

The neighbor in the house next door, on the opposite side of the Smiths was a widow in her mid fifties. She went by: Miss Lilly. She wasn’t from a hollow in Tennessee, but you get the descriptive gist. She was a chain- smoker and had a wrinkled hard face. She was sinewy thin, 5 foot tall if that, with straggly hair. Not even a slash of mascara decorated her face. Miss Lilly was a hard-ass and wouldn’t take crap from anyone, including me. When she looked at you, her expression, said, who the hell do you think you are?

I made the mistake of bragging that I was an escape artist. …I read a biography about The Great Houdini AND I and saw the Tony Curtis movie. I fancied myself as a younger version of the great one. Saying he could break out of any restraint, Houdini challenged the superintendent of the Boston police, that he could escape the city prison, called The Tombs. After being thoroughly searched, he was manacled in cuffs and leg irons and placed in a locked cell. Not only did Harry manage to pick the locks and escape, he did so naked. And with swift bravado, was out of the prison and down the street in ten minutes. It was a sensation.

I never tried an escape while naked; if you didn’t get out of it, you’d be exposed in more ways than one. But my brother Joe tied me up many times and I always escaped. You would have been impressed had you witnessed it.

The neighbor lady wasn’t impressed in the least and scoffed at my braggadocio. “How much you want to bet, boy! I’ll double it.”

“All I got is a couple bucks worth of coins,” I said.

This was easy money I thought as I retrieved a jar of coins from my under my bed and returned to her back porch. She sat there smiling with a long coil of rope in her lap.

“Put them pennies on the rail and get down on your belly then, right there,” she said and pointed to my feet.”

I obliged as she scurried from her perch spider-like and straddled me. I recall she had a boney ass. Within a minute I was wrapped in her tightly tied web. She had hog-tied me and left me there, squirming in the dust. I caught a glimpse of her varicose ankles below her black Capri pants as she casually scuttled inside. As I rolled and wriggled I could see her in the window watching me behind a haze of grey smoke and screen. She was laughing. I pulled and tugged at the ropes and could not budge them. Exhausted, I rested and was sweating profusely from both the exertion and the embarrassment. This lubricated my bindings and I was able to free one of the constricting loops.

Houdini could dislocate a shoulder to get out of a straight jacket. If I could only dislocate all four limbs, I could have escaped. After 20 minutes, I was defeated. I rolled over and looked up at the window red-faced and dirt caked and mouthed, “I give!” She wasn’t a lip reader apparently, so I yelped, “OK, I give up….” She feigned deafness and cupped a hand behind her ear. Sounding suddenly soprano, I tried one more time, “ I QUIT!” Miss Lilly shrugged back and shook her head with incomprehension and disappeared from view. She made me lay there another 30 minutes before she came out and untied me. I heard her shake the coin jar triumphantly as she went inside. I crept home. I could never made eye contact with that woman again.