As we age, our memory may not be as
good as it was when we were younger. Sometimes we struggle to remember our past.
Maybe we should record the special
events that helped us make our way through life. As such, join me in . . .
Remembering My Past, Before I Forget It
“The Early Years”
I turned
seventy-seven on July 13, 2021. As I lay in bed on a warm morning in early
August, I wondered where I’d put my cell phone. It wasn’t on the nightstand
next to the bed, connected to the charger.
What confused the
situation even more was that I thought I could hear it when I received an
email. But I had no idea where it was.
Was I slipping into the deep abyss of memory loss?
With this thought
rattling around in my brain, I tried to test my memory by recalling some of the
significant events in my life. To challenge my mind, I traveled back in time to
my early years—the first thirteen to be exact.
My life began in
the Bronx, New York. The first four and a half years I lived with my parents in
my mother’s parents’ apartment on Harrison Avenue. Aside from becoming potty
trained, four other notable occurrences emerged from the cobwebs of my mind.
The first was the
birth of my sister. I was almost two and a half years old. My parents came home
from the hospital and entered the apartment. My mother was holding a
blanket-wrapped package.
I ran up to her
shouting, “Mommy, mommy, what’s that?”
“This is your baby
sister, Alan.”
“Not a brother?” I
asked, somewhat confused.
“No.”
“Why not? Take her
back.”
“I can’t. It
doesn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .”
“Well, I had to
keep my sister.”
The second
involved a lady living on the ground floor of our apartment building. I was
almost three years old, when I first met Molly “Pretzel.” At least that’s what
I thought her name was. Her kitchen window faced the street. Every time I
walked by, she leaned out the window, with a pretzel in her hand, and said,
“Alan, if you’d like a pretzel, give me your hand.”
She didn’t have to
ask twice. One day, as I approached her, I raised both my hands and sung out,
“Molly, two pretzels, please.”
She smiled and said,
“Give me a kiss.”
I puckered up and
kissed her cheek and she placed one pretzel in my right hand and one in my
left. As I turned away, my mother said, “What do you say?”
I looked up at
Molly and chanted, “Thank you.”
The third event
focused on a bronze statue of a man sitting on a rock with his chin resting on
his hand. I was about four. One morning my grandfather saw me staring at it. He
put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Allie, that man is called the ‘The
Thinker.’”
“Why?” I inquired.
“Well, as you grow
up, you will have a lot of questions about life that you will think about. And
what you need to do is to work hard to find the answers. Will you?” he asked.
Not fully
understanding what he was saying, I shrugged my shoulders and muttered, “Yes.”
The statue passed from my grandparents’ home, to my parents’ home, and now sits
on the mantel above the fireplace in my living room.
Finally, my fourth
remembrance is of the visits to the corner soda shop, with my grandfather. He
would help me up on the stool across from the soda fountain, and ask,” Allie,
what would you like?”
I’d stare at him
and say, “A glass of water, please.”
“But you can’t
have a glass of water. We’re at the soda fountain. How about a chocolate
malted?”
My response didn’t
change—“Just water.” This frustrated him to no end.
Well, my time
spent in the big city ended in the summer of 1949. My parents moved us to
Elmont, Long Island—farming country that was being developed into what would
become the largest unincorporated village in the world, at that time.
My grandmother
cried to my mother, “You’re moving to the middle of nowhere. I’ll never see you
again. It’s so far away.”
“Mom, it’s only
fifteen miles from where you live. You can visit every weekend,” my mother
responded.
And visit she did.
Each Saturday morning, looking out my bedroom window, I remember this little
old lady shuffling up the driveway, with a large shopping bag in each hand,
filled with goodies for my sister, baseball cards for me, and food she and my
mom would cook for Sunday dinner, when my grandfather would join us.
At fifty-two, she
was the “oldest” person I knew—ancient in my eyes. She shared my bedroom and
became my best friend. I loved her deeply.
My grandfather
entered my world on Sundays, dressed in a three-piece suit and tie. My mother
would say, “Dad, put on something more comfortable, or at least take off your
coat.”
He would look at
her, with a smile on his face, and reply, “No.”
“Why not?” she
would ask.
“Because I’m
wearing a dirty shirt,” he would reply.
And this happened
every Sunday that he came to visit. Sometimes he would even sit, dressed to the
nines, on a folding chair in our driveway, holding a sun reflector up toward
his face to get a tan.
When I began
school in September of 1949, my mother marched me to the bus stop on Fallon
Avenue. I lived in Fallon Court. Two other boys, accompanied by their mothers,
stood next to me. We were just getting to know one another. As our elementary
school years passed, we would become friends who hung out together, spent time
in each other’s homes, and played baseball and football on the street.
However, during
these early years, something happened that made us famous, at least for a short
period of time. Mike, our school bus driver, gave us a nickname that stuck with
us through grammar school. Since we were the only passengers he picked up on
Fallen Avenue, he dubbed us, the “Three Fallon Brothers.” And my wish came
true, since I always wanted a brother.
In third grade, I
accomplished something I didn’t think could happen. I wanted to be a singer, so
I tried out for the glee club. After auditioning, the twinkle in my music
teacher’s eyes seemed to have disappeared. Not wanting to disappoint me, she
placed her hands on my shoulders and said, “You made it.” My face lit up.
At our first
rehearsal, I showed up ready to share my voice with the world. When my teacher
saw me, she took me aside, and said, “Alan, I’d like you to do something very
special for me.”
I blushed and
whispered, “Okay.”
“Please stand on
the top of the riser—the very back row. When it is your turn to sing, move your
lips, but don’t let any sound come out.”
This confused me,
but I was a member of the glee club, so I did what she asked. It wasn’t until
years later that I discovered I had invented lip- synching.
From that day
forward, my singing reputation preceded me. Five years after my glee club
experience, I prepared for my bar mitzvah at age thirteen. It was customary to
chant the prayers at the service. As I stood on the platform before the
congregation, awaiting my passage into manhood, the president of the temple, a
family friend, whispered in my ear, “Alan, it would be better if you recited
the prayers rather than sing them.” And so I did.
Just before I
entered the fifth grade, my grandparents bought me the most beautiful
two-wheeled, red bicycle. I couldn’t wait to ride it. It had been raining
during the day, but as soon as it stopped, I got on the bike and sped around
the block. As I came around the corner back into the court where I lived, I hit
a sandy patch. The bike went out from under me and I landed on the ground,
hitting my face on the handlebars. The bike was pretty beat up, but I was
worse—a bloody nose and two black eyes. In my school pictures, taken later in
the year, even though the black eyes couldn’t be seen by anybody who looked at
me, it appeared as if I was wearing a mask.
Although I was
shaken up by this event, the death of my grandmother from leukemia at the end
of 1954 devastated me. I was only ten and she was just fifty-seven. Our
wonderful rabbi, at the time, spent over an hour with me in our basement
helping me understand what had happened. To this day, he holds a special place
in my heart.
In the spring of
my fifth grade year, I stayed up late one night celebrating my grandpa’s
fifty-seventh birthday. Mom bought strawberry shortcake for the occasion. I’d
never eaten strawberries before. They tasted all right, but not great.
After recess at
school the next day, my teacher gave me a weird look and asked, “Have you been
in a fight? Your right eye is swollen shut.”
I told her I
hadn’t been in a fight. To make sure I was all right, she sent me to the nurses
office and the nurse called my mother to come and pick me up and take me to the
doctor, as my other eye also now was swollen shut. The nurse stated, “That
must’ve been some fight you had.”
When my mother
arrived, she took one look at me and asked, “Have you been in a fight?”
I looked her
straight in the eye and said, “No.”
At the doctor’s office,
he stared at me and asked if I’d eaten something I’d never eaten before. When I
mentioned strawberries, he laughed and said, “You weren’t in a fight, were you?
You’re allergic to strawberries. You have what we call a case of ‘hives.’” I
breathed a sigh of relief, because I was no longer in trouble for the fight I
never had.
In the summer,
after my thirteenth birthday, I attended a camp in upstate New York and had a
spectacular experience. Not only did I learn how to ride a horse bareback, I
learned to jump hurdles. However, without the security of a saddle, I went up
in the air fine, but when I came down, I found myself grasping the horses mane
while looking into its eyes and praying I wouldn’t hit the ground headfirst. I
never did try that again.
“Wow! I still have
my memory—at least about the first thirteen years of my life. If I get up the
courage, I’ll dig into the depths of my mind for more events that shaped my
life, as I aged. And if you’re lucky, I’ll share them with you.
Copyright © 2021
Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.
