Chapter Three

1964 (part three)

In Sarasota, in the spring of 1964, you basically found three types of kids at Brookside Junior High: imitation "surfers," "greasers" (sometimes called "hoods") and a large cross section of dull, ordinary students known as "geeks" or "dorks."

Imitation applies to "surfers" because on the west coast of Florida the waves in the Gulf rarely reached a height of three feet, so in actuality, there was no surf. But that didn't stop the "surfers" from claiming a lifestyle after the current Beach Boys craze flooding Southern California.

The "greasers" projected an image of bad boy/girl coolness, rejecting the recent inroads mapped out by the four moptops from Liverpool and all the rest of Britain's pop invaders. As their name implies, the "greasers" ignored the new "dry" look in hairstyles and still hailed Elvis as a musical saint. Fast cars were also important in upholding their reckless, tough guy/doll image.

A confirmed member of the geek subclass of Brookside Junior High, I, like my fellow nerdy scholars, had no image. While surfer boys wore madras shirts, cuffed khaki pants and penny loafers with no socks, I wore olive or tan slacks from Sears, blue or white oxford shirts with matching socks and Hushpuppies. After school, while the greasers rode with their high school friends over to the Royal Castle in souped-up Chevys, I worked on the school newspaper for an hour or so, then rode my bike home.

Sometime in the early spring of 1964 a hormonal stampede began to trample my longstanding physical appearance. By the autumn of Ô64, in a span of eight months or less, I would be over six inches taller while losing around twenty pounds. Sweet-faced pudgy boy shed the last of his baby fat and became a bona fide adolescent.

Unfortunately this hormonal earthquake within began producing angry eruptions on my forehead, cheeks and nose, the first rumblings of an all-out war waged over facial terrain for many years. As if by invitation, the first of the ugly red blotches appeared on my thirteenth birthday. Whatever changes took place in succeeding years, through them all, the pimples kept coming. Come to think of it, the blots I examined everyday in the bathroom simply mirrored the changes. But always I fought the good fight against acne, claiming a battle-scarred truce before the end of my teen years.

At Brookside Junior High, the scourge of acne cut through social and academic classes like a switchblade. But once labeled "dork" at any public school, you remained a dork until you changed schools. Acne or no acne, lanky or fat, penknife or switchblade, there was no shifting of the social ladder due to dramatic physical changes.

My stepmother, however, broadcast her pleasure at my shift from butterball to slim jim. A practical woman if nothing else, Dahlia loved the blessing that she no longer had to scour the racks at Sears and Montgomery Ward for "Husky" cut pants. Now that my shape began, finally, to better match the apparel makers' ideal, Dahlia could happily cut the time she spent on shopping duties for ol' Josh.

A kindred geek spirit in many of my eighth grade classes battled his own curse of little boy chubbiness. His name was Larry Katz, and along with the nerdy Sears label decorating his backpocket (next to a slide rule), he had the added burden of being Jewish.

We had a lot in common, Larry and I, no matter the differences in our religious backgrounds. He liked movies. I liked movies. He liked music. I liked music. We both liked hanging out in the library compared to "hanging ten" at the beach. Besides, beaches like Siesta Key had girls running around in two-piece bathing suits with blonde surfer boys chasing them. Larry and I liked the girl part (and parts) just fine but the competition kept us at bay. So we pretty much kept our eyes on the movie screen, our ears on the radio and our noses in a book.

In Larry's case the nose-in-the-book was a rather large one, a fact pointed out to me by my dad one day when he drove me to the Katz's home during an afternoon thundershower. Wallace had come home early after a morning golf date with his boss from Jarrett Chevrolet.

"Katz? A good Irish name, huh?" Wallace chuckled on the way over. "You know, really, I always liked Jews. I learned a lot from Ôem about business in the old days."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, old Sol Levine was a New York kike if there ever was one, but he knew how to buy and sell cars. Yessir."

We pulled into the Katz's drive and Larry stood in the garage with a ping pong paddle in his hand.

"Whoa, ho," Wallace said under his breath. "That's a honker and a half." He glanced at me. "Looks like a nice fella, though. You pay attention to him, Josh. Jews are smart. You might learn something."

"Sure, Dad. I'll walk home if it stops raining." I slid out of the Impala's front seat and ran to the shelter of the garage.

Dad waved at Larry. "Have a good time, boys!" he called from the car.

Another day after school Larry and I went to see a return engagement of Lawrence of Arabia on the giant Cinemascope screen in downtown Sarasota. We had both seen it before but were awed again by the exotic desert landscapes and epic story. On the city bus back to Southgate we agreed that Lawrence represented the fine art of movie-making. We both liked the spectacular action sequences and also the quiet scenes where Peter O'Toole struggled with his inner conflicts. Larry even liked the story about the Arab tribes coming together and fighting side-by-side like a family.

Instead of movies, most afternoons if the weather was bad (or if Dahlia didn't have any special yardwork for me to do) I would stop by Larry's house on my trusty coaster-brake Schwinn on my way home from school. Most of the time we hung out in his room listening to the record player and reading magazines. His mother would bring us treats like rugalahs (crispy tidbits similar to Danish pastry) coogle (like a sweet noodle pudding) and hamentashen (delicious little pastriesÑmy favorite).

Larry was a big fan of The Dave Clark Five. It knocked him out that the drummer, Dave Clark, was the leader of the group and the lead singer, too. Larry and I listened to Dave and the boys on his cabinet Hi-Fi record player, a real piece of furniture with built-in speakers. Stacks of albums and 45s were organized alphabetically on shelves next to the console phonograph. Behind sliding doors in his bookcase headboard, Larry filed stacks of his favorite magazines. I guess the two we read most often were Mad magazine and Motor Trend.

Almost as much as he loved to listen to the Dave Clark Five, Larry loved to look at pictures of the Ford Mustang, the hot new 1964-and-a-half coupe that filled the pages of Motor Trend in articles and advertisements. I liked its snazzy looks too but I didn't get too carried away since my dad was a diehard Chevy man.

Filed separately from the issues stacked neatly in the headboard was another type of magazine, a popular monthly that Larry stuffed under his mattress for safekeeping. Unlike the latest Mad or Motor Trend, the dog-eared editions of Playboy Larry shared with me were rarely up to date. That's because Larry only "borrowed" them from Mr. Katz when a months-old issue hit the boxed stacks in the garage.

Larry always waited till his mom brought us a snack, then he slipped the thick Playboy between the covers of a large magazine like Look or Life. Even though we rarely read them, he always made sure the larger magazines were within easy reach on top of the Hi-Fi.

The day my dad dropped me off during the thundershower, we played a game of ping pong, then headed to Larry's bedroom for recreational reading. Right on schedule his mom came in smiling with a plate full of rugalahs and hamentashen. This was the good life indeed. We had wonderful food, a current top ten hit on the record player, plus our pick of stimulating reading material.

We passed the decoy issues of Look and Life back and forth, commenting on the busty pictorials hidden inside.

"Oh, man. Check this out," Larry said, handing me a recently liberated Playboy.

"Mmmmmmm. I'm in love," I said. "Again."

"Yeah. I always keep a playmate under the mattress here, you know, in case I feel like having a little sex after checking out her horoscope and favorite hobbies and stuff."

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"A little sex? You mean...with yourself?"

"Sure. I think it's healthy. Don't you?"

I thought about Dahlia and the time she found the wadded up toilet paper under my bed. She gave me a menacing look with her dark eyes, but I clung to the alibi that I had gotten the sniffles during the night and accidentally dropped the paper on the floor. Ever since, after ejaculating, I took the trouble to wipe myself clean, tiptoe into the bathroom and flush the evidence into the sewer system.

"Don't you think it's healthy, Josh?"

The Dave Clark Five thumped through "Glad All Over" on the Hi-Fi. Though I had been to church rarely in recent years, I thought about what my former Baptist Sunday School teacher would think of this conversation. Maybe you get different ideas if you go to a "temple" like Larry talks about sometimes.

Larry had focused his attention on the Playboy, still awaiting a response. He looked up, his thick-lensed glasses shifting toward the end of his nose.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Well, yeah. I guess it's healthy. But, I don't know. I always feel kinda guilty about it."

"Forget that," said Larry. "What's wrong with it? It feels good. And you feel better afterward."

"Well, yeah."

"Hey, so what? Until I get a chance with a girl sometime, it's the next best thing."

"I guess you're right."

"That guilt thing, I mean, there's no future in that stuff."

I began to realize that my dad was on to something when he told me to listen to Larry. Larry was pretty smart, all right. In more ways than one. And it wasn't only because he was several months older than me, already fourteen. He just seemed to be a little surer about a few things and didn't mind telling you about it when he was.

I bit into a rugalah and Larry passed over the Playboy/Life. The playmate's name was "Gina" but it said her real name was "Tina." She was a Libra like me. She liked people and pets and her favorite hobby was taking simple household items, breaking them into smaller pieces, then gluing them back together again into sculptures called "mobiles." I decided her body was so beautiful that if she asked my opinion in person, even with all of her clothes on, that I would tell her her stupid-looking artwork was beautiful, too.

One Friday afternoon in April, about a month later, Larry came over with his sleeping bag to spend the weekend. This was a major event, the first time in over a year that I had invited a friend to spend the night at my stepmother's house. This weekend was also the first time in a year or so that I wouldn't make the regular bus ride up to St. Petersburg.

My mother's divorce to Leonard was in the works and she was moving to a little place called New Port Richey, about thirty-five miles north of St. Pete. In fact, mother and her friend Helen Spolito would be renting a small lakehouse from Leonard's brother, Gus.

Tommy asked me to give Helen and her a couple of weeks to get settled. I didn't like the idea at first, but then I thought maybe Larry and I could do something on one of the weekends.

So Larry showed up on our doorstep after school that Friday, buzzing up the driveway on his Vespa scooter with his sleeping bag tied to the buddy seat behind him. Personally, I thought the little Vespa was a cool mode of transportation, but it gave everyone at Brookside one more reason to make fun of Larry. Calls from the crowd ranged from "Hey, you! Kike on a bike..." to "Rats, here comes Katz!"

Arriving with his sleeping bag stuffed with clothes and assorted Playboys, Larry hoisted the Vespa up on its kickstand in the driveway and walked up to the front door. Earlier in the week I had talked a reluctant Dahlia into accepting Larry as a weekend guest. She clued him in as soon as he rang the door bell.

"Go Ôround the side," Dahlia ordered from the kitchen window. "We don't use the front door. And take those shoes off, too. Josh, show him where to put his shoes." She looked suspiciously at the little gray scooter in the driveway.

"What's that?" she asked me, turning from her perch over the kitchen sink.

"It's Larry's scooter. It's like a bike with a motor."

"Hmmph," Dahlia said. "That ain't nuthin'."

Of course I had warned Larry about Dahlia's "commandments." A skeptic by nature, Master Katz made a quick conversion from non-believer to humble adolescent disciple. After washing his hands, tucking in his shirt and receiving a rundown on bathroom procedures, Larry gave in to the gospel of clean living, as preached by my devout stepmother.

Mainly, he did what I had told him to do: shut up, listen to what you're told and keep one essential phrase on the tip of your tongue.

"Yes ma'am," Larry said, after every instruction. "Yes ma'am, I will. Yes ma'am, I see what you mean. Yes ma'am, you're right about that."

"Yes sir," I said. "You've got it now, Larry."

GO FORWARD TO 1964
(part four)

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(part two)