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Chicago, Illinos
September 7, 1948
Freshies
Their back doors slamming simultaneously, they ran down the three flights of stairs.
This day, Tuesday, September 7, 1948, was Norman Parminter and Mitchell Lipensky’s first day of high school.
They had their choice of two schools: Farragut, to the south, and Harrison, to the east.
The boys, against the wishes of their parents, had chosen Harrison. Their parents’ reasoning had been two-fold: Farragut was closer, about a mile away, while Harrison was almost three miles away, and also, Farragut had a goodly number of Jewish children in attendance, while the kids at Harrison were primarily Polish and Italian. Norman chose Harrison because he wanted to join the ROTC, which Harrison had and Farragut didn’t. Mitchell chose Harrison because Harrison had Phyllis Koscinski and Farragut didn’t.
She was an older woman, sixteen, and a sophomore and, outside of living next door for years and knowing that he was that annoying kid that always looked down her blouse when they played baseball, Phyllis didn’t know Mitchell was alive or, if she did, she could not care less.
Mitchell, on the other hand, was madly in love with Phyllis.
Last spring, before graduation and summer vacation, one day, accidentally, Mitchell saw Phyllis naked… well, half-naked really.
****
He’d been on the toilet and could hear the sound of running water, then the knocking of pipes when the shower was turned off. Finished, he washed and dried his hands, opened the door and, going to the kitchen, turned to the left. As he began to walk he looked over his shoulder and there, on the opposite side of the air well, standing, staring towards the front of the apartment, as though in deep thought, or possibly daydreaming, was Phyllis.
Obviously no one was home, and obviously it had been Phyllis in the shower because she was naked, at least from the waist up.
Unaware that Mitchell, on the other side of the air well, no more than ten feet away, was looking at her… Looking? Hell, he was gawking.
Her eyes seemingly focused on some faraway point to the west, reflected in the golden rays of the setting sun, Phyllis’ face had a shining glow. Her dishwater-blond hair hanging in straight, wet strands down her back, her head held high, her neck arched, her youthful, pink-nippled breasts pointed outward and upward.
Standing with his heart pounding, thinking, She’s so beautiful! he’d stared at this wondrous picture for what was in reality no more than three heartbeats, then, sadly, Phyllis moved out of sight. But still he stood looking, hoping, wanting her to come back, but she didn’t, and through the ten feet of airspace Mitchell Lipensky had fallen completely and hopelessly in love.
From that day, whenever he’d hear the door on the opposite side of the landing slam shut, he’d go to the front window, pull it open and look down, and if it was Phyllis, he’d go downstairs and wait, nonchalantly, so he thought, for her to return.
Oh, God, Phyllis would think when she’d see him sitting on the stoop, what’s that damn pest want now?
“Hi, Phyl,” he’d say. “Want some help with those bags?”
“Sure,” she’d say, shrugging her shoulders indifferently, “why not?” And she would allow him the privilege of carrying the heavy bags of groceries up the three flights of steps, then, opening her door, she’d take the bags from his hands and, having slightly more manners than Amy Pearlman, Phyllis would mutter a barely-heard, “Thanks,” and kick the door shut behind her.
Oh, yes! Harrison did have Phyllis Koscinski, and for all the good that ever did him, Mitchell Lipensky.
****
The boys met in the juncture of the alley.
“Hey, Norm!”
“Hi, Mitch! So, you ready?”
“Jeeze, yeah! I guess so.”
Carrying their lunches in brown paper bags, each had ten cents in their pockets: a nickel for milk and a nickel for an after-school snack. Cutting through the alley, they crossed Nineteenth Street and followed the same route they’d taken to the Douglas Theater for years. Coming to the Douglas, they stopped to see what movies would be shown when the features changed, then went on… and on!
Walking to the east, the rising sun shining in their eyes, since there was no shade on either side of the street, soon perspiration covered their faces and ran down their necks.
“You know, Norm, it never seems this long when we go to the Marshall.”
On Marshall Boulevard, one of their choices of a movie theater, The Marshall Square was one block north of Harrison Technical High School.
“Well, I guess we could always take the streetcar, then.”
“You kiddin’, Norm! They ain’t gonna give us another penny for the streetcar! Not after the way you’n’me fought ’em to go to Harrison. They told us we wouldn’t wanna walk every day.”
“Well, I guess we could give up pop…” The nickel was for milk, but they both knew they were going to get pop. “…and ride one way, or we can give up the nosh, too, and ride both ways.”
Hefting the bag, feeling the weight of two salami sandwiches, an apple and a package of Twinkies, “No, I don’t wanna do that!”
“Hey, Mitch, you’re the one that’s complaining.”
Marshall Boulevard, finally! Turning right, walking one block, there it was: Harrison Tech.
“God! Normie,” Mitchell said in awe, “it’s gigantic!”
Talking, yelling, horsing around, re-acquainting themselves with friends they hadn’t seen in more than two months, thousands of teenagers, so it seemed, milled in front of the entrance and all of them were…
“Holy shit!” Norman said. “They’re so big!”
Last spring, in the eighth-grade graduating class, Norman and Mitchell thought of themselves as the biggest kids in school, but now both felt like… what? Shrimps! Norman was of average height for his age and Mitchell was better than an inch taller, but in their minds both boys felt small in comparison to the giants that bumped, jostled and elbowed by them.
Mitchell looked to see if he could spot Phyllis or anyone else he knew, but there were so many kids it was impossible.
“Mitchie! Normie!”
Feeling a poke in their backs, the boys turned and, Oh, shit! they both thought. Of all the people in the world it’s gotta be these two!
“Hi, Roz.” Mitchell said with minimal enthusiasm.
“Hi’ya, Ron.” Norman said in the same flat tone of voice.
Big Rosalind Feigenbaum was big in both height and girth. She had short, kinky red hair and her heavily freckled, light complected face, was, as always, broken out with pimples.
Ronald Muskowitz, whom they called Mushuggi-witz—the Mushuggi, as in crazy—lived on the other side of Christiana Avenue.
Smaller than average, Ronald had tightly curled platinum blonde hair. Besides being a blonde Jew, there was not much else wrong with the way Ronald looked. Except, at birth he’d been an instrument baby and the doctor had extracted him from his mother’s womb with forceps. Consequently, his face was long and thin, especially above both temples where his head, going from his forehead back about three inches, was deeply grooved where the inch-wide forceps had grasped and pulled. And in these one-inch wide strips no hair grew, giving Ronald a kind of satanic, crazy appearance, hence, Mushuggi-witz.
But being physical outcasts made Rosalind and Ronald the best of friends and actually, aside from their appearance, they were clever, quick-witted and—their verbal sallies toward one another often leaving whomever was within hearing holding their stomachs gasping with laughter—bitingly sarcastic to each other. And also, as though when God made them ugly, he gave them brains to compensate, Ronald and Rosalind were the two top-graded students in their graduating class.
Maybe, Mitchell had thought one day while trying to understand a math problem that Rosalind, at the blackboard, was in the process of easily solving, that’s why I’m not so smart, because God gave me a good-looking face. Look at her; she’s ugly as hell and knows everything!
The bell rang.
The four freshies melded in the stream, got caught in the current, and were carried away with the flow.
Cavernous hallways. Monstrous stairwells.
Harrison is gigantic!
“Where we supposed to be?” Rosalind asked Ronald.
“I d’know!”
“Where we at?”
“Beats the shit outta me!”
“Where we going?”
“I d’know!”
“You don’t know where we’re supposed to be, you don’t know where we are, and you don’t know where we’re going?”
“Yup, that’s right!”
“I guess we’re lost, then.”
“Well,” Ronald said, “in the words of that famous old Indian chief…”
Knowingly or unknowingly, always each other’s foil: “Uh, what famous old Indian chief?” Rosalind asked warily.
“You know, Roz. The chief of that wandering tribe that moved someplace else every day… the Fukawees.”
Big Rosalind looked at Crazy Ronald. “Uh, the Fukawees?”
“Yeah, the Fukawees!” Ronald said seriously. “Every morning the chief would climb to the top of the highest hill, shade his eyes with his hand, look around and say: ‘Where the fuk’a’we’?”
