Art and Art Politics at Cooper Union

There were cliques at Cooper Union. Competing factions in painting and other media all with differing concepts, approaches and ideas about the current state of art and what was possible, what was important. There were “conservative” students and teachers and there were students and teachers with more unconventional ideas . So while I was learning how to paint I was also learning about the “politics” of art and the art world. It was a kind of battleground. Conceptual and minimalist art was having it’s day and in many ways painting seemed a bit out of it or not as vital as it once seemed. Was painting still alive? Was painting dead as some were espousing? Not for the painters it wasn’t. Looking back now it was a time when the spring was getting wound tighter and tighter (though you couldn’t possible have known it then) and the energy was building up. The spring exploded in the late 70’s and the rest is history as they say.

I ran into the great conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth just after I had graduated. I was out on the town one evening with a girlfriend of mine Lisette and Joseph passed our table. I said “hi Joseph” and he quickly sat down and joined us. I had recognized him from the time he came to Cooper and gave a talk. A very stern but fluent lecture about what I haven’t the foggiest not then or now. He read from a sheet of paper as he sat in front of the class in the dark with the light falling on him in his all black outfit. An imposing figure. After his speech he didn’t stay long nor field any questions from us. Instead he went out in the hall and had a long talk with Hans Haacka. I thought he acted like a snob. But on this night he was very gregarious. We started talking about some current issues of the day and I asked him what he thought of Julian Schnabel. Unequivocally he stated “There’s nothing new there”. This was the response I got from a lot of older artists on this subject. Their disgruntled take on the art world phenomenon Julian Schnabel and the like that was sweeping the scene along with the newly minted Trans-Avant-Guardia, and Neo-Expressionism etc. This flowering of new strategies and new approaches in art making that were in my estimation very liberating. Joseph on the other hand seemed very unhappy with all of it. Then he tried to take my girlfriend away with him after I had a few too many (an extremely rare occurance for me). The only time I ever drank so much that I threw up. After Lisette and Kosuth discussed Fellini in some detail with Joseph saying how he had met the famous director and that Fellini said he knew Mr. Kosuth’s work as well, Lisette stayed with me and Mr. Kosuth went on his way. This encounter typifies some of the hostility and even anger that the “new art” was being met with. A true paradigm shift, it was a shift in fortunes as well and it was really rocking the apple cart of the art biz.

Cooper Union 1976-1980

In 1976, my freshman year at Cooper Union, I realized that there were a few other students from Music & Art there as well. Hillary and Zoe tried but did not get in. Everyone else was new to me of course. Classes consisted of Sculpture with Hans Haacka and Rueben Kadish, Painting with Steve Posen, Drawing with Sue Gussow, Graphic Design, Art History with Dore Ashton, Photography and a Humanities class, a gym class and a shop class. A terrific line up of teachers and it was apparent that they would be demanding, expecting the very best from each of us. There were some fellow classmates that I recognized from the start as being very talented. Many of them became my close friends. Teo Mieczkowski a gifted, sophisticated painter and my mentor in many ways. Henry Finklestein, Thomas Woodruff, Dan Witz, Ellen Berkenblit, Andrew Marcus, Jeff Gompertz, Claudia Renfro, Sharon Horvath, Ken Hori, Curtis Anderson to name a few. One day Andy pointed Ellen Berkenblit out to me and he said how beautiful he thought she was. He was right. Little did I know at the time that we would later become a couple. Ellen ended up moving in with me at 227 W. 11th St. for what must have been at least a year or more. She had been going out with some architect student that wasn’t very nice it seems. She dumped him. She was living with a roommate on 4th Ave. off of 14th St. when we first met. Her parents reluctantly accepted the fact that Ellen and I were going to live together. Ellen, her parents and I once had a somewhat awkward dinner at the 2nd Avenue Deli Restaurant. It was the first time we met and they wanted to see who this guy was that their daughter was with. It helped for them to get to know me a little and to see that Ellen and I were serious about each other.

Most of us would stay as late as possible to do work in our studios. The school closed at 10:30 PM if I’m not mistaken. The guard would come out of the elevator every night and say “Time to go!!”  For four years this was the routine and it was something.

A Season In Hell and A New Start

In the spring of ’75, I moved into my first apartment all to myself on West 11th Street between Waverly Place and West 4th Streets just west of 7th Ave and a couple blocks from my Dad’s. He found it for me. The rent was $140.00 a month. Previously I had lived with a roommate on Sullivan Street in the heart of Soho for more than a year. The roommate and I got along well enough but he was a little weird and would make too much noise if he had a woman friend over. At that time I had no steady girlfriend. My old friend Zoe, from Music & Art, hooked me up with a friend of her’s once but it didn’t last long. Then there was Avia. A friend from the old scene that I had a huge crush on. We finally got together after all those years and that too was short lived.

Around this time, I saw my first psychotherapist in Brooklyn but it began to go nowhere fast after I told her I wanted to make love to her. I simply stopped going though I probably shouldn’t have. The reason for going in the first place was because of the depression I found myself in after the break up with Rosy. She was going to college way upstate at Alfred University and when I went up to visit her I found her diary which I promptly read and discovered she had fallen for some other guy. Heartbroken I contemplated suicide. Even going so far as to buying a bottle of iodine that I would drink thinking this would do the job. I got a yogurt too and ended up eating that instead. Her Mom was consoling but I was a mess. It took me a long time to get over it.

My Mom and Dad had separated by now. She moved to Jane Street just around the corner from me. They remained friends despite all the years of turmoil and insanity that they had put us and themselves through. They should have separated early on and spared us but she couldn’t leave. Never one to be able to take care of herself much she had to stay for financial reasons I’m sure. Dad didn’t really want her to go either I guess. Speaking of finances, in order to do some of the things we were able to do as children and young teens such as us going to the very expensive Camp Winona in Denmark, Maine for a number of summers, this was all made possible by a trust fund that was set up for Tony, Candela and myself that afforded us these luxuries. My psychotherapy was paid for this way, as well as my living in Soho. The trust fund was handled by my uncle Paul Benaceraff and when I was to reach a certain age the moneys were to be split three ways among us. So my father never paid a dime for a lot of these things. The money was from my Mom’s father I believe if I’m not mistaken. This was fortunate for my Dad who worked hard at making a living through teaching classical guitar. We too were very lucky to have been able to experience some things that if not for the funds we never would have. I always felt as if I drifted from one extreme to another. Being surrounded by wealthier relatives will do that to you.

The test came up and I applied for acceptance into Cooper Union, again. I got in, just like before. This time it was for keeps. When I got there it was such a contrast from what I had experienced at the NYSS that it was breathtaking, as if everything were amplified and heightened to a high pitch of quality and excellence. The Cooper Union building alone was enough to let me know that I had moved on up to a whole new level, a whole new world of opportunity and challenges. One felt very fortunate indeed for getting into this College.

The New York Studio School and Dirty Old NY

A technical glitch stalled my entry into Cooper Union College. Yes, as crazy as that sounds that is exactly what happened. Something to do with my SAT scores getting in late or something like that . Anyway, they informed me that I would have been accepted but I had to wait another year and reapply and take the test all over again. That was the test in which you were given 4 assignments to execute on a given size of paper. One was a hand holding an egg, a hand holding a cube, a machine of your own invention, and finally something of your own choosing, your own subject matter. So during that year of waiting I enrolled at the New York Studio School on 8th St. off of 6th Avenue. Cooper is down the street on Astor Place. After bringing my work to the NYSS and having it evaluated by the head of the school – Mercedes Matter, I was accepted. The NYSS turned out to be a good place to keep working.  There were students there doing very close “versions” of  Abstract Expressionists works. There were huge paintings rolled up that I saw there that were basically big “drip paintings” ala Pollock and another student’s work was an exact replica of Giacometti. Very well done I thought, maybe a little too well done. There was a trendy kind of Mattisien drawing thing happening as well. That’s the Matisse of the trembling, shifting line where by the image is produced after a long and arduous search for the right placement and scale of the object. Except the subject the student drew was Batman or some other Pop icon instead of a nude . All in all there was something a bit depressing about the place. Maybe it was the general run down look of the building coupled with a certain suffering artist schtick going on. Nicholas Carone was my drawing teacher. He had been a close friend of Jackson Pollock’s but I didn’t know it at the time. He was always saying the same things “the concavity, the convexities” when referring to the human form. By the way, there are no concavities in the human form. Everything is a convex shape, one overlapping the other. The first major work that I produced there was a large Matissian still life painting. It started out as a Cezannesque still life and ended up looking like  Matisse.

This was the mid 70’s and NY was a seedy run down place as well. The 60’s seemed like paradise compared to the 70’s urban blight. The infrastructure was crumbling, the ghettos were ablaze, crime was high. NY could be a very dangerous place back then. There were neighborhoods and areas you simply did not venture into. I would never go pass 2nd Ave. if I didn’t have to. The West Side Highway did not have the landfill it has today. Instead there were decrepit piers with the old elevated highway shut down but still accessable for walking on or bike riding. The recently erected World Trade Center Towers for me were an eye sore that I never liked much. Of course, I very much miss them now. Still NY had a great feel too it also. The dark, seedy side held it’s own unique allure. It gave the city a strange vitality and edge that you could feed off of. That particular quality can be lacking when everything is nice and neat and tidied up. The seediness of Times Square for instance was something to behold. I do miss some of that atmosphere. NY was a rich breeding ground for creating and inventing things and for inventing yourself. When Punk Music hit it was the music that most took me to that same place I felt as a little kid and first heared all the revolutionary music out of the 60’s. It felt like it was back again after having been dormant for some time, after Disco and all the post Woodstock commercial crap that was around. Here was some anger and some truth that was inspiring. By the late 70’s it had changed everything and its impact was felt and began to be expressed in my work. “Anger is an Energy” – sang Johnny Lydon post Sex Pistols. I concur wholeheartedly.

Music and Art, Racial Tensions

There were racial tensions when I was going to Music & Art. One day some black kids were riding the subway and when they got off one of them reached around and punched me in the face. Just looking at them had set them off I guess. There was another time when I was held by one kid, while another one hit me because I had thrown a basketball at him during gym class. He had been yelling orders and it was annoying. I wasn’t hurt so much as scared. Then there was the incident where I saw one kid beating up another kid with what appeared to be martial arts skills. A teacher also witnessed this and exclaimed “he’s high” Apparently this was a known fact concerning this particular student’s M.O. These kind of occurrences were a daily reality but you lived with it. It wasn’t like I went to school with fear and trepidation necessarily. It wasn’t that bad but the chances of getting into something, like getting mugged, was a real possibility. You had to be aware and try and avoid any potential threats. For the most part I was able to do that.

Zoe and Hillary were also close friends of mine at M&A. Both were painting students and the most fun, interesting, pretty and talented girls I knew then. I had a crush on both of them but pursued Hillary more. Hillary was a little evil and would like to mock or tease me in a way that was not always very nice. She had a kind of sadistic streak. One night we were hanging out at her home and she literally teased my hair up into a huge afro telling me how great it looked. Of course I looked ridiculous but didn’t realize at that moment that she was just making fun of me. It sounds harmless enough but it hurt me a lot, some of the things she would say or do. I was in love with her. Maybe Hillary was somehow more of a challenge and that may partly explain my infatuation. Hillary had lost her father recently to Rocky Mountain Tick Fever. This amazed me, the idea that a tick could fatally harm you. It was very tragic for her of course. This may also help explain her cruel side. Maybe she was relieving some of her sorrow by hurting others. Still I really cared for her. Hillary struggled a lot with her painting. She was tentative and insecure at times. I remember seeing paint on her pallet that had been thoroughly blended with a pallet knife. Getting it from there to the canvas seemed not so easy. Maybe the act of blending the paint was the process that held the most meaning for her.

Zoe had approached me one day in painting class and she was flirting but I was too shy to play along. She misread this and thought I was somehow rejecting her. That’s not what it was at all. I was very, very shy and felt awkward in certain situations. Zoe was very headstrong and acted that way. Of the two she appeared the more confident in her artistic abilities than Hillary did. This may be a bit of selective or partial memory on my part but this is the over-all impression and sense I have of Zoe and Hillary and that I am able to recall from those days.

There were quite a few other girls that I had crushes on or that I had brief affairs with. Then Rosy came into my life my senior year and it was “the big one”. She was tall, with long dark hair, beautiful and smart. A poet studying music. The summer after having graduated we traveled with her Mom to the Island of Maui where her brother and sister lived, and stayed there a whole month.

My abilities and confidence as an artist were growing. The teachers had a lot of praise for my skills and work ethic. I was thought of as one of the best in my art classes. It was competitive of course and I was as competitive as the rest. The next rung on the ladder, the next hurtle, what I set my sights on (yet again due to my Dad’s attentiveness in these matters) was to graduate and get into The Cooper Union College of Science and Art. Cooper Union was an elite school and a free scholarship for those lucky and talented enough to be accepted. Would I stack up, could I make the grade, would I get in?

Music and Art High School, The Early 70s

It took a long subway ride to get to and from Music & Art High School everyday way up on 125th Street. A fine arts school, preparing students to become professional gallery and concert artists. M&A turned out to be a great school to go to. It offered me the opportunity to not only develop in painting and drawing but to grow musically as well. Having studied the classical guitar I knew how to read music which I then applied to learning rock and roll. My best and closest friend, my mentor and teacher was Chris Bovasso, an extremely gifted and talented self taught musician, as well as being a fine painter. Chris was to have a huge influence on my musical development. When we first met our technical abilities were not that far apart but very rapidly Chris progressed by leaps and bounds. Chris had that one thing that really made him special and that was his ear, his perfect sense of pitch. He could figure out anything on the guitar and his abilities only grew and grew. It was like I was along for the ride and picked up as much as I could from him. The relationship was not unlike the one I had with my Dad. It was as if Chris had all the power and could share things that he knew with me or withhold things. It wasn’t malicious on his part per-say. He simply knew more than me and could dictate how things would be. He relegated me to being the”singer” in the band we formed. It wasn’t my choice, I wanted to play guitar. I was allowed to play rhythm guitar when it was deemed appropriate. Still I learned an amazing amount just by being with him. The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles these were the bands we adored and tried to emulate.

This scenario, of students at M&A that were ostensibly there to study painting and also were playing music, was very common. Given the nature of the school this was inevitable and even encouraged. The painting and drawing teacher I most remember was Mr. Feinstein, I liked him very much. He was serious about teaching, something that cannot be said about many “teachers” I’ve had throughout the years. I had gone to the Arts Students League for a short while where I got next to nothing out of it. Just going there and working from live models was enough I guess. I went to a drawing class at The New School and learned nothing to speak of from the teacher there as well. As a young boy I learned a great deal more from my father and Lila Copeland primarily. When my Dad would paint, like the time he painted a “Spanish Landscape” on a wooden door in our home, that more than anything he ever said to me about art or painting made a lasting impression. I copied that landscape of his over and over. It resonated very powerfully with me. He led me much more by example than by what he said. When something is there, concretely in front of you, words are  often enough not necessary.

Exile to Spain

El Gayo (the Rooster) owned the restaurant in the small town of Aravaca, a small suburb of Madrid, Spain where I lived while attending the American School of Madrid in the years 1972-73.  During my stay there I never had any money from home sent to me, no allowance to speak of. There were times when I would meet up with my friends and go to a restaurant in Madrid where I couldn’t order anything. Feeling deprived and embarrassed in the extreme I sought out other ways to entertain myself not all of which were positive. Sometimes I would watch for hours the local Spanish boys play pinball or table soccer. The proprietor of the place was this old gent and he sold candy out of a huge bag he kept in his office. From the adjoining bathroom there was a low wall that you could get up on and I could see the bag of  goodies sitting on his desk. I came very close to climbing over that wall and grabbing what I could but something stopped me. It was too risky. It would have been too absurd to get caught doing something like that. But I came awfully close.

One day I got on the restaurant’s delivery bike and rode down a steep hill at breakneck speed. At the bottom of the hill was this bump that would act like a launch pad propelling me into the air. When I hit it, I went up and came crashing down to the cobblestone calle below. Remarkably I wasn’t hurt at all but it was shocking none the less. The violence of the landing was unexpected. A crazy “suicidal” stunt? What was I thinking. Did I want to get hurt? Was I looking for some kind of attention? It would seem so but thankfully I failed. There was no one around to even witness it. When I think back on this incident something occurs to me clearly now: I never once heard from my Mom in the whole time I was in Spain. No card or a phone call asking how I was doing. Not once was there any concern displayed to me on her part. Maybe that explains why I was so desperate.

My grades were descent the first semester. When I presented to the art teacher a few paintings I had executed during that summer trip through Spain with my Dad, she was extremely impressed. They were landscapes in an Impressionist style I was working in then – the style my father had a hard time with. He always said I should mute my colors more. All my heroes like Van Gogh and Gauguin had liberated color and it was a very powerful influence. At times my Dad’s ideas and biases rang true for me and at other times I simply didn’t agree and continued on the way I wanted to. Regardless, his opinions did have an impact. His disapproval hurt. Then when he would overly praise me I didn’t trust that either.  Mostly I followed my own intuition and what I liked and thought useful.

Xmas came and I was to return home for the holidays. Consequently, having to go back to Spain proved all the more difficult. On my return to NY a girl I had always liked a lot was waiting for me, her name was Jenny. Absence makes the heart grow fonder as they say and appears that this was the case. We professed our love for each other and it was a great and welcome surprise. She had missed me and had come to realize her feelings while I was away. Sadly it did not last when I went back.

When I returned to Spain I brought some money with me this time, along with boxes of Lipton’s chicken noodle soup and Slim Jim’s. Junk food I loved and couldn’t get in Aravaca. A friend and I ate practically all the soup in one sitting. Making up for lost time I played pinball all day, went to a Marlon Brando movie dubbed in Spanish, and bought sandwiches of anchovies and sauteed mushrooms. The two little boys that worked at Gallo’s restaurant saw me one day at another establishment buying food and they ran back and told on me. Gallo was upset, apparently because I had broken some unspoken rule which said I could not patronize any other place except his restaurant. In my best Spanish I explained that this was my money and I could spend it any way I wanted to. From then on I was more careful when I bought something so as not to upset him again. Anyway, having gone through my money very quickly I couldn’t get things even if I had wanted to.

My second term at the ASofM was not as good as the first and things went to hell for me. The family I was with, up to that point, had been very kind to me but now started to show signs of disapproval for what they must have seen as delinquency on my part. Doing worse and worse with my studies, then cheating on a test and getting caught ended with me being promptly booted from the school. Gallo’s son looked at me one day just before I was to leave to go back to the States and said how I was going back home to get a beating. Yes, I had messed up all over again in a big way. My father’s apparent guilt for having sent me in the first place over-rode his anger for my failures and saved me from that shellacking. The funny thing is in the year that I was away everything back home that I had known and was a part of  had changed. All the old crew was mostly disbanded, scattered to the wind. I would never again be as close to some of my best friends from the time before my stay in Spain. In many ways though it was all for the best. I would be starting fresh with that all behind me. The next important phase was going to Music and Art High School up on 125th Street and Convent Avenue after a brief interlude back at I.S.70. It was on account of my Dad. He once again was looking out for me. He took the initiative to enroll me at a school where art, painting and drawing would be the focus. As much as I was going to art classes in the following years I would come to play music more and more and also took classical ballet classes at the Joffrey School of Dance on 6th Ave. and 10th St. Mentally and physically I was in the right place to continue and further my artistic growth and education.

Messing Up and Shipping Out

My years at catholic school continued but at a new school on Christopher St. and Waverly Place in the heart of the West Village, a short walk from my home. I was glad to say goodbye to MHofC in the East Village. The nuns pulled your hair and didn’t mess around at Saint Josephs but it was great to be in my own neighborhood. We had a substitute “civilian” teacher one time and we drove her crazy so much so that the Principal (Head Nun) of the school had to take over and whip us into shape. My grades were always good with the usual level of problems in terms of conduct but nothing major. That would all change dramatically when I left SJ to go to I.S. 70 (Intermediate School) in Chelsea.

My sister was already going there and I couldn’t wait to go. When I went there I felt like I was freed, free from all that religious clap trap, free to grow my hair long, free like I had been released from jail. The play “Hair” was a big hit at this time and we had the album which I used to listen too constantly memorizing all the words. I was getting in step with what was hip and cool and new. My liberation was a real blessing in so many ways but as I was want to do I went too far. Basically I dropped out of school for all intensive purposes. No one noticed till it was too late. My Dad had tried to keep an eye on me but to no avail. Wreckless in the extreme I spent my days hanging out with my friends, getting high on pot, then moving on to LSD which practically destroyed my brain. Just the few times I did mescalin, or doing “Barrel Sunshine” as it was called, was enough to scare me off it forever. Some close friends of mine were not so lucky. It devistated many people I knew in one way or another. Some died, some went insane like my best friend Jamie. It was shocking and frightening to witness the toll it took on so many young lives. Realizing this situation I was getting myself into I had something of an awakening. I realized I was hurting myself. I realized I was being self destructive and losing my sense of who I was. Again Dad tried to give me structure and sent me to painting classes with a teacher on 14th St. There was one time I went there tripping and I had a good time. Usually I learned next to nothing there. The teacher was never around to say anything. Still if I only knew that this was as good for me as it was I would have been more serious. I just didn’t  get it. The bug hadn’t bitten me yet. That bug that turns you into an ambitious driven artist and the love of learning. Somewhere I was still rebelling against the idea that this is what my Dad wanted for me, to be a painter. Regardless I kept showing progress and did work that showed a lot of promise. My head was really somewhere else though and that was with my peers. All those great friends of mine. Allen, Claudia Jamie, Maro. My first loves Melanie, Diana, Jenny, Avia, Luth. Dad was always shocked to see how many girlfriends I had at such a young age.

Then there came the solution to get me on track again and far away from all these “bad influences”. At first I didn’t want to go. After considering the matter further I capitulated. I would go to Spain and spend a year there cleaning up so to speak. It was arranged with the American School of Madrid and I would live with a Spanish family that owned a restaurant in a small town outside of Madrid called Aravaca. They had this set up before with other young students. So that was the plan. Just like when I was in 2nd grade I would again be going away. My Dad and I traveled throughout Spain that summer and it was kind of sad for me. I knew I wouldn’t be coming back with him at the end of our vacation. From Madrid we traveled up North to the town my father was from  La Coruna  and many places in between. The night my Dad was to leave I was on a bus with him and just before he left he said to me “now don’t cry Ricky”. Funny thing is, I wasn’t going to cry until he said it.

Snails in Black Bean Sauce

In fourth grade, I won first prize in an art contest at school. My Mom and I attended the award ceremony. My watercolor landscape was sophisticated for my age. It was one of the first times I realized that apart from my parents I was receiving praise for my talents as an artist.

I also remember the time my Dad and I went on a school bus trip to Washington DC. We had to get up very early in the morning before sunrise. All I can remember from the trip is that we hooked up with a friend of my father’s there. But I also recall that I felt really good going with my Dad. We rarely did anything like that and it was nice to have that opportunity to be together just the two of us.

The school lunches were nothing to write home about except for the pea soup that I loved. It was junk but I liked it none the less and always asked for seconds. Dinner in our home was the one meal that was consistent. Mom was a terrific cook. Now and again she would make a Paella to die for or my favorite dish – Mom’s linguini with white clam sauce. From an early age I developed a love of soups and salads due to my Dad. This was also the time when we would go to Chinatown and I would order the snails in black bean sauce. My father would ritually buy this dish for me. This was one of the first outward signs, among others, that Dad treated me a little special. I had no way of knowing that this would have an adverse effect on my sister but it did. Candela loved the crab dish but Dad would rarely get that. The snails were also the cheapest thing on the menu, $2. Still I believe this to be one of the things that was the catalyst for some growing jealousy that my sister began to harbor toward me. Sometimes with good reason.

My father was very vocal about me becoming an artist, a fine artist, and paid more attention to me in this regard. For him it seemed a foregone conclusion that I would be a “Painter”. It was a blessing and a curse. All in all, in the end, it’s what saved me. Being too young of course to make decisions like this on my own, my Dad made the decision for me – guiding and encouraging me to study art and to think of it as a way of living as much as a profession. The classical guitar was a way of life for him. He instilled in me an understanding of the idea of the artist as being uncompromising when it came to the work. He showed disdain for the idea of doing commercial art work to get by. Unrealistic and uncompromising as it seemed it did have some benefits but it would all come with a huge price. Part of that price I would pay for dearly when I was older. Essentially on my own and making my way in the world, any safety nets that I could have constructed to buoy me through hard times were not well erected or blatantly ignored by me. Of course I would need them very much as the tides of fortune and change shifted this way and that. Would I have even listened to advice if I had been given it by then? Probably not.

Mary Help of Christians

There was a short haired, gray cat on the street in front of the Mary Help of Christians Catholic School I attended on the east side of NY. The cat was flattened, like a pancake but perfectly intact. Having come out of school and on my way home I happened to look down and saw this shocking sight. The poor little guy must have met up with a big truck’s tire, the weight of which had pressed him into the pavement absolutely flattening him, with what appeared to be entrails coming from his mouth. No one else seemed to notice him. This image stayed with me into adulthood.

Going to school on the East Side of Manhattan was arduous. Making matters worse, I would always lose my bus pass and end up walking home often all the way from East 11th and Ave. A  to West 11th and 6th Ave. where we lived. Sometimes I tried to make fake bus passes. I would have to get the same color paper to pull it off cause every month the color of the passes would change. When I was a kid the bus fare was 15 cents (in 1966 it went up to 20 cents). MHofC was made up mostly of Latinos: Spanish, Puerto Rican, some blacks. When I went to Saint Joseph’s School on the West Side some years later it was all Irish/Scottish. These being my two nationalities  Spanish/Irish it served me well. When at MHofC I was a “Spaniard”. When at SJ I was “Irish/Scot”. In this respect I fit in if you will.

There are some things I remember from those catholic school years in the mid ’60’s, one of which was embarrassing. The teacher had me stand at my chair in front of the whole classroom and asked what I ate for breakfast every morning. Instead of telling the truth, that I ate next to nothing usually, I lied, making up a whole list of foods: eggs and bacon, pancakes and waffles. The sad truth is I don’t remember eating much of a breakfast in those years at all. I might have had cereal now and again but I honestly don’t recall. When she asked me, I thought it was was strange. Strange to have me stand up like that and asked that question. To this day I don’t know what her point or her motive was. Did she somehow know that I hadn’t had much to eat before going to school? Did I show signs of being malnourished or was I overly active (what now-a-days would be labeled ADHD)? Why would she want to embarrass me?