I liked most of our activities at Camp Sussex: playing games like tag and hide-and-seek, and swimming in the roped-off section of the lake. Every once in a while bullies would pick on me, but my brother Bernie always came to my rescue. He got into many fights, but he never lost. When Bernie was in his late seventies he moved to Las Vegas, and I made sure to go see him at least twice a year. And every time I did we would always sing the song that they used to sing to us right when we got off the Camp Sussex bus.
“We welcome you to Sussex Camp
We’re mighty glad you’re here
We’ll send the air reverberating with a mighty cheer
Rah! Rah!
We’ll sing you in
We’ll sing you out
With all our praises we will shout
Hail! Hail!
The gang’s all here
And you’re welcome to Sussex Camp!”
Many years later I got the chance to thank Eddie Cantor for my time at Camp Sussex. I had begun writing for Sid Caesar in 1950 and had reason to attend a big charitable function at Madison Square Garden with him. I saw that one of the stars on the program was Eddie Cantor. I was still rather young and intimidated by all the big stars, but I gathered my courage and knocked on Eddie Cantor’s dressing room door. He said come in and I told him that I was one of the writers on Your Show of Shows and he exclaimed, “I love that show!”
I told him that when I was a little kid, I went to Camp Sussex and I thanked him for making that happen. Then I added, “By the way, my mother tells me that she knew you when you were both children and played together on Henry Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.”
“Yes,” he said, “I used to play on Henry Street every day when I was a kid. What was your mother’s name?”
I said, “Kitty Kaminsky.”
He ran it over a few times, “Kitty Kaminsky…Kitty Kaminsky…” He said, “I hate to tell ya, I knew every kid that I ever played with on Henry Street and I’m sorry, there was no Kitty Kaminsky.”
I couldn’t believe it. My mother never lied; she didn’t know how to lie. Crestfallen I said, “Well, thanks for saying hello” and shook his hand and went to the door. As I started to leave a burst of revelatory thought exploded in my head. “Wait!” I said. “Her name couldn’t have been Kitty Kaminsky. She was just a kid. She wasn’t married yet. Back then her name was Katie Brookman!”
He jumped out of his chair. “Katie Brookman! I loved her! A little redhead, freckles, blue eyes. Who knows, if Ida didn’t marry me I might have married your mother! She was really cute. I could have been your father! Then maybe I wouldn’t have had just five girls. I could have had a boy!”
I said, “You could have had four! I have three older brothers.”
We both broke into a fit of laughter. He said, “Katie Brookman, wow.”
As I left, I never felt so satisfied in my life—my mother hadn’t lied.
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When I was about eight or nine I learned to roller skate. I was doing fine until one night right after dinner when I was practicing my “spread-eagle turn,” a slow arc made by facing your heels together and turning your toes out to move in a smooth half circle. I remember being in the middle of doing one and being very happy with my progress when suddenly I was knocked down to the street and felt the front wheel of a car go over my belly. To this day I remember the great big ooff! that came out of my mouth.
I don’t know exactly what happened. Obviously I started my turn before I saw the car, and it suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hit me while I was in the middle of making my turn. I guess a little kid’s belly is like a rubber balloon, able to be squashed and then popping right back up. The next thing I knew I was in my brother Irving’s arms and he was rushing me to the corner drugstore. I remember onlookers blocking his path and Irving shouting at them, “Get out of the way, you stupid son of a bitch!”
I was shocked. I’d never heard my brother Irving curse before!
Soon enough, I was in an ambulance with Irving headed for St. Catherine’s Hospital. When I got there they put me on an X-ray table, took a picture, and put me in a hospital bed. The doctor told Irving that miraculously the X-ray showed nothing was wrong with me, but that they would keep me a few days for observation. No bones were broken and my organs seemed to be intact. Like I said, little kids’ bellies are made of rubber. And I was very lucky that the car that ran me over was a light model Ford that in the old days used to be called a “Tin Lizzie” or a “Flivver.” Thank goodness it wasn’t a Buick or a Cadillac, or I wouldn’t be telling this story.
St. Catherine’s was a Catholic hospital and the nurses were attired in nun’s garb. When they put me in my hospital bed a nun who looked not unlike a huge penguin approached me wearing a heavy wooden cross and holding a glass container in her hand and said, “Urinate in this.” When she saw the puzzled expression on my face she quickly added, “Make peepee into this.” I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.” I simply didn’t feel like peeing. She said, “If you don’t pee, we’ll have to shove something up in your peepee to get it out.” I quickly shouted, “Gimme that glass thing!”
I was in the hospital for three days, but it wasn’t so bad. There was always family around, I had nonstop visits from neighborhood friends and classmates, and somebody even brought me a Whitman’s Sampler, a whole box of delicious chocolate-covered candies, which made the whole thing worthwhile. I was the center of a lot of attention, which always felt good.
One of the other things I was interested in as a kid in Brooklyn was building model airplanes. They were mostly constructed with very light strips of material called balsa wood. We had a little club called the Balsa Bugs consisting of myself, Bernie Steinberg, and Tony Galliani. We made all kinds of planes, from WWI biplanes to single-engine light planes called Piper Cubs. They were all propelled by a rubber-band-driven propeller. Frankly, I think we liked sniffing the airplane glue that held them together more than any other part of the process.
Anyway, one Sunday afternoon after we had finished our doodling, Tony Galliani invited me to his home for a Sunday Italian spaghetti and meatballs dinner. Occasionally my mother would make spaghetti for me and my brothers that we thought was okay. It consisted of boiled egg noodles put into a casserole tray then doused with ketchup and baked until it was ready. My mother then cut squares from it and served them to us. It wasn’t bad, but (as I was about to find out) it really wasn’t spaghetti.
Tony’s apartment was redolent with a wonderful aroma of garlic, basil, and oregano. Already things were looking up! His wonderful, welcoming mother served me a great big dish of lightly al dente La Rosa spaghetti and meatballs swimming in a rich sea of tomato sauce and sprinkled with a generous helping of grated Parmesan cheese. What a revelation! It didn’t need anything—I salted it with my own tears of joy.
That night when I got back to our apartment I screamed, “I’ve tasted spaghetti! I know what spaghetti is now, and, Mom, no offense, but you don’t make spaghetti.”
I didn’t want to make a pest of myself, but every once in a while I would beg Tony to invite me to another Sunday afternoon spaghetti and meatballs dinner. Later on in my life, I think one of the reasons I married Anne Bancroft was the fact that her real name was Anne Italiano and, boy, could she make spaghetti.
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