he returned home after the war to resume his medical career. Other members of my family that fought in the war were my uncle, Sam Siegel, who fought at the battle of the bulge and two cousins, Russell and Jay Topper who fought in Europe as tankers with George Patton as best as I can remember. They all returned safely. During wartime, I busied myself as a student who participated in scrap and paper drives, “for the war effort.” I followed the course of the war religiously via radio, the newspapers and a one-hour news theater once per week when I went downtown to take my trumpet lesson. I think I knew every island hopping battle fought in the Pacific as well as following the European battles.
I have very little remembrance of my first year at Tuley high school spent at Sabin. I was a good student getting mostly S’s and some E’s in a system where S stood for superior, or A; E stood for Excellent or B; G stood for good, or C. The second year is when most activities started. I will divide them into three categories: academic, social and athletic.
Academically I did well ending up near the top of my class behind the two “biggest brains” Nick and George. Nick became an attorney and George, I believe, became a teacher and school principal. I realize that all the reading I had done as a pre-teen; the human body, medical history “Rats, Lice and History” by Hans Zinnser, etc, trained my brain in the memorization of facts, but my dislike of mathematical subjects (just getting by with good grades) and only doing the minimum of work would come to haunt me later in college. Although adults told me of math’s importance, I paid no attention to the wisdom of elders. After all, who knows more than a thirteen-year-old? Unfortunately, I had to get older to realize this almost fatal mistake (more when the book takes us to the college years). I took Latin as a foreign language. After all, didn’t doctors speak and write prescriptions in Latin?
As you can see, I missed the wisdom of my uncle, away in the Aleutian Islands where “I could see the Japanese pilots smiling in their cockpits.”
Socially, as regards the opposite sex, a few paragraphs should about do it for my four years of high school. I was sixteen and madly in love, we dated a few times and I took her to the junior prom. In addition, we went to the Daily News relays (an annual track and field meet) at the Chicago Stadium. This was the first time she witnessed track and field events. Amazed, she asked me, “What is that guy doing with the long pole?” I finally kissed her good night after the fourth or fifth date (only after asking permission) and subsequently learned that her father was an active member of the Communist Party. On one date, I picked her up at the Abraham Lincoln School in downtown Chicago (The Loop) and she asked me to sign my name on a guest (?) register. Ten years later when I filled out an application for the doctor draft (compulsory two years of military service), one of the questions was…have you ever been a member of one of the following subversive organizations? There it was…the Abraham Lincoln School.
I don’t remember the details about how the relationship ended, but it did. I believe she lost interest in continuing to date me and I lost track of her, but a friend of mine married her younger sister and I learned that she married a Professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago.
The area where I grew up had its rough elements as I learned the hard way. Walking down Walton Street with two friends, Lee and Fred, a younger boy on a bicycle approached and his bicycle must have hit an impediment, because, if I remember correctly, he fell off. I made a comment that he apparently did not take kindly, and he pedaled off in haste only to return within minutes with a group of older boys. The bicycle rider pointed me out, most of the older boys surrounded me, told my two friends to step back and one of them let me know that he was going to “Beat the s--t out of me.” Finding myself on the ground, arms and legs flailing in all directions, it soon became apparent to a surprised me that I was getting the best of him reflected by the massive amount of blood, from his nose, now all over my jacket. Since we were ruining the front yard of a neighbor, an adult man came out of his house, separated us and chased us away. My friends and I promptly left for our respective homes. I can still remember my shocked mother and grandmother when I entered the apartment and they saw the blood all over my jacket. “You should see the other guy,” was my only comment.
This little episode made the neighborhood a difficult place to walk around, and sure enough, within one week, my friend Lee and I were in a candy store on Walton near Francisco. I was interested in purchasing a ten-cent comic book displayed in the front window when my friend Lee pointed out to me that our friends, including the one I had the altercation with, were standing outside the store staring at us through the window. Lee panicked, but that and the knowledge that I had already licked this guy gave me some misplaced courage to say, “Don’t let them think you’re scared.” Then I walked outside the store, mingled between them while at the same time ignoring them and looking at the display in the front window while pointing out to the proprietor the comic book I wanted. I went back in the store, paid my ten cents, told Lee to act confident and follow me out of the store. They never touched us.
I soon began to envision myself as this heroic fellow working as a spy or a commando, landing on a dark beach in a clandestine attack.
If I only had the brains to save all those first edition comic books I purchased.
Another time, I attended a Tuley football game. The Second World War ended. The year was forty-six, possibly forty-seven. After the game, I was walking home, still near the stadium when someone struck me from behind causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. Without thinking, my spontaneous reaction was to say, “Who do you think you’re pushing?” and as I looked up, I saw a group of older young men dressed in Navy uniforms. At the sound of my voice they stopped and one of them said, “Hey, there’s the guy that said the Navy’s full of s--t.” With that, several of them attacked me, knocked me against a fence, threw me on the ground and began to pummel me unmercifully. That seemed to be lasting forever until, out of the corner of my eye, I could see two of my classmates running toward me, leap into the air, land feet first on the faces of my two assailants causing them to turn their attention away from me. Joe Greco and another friend of his started beating them without let-up. A Tuley assistant principal pulled me away and local police rushed upon the scene and ended the fight. I went home on the bus, hoping that this episode had ended.
I don’t want the reader to get the impression that I attended a rough high school. In my experience, the above were the only violent episodes in four years. Tuley had an excellent reputation academically all through the twenties, thirties, and forties when my aunt Harriet used to walk to school with Saul Bellow, the future Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
Athletically, I involved myself in two sports. The three dollar tennis racket that my mother purchased for me, and the Humboldt Park practice routine playing pick-up games put me in good stead, for I made the team early and became number two singles my junior year. Not all Chicago high schools had tennis teams, but the suburban teams did have teams and they were the powerhouses of tennis in the Chicago area, a reflection of the wealthy suburbs where tennis courts graced back yards and wealthy suburbanites gave their children tennis lessons. We played against tennis teams from the city and the suburbs, and as number two singles, I won every match my junior year. My number one singles teammate, Bill, and I qualified as one of four Chicago tennis doubles teams to vie for the state championship, but the suburban team we played against, Riverside, defeated us in the first round, thanks to my sloppy play. As a reward for winning all my number two matches as a junior, Coach Tortorelli promoted me to number one singles my senior year. I promptly rewarded his insight by not winning a single match. Obviously, the level of competition at the number one single’s level was a level or more above.
Basketball was the second and only other high school sport I participated in, a sport where I learned my craft at the Deborah Boy’s Club on Division Street, the low ceiling, low arch required shot where I played almost daily pick-up games and where different teams competed in various tournaments. Enough of those games and, as some told me, natural athletic talent, made it possible for me to make the senior team. By senior team, I mean the team for boys five foot eight inches or taller as there was also a junior team for boys less than five feet eight. I worked my way up the ranks, so that by the time I became a senior, I was in the running for the starting first team. I remember at the time feeling that this decision would be the most important thing that could