Half Moon Rising

A little bit of Albany history...

By the beginning of the 20th century, Albany had become an important, versatile transportation center connecting major markets throughout the Northeast, just as the railroads were beginning to surpass riverboats as the primary mode of transportation. The Delaware & Hudson Railroad company, one of the largest in the country, responded to this boom by building one of the most elegant buildings in the State of New York for its headquarters. Overlooking the mighty Hudson on one side, and surrounding a beautiful green plaza on the other, it formed the focal point of lower State Street, with the New York State Capital building in full view at the upper end.

At the time the new building was being conceived, it was common to look to specific precedents in the architecture of the past for inspiration. Thus, Architect Marcus T. Reynolds selected the Guild Hall of the Cloth Makers in Ypres, Belgium (also known as the Cloth Hall) as the primary model for the new building. Begun in 1205 and completed in the 15th Century, its architectural style was early Flemish Gothic. By coincidence, the Cloth Hall at Ypres was destroyed by German artillary fire in November of 1914, shortly after work was begun on its counterpart in Albany.

To commemorate Henry Hudson's trip up the river in 1609, Reynolds chose a model of Hudson's ship, the "Half Moon" as the crowning ornament of the central tower of the new building. Regularly refinished in goldleaf, this landmark is the largest working weathervane in North America, measuring seven feet long and nearly ten feet high, and sails high above the Albany skyline to this day.

School of Hard Rocks, Part II

On the way to my first day at Schuyler I had to walk past McCloskey High, and felt a twinge of shame and sadness as I waved and said hello to a number of good friends and former fellow students. It also didn't help that I had to retrace the walk that Father Turner and I had taken just a few days earlier, and probably would have to take every school day from now on. There was some comfort in the fact that I was wearing jeans to school for the first time in my life, though; after all, I had just won my freedom, hadn't I? And wasn't this the first of many rewards? Well, like many things in life, turns out it wasn't necessarily so.

I would soon learn that my tough guy status was not directly transferable to other schools, especially if that school is the end of the line for troubled kids, a place where wiseguys were a dime a dozen. My bargain-basement bravado would soon be tested by barbarians at the school gates; I would be mingling with some of Albany's meanest and baddest boys, and they had no respect for illusions.

Sitting in the same class with legendary figures like Hiawatha White, a gang leader whose feats in battle had earned him his name and elevated him to near-mythical status in the South End, or the Sumo-sized Charlie Smith, who once picked up a manhole cover and caved in a guy's head with it during a fight in front of Sad Sam's Bar on Sheridan Avenue, was enough to take the wind right out of my sails. In English class I would sit next to the leader of a motorcycle gang called The Outlaws who had recently been spotted gnawing a pig's head while sitting on his Harley in Thatcher Park, and would keep engine parts under his desk. Mongols. Huns. Philistines. I thought wistfully of my run-ins with Father Turner and Sister Marie Frances, but there was no way back.

This might be a good place to point out that in the 1950s, these soon-to-be-lionized characters weren't called 'Greasers'; they were called 'Hoods', a shortened version of 'hoodlum', a term popularized during the Gangster Era in the 1930s. They were the guys who came to school with greased-back hair, wearing denim jeans and a white t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, a red nylon jacket ala James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, or motorcycle jacket and boots like Marlon in The Wild One. They were not universally loved and admired back then, either; they were outcasts, rebels, troublemakers. They weren't nice guys. In fact, they didn't get to date cheerleaders until they were transformed by Hollywood in the 1970s, in movies like Grease and The Lords of Flatbush, into cultural heroes.

Philip Schuyler did seem a bit strange at first; nearly everyone was on time, teachers were treated with respect, the halls were quiet and orderly... not at all what I expected. Where was the blackboard jungle, where rebellious youth decided things, and we could come and go as we pleased? When I asked the usual suspects while copping a smoke in the boy's room, all I got for an answer was, You'll find out if you ever get sent to the Principal's Office. Now, I had already met Ben Becker, and I could see why you wouldn't want to tangle with him. A former pro boxer who had discovered and trained Sugar Ray Robinson, among others, he parted the hallway crowds like the Red Sea when he ventured out of his office.

One morning when I walked into my homeroom about 20 minutes late, Mr. Sheehy confronted me about it. I told him just what he could do with himself, and he grabbed my jacket and led me firmly down the hall to the Principal's Office, where I had to cool my heels for at least an hour and build up a good head of steam. Finally the secretary informed me, with an odd look, I thought, that the Principal was ready to see me. Ben Becker sat behind his massive oak desk for a full minute or so, without moving or saying a word. He just sat there looking at me, as though he were psyching me out before the battle began. Then he began to explain what he expected of the students at Philip Schuyler, and when he finished he asked me to tell him what it was that I expected from him. Nothing, I said. Then, silence.

Now the one other crucial bit of information I had learned in the boy's room was that if he began to fold the pinky on his left hand (which apparently didn't work well without boxing gloves on), that I might as well start saying my prayers. Of course, until that moment, I didn't believe a word of it. Besides, I had the role of a tough guy in this movie. Then, well, hell's bells, if he wasn't tucking that little finger in and walking around the desk. I must have still had a look of complete disbelief on my face when the blow came. I hit the floor like a useless sack of potatoes. The next thing I knew the secretary was giving me a drink of water.

In April, 1967, Time magazine wrote of Ben Becker's accomplishments at Philip Schuyler High School in a piece entitled Academy of Hard Cases: "Schuyler is not an ordinary high school, nor is Becker an ordinary principal. Located in Albany's slum-ridden South End, it is an academy for hard cases... many of the students come from broken homes, still others are dropouts from other schools... Becker himself has a broken nose, scar tissue around his eyes—and a brain-jolting jab in his fists. A boy who abuses a teacher will be challenged by his principal to a quiet meeting behind closed doors. The problem is usually solved after Becker flattens the youth with a left cross... No Problem Kids. Backed by the Albany Board of Education, Becker has proved that tough but fair discipline is a remarkable impetus to learning."

I was never sent to his office again. I went on to graduate a few years later, made it out of the slums by joining the Air Force, where I became a Russian linguist in the Intelligence Service, and later a college professor. Many a time I have recalled that day, and tried to calculate how much I owed him. Never could figure that one out, but it must amount to quite a bit. In my senior year, Ben took a leave of absence to take a group of young men to Rome, Italy, where one of them won a gold medal in boxing. His name was Cassius Clay.

I hear tales to this day of inner city schools that are completely out of control, schools in which teachers are insulted and even physically assaulted by their students, and I think of Ben Becker. Whether it was giving his camel's hair coat to a student who came to school in winter without one, or keeping a closet full of prom dresses for some of the poorer students who might not otherwise be able to attend, Becker influenced an untold number of lives for the better, with his own unique philosophy of tough love and high expectations. Mine, I can proudly say, was one of them. Me, Sugar Ray, and Cassius Clay.

The Same Spring

Springtime now and that magic scent is in the air, that rising perfume of softening earth and newcoming life that still tells me, even 60 years later - even in Japan - that it's time for me and my buddies to drag out and polish all our marbles – handfuls of cat's eyes and immies and puries and alleys and steelies (the most majestic and intimidating steelies came from kids whose dads worked on the railroad), and what a sight it was to behold, when the treasure of last year's marbles came cascading from can or bag into your hand!

In that moment Spring returned, the marbles bringing again to their possessors the mystic heft and power alive in that rainbow gleam; with that mysteriously delicious clacking together in bag or hand, a kid's marbles foretold whole seasons of potency yet unfathomed, they augured fun and victory and marble-trading and all the other stuff that goes to filling life in new Spring hearts...

Then one day on the way home from school, right beside the sidewalk or anywhere else there was a reasonably flat piece of bare earth, with one heel you'd dig a just-right-sized hole in the new Springsoft ground for Holies, get down in the dirt and begin to play according to ancient but arcanely flexible rules that everyone seemed to know and agree on yet had never learned, and whole seasons of afternoons would slip magically away...

That same playtime perfume also tells me as it always has that it's time to dust off the yo-yo (mine was silver with a gold stripe) and practice sleeping and the cradle and walk-the-dog and loop-the-loop and all the other yo-yo moves on the way to yo-yo pro-dom before the Philippino yo-yo stars came to the yo-yo store to stand for an afternoon and show us how it's really done, then demonstrate in kid-jaw-dropping fashion all the new tricks there are in the vast yo-yo book, completely absorbing the kidcrowd in their yo-yoing virtuosity; then at the end of the show, for a small fee they'd carve something special into the sides of your yo-yo (while carefully maintaining its balance), like a far-away island where a palm tree with coconuts on it waved in the tropical breeze, and how that yo-yo would do magic for the next few weeks, though never as good as the guys in front of the yo-yo store on that one afternoon each Spring...

And now from the vantage of age I look at the same Spring sky as then, and say: Thanks for all the marbles and yo-yos...

Hot Rod Fever

Blandly mother
takes him strolling
by railroad and by river
-he's the son of the absconded
hot rod angel-
and he imagines cars
and rides them in his dreams
xxx- from Wild Orphan by Allen Ginsberg


I was daydreaming about current events while Mrs. Taylor droned on and on about American History, I think, in the middle of an unseasonably warm spring afternoon. This particular dream involved a '32 Ford coupe with 16 coats of hand-rubbed cherry red lacquer, a Chevy V8 engine with dual carbs, fat slicks in the back, laker pipes and moon hubcaps all around. Visions of rolled and pleated white naugahyde danced in my head. My dream car was gestating.

All well and good, as far as dreams go, but I knew it would never go much further. My dream life had become quite active since my father left for California and we ended up in the South End of Albany, on welfare. Life was tough, but dreams were free, and it was a great way to improve upon a badly-designed universe. Not that the Designer was paying much attention, mind you, but I was already working on the rough sketches with pencil and paper. Like many dreamers before me, I was a damn good artist.

When things were coming apart, when the dull and the incomprehensible conspired against me, I could always slip into a chopped and channeled roadster, examine the curves of a 550 Spyder, or catch the gleam in the eye of a radically altered '49 Merc, like the one dad drove away in. There was no reason to hurry in this parallel world; it might take me a whole week of study halls to capture the reflections on a chrome hubcap. The angle of a Firestone tire turning into a curve would be studied with the same intensity that Michelangelo contemplated the dome of the Basilica di San Pietro, with the results just as satisfying.

The stripped-down street rod itself was a work of minimalist art; it was rebellious, dangerous, and sexy; it spoke of power, freedom, individualism and innovation, and like many of America's most enduring cultural icons, it was born in the mythical land of California.

When the war ended in 1945, hundreds of young men returned home with newfound mechanical skills and a burning desire to build their dream cars. In the backyards and garages of Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank, they took things into their own hands and created some of the most innovative machines ever to run a redlight. Although racing them was initially confined to dry desert lakebeds, street racing soon caught on in other parts of the country, and the hot rod became a fixture on the list of America's social problems, right up there with juvenile delinquency and teenage gangs. Like the rock music that blasted from its radio, it quickly became a symbol for the dark side of American youth, and an early sign of the cultural revolution to follow. I was solidly hooked. They were rockin' my dreams.

Then one day I saw an ad in the paper for a 1930 Model A 5-window coupe, selling for a measly one hundred dollars. I didn't have the money to buy it, of course, but I knew where I could get it. Tony Donahue was several years older than us, worked for the New York Central railroad, had a Magnavox hi-fi and an impressive record collection. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time at his house. As a drummer with my own band, I spoke rock'n'roll fluently, and had become his de facto music consultant. Since he would usually pick up just about anything I'd recommend, it was, in a sense, my record collection as much as his. I decided to try and parlay this power into a major move into the magical world of hotrodding.

A few days later I was behind the wheel of a Model A, hooked to the bumper of Tony's '54 Ford Glasstop Victoria, weaving our way through Albany traffic. It was tricky business with a rope. I had to stay completely on top of things in order to hit the brakes as soon as his brake lights went on. At this one intersection, though, somebody pulled out in front of him thinking he had time to stop. The margin of error was very slim; I never even got my foot on the brake pedal before I smashed head-on into his beautiful coral paintjob. We limped the rest of the way to Chris Hoffman's garage, but the damage had been done. If we thought it was going to be difficult to begin building our masterpiece before the accident, it had suddenly become impossible.

The dream didn't die immediately, however. We would regularly gather at the garage for planning meetings, which usually consisted of each of us getting a turn sitting behind the wheel with a Lucky Strike in our mouth, arm resting on the window, rolled-up sleeves and a far away look in our eyes. This lasted a couple of months before we finally gave up the dream and handed the car over to a real master, Bobby Hennig, who eventually turned it into something we could all look at wistfully as it crawled down Elm Street with a low rumbling sound. For me, it was back to the drawing board, where I was already working on a few new dreams.

The End of the Dark Ages

Back in 1956, when it had been dark for over a thousand years, a primal scream to match the one that had been building in the breasts of white America since way before the Middle Ages pulsed out over local airwaves and touched like the outstretched finger of God the straining antennae of thousands of carfuls of yearning teenagers who were cruising the unending highways of darkness, searching for something in the cosmos to nourish their hungry hearts.

"YEEEAOOOHHHOHAHHOHAOUGGHH!!!!!!!!"

Across the benighted land, a million nimble teenage car radio operators' fingers tuned in to that miracle; they knew that scream: that was the scream so long pent up in their very own souls, the scream passed down unscreamed through silent generations gone before, a scream given voice at last by Screamin' Jay Hawkins as a favor to us all, and cast upon that evening's airwaves by the hand of the Hound, a late night deejay out of Buffalo (later pallidly imitated by Wolfman Jack); and lo, the million tuned-in fingers turned tens of thousands of car radio volume knobs as far to the right as they would go, filling the night air to overflowing at last, for all the silently hungry country, with the breathtakingly unrestrained tones of I Put a SSSpell on You, Becaaaauu-hauuusse You're Mi-hiiine!!!

Into tens of thousands of young hearts poured the true sound of illumination, pushing the soulpedal right to the floor; in less than four bars the Dark Ages were gone forever, and sky-high decibels of genuine righteousness went screaming down the highways of the world.

School of Hard Rocks

I must have been staring at that page for a good ten minutes. It remained as blank as my mind, except for the few shards of information I was able to scratch out at the top: name, date, subject, school. There was nothing else to add. Or subtract. Or multiply. A mid-term test in algebra and I couldn't answer a single damn question; in fact, didn't know the first thing about it, and didn't care. So, rather than sit and stare at it for another forty minutes, I walked to the front of the room, handed the empty page to Sister Ann Marie, and walked out into the hallways of Cardinal McCloskey High. It turned out to be a pivotal moment in my young, sin-soaked life.

No sooner had I closed the door than I heard a voice behind me, "Where do you think you're going?", and realized it was the one person I didn't expect to run into: The Principal. "Come with me;", he said. "I'm going out to mail some letters." Father Turner, a stern man given to few words, was utterly silent as we walked past the Governor's mansion, home of Nelson Rockefeller, and down the hill to the mailbox on the corner. We then walked back up the hill in the deepening silence, and upon reaching the stairs, he turned to me and said, "Go empty your locker, and don't come back here again.", an eerie echo of Jesus' words to the woman caught in adultery, "Go, and sin no more.", except for the complete absence of Christ's love. For the first time in recent memory, I actually obeyed.

My mother, poor soul, had just gotten me back into school three days earlier after a scandalous event the weekend before. A friend and I had showed up at the dance on Saturday night with a bottle of bourbon, and before you could say Shake it, baby, Shake it!, had gotten pretty toasted. One of us (I swear to God I don't know who to this day) got the brilliant idea to slash Father Gillespie's tires, for some odd reason; perhaps to impress the girls. Being the only ones on the gym floor who could barely stand up (let alone dance), however, proved to be a dead giveaway, and the Albany police had to chauffeur me home, again.

Now, why had I become such a problem? Perhaps it was because Father Turner had not long before turned a deaf ear to Mom's pleas for mercy, after informing her that she had been excommunicated on the grounds of divorce. It seemed to me that God Himself had deserted us in our hour of greatest need, yet I was expected to respect and obey His minions without question. This was more than any self-respecting angry young man should have to put up with; they would have to put me on the rack first. Fortunately, I escaped before they got around to it; I was accepted at the only school that would take me: Philip Schuyler High School, the end of the line for many, an unapologetically pagan school which, if I recall correctly, was ranked just above Sing Sing, and located in what would someday be known as the Inner City. My one consolation was that I would now be able to wear jeans to school. Rock with me, baby; my official term in office as a Juvenile Delinquent had just begun.

To be continued.....

Cold Warriors

"...and these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them."

The World Set Free, H.G.Wells, 1914


I can still recall standing on the couch next to Mom, looking out the window of our second floor apartment, amazed at the spectacle below, not fully understanding that it was a true historic moment, but quite able to feel the excitement of it all. Benny Goodman was blaring from a speaker outside Dyers' grocery store and the streets were filled with a surging crowd of dancing, kissing, hugging, deliriously happy people. "The war is over, honey;", Mom said, "Daddy's coming home."

That moment would prove to be the high point of a long, slow slide into another kind of war, though - a much colder kind of war which would eventually permeate our cozy little world, and one day lead each of us to opposite sides of the planet in defense of the Motherland. In the meanwhile, however, we would have to make do with confronting our new enemies, The Commies, in comic books, movies, and backyard battles.

Once Uncle Joe had The Bomb, my friends, fear and paranoia spread throughout the land. We now had to learn how to 'duck and cover' in our classrooms at St. James (a lot of good that would do), and began to read stories in the Times-Union about people building bomb shelters in their backyards. There were air raid drills, when sirens throughout the city would alert all good citizens that it was time to either be ducking and covering at home, or finding their assigned air raid shelters. I was once out alone on the streets during one of these exercises; it was like being in a B-movie about the end of the world.

Much later, as budding young bohemians grown used to the threat of annihilation, we would spend endless summer days filled with angst and longing on the steps of the National Commercial Bank on Pearl Street, bumming Lucky Strikes and typically savoring a page from Gregory Corso’s ‘Bomb’, torn out and stashed in Marty’s wallet, to be retrieved at exceptionally fertile moments. Lines from that poem still reverberate in my head....

Turtles exploding over Istanbul
The jaguar's flying foot
Soon to sink in arctic snow
Penguins plunged against the Sphinx

There was a rich, dark comfort in those words, like hot whiskey in the belly. We were young men living in the face of doom, surrounded by the empty faces of a dying world as it drifted toward oblivion. We were impatient, irreverent, too smart for our own good; and, some might say, we just wanted to get laid.

Little did we suspect that the bomb had already come and gone. A nuclear cloud, blown all the way from a test site in Nevada, passed over Albany in April of 1953* and collided with a bank of thunderstorms, dumping its deadly contents on us unawares. As full-blooded teenagers, we knew instinctively that the world was doomed; we just couldn’t see, taste, smell or feel the scope of it, nor have any inkling that it was already in our midst. We were waiting for the big bang; we didn't know it would arrive like an x-ray. But we were cool.

*The nuclear cloud was from a surface shot called SIMON, conducted on April 25, 1953 as part of a series of atomic tests at Camp Desert Rock, Nevada. The fallout reached upstate New York thirty-six hours after the detonation, where a thunderstorm brought it to earth in an area estimated to be about 7000 square miles, centering on Albany. A nuclear physicist writing in Science magazine calculated that the thyroids of 10,000 infants in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area could have received from 10 to 30 rads from the radioiodine in their milk, which was contaminated by the fallout - enough to produce from 10 to 100 cases of thyroid cancer over the next 20 years. SIMON had exceeded its expected yield by up to 43 kilotons, nearly four times the yield of Hiroshima.