There Was a Horse

A-S on Jewish Long Island in the1950s

May 17, 2024

I can hardly write the word, “anti-Semitism”. (As such, it’s abbreviated in my subtitle as “A-S”). It’s so pervasive these days, like a new modern-day plague, the one replacing the formerly ubiquitous COVID of just a few years ago. Now it’s “anti-Semitism” - on the left, on the right, on Capitol Hill, on college campuses, in our places of worship and K-12 schools, in our homes (including my own), throughout our nation, and throughout the entire world, civilized and otherwise.

There’s no politically correct point of view, or better side of the fence to be on. Even we Jews, ourselves, are absolutely divided, as are the young and old, radicals and conservatives, parents and children, siblings, extended families… the whole damn lot of us.

Here in Santa Fe, however, the entire issue… the Israeli-Hamas-Palestine-Gaza war/genocide (call it what you choose) is kept amazingly and astounding…. quiet. So much so that… one would think that it’s not even “an issue”. As if little ol’ Santa Fe, tucked secludedly away, as it is, in the American Southwest’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains… doesn’t even get the news. But guess what? It does. We do. Not just via the local Santa Fe New Mexican, but guess what else? We have the Internet here. And access to the New York Times, and Time Magazine, and Robert Friedman, and Robert Reich, and even ol’ Dather Rather and astute historian, Heather Cox Richardson, both on Substack.

Still… there are no… anti-war demonstrations, public displays of anti-Semitism, student protests (except at UNM in Albuquerque), and as far as my own personal experience, no conversations… at all… about the entire “issue” at hand.

As I said, it amazes me, although I can’t say it disappoints me.

I’d rather read about it on my own and form my own opinions, thank you.

But no worries. I do have my own personal experience with, and I will write it out from here forward, “anti-Semitism”. More than my share, as the saying goes, Or to be honest, I’ll just say - my share.

Because there was a time… when I didn’t know the first thing about it. Anti-Semitism. For most of my first 12 years. A very long time, I’d say, for most children… born of a Jewish family.

But not of the Trules family. An upwardly mobile, Ashkenasy Jewish, 1st-generation, post-World War 2, first-ever New York suburban homeowning family - of the Ike-Eisenhower conservative 1950s (see more below).

I originally wrote about it online on May 7, 2014 - on my Trules Rules WordPress blog. About the sort of repressed anti-Semitism in my high school in Westbury, New York. In the 1950s.

I’d told the story before I posted it to some of my high school friends with whom I was still close. It had a surprising reaction. Some friends identified with my story (even my sister); others absolutely did not.

I didn’t know there was anti-Semitism in our high school. Really? I never experienced any. Are you sure?
Positive. Everything in my story happened to me at Clarke. I just changed some names.

Then…. as things posted on the internet have a way of doing… someone from my old high school class… read my post and… re-posted it… on our Classmates High School Web Page.

And all hell broke loose.

Semites, anti-Semites. Those on the Jewish side of the tracks, those on “the other side”.

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone posted.

So sorry.
Not me.
Etc. Etc.

I won’t say anymore.

Here’s the original post (in lowercase, as I used to write back in the day):

may 7, 2014

there was a horse. a golden palomino. “ginger”. like her color. a perfect, golden palomino. no bridle, no saddle, just naked and free. across the street on valentines road. on the bolson estate. tall oak trees, green grass, and a golden horse. she would come up to the fence and let us pet her. or sometimes, feed her apples. whenever she felt like it. she was there before us. the first horse i remember. probably the first i ever saw. “ginger”.

we were the newcomers in1953. i was six years old. my sister had just been born a year before. in levitttown, new york. long island. the first suburb in america. built for GI joes (my dad's actual name), coming home from world war 2. america was in her first glow of empire glory, one of the world's two new, post-war "super powers". and after the "great depression" and five long and terrible years of a devastating war, her generous GI bill offered her victorious returning soldiers a free education, a job back in the workplace, and a good deal on a house.

and... after another 5 years of president "ike" eisenhower's buttoned-down prosperity, my parents upgraded again... buying their second and last house on valentines road, just 5-10 miles away from levittown... in westbury, new york. not "old westbury", home of the sprawling, manicured estates of the whitneys and vanderbuilts, but just plain "westbury", across from newly built salisbury park and just a 5-minute car ride from the long island railroad, which would take my dad and his commuter neighbors into "the city", manhattan, five days a week, to "bring home the bacon" and to raise their families.

we lived at 1969 valentines road.

hence… "1969", the year, was always there... an eternally long time away... always looming, beckoning, inviting me... into my prescripted future.

my son, the doctuh

that's what my future held, at least in the eyes of my russian-jewish parents and grandparents who had emigrated to america via ellis island just around the time of the 1917 russian revolution. little did i know that i would graduate college in 1969, a long-haired participant in the counter-culture, with “no direction known”, and so many light years away from my family's well-intended expectations.

no, back then, in 1953, my parents, joe and roz, had bought the last of the "model houses" on valentines road for the new suburban development called "birchwood". ours was a one-story "ranch house", with three bedrooms, a front and back yard, a knotty pine "den", and an enclosed, mosquito-proof "back porch". pretty damn luxurious for GI joe and his hard-working neighbors, siegman, rubin, reiss, silverman, and schwartz, all of whom worked in the "schmata", or garment, industry around broadway and 40th streets in the heart of manhattan.

me and the rest of the kids on valentines road, howie siegman, dennis silverman, roy reiss, arnold rubin, stevie schwartz... we all watched the rest of the neighborhood being built in front of our eyes. from the ground up. first the concrete foundation. then the wooden frames. eventually the glass windows.... all of which we continually and joyously broke with well-aimed stones as fast as we possibly could. it was a wonder to us how they ever finished building the neighborhood because we used the entire "development" as our backyard, playing king of the hill on the mounds of black earth turned over by yellow "bulldozers", eventually playing stickball and basketball behind the new elementary school. we were all “kings” and “princes” of the hill back then.

in a way, we were also witnesses to the first "gentrification" of our neighborhood... even though it wasn't called that back then, nor would we, or our parents, ever have known what the word even meant. but where once, eleanor roosevelt was rumored to have grown up, right across the street from us on valentines road, in the big old rickety, white wooden house, right next to the aforementioned bolson estate, both with uselessly-sharp protective fences around their perimeters, our new street was entirely "modern", built with tiled bathrooms, asphalt streets, air-conditioning, and perfect, all-weather plumbing (or so they thought until the annual hurricanes devastated and collapsed all our front yard’s septic tanks).

so no, we certainly weren't the whitneys or vanderbuilts, but yeah, we had all the modern conveniences, comforts, and amenities that 1950s america could offer its new, first-time suburban homeowners... on long island, new yawk... all for $18,000 a pop.

but then when i was 12 years old... everything changed. not only school, when we were moved from salisbury elementary, right up the street, to w. tresper clarke, the new brick-built high school, a long walk away, but also... childhood itself changed. you see, what i never knew about birchwood... was that everyone was the same. in a very particular way, that is.

we were all... jewish.

of course, you knew that, just by reading those names above. but me? not really. sure, i already went to "hebrew school" to learn this strange, backward, phonetically-pronounced language of my ancestors, and to prepare for the bar mitzvah i never wanted, but i never really understood what it meant. not only the words themselves, which for some idiotic reason, they never taught us the meaning of, but also what it meant... to be jewish.

in 1958, clarke high was only half built. still, with the post-war baby boom, salisbury elementary was overflowing with kids, so... they decided to ship us, the 5th graders, mostly from birchwood - to the first completed hallway of clarke. we were the inaugural class. i was in miss locklege's class. she was a first-time teacher with curly red hair and glasses. i had a crush on her and waved wildly to her every day after school as she drove past our house on valentines road in her turquoise and white chevy bel air.

but then, in 1959, the next year, things changed even more. they finished the 2nd hallway of classrooms in clarke, and they bused in a whole different crew of kids. we birchwood kids, who had grown up with each other our whole childhoods, didn't know any of them. they had names like scalisi and o'farrell. donahue and acerra.

bennett mc connor had vaseline all over his pimply face, and even more grease on his slicked-back red hair. these kids were complete aliens to us birchwooders. but... we were all thrown together down the hall in mr. dillon's class. it was weird, even before we used the word "weird".

still, i was able to work my magic in the school bathroom, when i made a "deal" with acerra and mc connor to nominate me for class president, if I let them play first base and pitch softball. i “won” the "election", even though i'd sort of rigged it myself. i was still popular and i even almost had a girlfriend, lisa delaney, a tomboy with bobbi sox, but little did i know that it was soon to be my last hurrah.

one day, acerra and mc connor, scalisi and dwayne "jungle bunny" graybandt, all kids "from the other side of the tracks", came over to valentines road. it was a big deal. i didn't know exactly how, but it was. i introduced them to ginger, the horse. the golden palomino on the bolson estate. i went inside my house while they all waited outside, across the street at the fence, and i got some apples to feed ginger.

these were tough kids, but they were afraid of ginger.

they'd never seen a horse before. they thought she'd bite their hands off if they fed her an apple. but i showed them how to do it, with a flat palm, and eventually... they all succeeded, except mc connor. he was still too afraid. but i remember, it was a glorious day. my friends walked all the way over to valentines road, to a neighborhood far away from their own. they fed appleas to ginger, the golden palomino. then they walked all the way back to clarke, then all the way back home to their own neighborhood. this had never happened before.

then one day, my green schwin bicycle got stolen.

i had locked it in the school's underground parking garage. at the bike rack like usual. but after school when i went to get it, it wasn't there. it was such a strange feeling, you know? i was sure exactly where i had locked it, and so i was confused when it wasn't there. i walked home, feeling guilty and empty, and i told my parents. i don't know what they said to chastise or console me, but the next day, the shit hit the fan.

hey, look, jimmy, the kike lost his bike.
hahahahah!

jimmy biscotti laughed with martin o'flaherty, the big burly 6th grader, who went on to become state wrestling champion, and even back then in the 6th grade, he was intimidating enough for me to keep my mouth shut and just slink on by.

what's a kike? i asked my parents when i got home from school that day.
who said that? my mother asked angrily.
martin o'flaherty, i told her.

i knew he'd said something bad. this time my dad chimed in equally angrily.

was he one of your friends over here the other day?
no, i said. what did i do wrong?
nothing. nothing at all. my father said. did you tell your teacher?
no, i said defensively. what for?
i want you to tell mr. dillon or mr. sullivan tomorrow, my mother said pointedly.
nooo, i whined. martin o'flaherty will beat me up and tell all his friends.

my mother and father looked at each other, like they had to decide how to proceed. like they had to decide whether to give me the bad news.

do you know what that word means? my mother asked gravely.
no, i guess it's a bad word, huh?
yes, it's a very bad word.
what does it mean? i asked again.
it's just an ugly, mean word that some people use to call jewish people.
what for?
well, my mother looked over at my father. you know about the holocaust, right?
yeah.
well, you know that hitler and the nazis killed millions of jews during world war 2, right?
yeah.
well, those people who killed jews and who still hate jews are called anti-semites. and martin o'flaherty is an anti-semite.

i didn't know what to say.

well, how did martin o'flaherty and jimmy biscotti know that i was jewish?
that's a good question, my father said steadily.
well, how? i insisted.
well, i don't really know the answer. but probably martin o'flaherty's parents or... his friends... just knew... somehow... they knew... they know... that you and your friends are... jewish.

this was a hard lesson i was learning.

but how could he tell? do i look jewish?
i really don't know, son, but some people think that jewish people have certain features that make them look... jewish.
really?

i was just so curious and amazed.

like what?
like.... my father winced and looked again at my mother. like.... for example... curly hair and long noses.
but i don't have curly hair or a long nose.

it was true. i used green, goopy jeris hair tonic, to harden my hair into a part on the left side with a pompadour. and what about my nose? it was just... a nose. what were they talking about?

but that's the way i learned. because that wasn't the first time martin o'flaherty, or his copycat younger brother, gerald o'flaherty, called me "kike" or "yid" or "jew boy". that wasn't the first time i had to hold my tongue when they told me "i sucked"... even though i didn't know what sucking was and when i asked my parents, they didn't seem to know either.

and that wasn't the first time that me and my birchwood friends, siegman, reiss, silverman, rubin, and schwartz had to endure humiliating, derogatory, and scary antisemitic attacks from the foul mouths and hard fists of the italian and irish kids "on the other side of the tracks".

hell, i never even wanted to get bar mitzvahed in the first place. and my parents were the only ones on valentines road, and maybe in all of birchwood, who weren't members of temple sholom with rabbi bernstein and cantor flocker.

this wasn't my fault. i wanted nothing to do with it.

after the 6th grade, i was tested out of the general school population and put reluctantly into the "e" program. i think it meant "accelerated" even though they called it the stupid "e" program.

i begged my mother not to put me there.

please, mom, i don't want to be in classes with nicky blumberg. he has coke bottle glasses. he doesn't play any sports. he's a nerd."
eric, son, this is a special program. for smart children. it will give you opportunities that other children don't have. it will help you get into a good college."
i don't care, mom! please don't make me go. i'll lose all my friends. i'll hate it. i know i will.

but off i went. to the gallows.

and hate it i did. and lose all my friends. i did that too. bruce acerra became senior class president. bennett mc connor pitched varsity baseball and made the all-star team. and they never came over to valentines road again. they all had girlfriends and i never had one. i never went on a date and i never asked jeannie winters to the prom. i became socially awkward. i was ostracized because i was smart. the o'flahertys and the biscottis called me anti-semitic, jew-hating names, and dwayne "jungle bunny" graybandt stopped speaking to me.

and ginger, the horse? the perfect golden palomino?

she died.

and the uselessly-sharp fences around the bolson and the roosevelt estates?

they were torn down.

and new concrete and asphalt neighborhoods were built in their stead.

and me...?

i grew up....

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There Was a Horse

A-S on Jewish Long Island in the1950s

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