GLADIATOR HERMIT

"TRAIN HARD,FIGHT EASY." Marshall Suslov, the Red Army "Hero of Stalingrad" WWII

aloha again,
where were we?
Fredrick Douglass JHS,still in Harlem. they took the girls away.in the Gladiator School ghetto they took the female humanizng/socializing factor of girls away and put us in an all boy school. to compensate they made us were ties,everyday,ties. if u forgot your tie they gave you a brightly painted wooden cut out labeled TIE.
the school was old big & scary.
there were kids there on the 5th floor who would never graduate,too hard core dumb & thuggish, they had to stay until they were old enough to be legally released or join the Army. these guys were adult sized and played aggressive basketball all day in the outside courts.
the first day of school Theodore Hellinger,a chubby slum kid with a big mouth mocked our gym teacher Mr.Churchill. a short tough thuggish drunk ,we did not know he was the school Enforcer. "hey Mr.Church on the Hill." as Mr.C was walking by, without breaking stride Mr.C spun around and delivered a crushing blow to Hellinger's chest which sent him moaning to the floor. Zero Tolerence was in effect. for every minor infraction you got punished, not the Principals Office laddy NO. they,our mostly female teachers, had us roll up our pants legs to expose our bare calves then you held onto a desk,facing the class so they could see you whimper and mock you mercilessly, while she whacked you across the calves with the brass edge of a wooden ruler.( THIS IS SPARTA!) getting rapped across the knuckles was a normal penalty for not paying attention.

side note, my next door nabe in the ALP was a corrupt NYPD cop with a closet full of guns.he confirmed or answered many of my questions about life after my father died.yes several 'suicides' off the building roof were really murder but nobody cared.yes, if you took a bicycle spring and put it inside a rubber hose you could break bones without bruises and yes the huge thick NYC phone book made an excellent 'tenderizer' and yes u did not want to f*ck with the NYPD under any circumstances.at the YMCA up the street i got physical training from K.Leo Swanson who had been fired from the NYPD for Brutality,what exactly had he done? i never knew.
back to JHS,
somehow we got a spotty education.we were now tough enough to withstand most threats from thugs our age and often older.by then the Silver Age of comix had arrived and at a dime a comic i was in hog heaven. i was under House Arrest after some of my earlier exploits and since my mother worked until late at nite a nabe would call or come over to verify thaat i was actually at home.

i began relish solitude,
i had a radio for rock & roll and around JHS i got a small portable TV for almost everything else.when i was a child i drew on the wrapping paper from the Chinese laundry,then drawing tablets from Woolworth's (where everyone learned to shoplift,esp. girls & cosmetics) then i switched to typing paper.i am a self taught artist,i never read an art book until i got to SF in 1971.as i got older the leash was loosened and i could go to the local libraries on weekends.one was two blocks away and the other half a mile away, i walked to both and within years had exhausted their resources.(one of the benfits of living in NYC is the downtown iconic NY Public Library, i was thrilled to find that my flimsy library card from Harlem granted access to this holy of holies).

when i had lunch with my friend DOUG two days ago i told him how my mother had bought me a World Book Encyclopedia and i head read every page of every volume,i didn't know any better. they were books and u read books. when my Dad was alive and at home,usually banished by Mother for being "a weak alcoholic" (PTSD = battle fatigue), on Sunday we would get up early and walk to the news kiosks next to the subway exits on Lenox a long block away.we would purchase the Daily News,NY Post,NY Mirror,the Journal American,Herald Tribune and later the NY Times as my last grade school required us to submit reports on the NYT every Monday. then we would take our shopping bag to the Cushmans bakery for cupcakes or anything else that looked good before returning home to cook Mother breakfast in bed and start Sunday dinner. we would have my fave waffles then spread the papers all over the floor where i would try to copy the comix before reading what i could understand.( a trio of local thugs saw my routine in later years and assumed i was selling the papers to lazy Sunday nabes so the robbed me at knifepoint ONCE inside the claustrophobis elevator {it was working for a change} the second time i was in a less accomodating mood and i kicked two of their asses witn my martial arts training and i chased the leader until my lungs gave out.
my friend DOUG a warm devoted father semi normal white guy confessed that he had never been in a real fight. i regaled him with the time in the ALP i had to fight 6 or 7 guys after my buddy ran off, he later returned and they fled.the trick is keeping your back to the wall, take out the best fighter first then throw people in each others way until they tire then disable them.easy huh? each bldg of the ALP had its own thugs and they resented trespassing.)

anyway my Dad died and i was left with Sherlock Holmes & Batman as faithful father figures.Mother called me The Hermit (like on the Tarot Card) because even when i wasn't under House Arrest i preferrred to stay in my room with my books & drawing tools.soon i began to walk every Saturday from Harlem to Battery Park (near Wall Strret) a lil over five miles.i would walk to Battery Park and sometimes walk back to stop for trashy movies in Times Square (double and sometimes triple feature for next to nothing,free blowjobs available in the balcony).a block from the rotten heart of Times Square was 8th Avenue and the Port Authority Bus Terminal where failed thugs who'd become junkies sold their souls for cheap sex & a quick high.many of my younger nabes wound up there, some later made it home again.Mother delighted in writing me,once i fled to California to get away from her, how many of my thug cohort died in Nam or subsequently of acquired heroin habits. when i saw the mini Nam Wall with Korak in San Jose, i found that i knew most of my cohort only by nicknames and thus could not mourn properly DAMN.

okay, i think that's all for today.

in other news,
WWW.SINGLEPAYERACTION.ORG
do it now before we get 'fooled' again (The Who).

namaste
semper grumpy
mega