Sol and I

Sol and I

Earliest Days

Sol and I have been friends from our first days in junior high school. We entered JHS52 in the spring of 1940, and were placed in 7AR. The New York public schools at that time assigned students by their perception of academic standing. In elementary school, the brightest were in the “1” classes, next came “3”, then “4”, then “2”. Someone decided that bright junior high school students can be accelerated, and Rapid Advance classes were devised. Instead of spending three years in junior high, the bright kids would do it in two: RA, RB, RC, and RD. This was modified a few years before we entered junior high to 7AR, 7BR, 8BR, 9AR and 9BR, so instead of skipping one year, we skipped one grade. I have had mixed feelings about this, (meritocracy?) but it is nice for one’s self-image to be considered one of the smarter kids. However, it is not so nice for the other kids. Nevertheless, Sol and I enjoyed our status.

There was something else that brought us together. We were both on relief and received “free lunch” in school. The poor kids would go to the second floor where there was an improvised lunch-room. We would line up and be given some watery tomato soup, a sandwich, a container of milk and a piece of fruit. The other kids would either go home for lunch or eat the lunch they brought in the gym where lunch tables were set up.

I suspect Sol and I wondered at the time, who was poorer, and we may have concluded that Sol was. Where my father died when I was three, Sol’s father deserted his family. His mother, like mine, was unable to find work. When Sol was around seven, his father returned briefly, but disappeared again. Nine months later, Sol’s baby sister Ethel appeared. Sol’s family moved frequently. During the depression, landlords would give you the first month’s rent, free. Sol’s mother would pay the next month’s rent, and then stop. They would be evicted after several months, and find another apartment where they again got the first month’s rent, free. (I understand that Sol’s older sister Bea wanted to believe that they were being upwardly mobile.) I have a very troubling memory of seeing Sol and his mother with a hand truck carrying their belongings on the street.

Several years ago, we discovered that we had something else in common: We both attended the Issac Gerson Foundation Hebrew Day Nursery. My guess is that both our mothers learned about it from Jewish Family Service social workers. I believe I went there after school when I was in kindergarten and possibly first and second grade. Sol remembers being there for several more years. We didn’t know each other there, but we both remember Miss Jean, the teacher in charge. The nursery was in a “brownstone” on Beck Street, two houses down from the Kavenoffs, my cousin Louis’ in-laws, where Sally Mae Pollack lived. Salle Mae was our age and pretty, and I was delighted to learn that as early teen-agers, we both had a crush on her.

Junior High School turned out to be a wonderful learning experience for us. In addition to the usual classes in English, French, history, math and science, we had typing, and shop, and art and music. We were on the staff of the Knowlton Herald, our literary magazine, and Sol and I were in the chorus and in the production of HMS Pinafore. He was a much better singer, and over the years he developed a wonderful repertoire of commercials, pop songs, camp songs, folk songs, labor songs and Spanish Civil War songs. His politics may have changed, but he still loves those left-wing songs.

The summer of 1942, was a particularly frustrating time for me. We had graduated from 52, I was 14 years old, and I spent the greater part of the summer looking for a job. I mention this, because I was very touched by the fact that Sol sent me a post card (neither of us had telephones) telling me that he saw a sign in the window of a florist shop on Westchester Avenue saying “Boy Wanted.” I immediately went there, but the job had been filled. Still, it was very thoughtful of Sol.

When we graduated, most of our friends and I went on to Stuyvesant High School. Sol’s mother did not want him traveling downtown. They had moved to University Avenue in the West Bronx, and Sol went to Clinton High School, but we kept in touch. In the fall of 1945, we all came together as freshmen at CCNY. We were never “out of touch” but now we saw each other more frequently. It was also the beginning of “Reading Out Loud” where several of us (male and female) would come together in each other’s homes and share readings, music, sing folk songs, and socialize.

Sol and I and our friends from junior high spent a great deal of time together that first year at CCNY, but in the spring of 1946, Sol came up with what I thought was a crazy idea: he would enlist in the Army, get the GI Bill, and use it to pay for law school. And that is what he did. After basic training, Sol was sent to Korea. He never figured on that. The war was over and I suspect that he thought he would be assigned as a clerk at some army base in the states. It turned out to be a miserable year and a half. Most of us knew nothing about Korea. Sol learned a great deal about a country that was going to make news, and involve us in a war in just a few years.

After his 18-month stint was over, Sol returned home, ready to go back to CCNY in the fall of 1948. Sol was a proud member of the “52-20 club” Unemployed returning veterans were able to collect $20 a week for 52 weeks. In mid-August, we planned to hitchhike to Canada. On the Monday when we were supposed to leave, Sol remembered that he had to sign for his check on Thursday. I decided to take off on my own, visit family in Toronto and meet him in Montreal on Friday. And we did! We saw the sights of Montreal, stayed at the YMCA, and had a great time.

Sol returned to school with a vengeance. He joined the wrestling squad, a fraternity, and played poker, believing that is also what college is about. We dated, and talked more about“making out” than actually making out. Sol was an important resource on the few occasions that any of us had a date that was willing to come up with us to a strange apartment. He had the key to his sister’s apartment. (Sounds like the Jack Lemmon movie.) Sol was short, good looking, with dark, curly hair. Girls thought he was cute. When dating taller women, Sol and I came up with the equivalent of our secret handshake: he would turn his wrist from side to side, which meant, “they are all the same size in bed.”

He proudly wore his discharge pin, an eagle, disrespectfully called “the ruptured duck.” And he managed to graduate in the spring of 1950, only one year after me. True to his plan, he applied to, and was accepted by Yale Law School. He also returned from the Army with a new first name. Seems that when he enlisted, he had to provide the Army with his birth certificate, which I believe his mother claimed was lost (which may also account for his entering school a year earlier.) When he obtained it, he discovered that his first name was not Sol but Oscar. And that he had a middle name: Charles.

Sol had been friends with a young woman named Jesse Winoker, and when he was in the Army, I asked him if I could go out with her, not really needing his permission, but I thought it was the right thing to do. He said OK. Jesse and I dated, but it didn’t go anywhere. When Sol returned, he became involved with Berna Leibowitz, and Berna had a friend named Bertha Davis, and we went out together several times. My relationship with Bertha (Davy) ended, but his with Berna continued. I was puzzled by Sol asking me what I thought of Berna. Why is he asking me? Is he looking for a second opinion? Berna was one of the brightest women around, and part of our Reading Out Loud group. I said, “go for it.” By the early fifties, many of our friends were getting married. First Sidney and Barbara, then Alex and Bernice, then Phil and Martha, and on June 17, 1951, Sol and Berna were married in New Haven. Several of us traveled up there for the wedding. The next two years were happy ones. Sol was in law school and Berna worked as a teacher in the Meriden school system.

When Sol graduated in 1953, he applied to several law firms around the country. I believe it was a firm in Chicago that was curious about the origin of his name, Rauch. “Is that a German name?” It was obvious to Sol that they were more curious to find out if he was Jewish. He accepted a position with an attorney in Phoenix named Herb Finn who was a Yale law school alumnus, and the only liberal attorney in the city. Sol also claimed that he chose Phoenix for the climate, having had asthma. In the spring of 1954, Sylvia and I hitchhiked from Miami to Phoenix to visit Sol and Berna. It was fun being together, and seeing where Sol lived and worked. I believe Sol chose to go to work for Herb Finn because of the kind of practice he had: representing unions and minorities. Herb was a good lawyer, a decent man, but disorganized, and after a few years, Sol decided to go into practice for himself.

The late ‘50s and the ‘60s were busy times. We were defining ourselves professionally, establishing our homes and families, and we were caught up in the politics of the period: the anti-communist hysteria, the civil rights revolution, the fear of nuclear proliferation, the election of JFK, the Viet Nam war and the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. Sol and Berna bought a house, and had three children: Ethan, Jon and Carolyn, between 1958 and 1964. Sylvia and I had three children between 1955 and 1962, and bought a house in Washington, soon after moving there. By 1970, problems developed between Sol and Berna, and their marriage ended. By 1972, problems developed between Sylvia and me, and our marriage ended. Berna moved to California. I moved to downtown Washington. Sol became both the breadwinner and the single parent housekeeper. We continued to keep in touch. And we kept in touch with our ROL friends who were still in the Northeast: Sid and Barbara in the Bronx, Bob and Rose in Long Island, Phil and Martha in Yardley Pennsylvania, Mel and Ruth in Princeton, NJ, and Alex and Bernice in Sudbury MA. Whenever we could, we got together. And we came together for special occasions, happy and sad.

Being Jewish was what we all were. It didn’t matter if we went to Shul or not. All my Jewish friends and acquaintances with whom I grew up married Jewish. (There was one exception: Sophie Widman. I suspect because of the effort of the Communist Party to recruit blacks, they encouraged interracial dating, and Sophie met and married Fitz Squires. But their children had the option to choose their religious affiliation, and they chose Jewish.) When we all married, we married in a Jewish ceremony, but few of us joined Synagogues. If anything, we were secular, unaffiliated Jews. A few years after Sol and Berna moved to Phoenix, Sol told me that Berna joined the Unitarian Church. I was appropriately shocked. I couldn’t believe it. He tried to explain that the Unitarians weren’t Christians, but I couldn’t buy it. Some time later, he told me that there was a new minister who really was Christian, and she left.

Sol is a good and generous friend. When the son of a friend of Fran’s had enrolled in Graduate School in the Phoenix area, I suggested that he call Sol who might help him find a place to live. Sol invited him to live in his house and even let him use his car. When we visited Israel, Sol insisted we use his apartment in Jerusalem. It was a bit complicated, because he had also lent it to a homeless woman, but we managed. Sol was constantly calling to our attention legal and financial matters that we might not have been aware of. And then he did the same with matters affecting our health.

Sol joined a synagogue in Phoenix, the boys had Bar Mitzvahs, and Sol became close to their charismatic Rabbi, who eventually made Aliyah, along with a few of his congregants who were also Sol’s friends. Sol found an apartment in Jerusalem, and for a while spent several months there annually. He also developed a point of view about Arab-Jewish relations which differed from the rest of us in our ROL group. He concluded that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors, that the Muslim world is the enemy, waiting to start World War III or IV. He read extensively and shared articles with his friends. There was a period that no day would go by without another e-mail from Sol proving the Muslim terrorist danger. As the Parkison’s increased, the e-mails diminished.

There was a period when Sol’s motto seemed to be “I don’t want to die wondering.” By that he meant wondering about what different places were like. His way of finding out was to take an apartment in a foreign country and live there for a while. He did this in Vancouver, Canada, in Australia and in London, and perhaps in a few other places that I forgot. Once in a while, he asked me to join him, but it really wasn’t possible for me. In the mid-seventies, I attended a conference in Tucson, and called Sol, and we arranged to go to Mexico together. He drove down to meet me, and we drove to the Mexican border, parked the car in a lot near the train station, and took a sleeper to Mazatlan on the Pacific coast. We spent several days together, enjoying the beach. Sol had been a long-time pipe smoker. In fact, when he was in Israel or some other place out of the country, I would send him pipe tobacco. In the confined quarters of the train, his pipe smoking got to me, but I didn’t say anything. I am glad he doesn’t smoke any more.

As Sol’s friends, we in ROL were troubled by the strained relations that existed between himself and his son Ethan. We could not understand how a father and son could stop communicating with each other. Recently, Sol indicated that he is having less contact with his daughter and her family, even though they live under the same roof. We have urged him to try to resolve the situations , but I suspect he feels his children should take the initiative. He has developed a close relationship with his son Jon in Washington. When we had the ROL family reunion at PEEC over the 2008 Memorial Day weekend,, Jon and his partner Michael joined Sol for the occasion. Sol is an integral part of ROL. Of course, it requires planning to get 11 of us together from MA., NY, NJ, PA and AZ. We now wait til AZ gets to DC.

Sol is also filled with contradictions. I mentioned before how generous he is. Yet he has no hesitation to take advantage of senior citizen lunches which are being provided by senior centers and religious and public agencies, largely for those less fortunate members of the community. Perhaps he likes the conviviality. He also can’t resist pocketing rolls or cookies from functions we have attended. I try to explain to him that is what our mothers may have done, but we are no longer poor.

Sol’s conviviality (or possibly manic behavior) extends to waitresses as well. Inevitably, when we go out to dinner as a group, Sol engages the waitress in conversation: Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Are you married? Do you have children? He manages to get their life story, and I don’t remember any one being offended or seeing it as invading their privacy. He is a skillful questioner, possibly his legal training.

And there are times when Sol withdraws. Some years ago, the guys got together and visited the old neighborhood, including our old junior high school. We parked and headed inside. Sol refused to join us. He sat in the car reading a newspaper and could not be persuaded to see what “52” looked like today. On another occasion, Sol was with me and Fran when we paid a visit to my daughter Carol in her new home. Again, he sat alone when we walked through the house, explaining later that he doesn’t know Carol.

Other traits: In the restaurant, Sol never orders what everyone else orders. He may decide to have a bowl of soup, or a cup of coffee. Or he may decide to go for a walk. That’s Sol. And when we are engaged in discussion at an ROL, Sol, claiming that he can’t hear, would move next to the speaker. And when he wants to make a comment, he raises his hand, even though there is no moderator or chair. Everyone else speaks up. Not Sol. So one of us recognizes him. Otherwise he would remain there with his hand raised while everyone else chimes in. And when he has to figure out how he is going to get from here to there, he looks to one of us to help him, even though he has traveled the world on his own. And he seems to be dressing more and more inappropriately: a denim suit, a cowboy shirt, a bolo tie, and expecting Bob to bring him a coat that he left at his house years before if it is cold.

It is certainly “khutspadik” of me to write these last “observations” but I am trying to describe Sol as I know him, warts and all. He is one of my closest friends. We are even closer these days. And these are difficult days.