Education Revolution Podcast · Episode 21: Stories From Jerry’s Childhood
The covid era has many of us in a state of contemplation. And it’s been very interesting to me to think about the freedom that I had as a child compared to the children of this century. But maybe covid is unwittingly changing some of that. Actually, covid is witless. I do now see more children playing outside, riding their bikes.
My earliest memory was sitting in a baby walker, next to a gigantic refrigerator. I must have been between 1 and two. My mother told me my first word was flowfer.
To show you how different things were in those days, I remember getting lost just a block away from my house. I must have been between two and three. A neighbor recognized me and brought me home. Apparently, nobody thought it was a big deal. Also, when I was about three. I could identify classical music, such as Prokofiev’s A Love of Three Oranges and Classical Symphony.
About that age my parents somehow allowed me to be studied by psychology students at Clark University. I remember them being very surprised when I made a joke about looking through their one-way window being a “pane.”
I also loved digging in the dirt for “treasure.” The treasure I found was a bunch of little green beads, probably from some discarded ten cent necklace. If you believe modern theories of biology, I suppose that digging could be why I was never allergic to anything.
When I was 4 or five I remember that the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus came to town and they would march up my little street, Longfellow Road, with elephants and performers walking up the hill and down the other side, across Chandler Street to the open field on the other side.
I followed them there by myself and watched them set up a giant tent in that field. The Blackstone Canal used to run through it and it was now covered over. I found out later it was a 45 mile-long canal that went from Worcester to Providence. It was a boon to Worcester merchants from 1828 when it was built to 1835 when that new technology, the train, replaced it. It closed in 1848, but the remnants of the canal were still there when I was 5, in 1948. So sad that children don’t get to experience the circus anymore, animal abuse issues not-withstanding. Alternatives could have been found.
I remember a sad moment about that time. There used to be a trolley system in Worcester but it ended, December 31, 1945. I must have a memory of being on a trolley, because I clearly remember how sad I was, sitting on June Street as I watched them take up the trolley tracks. I suppose it was a year or two later, so I wouldn’t have been more than 5 years old. The back story on this is that General Motors snuck people on the boards of city transit companies, and to promote their buses, got cities to end their trolley services. Every city used to have them. Eventually they were caught and paid a fine for doing this, but the damage was done. Trolley service in most cities was over. Even at 5 I knew this was wrong.
One of the fun things our family used to do was go to the Paxton Navy Yard, a mini-railroad. We used to go there a few times a year and I loved riding the trains. I know it is closed now but I don’t know when it closed. That’s probably where I got my love of trains. I’ve taken most of the trains in the United States, many in England, including one from London to Loch Ness in Northern Scotland, many across Europe, including one across Europe to Moscow, Russia and then another to the Urals.
Sometimes my cousin Judy would baby sit for us. She was about ten years older, the daughter of my Aunt Nessie, one of my father’s older sisters. Nessie was the black sheep or her family, but I really liked her, maybe because she was a rebel and very outspoken. My father was the second youngest of 9 surviving siblings. Sometimes I would visit my Bubby, my father’s mother. She didn’t really speak English. She and her husband has emigrated from Lithuania. But my father’s father died when my father was only 7, so of course, I never know him. My father’s younger sister, Janet, had a daughter, Rachel. I remember carrying her around Bubby’s house as a baby. . Bubby not only raised 9 children, but she adopted Bertha, who, I think was a niece, and raised her as her own. I remember my father driving to Moodis, Connecticut to visit her and her husband Mike. When I was trying or organize a Mintz reunion I heard from Bertha’s daughter, Ruth, who said, “You better hurry up if you’re going to do this! I’m in my 90’s!”
I remember stopping at Bubby’s house on my way to Hebrew School, which I hated. It was at a conservative Synagogue, and they didn’t seem to care if I understood anything, as long as I could mouth the Hebrew and sing the music. In fact, you had to wear a yarmulke or hat there. I used to wear a baseball hat with a big visor and fall asleep. Then I had to walk home when it was over, and it was already dark.
My father used to tell me stories about when he was a kid and the siblings worked to keep the house going. One story he told me was when he and his friends stole some eggs from a store. The owner stopped them, went up, and banged on their pockets, breaking the eggs inside. That was it.
Another story he told was how his friends used to bet on everything. One day he went early to the corner where they met. He found he could easily leap-frog over the mailbox. When his friends got there, he pretended that he couldn’t jump over it. “I bet you can’t jump over it,” they said. Then he smoothly jumped over and won the bet!
Just a few blocks from my house was Newton Square. On the far side of Newton Square there was an outdoor recreation area with tennis and basketball courts. I used to go down there to watch people play. A few years later I played tennis there. But when I was about five or six-years-old I wandered down there to watch a really good kid who played basketball for Holy Cross College from 1946-1949. His name was Bob Cousy! My father must have told me. Cousy would practice with his friends at the outdoor court at Newton Hill. I knew even then that he was very good. He went on to a career with the Boston Celtics and I would listen to Holy Cross and Celtics games religiously on the radio. I remember that when I was about 10 my father brought me to see the Celtics play the Knicks at the Worcester auditorium. The Celtics won in overtime 114-112. Some still consider Cousy one of the greatest players who ever lived. As I write this, he’s still alive at age 92.
Sometimes I would climb to the top of Newton Hill, behind the recreation area, one of the seven hills Worcester was built on, like Rome. It was a little scary because of the stories I had heard, like Indians on the hill and a strange underground chamber at the top. But I climbed it anyway. And, sure enough, there was a chimney sticking out of the ground at the top. I never did find out what that was for.
From the time I was very young I used to go to classical music concerts with my mother, mostly chamber music. She was a concert pianist when she was in her teens and went on to teach piano to thousands. When I was about 5 or 6 I remember going to a chamber music concert of the Julliard String Quartet and correctly identifying the Ravel string quartet. The violist and founding member was my mother’s friend, Raphael Hillyer. My mother introduced me to him. She knew many musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he had previously played. Hillyer lived to be 96, died in 2010, and the Julliard Quartet is still performing.
Before she started playing piano, my mother played the violin. When she was ten years old she played violin duets with a ten year old Mike Wallace, who later became famous on television. One of his first jobs was as a game show host on a local Boston station. As a youngster I remember watching as she talked to him by phone from my house. Somehow, she won a watch. Of course, later he was a famous, hard hitting interviewer on 60 Minutes for decades. He worked into his 90’s.
When she was in her 80’s I got her to write a book about her life in music and growing up with Leonard Bernstein. One day I had a meeting about organizing a fundraising event that was at CBS studios in Manhattan. I had a copy of my mother’s book with me. When I mentioned that my mother knew Mike Wallace, who had endorsed the book, they said, “”Oh, why don’t you say hello to him. He’s in the office over there,” motioning to the corner. Hesitantly I went into the office, and there he was, in the flesh, sitting at his desk. I had never seen him except on television. I introduced myself and handed him my copy of my mother’s book. It was one of the most surreal experiences I ever had: It was like handing the book through the TV screen!
Another person I met through my mother’s music group was Bedrich Vasca. He had a hunch back and a cleft palate. But he was a fantastic cellist. When I met him he was quite old. In fact he had studied with Antonin Dvorak, the famous composer and cellist, who had died in 1904. He came from Czechoslovakia. Once, when I was a teen, I went to a concert at my local high school by a newly arrived, young Czech quartet. When we went back-stage afterward (we always did) and talked to them in the little English they knew, they were flabbergasted to learn that Vasca was still alive. It turns out that Vasca had been a pioneer in chamber music there. They said it was like hearing that Beethoven was still alive!
I remember very little from school when I was young, which tells you a lot! But one incident I do remember was when I was curious about this red box in the school. There was a little swinging weight above it. So, I thought I would see what it would do. I picked up the weight and it went down and broke the glass beneath it. Suddenly the fire alarm went off. I didn’t get the connection at first. But then there was frantic activity in the school. One of the teachers saw me standing there, a bit stunned, and took me to the principal’s office, Miss Clover G. Knowlton. She was a kindly lady and soon realized that I hadn’t known what I was doing. That was the end of that, but it was one of the few things I do remember from that school.
One thing I do know is I don’t remember anyone driving me anywhere during weekdays. My mother didn’t drive, and my father drove to work. So, I walked everywhere by myself including walking about a mile to school when I was in kindergarten on up. It didn’t matter if was hot, cold, raining or snowing.
On snow days we sledded down the hill on Longfellow Road. I remember the song, “Let it snow!” from back then. It was a hit in 1946.
When I was under 6 there were no TVs in our community, and I used to listen to a lot of radio. Some of the shows I remember: Bobby Benson and the B Bar B Ranch, Straight Arrow, The Shadow, Candid Microphone, The Lone Ranger, Dr. Kildare and Jean Hersholt as Dr. Christian, and, of course, the Boston Red Sox.
Actually, I never learned to swim until I was 7. The reason is that every summer my family would go to Onset on Cape Cod. I was so afraid of the jellyfish in the ocean that I wouldn’t go to the beach. Instead I would stay back at the summer bungalow and listen to Red Sox games. Then I would wander over to the town center and go to the penny arcade. One thing I remember you could do with pennies is turn the crank and look at the flip cards as they made moving images. I thought that was amazing. My cousins Steffie Pall and Susan Shapiro would come to visit with their parents, my mother’s sister Josie and her husband uncle Dave, and my mother’s oldest sister, Hester, with her husband, Uncle Morrie.
When I was 5 or 6 years-old we were very friendly with the Smith family, two doors down on Longfellow Rd. The parents were Joe and Rose, and their daughters were Arlene and Beverly. Arlene, the older and about my age, was one of my best friends.
The Smith family was the first in our block to get a TV set. So, all the children in the neighborhood would pile into the Smith house every day to watch the Howdy Doody Show and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. It ran from 1947 to 1957 and was completely ad-libbed! Fran was Fran Allison, the only human. It had one puppeteer and many puppets, such as Beulah Witch and Fletcher Rabbit. Howdy Doody ran from 1947 to 1960 with human Buffalo Bob Smith and Clarabell the Clown, played by Bob Keeshan who later became Captain Kangaroo.
My mother’s parents lived in Boston, my Nana and Grandpa. We used to visit them every week or two, on the weekends, and sometimes they would come stay with us. My grandmother born Lucy Romberg, was born in Kharkov, Ukraine. Her father was a prosperous beer maker and the family lived a good life until the Tsar kicked all Jews out. Amazingly, I have my great-grandfather’s violin! The family fled and made their way to the United States. My grandmother didn’t speak any English when she arrived but learned English so well that she became an actress and speech teacher. Before she married my grandfather, she lived in New York City and met all kinds of people, including Juliet Thompson. She was a key person who arranged for a visit to the United States by Abdul Baha, son of Bahaullah, founder of the Bahai religion. When I mention that to Bahais, they are in awe. To them this was like knowing one of Christ’s apostles. I remember that Nana used to recite poetry and comic routines she had memorized.
But the greatest influence in my life was my Grandpa, William Blatt. He was the son of an alcoholic but became a respected judge and lawyer. But his first love was the spoken word and he was such an expert on Shakespeare that he wrote a drama called “After the Curtain Falls,” extra acts of Shakespearian plays written in iambic pentameter. It was performed all around Europe. He also wrote books of epigrams that were published. Some of them use to appear above the headline in the Boston daily newspapers. When I was a bit older I remember sitting around the dining room table at my house as we went over his epigrams to decide which should go in his books.
But his biggest influence on me was much simpler. When we would visit him in Boston, he’d sit down with me and say, “What do you want to learn?” He would give me choices like science, history, and literature, including fiction. I remember not wanting to hear about fiction because it wasn’t true! So, starting at about 6 or 7 I remember learning about theories of humor, the causes of World War Two, the ego, id and superego in psychology, and the difference between atheism and agnosticism. He was not religious, but he was proud to be Jewish. He said he was an agnostic because “atheists would have to prove there is no God, which is impossible!”
To me, this approach to learning made a lot of sense and I loved it. When I discovered that school didn’t work the same way, this led me toward my life-long quest to reform education.
At about that age I started planting a garden next to my house. I remember tending it and being so happy when it produced something to eat. I still have a garden and love working in it.
Also, at about the same age I cleaned out a former coal storage room in our basement, made a little club, and began to publish a house newsletter, the Mintz Daily Gab. I made three or four copies by carbon paper. I remember one illustration I made of a Ted Williams home run creating an eclipse as it passed the sun!
A great fear in those days was polio. It was crippling and killing a lot of people, including a lot of children. I remember that in the summer we didn’t dare go to the public swimming pool for fear of contracting polio. We were also afraid of atomic war. I used to have nightmares about that.
My parents didn’t really smoke, although my father sometimes smoked a pipe or cigar. But they would leave some cigarettes in a bowl for guests. When I was 7, I sometimes used to steal them and sneak out to the burning barrel behind the garage, light them and puff on them. One day my parents caught me. They thought it was the funniest thing they ever saw! Well, that was it. It wasn’t worth it. I never smoked again!
When I was 6 or 7 my parents sent me to a Jewish day camp called Pack a Lunch. They needed a camp song and I wrote one. I even still remember the beginning words and music:
“We salute the campers that go to Pack a Lunch
We sing and we dance and we’re such a happy bunch!”
I guess they used that for publicity and there was a story about it in the newspaper.
One of my counselors was Richard Talamo, Whose father was a lawyer. He lived at the top of my street. Later that year he gave me his stamp collection. I used to work on it off and on, mounting the loose stamps. Every once in a while it seems to pop up in my house. I suppose it might be worth quite a bit now.
One thing I used to do when I was seven or 8 was climb on top of our garage and others. Then I would jump off the low part the garages. I remember my mother wasn’t very happy about that, but I never did hurt myself.
I used to cut through several yards from June Street to get to my house. But one day, when I was about that age, a neighborhood bully from down the street whose father was a judge stopped me in the middle of one of the yards and beat me up. He was Irish. It got me really mad and determined to learn how to defend myself. I used to watch boxing on television and study their techniques. Then I would practice by hitting big pillows. Sometimes my little brother, Billy, three years younger, would hold the pillows up. After a while I became very confident in myself. But for the next 8 or 9 years nobody challenged me. My theory is that bullies are really cowards and since I now had a lot of confidence in myself, I walked in a different way.
By the way, that ended when I was in high school. I was in a lab and Tommy, my lab partner was the biggest, strongest football player on our high school team. I idly told him that I wouldn’t be afraid to fight anyone in the school if I had to. The next day he came in and said, “So you think you can beat anyone in the school! We’re going to fight.” I confidently, naively agreed. As time went on the rumors began to fly. At that point I was just known as a tennis player, science student and violinist. One was that my father had been a golden gloves boxer and taught me.
The day came to fight and someone came down to the science room and introduced himself as my manager. He said “Everyone’s waiting in the gym.” My science teacher had fashioned a teeth guard for me.
Indeed, there were hundreds of students in the gym. But the gym teacher said we couldn’t fight on school grounds. So, the whole throng went across the street to an empty field. We put on our gloves and helmets, they made a human ring, and someone said “Ding!”
We started fighting. If you’ve ever boxed, you would know that boxing is one of the most tiring sports. We swung and swung and swung. He was strong but slower than I was. I actually hit him hard with a left. Meanwhile the principal heard the noise and commotion and sprinted from his office and up the street to the field. He said he thought it could be a gang war. When he got there, he laughed and broke it up. By then we were pretty exhausted and happy to have it come to a halt.
He never challenged me again and I never got into another fight. Fifty years later, Mike, a class historian who refereed the fight wrote in our reunion yearbook,” Tommy always spoke admiringly and with respect for Jerry as a praiseworthy opponent. But who can doubt the cajones of our Jerry Mintz, a quiet, bespectacled violin player, to enter the ring with the fiercest guy in our class?”
