Old 96th St. West Side

Preteen and teen years on 96th street, black kids my age were either

a. known to me, in school, as friends or aquaintances or
b. were in school uniforms, or
c. were with their parents, or

. . . they became an immediate object suspicious fear, since the possibility remained that they were going to f* with me . . .

I got threatened, lost my wallet to a knifepoint, chased, a lot. Never by a white kid, although one stayed away from Horace Mann. Some black hispanics, and then, from the age of 8 or 9 on, increasingly commonly, Puerto Rican youths one had to watch out for, too . . . two of my friends tied up and beaten by PRs, me pushed against a wall on B'way and 96th wit a "lookout" and a PR teen with a pony tail punching me in the gut as hard as he could. (Age 13?) And I haven't mentioned the Zulu Nation.

My own identity was uncertain: My father was taunted in Astoria for being a Jew, and Irish boys threatened to beat the crap out of him, knocked him down and said, "Hitler is doing a good job killing the Jews." (Hard to remember that Father Coughlin was tied to the "Christian Front" which had weapons and said very similar things . . .)

Children can learn what it is like to be mortal, to fear for their lives. By the time I started paying attention to books in college, there either was or was not an abstract right in the world, a good that could be accomplished, and South Africa seemed to offer that clarity inside and out.

I wanted to undertand the hostility. I knew enough to suspect there was a reason for it.