Alvin
The Bronx Late 2940s
I first saw him on a Friday afternoon when I was carrying a jar of pickles home from Jake the Pickleman. I was short. I envied his height and his off-white heavy knit, wool sweater. My brother didn’t have one, so there was no legacy for me on the horizon.
Alvin lived on Charlotte Street, a three-block street with an array of characters that Damon Runyon couldn’t possibly conceive. There was Alex, a victim of Downe’s Syndrome who stood all day adjacent to lamppost twirling a wooden club. Doovidl Simon, eighteen-years-old, was a playmate of the seven and eight-year-olds on the block. Weinberger, a mass of protoplasm, and a baseball fanatic who claimed he went “on a pu–y hunt with Billy Martin”, the manager of the NY Yankees. Red Denowitz, who couldn’t read a note of music, yet played the trumpet at weddings and Bar-Mitzvahs. Then there was Layble. He stood on a street corner of Wilkins Ave, playing his harmonica until dark. The Parrot had a nose that fit her name and a mouth as filthy as a parrot polluted by a pirate. Lee-the-Gee, whose candy store at the corner of Charlotte St. and Seabury Pl. was the summit for the enterprising Landau brothers, Bummy, Beak Levy, Gitchie, Nootch the Bookie, and tiny, Louis the Pimp. He was a stunted and disfigured man. Alvin was in the store with Louis one evening when he pointed to him and yelled,
“This man takes numbers!”
Louis became so stressed and befuddled that he threw his wallet at him.
The conversation was a ceaseless discussion about females. Lee-the-Gee would interject, “Ahh, she’s a dog.”
He should have been declared Legally Blind because, through no fault of her own, his wife was extremely unattractive.
How Alvin came to our hangout, the candy store, I do not recall, but he was another amusing addition to our extended list of comedians. In our adolescence, he was the focal point of pockets empty, but laughs aplenty .
School was not a place for learning; school was a place for playing baseball. He was the catcher for James Monroe’s H. S. baseball team. How he managed to make the team in spite of his academic record was a mystery. The classes were too much of a burden. A grade advisor called for a parent after examining Alvin’s terrible record. Alvin’s mother worked, and his father passed away when Alvin was three years old. The night before his visit, Alvin tutored his 80 year old grandfather. There was no transportation to James Monroe H. S. The following day, the frail, elderly man walked two miles to see the grade advisor. Alvin was called for. Both he and his grandfather listened to the advisor reading Alvin’s failing school record. His grandfather responded,
“I don’t know. He studies late into the night.”
Among the many subjects he failed was Earth Science. He went to summer school to “erase the disgrace”. His summer school teacher was Mr. Epstein, the same teacher that had just failed him during the regular term. Alvin remained for the summer session, then took the final exam, and scored a 39. After dismissing his class, Mr. Epstein called Alvin.
“Lakind, at the end of last term you scored a 34 on the final exam. Now you scored a 39. What have you got to say for yourself?”
“You can’t say I didn’t learn anything,” Alvin replied.
Mr. Epstein was left speechless.
We graduated. I earned an academic diploma, Alvin a general diploma. The economy was still in a slump, college was not on my agenda. Alvin came to my apartment to inform me that NY Central RR was hiring, and to be at the Grand Central Station the following morning. We were hired as switchtenders and brakemen. The Korean War put an end to two railroaders.
My uncle, who came to my parent’s wedding, and then celebrated by living with us for 61 years approached Alvin.
“Are those new pants? I didn’t see them before. Let me check the cuffs.”
As he bent down, Alvin ripped off a fart that nearly knocked over my uncle.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” asked my uncle with a smile.
“No,” Alvin replied.
My uncle turned to me and said,
“He’s got some noive”.
His orange pants, a Pop Myer Special was a backdrop for entertaining the women who sat outside their apartments waiting for their husbands to come home from work. The pants had a zipper with teeth like Tyrannosaurus Rex, and was so long it should have been sewn into a sleeping bag.
In front of the women, Winkler grabbed the pants by the zipper fly and twisted it into a curl, while Alvin threw up his hands and moaned as if he were in a horrific agony. The women nearly fell off their chairs from laughter.
Alvin was very proud of his farting. He painstainly honed this skill in the candy store. Almost every customer was greeted by a fart including the owner’s wife. He not only broke wind, he fractured it.
His wife, Mimi made a party for him when he was 65 years old. I met one of Alvin’s fellow employees.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “Alvin told me he was in the elevator at the ground floor, released a fart, and it continued until the fourth floor.”
He replied,
“I hoid it! I was there! I hoid it!” he exclaimed, as if he had heard Pavarotti sing nessun dorma.
Another employee after hearing Alvin perform claimed he “was gifted.”
Alvin’s job at a sewage plant was to collect a sample of the treated sewage and bring it to the lab to be tested.
“Who would have thought,” he said, “that with my academic record, that Walter and I would end up as chemists?”
Walter had a degree in Chemistry from City College, developed a number of patents while directing the plating operations at Enequist Chemical Company in Queens.
It is February 2014 and the beat goes on. Alvin still works at the sewage plant. One of the employees at the sewage plant who regularly attended Alvin’s eruptions claimed Alvin was gifted.
For stories about this Bronx neighborhood read: Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir.
danielwolfebooks@aol.com