The Ash Creek Papers

What could have plagued them? What could have been so pressing to a 21 year old?

I have been to several campuses… when I was looking for schools myself, when I was attending College & then again in looking for schools for the kids. And of course I grew up in New Haven where the Yale Campus was in my “back yard”.

I loved Yale’s Gothic Buildings… its detailed architecture… a stately Payne-Whitney Gymnasium, Woolsey Hall for concerts & lectures and a magnificent Library… the main Library, not Beinecke Rare Book (too modern for my taste).

And I suppose I am drawn to Libraries on College Campuses… I mean that’s what it’s supposed to be about isn’t it? Yes, the campus is wonderful… show me the Library.

My Brother-in-Law Will and I went to Union together… but both he and his wife Wilma got their Masters and PhD’s from Cornell. Beautiful Campus that… tremendous Library, too. But the feature that is mostly identified with Cornell is the massive gorges that slice through the Campus… narrow apertures that open to rocky and treacherous defiles. Troubled students have been known to jump from the edge to their deaths in the jagged rocks far below. This was referred to as “gorging out”. A grim sport that you don’t want to letter in. Folks say that Ithaca can be a depressing place during the winter months.

New York City is never depressing. And Zack simply adored NYU. Campus? No… nothing much really. Washington Square in the Village has its charm… but any citizen can enjoy its charm… it’s not distinct to NYU… but what is definitely NYU is a tall concrete & brick edifice that rises from the South East corner of the Square…it is the Bobst Library… and by all accounts it is the most impressive College Library that I have seen.

It is a 12 story building that is built around an atrium… the stacks and rooms surround the atrium. The ground floor of the Library has a marvelous marble floor in a fascinating geometric pattern… from above the pattern creates an incredible optical illusion… from the 12th floor it looks like huge sharply cut slabs emerging from the ground. If you fear heights it can be scary stuff looking down from the 12th floor… Ellen was terrified and couldn’t be pried from the inner wall of the gallery.

What were those two students thinking (some 6 months apart, the most recent this past week) when they leapt to their deaths?

Oh the pain they must have endured to have come to such a decision.

I watched her as she approached the convenience store… and she was crying. What was making her cry?

It’s a lonely part of the street at that early hour. The sky was lightening; but the sun had not cleared the tree line. It’s a “semi-commercial” part of Norwalk… a mixture of small businesses and homes. The houses are multi-family structures… many of the residents are Latino, mostly from Peru or Ecuador… and some of the store fronts boast multi-lingual signs… check cashing services, legal services… that sort of thing.

My breakfast hang out is there, too. The Family Diner… it’s Greek owned; but unlike the other Greek Diners in our neck of the woods, which typically remain open 24 hours (and menus that have pages upon pages of entries & have every cuisine imaginable except Chinese), the Family Diner is open just for breakfast and lunch. I go there for my fix of eggs over easy, whole wheat toast & homefries… it’s a place where you sit down at the counter, and without being asked your coffee is there, newspaper, too & in 3 minutes your breakfast is hot before you. And it is where I took Suzy for lunch one day to say that I was moving out of the house.

In the early hours that I am there I usually see the guys who drive the trucks… delivery trucks, utility trucks, city trucks, repair trucks… and they come in for their breakfast fixes, too. Or they head across the street to the “convenience” store.

I don’t remember “convenience” stores being around when I was a kid. Or maybe they were there; but we didn’t call them that. Or maybe they were there; but the product mix was different. I guess that must be it. And although I have never been in this particular convenience store across from the Family Diner… I can tell you what’s inside… tobacco products, candy, packaged cookies, chips and assorted other “junk food”, phone cards (real big deal for the South Americans in the neighborhood), wire services for money — also big with the Latinos who have to send half their pay away to family south of the border, cold drinks, ice cream, newspapers and magazines (some in Spanish), bread, peanut butter, pickles, ketchup, toothpaste, deodorant, tampons, condoms & lottery tickets.

Lottery tickets. Oh my… not just our State Lottery, not just Power Ball; but countless “instant” lottery scratch-off “games”… and the machines to handle the daily numbers. Stand in back of folks trying to pay for the newspaper & listen to someone rattle off which tickets they want & what number they want to play… $20 – $30 is put on the counter as they turn to walk away. It looks like they can barely take care of their basic needs (do you think that bread and peanut butter would have been a better way to spend your money?) & yet they spend $20 or so on lottery tickets the way you would spend a dime to make a phone call.

Unreal.

And here she comes walking down the street. I notice her. Here gait shows some urgency, hands thrust into the pockets of those long oversized sweaters… she has on jeans, and from her stride I can see that she is slender. Her sandy brown hair is mussy & pulled up in a bun… in a way that I have always found sexy; because to me it has the look of “I’ve just gotten out of bed”– and in this case she probably had. Her head is down, and then she takes one of her hands out of her pocket… a tissue there — to wipe her runny nose from the cool morning air? No… a tissue to hide a cry, to relieve the stuffy nose that came from a good cry & something that hadn’t stopped yet.

What does she need at this early hour? What can be so important that would bring her to the convenience store at this time of day? What is her addiction? Does she need smokes? A scratch off game? Maybe it will bail her out of a money jam if she wins? And the tears? Who has mistreated her? What makes her hurt? Where is someone to help her… to give her support… to make her whole?

Why is she crying?

It was on my second trip cross country with the Ansonia YMCA — the one that I was joined by Gary Moss and Jay Berman (Alan’s cousin) — that one of the kids mentioned that I looked a lot like Jerry Lewis. I think I was all of 13 or 14 at the time.

Then in 1969 when I hosteled my way thru Europe with a bunch of rag tag college/high school kids I had another person remark that I resembled Jerry Lewis… so much in fact, that for the remainder of the summer I was called Jerry by one and all. To this day if someone calls out “Jerry”, I turn around.

I was never sure if it was a compliment to be said that I looked like Jerry Lewis.

But by an large, regardless of his appearance, I certainly was not a big fan of his. It never ceased to puzzle me why the French regarded him in such high esteem. But they did. They thought he was a pure comic genius on par with Charlie Chaplin. It is real safe to say that he was more popular on that side of the Atlantic, than on this one. So be it.

A couple of years ago I caught him on the Letterman Show (and it was clear that Letterman thought he was a genius, too), and then I caught him on cable (A & E or Bravo?) with that guy who interviews folks at length and entertains questions from the audience… Actor’s Studio? or Behind the Scenes? (I am terrible with names of shows these days). Anyway… listening to Lewis reflect on his years I began to warm to him… yes, this was a funny, witty & talented man… not just a silly buffoon.

I can not remember a Labor Day without the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy. When I was a kid and watched a lot of TV, Labor Day was such a disappointing day… nothing was on! Of course this was well before Cable… and even well before station changers! So there I would be turning the dial on the TV… nothing, nothing, nothing… Jerry Lewis Telethon… nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing… Jerry Lewis Telethon.

If I knew his “connection” to the disease (one of his children? Maybe a sibling?) I have long since forgotten it. But for the longest time it seemed that the only time Jerry Lewis’ name would come up was around Labor Day and his Telethon… a one day a year guy?

Yesterday I headed home after helping Zack and Beth move into their apartment in the City. I was beat & flopped on the couch and put the tube on. I flipped thru the channels for a bit and came across the Telethon just as a key donation of some 8 million dollars was being made by the head of some big national union… And there was Jerry on camera to receive the big check (gone were the days when he would virtually never leave the set… taking the briefest of respites during the wee hours when fewer folks were tuned in).

I was floored. No longer dressed in his signature dinner jacket standing with microphone ready to break into a dance or song, there he was seated in casual attire… face and body exploded by the hormones he is taking for whatever disease that has invaded his body. What happened? Would this be his last Telethon?

Was it him? Maybe it was his kid? Is he still alive? My gosh, I don’t know… where have I been? What else have I missed?

Folks still talk of “Jerry’s Kids”… and I can think of no more fitting tribute to a person who has lent his name and talent for so many years to help find a cure.

A silly buffoon?

No… I don’t think so.

The Egyptians knew what they were doing when they made Ra the Sun God. Not as well known, they also made Murray from Woodmere the Tan God. And it is to this God that I will pay my respects to in about a half hour. I am taking Zack with me to the house in Milford… my visit will coincide with high tide… I will anoint my body with oils to make me smell like a pina colada (another old Egyptian custom… except their oils made you smell like a combination of prunes, figs & chocolate)… I will then plunge into the cold (but not icy cold) Long Island Sound for a bracing dip and then will get serious in my worship of Murray… and a secondary God… Biff… God of Grain & Hops… but will try to forestall his dark side (Barf) from entering into the afternoon’s enjoyment.