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becoming Americans. Even, Irish kid who made a Jewish kid knuckle under was made to say “Uncle” by an Italian, who got his lumps from a German kid, who got his insides kicked out by his old man for street fighting and then went out and beat up an Irish kid to heal his wounds. “I’ll teach you!” was the threat they passed along, Irisher to Jew to Italian to German. Everybody was trying to teach everybody else, all down the line. This is still what I think of when I hear the term “progressive education.”
    There was no such character as “the kindly cop on the beat” in New York in those days. The cops were sworn enemies. By the same token we, the street kids, were the biggest source of trouble for the police. Individually and in gangs we accounted for most of the petty thievery and destruction of property on the upper East Side. And since we couldn’t afford to pay off the cops in the proper, respectable Tammany manner, they hounded us, harassed us, chased us, and every chance they got, happily beat the hell out of us.
    One way, the only way, that all of us kids stuck together regardless of nationality was in our cop-warning system. Much as I loathed and feared the Mickie gang or the Bohunk gang, I’d never hesitate to give them the high-sign if I spotted a copper headed their way. They’d do the same for me and the other 93rd Streeters.
    The cops had their system, too. If a patrolman came upon a gang fight or a front-stoop crap game and needed reinforcements in a hurry, he’d bang his nightstick on the curb. This made a sharp whoinnng that could be heard by cops on other beats throughout the precinct, and they’d come a-running from all directions, closing in a net around the point the warning came from.
    In my time I was grabbed, nabbed, chewed out and shin-whacked by the cops, but never arrested. This may sound miraculous, considering all the kinds of trouble I was able to get into, but it wasn’t. My Uncle Sam the auctioneer, don’t forget, was a wheel in Tammany Hall. Nephews of men in the Organization did not get arrested.
    For another thing, the cops went mostly for the gangs, the most conspicuous targets, and I was not a gang boy. I was a lone wolf. This made me, in turn, more conspicuous to the gangs. Gang boys couldn’t tolerate loners. They called me a “queer” and worse. Today, I guess, a kid like me would get all kinds of special attention from the authorities. They’d call me an “antisocial nonconformist”-and worse.
    So my pleasures had to be secret ones. I couldn’t even fly pigeons from the roof of my own house. Every time I set out a baited cage to catch some birds, the cage would be smashed or stolen. I wanted desperately to have a pet. Once I brought home a stray puppy, and fixed a nest for him in the basement of 179. I had him for exactly a week. As soon as he got used to his new home he felt frisky and began to bark. Some kids heard him and promptly stole him.
    The janitor of our tenement, an elderly Bavarian plagued with corns and carbuncles, wouldn’t protect my pets. He had a running feud with my family because our garbage pails were full of holes. Every time they went down the dumbwaiter for him to dump, the janitor would mutter and curse and yell up the shaft, “Hey, up dere! Hey! Dem’s got leaks on!”
    I took to spending a lot of time in Central Park, four blocks to the west, the park being a friendly foreign country. It was safe territory for lone wolves, no matter what Streeters we were.
    Summers I hung around the tennis courts. I loved to watch the game, and there was always the chance I could hustle myself a tennis ball. In the wintertime the park was not so inviting, unless there’d been a snowfall or a good freeze. When there was snow on the ground I’d hustle a dishpan somewhere (”hustle” being a polite word for steal), and go sliding in the park. This was a risky pleasure. A dishpan in good condition was worth five cents cash from a West Side junk