1953-I AM ABOUT TEN YEARS OLD…

It is an early Saturday morning, maybe 10 a.m. At ten years old, freckles cover my face and my red curls spill over these freckles (which I hate) and over my eyes at this early hour. I am allowed to stay in my nightie, the one trimmed with lace and flowers, the one that flares out from under my still invisible breasts. My feet are bare. I am sitting on a little stool, which my father made, and I am about 6 inches from the TV set, usually not allowed since I might go blind. This is what my father would call “the in danger of imploding position,” imploding being the term he uses when my sister or I touch the TV screen and “risk the danger of having the set explode.” I love that word-implode! I love the TV! It is small and in a cabinet many times it’s size and it occupies a special place in our already crowded but comfortable living room in the projects. The black and white test pattern, “The Eye”, as our family, and probably thousands of others, named it, has just blinked off the TV and in its place, “Winky Dink and You” with Jack Barry is on. I can’t wait. Excitement is all over my body. I have my special crayons out and my mom has put the specially ordered in the mail green colored plastic over the screen. It costs about 50 cents to send for but there was a better one that I got from Aunt Nettie who found it in a toy store on Orchard Street. I know that this morning my drawing will allow Winky, this little star-headed cartoon figure, and his dog Woofer to get to safety. What a job for a girl hero, and I dream of being a girl-hero! I draw with the television voice, ropes and the ladders and bridges and secret paths; I invent escapes and figure out the secret codes to save Winky and Woofer from danger, from some unknown terror they face each Saturday. It is only a game I know and I know I play it with hundreds of other kids I’ll never meet who probably come up with the same solutions I do, but who cares. This is serious business. My father says this is nothing like the problems in the real world or the ones he faced in the war. But I don’t care. What do I know of dangers at ten? I don’t read newspapers and am not threatened by poverty and crime. Even starving children in some far off place are not my concern. Winky is the one in danger and I work hard to get him safe. This half hour flies by too fast and the program is over. At the end, there’s a little song to sing to say good-bye. As always I follow instructions when it’s over and take the plastic from the TV screen and smooth it out on a table to use next week for more adventures. I am always obedient and careful. There’s the simple reminder from Jack Barry to wipe this plastic clean. I do this. This is my favorite Saturday morning entertainment, at least for now. I saved Winky and I showed off my talent in art.

I have always been an artist, I think. Diane, my friend who was born just five days before me, who lives in Elmont now, not in the projects anymore, in a private house with wonderful orange and yellow flowers around it, flowers called marigolds which get rid of bugs, I am told, asks me to draw pictures for her homework when I sleep over. She is studying Indians and Pilgrims. I am great at feathers and shoes with large buckles. I am not so good at pilgrim’s hats but better than she is. I love sleeping over at her house. She has her own room. Her house has its own basement with a bathroom and its set up like a playroom or an art room. Her mom Charlotte served me an artichoke for dinner once.  I drew it. It was easier to that than eat it. I thought I needed a book of instructions on how to eat it. “Pull off each leaf (which was covered with bread crumbs) and run it along your teeth getting the ‘meat’ from it. You can dip it in a sauce if you like the sauce”, she said. I thought this was more fun than good to eat. I never got artichokes at home. But maybe Jewish people didn’t eat artichokes. After all, we didn’t eat a lot of things that I knew others did, especially bacon. 

Diane’s family was Italian. Everyone on her block was Italian and they all had these little smiling saints in their windows, on their cars’ dashboards, even in their yards. Some of them had great names like Eustacius or Mary Robert. When I slept over I stretched my neck backwards in my bed and there was a cross on the wall with Jesus, the Catholic God. Whatever helps, I guess is good. We didn’t have a Jewish star on our wall and we didn’t believe in Jesus or Saints or even Christmas. Maybe we should have. 

Diane and I had lots of fun memories to share from the projects and our school days. She goes to Catholic school now and says the Nuns hit her on her knuckles with a ruler if she talks. My mother would kill them if they did that to me and I am sure they would since I never stop talking. I don’t think I would like to call my teacher “Sister” instead of Mrs. Something or other. Diane says you get used to it. Diane remembered how well I drew since our 1^st grade when I won the art contest with a drawing from “The Five Chinese Brothers ”book. This was a made-up story about five miracle men each performing an act that could save the other. Maybe the principal loved my drawing of the idea of this story more than the art. I will never know. But I won and he framed the picture and hung it in his office. I never saw it again. I think about that story a lot and told my mother, “Mom, no one could swallow the sea. No one could survive being burned, well, could they?” She shrugged. So much for sharing that episode of my life!

I also copied a lot from the back of matchbooks where I found the “Draw Me” heads and profiles which when sent in to some address could win for me a career in art, a trip to far off places, or at the least a chance to get into in some program not even my 50 cent a week allowance, half of which I had to put in my bank book and bring to school on banking day, would cover. I think I entered that contest a million times. I never heard a word and everyone said my drawing was better than the one on the matchbook. But I didn’t stop there.

Drawing with Jon Nagy on the NBC Channel was a different experience for me. I wasn’t playing here or trying to win a contest. This was for real—“Art with a capitol A,” my mother said. I wanted to be an artist. I had already given up on being a dancer after the ballet recital where I forgot to come on stage with the group, on singing when I couldn’t get into the singing group or remember the words to the songs, and on being a baseball player when I learned girls just didn’t do that. I still hoped maybe for ice-skater. I didn’t want to be a secretary although my mother was one and felt it was a good, secure profession for a girl. “Good for girls and secure” were words that were sayings in my house. But I was ready for the world of art. “Anyone can draw,” this thin bearded man said. All a girl needs to do is follow his lessons and buy his kit. I already had my special art paper and crayons or pastels. On the day of his program and his lesson, I sit at the table wearing an old white shirt of my father’s to cover my clothes and I go along with what Jon Gnagy draws and then add the color to the black and white outline. The outline reminds me of my mother’s knitting patterns and sometimes of my father’s clothes patterns. Drawing with Jon Gnagy is harder than “Paint by Numbers” which my aunt is always buying for me. I must have done a million of those and she hangs them on all her walls in her room. On this day Jon has us draw a park scene. “First kids, how are you all? Wipe the sleepiness from your eyes.” It is not even a morning time. Thousands of kids like me are wiping their eyes and answering the television with “fine” or good.” “Make sure your paper is smooth, really smooth,” says Jon, and I carefully smooth the textured white paper, getting out every crease and lump. “Then, get brown, the brownest brown you have from the special crayons.” I follow his instructions as he draws the tree trunk and then the branches. Where is this place? It must be Central Park. I know that tree! It looks just like the one near the camels’ cage in the zoo, the camels that are named Artie, Ellie and Peter who I visit whenever we go to Central Park. This is fun. Then I add the leaves, greens and yellows, shaping each as Jon says, making up colors on my own. “I hope he adds the little nest and the squirrel running across the branches,” I dare to say aloud to the empty room. He doesn’t, but later when I look at my creation, I will sneak in those details. I might even add the little fence around each tree, which prevents people who dare to step on the grass from going too close to the tree. I actually know how to draw better than this, maybe as well as he does if I can brag, but I don’t let on since then I might not get to sit in front of the TV if I know it already; maybe I will have to do math or dust or even make my bed. This beats them all. “Let’s try the sky,” he says. “What kind of day is it?” I think, sunny or cloudy? Cloudy means those great pink and white clouds, so that’s what mine will be. I will not get the yellow sun into this one. Cloudy means purples and grays and blues. I try to rub the colors around to get different tones. It’s hard since I really want to get the best of color choices. I imagine how it looks. I add grass and maybe flowers. I add a bench. I’m glad. I actually love the benches. When I spend time in Central Park with my family we sit on those benches and bang two nuts together to attract the squirrels. They always come and grab the treasure and hide it for the winter when they don’t have a lot of food or people sitting on the benches. My father says they always remember where to find them. I wish I were as smart. I have things in my room someplace that will never appear again.  I put my park thoughts away. I return to thinking about my drawing. Anyone would know this scene, I am sure. “Add yourself into the picture, he says.” This is my favorite part. But I am not as good as drawing people yet. He can’t possibly know what we all look like and we can’t trace his shape and person. I use the position and the size of him, but add me. There I am. My hair I decided would be in bunches; I have on my pinafore, the Swiss dotted one and I have my mary-janes, the party shoes, on this not a party day because they are easy to draw and look like themselves. I let myself carry a little pocketbook I just got from my aunt. I sneak in balloons on my arm, which I usually don’t get to buy in the zoo. “Step back. Look at what you did. Look at it turning your head and from all sides, even turn it upside-down and look,” he says. I stand back; I tilt my head, my curls falling in my eyes, and I smile, pleased. I call my mom and dad. They are pleased. I will draw this scene again later in the week in my art pad, making it better. I will sign it and date it like I see an artist do. It might be someone’s gift. For now, the show is over; the TV gets turned off. My mother tells me to take a bath, get dressed, and come for a snack of milk and cookies. It is a beautiful day on earth, I think, and I am ready for whatever will be.