Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember that my mother used to make meatloaf with a hardboiled egg in the center. We loved getting a piece with a slice of egg in it.

I remember my father used to conduct Don Giovanni with the cardboard sheath of a wire hanger in the living room on Sunday afternoons.

I remember WQXR, "the radio station of The New York Times," and that in the late afternoon or early evening the announcer would describe and read the next morning's front page.

I remember that WQXR was always on at my uptown grandparents' house. I associate Mozart with the kind of bakery bread (white bread with a hard crust) that they would eat with jam in the mornings.

I remember the large Telefunken radio they had; my father also had one. The speaker was covered with a thin nappy white cloth. It would take a while for the radio to warm up and for the lights to come on on the dial. There were big, comfortable, smooth ivory-colored buttons for preset stations, and an odd pair of buttons for I guess treble and bass, though to me it jsut sounded like a slight change of volume. When you pushed those buttons a kind of dial lit up momentarily showing the increase you were producing. FM was UKW -- Ultrakurzwage or ultra-short-wave. I don't remember what AM was. There was a radio and hi-fi repair man named Mr. Heimer who would come once in a while to fix things, and to replace the needle on the phonograph. Later when I was trying to figure out better ways of taping things I cut the speaker wires of a later hi-fi my father had given my mother for her birthday and spliced them to cut extension cords. I also spliced cut extension cords to the wires attached to a jack that fit the line-in socket on my cassette recorder. I hid all these depredations behind the amplifier and under the rug, but extraordinarily my parents -- my mother! -- found it the very day I did all this. Big trouble, and then Mr. Heimer came and fixed it all and added an odd eight-pinned plug that connected up to the RCA hook-ups for the cassette player. All of this to record, I think, the Turtles.

I remember Tommy James and the Shondelles.

I remember Scott Muni, and Alison Steele, the Night Owl, on WNEW-FM.

I remember Limelight, the radio show, I think on WNEW-AM, but it might have been on WHN. I would never listen to it myself, but I liked the name and the atmostphere of the room where my father would listen to it.

posted by william 3:05 PM
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I remember firecrackers. And the more dangerous cherry bombs and M-80s. There were lots of firecracker tricks, like lighting all twenty from their braided fuses so that they would go off either simultaneously or in rapid staccato succession. I had the idea, which impressed my friends, of putting a fire cracker into a piece of clay, so that you could throw it like a grenade and watch it explode in the air. And we sometimes put the clay into a Coke bottle, and then the glass would shatter in the air, which was impressive but I think a little too scary for us: we didn't do it often. I remember that if you break a firecracker in half and light the two tubes of gunpowder, you get a sizzler. We used to do this indoors as well, and the white counter of my book case/shelving has a scar from a sizzler that singed its top. I used to have to cover it up so my parents wouldn't notice it. It looked as though someone had left a cigarette burning there.

posted by william 9:26 AM
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I remember Tennessee Tuxedo.

posted by william 10:37 AM
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I remember the riding stables (I think they were called the Claremont Stables) on 89th street between Amsterdam and Columbus. I took some riding lessons there, circling the indoor arena, covered with sand and cinders and sawdust and straw. The better riders would ride on the bridal path in Central Park. I was always interested in the fact that they would have to follow the traffic rules. You could see them riding east towards the Park on 89th, or west on 88th, down to Amsterdam and back east to the stable. There they were, in jodpurs and round velvet covered black helmets, looking so out of sync with scuzzy New York -- the neighborhood, the cars, the traffic, the honking. What made the transition was the horse-manure: dirty like the streets, but related to the aristocratic riders. Once running around the reservoir, years later, I saw Margot and I think her sister Anne riding on the bridal path, and thought they must have hired horses at the stable. She didn't see me, and I in a kind of panic I hastened my steps away from her, by the cyclone fence around the glittering water.

posted by william 4:48 PM
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I remember that my uptown grandmother had a large Persian rug hanging from the wall in the dining room. I didn't quite see the point, though I didn't quite question it because it just seemed part of the character of the surroundings she'd focus. It was dark and somewhat dreary. It certainly didn't make the wall look any nicer. She also had camel bells on a belt hanging from a door-knob; I think there was something of a vogue for them, because I think my other grandparents had some too, and I got a set, maybe when someone returned from Yugoslavia with an extra set as a gift. I kind of liked them; they looked like copper but I think were made of some less reverberative metal. They're precursors to wind-chimes, but make hardly any sound.

posted by william 6:52 AM
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I remember "Spry for Baking," a large sign you could see from my room across the river in New Jersey. I liked the name -- the hint or slight resonance that Spry was... spry. I don't know what kind of product Spry was (or made), but I guess there was something comforting or reassuringly domestic about what it offered over that grand sweep of water among all those bright signs and machinery and docks on the Jersey side of the river. I remember an Alcoa sign there too, and then a little later learning that Alcoa stood for The Aluminum Company of America, right around the time that I learned that tin foil was really aluminum foil. And I remember occasional fires -- bright chemical conflagrations burning at night and sometimes into the next morning over the river: they were beatiful and scary (I remember hearing about a firefighter dying in one of them), but seemed a world away, part of the odd industrial spectacle of New Jersey from the comforting familiarity of the West Side. But still, New Jersey knew how to acknowledge such comforts -- there was, after all, Spry for Baking.

posted by william 2:03 PM
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I remember words that turned out not to exist, that I constructed by reading too fast: "parsh," which was (and meant) a combination of parse and phrase, and "exterprise," which was basically expertise, influenced by dexterity: someone with exterprise could do something skillful with grace and ease. And then I remember a word that I thought was a joke: shirk. In some tense situation I was being dressed down by my parents, and my father told me that I "shirked" too much, and I burst out laughing in relief: he was being playful, so how angry could he be? But I was wrong. It somehow seemed unfair that a silly word like shirk could be a rebuke. If I did shirk, then I must have been being playful too -- and how much did that deserve punishment? But it was a rebuke, and I was punished.

posted by william 7:42 AM
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I remember Stingray bicycles. Their descendents are still around, but they don't have that futuristic look. They were great to do wheelies on, and looked cool going down hill, but otherwise, not so efficient. They had impressive fenders, which helped change my mind about fenders: Hugh Cramer always took them off his bike as unnecessary weight, and eventually I took them off mine as well. Hugh was the first person in my acquaintance to get a ten speed, with racing handlebars. I got one too, eventually.

I remember the speedometer/odometer I got. (I think this is when I learned the word odometer). I wanted one for a long time and finally got one for my birthday. You had to put it on, which involved a lot of cables twisting by the brake and gear cables. As with the training wheels, when it was finally on I thought there was something wrong, because it kept clicking -- this was in the bad old mechanical days -- every time the wheel turned. This was annoying and seemed to me to slow down the bike, and seemed to indicate that things weren't in working order. But someone -- maybe my Chelsea grandfather -- explained how it worked. This was another in that long series of lessons about trade-offs, which include the training wheels and the James Bond automatic with the broken plastic nub, which life never seems to be done teaching. I remember seeing how fast I could go -- thirty mph -- down hill in Central Park, on Tuesday nights when we'd all go riding in the summer. There is also a huge hill in Riverside Park at 91st street, but you can't go down that hill looking at your speedometer because you'll get killed if you don't watch where you're going. (This is the pathway down the same hill that formed our sledding amphitheater just to south.) I remember figuring out exactly how far a mile was on the Promenade (from 91st street to about 81st), so that I could figure out how far I was running in the morning. (I started running because of Hugh Atkinson's The Games: see earlier entries). You ran down to the memorial to the six million, around it on the flagstone inlay, back on the other side, and twice around the "key" back on the uptown end. I remember that the speedometer would swing wildly as I peddled and pumped, so like a scale it wasn't accurate and you worked hard to make it flatter you and then believed its flattery.

I remember my father teaching me how to ride a bike, and how to brake. I remember falling a few times, and finally getting it, and I remember his telling me that once you learn you never forget. I remember also learning the phrase "stop on a dime" when he taught me to ride: he said you could slam on the (pedal) brake and "stop on a dime," a phrase I really liked. Later I liked that Renata Adler used it in the last sentence of her pretty good novel Speedboat: I remember it as "Perhaps the kind of sentence one wants here is one that moves and walks and sways and bounces and then just stops--right on a dime."

I remember that there is an exit East and out of the park on the promenade after about a quarter of a mile (with stairs after a few yards), and another exit, lonelier and less travelled west and down towards the river after about another eight of a mile. That second one always seemed mysterious to me, even after I started taking it. It led down to the abandoned train tracks and huge arched storage spaces, some walled up, others not, below the Promenade. Homeless people didn't live there then, though they do now. It seemed a wonderful and mysterious world down there, and one that I would explore when I was a bit older. That was in the times of a promising futurity, in which all sorts of things of interest to me then promised to unfold themselves. I remember this sense of things, which also took the form, whenever I had an experience that I somehow didn't play quite right, of a sense of "next time." That next time meant something like: when this life repeats again. Next time I'm six I won't say that cruel thing to my mother. Next time I'm in first grade I'll work harder in trying to keep up with copying the material written on long white sheets of paper and hung from the metal above the blackboard. Somehow this anticipated repetition seemed very clear to me then, and I think I only completely lost it as an expectation after graduate school.

posted by william 3:28 PM
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I remember Esso. Of course you can still get it in Canada and in Europe, but I remember it here. I also seem to remember the jingle: "Esso helps your car stay young! / Esso extra gasoline helps the car your driving / Stay alive / And young. / Young is the name of the game when it's all said and done." I think ad jingles have improved.

I remember that the Esso tiger was virtually indistinguishable for me from the Frosted Flakes tiger.

I remember tipping the gas station attendant. I remember that you could get your oil checked for free, and that maps were free, and that there was no self-service.

I remember wondering why when they checked the dip stick they wiped off the oil, since there was so little oil to begin with. (I thought the oil was contained only in the sheathe of the dip stick.)

posted by william 2:40 PM
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I remember the times when I was sick in bed with a slight cold or sore throat as a child of seven or eight. This was in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, usually on snowy winter days. I loved those spells of minor illness. I lay in my parents' bed covered with a thick feather comforter while a fire burned and glowed red in the wood-burning porcelain stove in the corner of the room. In the afternoon I would get a visit from my aunt Lori, the wife of Uncle Rafo, my mother's brother. She would always bring a new book and an exotic delicacy, such as a banana - sometimes even pineapple!

posted by alma 8:34 PM
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I remember the first movies I remember vividly: my mother taking me to El Cid (Charlton Heston, again); and my father taking me to Bad Day at Black Rock (Spencer Tracy). I guess they're both movies about victory through the prostheses that seem to signal defeat. El Cid won't let his friends remove the arrow that the next day will make him a legendary figure when his corpse, tied on his horse, scatters panic among the Moors. Tracy, one-armed, must remove his tie to somehow explode a bomb or prevent it from being exploded: the tie does what his missing arm can't. I also remember Chaplin movies my father took me to, especially City Lights, Modern Times, and (most vividly) Limelight. We laughed ourselves sick at the final scene, and when Chaplin falls off the stage we laughed even harder, until we realized that it was tragedy. I asked why they covered his face and my father said "Because he's very sick." Now I know better.

posted by william 7:47 AM
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I remember Instamatics. First the 100 series and then the 400 series, which took flash cubes. I remember flash cubes -- four flashes to the cube -- and that wonderful sense of completion when all four were blown.

posted by william 7:32 AM
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I remember The Sensuous Woman by "J." I also remember The Sensuous Man, far inferior. And Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape.

posted by william 7:15 AM
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I remember wax bottle penny candy. You bit the top off and there was a little bit of sweet sugary liquid inside of it. The taste of the wax and then chewing the wax for the last remnant of liquid was what made it interesting.

I remember Razzles. ("Razzles is a candy! Razzles is a gum!") Razzles was awful. It started out like candy, but once you crunched it turned into gum. They had a contest asking kids to come up with a new term for it, to put to rest the debate whether it was a candy or a gum. This must have been the precursor to: Less Filling! Tastes Great!

I remember Now and Laters. Another awful tooth denter. Very hard cubes of some waxy candy, like petrified or stale Starbursts. It was supposed to take you hours to get through the whole pack, or maybe each individual cube, and I think it did. They came in oblongs, wrapped in cellophane, like modelling clay.

I remember Bonomo Turkish taffy. Chocolate, Banana, Strawberry, I think.

I remember the candy store where I bought all this stuff on 89th and Amsterdam. It was run by a middle aged black couple. I remember the husband, who was bald and very big and whom everyone called Curly. We had to wear blazers to the Franklin School -- a bit of pretentiousness that went by very quicky, once the narrow edge of desert boots was jammed in, and standing out like sore thumbs we would often get mugged by other kids on our way to or from school (once by the kid who called me a motherfucker), and I always liked the candy store because the owner (I never called him Curly) would protect us and tell the other kids, even when they were black, to leave us alone. I remember also in sixth grade, the first time I had to take "midterms," glamorous word, stopping with my friends to get some candy at that store before the test. It was dark and full of good things.

I remember stealing change left on the newspapers outside the New Yorker bookshop by people in a hurry -- either because they had to go quicky or because the bookshop wasn't open yet. I always stole some and left some -- that way if anyone came by just after I pocketed some, they would see that there was change still there and assume I was just reading the headlines or windowshopping. This is where we got money for candy from the candy shop.

posted by william 7:07 AM
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I remember my mother's engagement ring and my father's mother's engagement ring. They both had diamonds in white gold. My mother's had two diamonds, which looked rather like her glasses with their (at that time not) retro pointed frames; my grandmother's had one. This too seemed to me one of the basic divisions of the world. Later, of course, I learned that my grandmother gave my father the ring that he gave to my mother: it had belonged I think to her mother. My grandmother also had a golden locket with two pictures in it -- of her parents -- that she wore around on her neck. I liked the complex way it snapped open. She told me how her mother died in Dachau -- actually upon liberation, when she ate too much and couldn't handle it.

posted by william 7:26 AM
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From Jenn Lewin:

I remember crossing the George Washington Bridge with my grandparents when we'd drive from Boston to Lawrenceville and back again every summer from age 3 or 4 to 10 or so. I looked forwart to the trip itself because at that point it became a good excuse to see the New York City skyline, which I otherwise never got to see (not too many trips into New York, and I remember not paying attention to the skyline whenever we'd take NJ Transit into the city). I remember seeing the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, what feels like years later (maybe when I was 10), and thinking then of the GW as functional, designed to get across (and ideally to "make good time" on) and to see the world from, and picturing the Brooklyn Bridge as a monument, nicer to look at and to remember.

Jenn Lewin

posted by william 9:36 PM
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I remember Gimbel's, B. Altman's, and E.J. Korvette's in Herald Square. I could never quite parse the cursive writing on the Altman's bag -- did it start with a B or an A? My grandmothers shopped at Altman's, so to me it seemed slightly dowdy, but I think this was actually and artefact of where my mother worked and where my grandmothers lived.

I remember my two favorite restaurants to go to with my parents: La Fonda Del Sol, in I think the Time Life building, on 50th street and Sixth, and Bambi's, on Madison across from 180 Madison Avenue where my father worked at the time. La Fonda Del Sol was South American, and they had a strolling band and also sorts of cheesy foods. But I remember best chewing on the sugar cubes whenever anyone looked away. Bambi's was a sandwich place. I used to go with my father to his office on Saturday's during "tax season," when he had to work, and he or his partner Ed Zeitlin would give me a list of numbers to enter into a ledger or to add up. I thought they were relying on me, but of course.... Sometimes I had to do homework there too. We would have lunch at Bambi's and I always ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on rye. I have a dim sense that I got the idea of this sandwich from Perry Mason -- that is from the Earle Stanley Gardner novels. My father always suggested rye toast,but I wouldn't give up the tried and true. I think I had a brownie a la mode for desert.

I remember the Perry Mason TV shows. I loved Raymond Burr. (My father had a friend who looked just like him: Abe something.) That's why I read the novels. I was surprised that when in one of the novels Perry Mason and Della Street are pulled over for speeding, and Mason explains to the cop that "I'm an attorney," and shows him his card, 1) the cop doesn't know who he is (I thought he was famous, like James Bond); 2) the cop doesn't realize he's a good guy, making a cutting comment about "these defense attorneys." "Where's the fire?" the cop asks, and Mason replies without missing a beat, "In my office." Della is unhappy. She gets out of the car, and the cop follows Mason to his office. There, it turns out, there isa fire, a tiny one, much to Mason's relief. It turns out that Della has called the office and told them to set a fire where it would do "about $10 worth of damage," and thus saves Mason's bacon.

I remember Paul Drake, Mason's investigator on the TV show. I think that when I first learned what a drake was, I saw the resemblance. Paul Drake, like Perry Mason, was big and tall, and I loved seeing those two tall men conferring together. They made Hamilton Burger look so puny.

I remember when the actor who played Ham Burger got on TV to do an anti-smoking public service ad (I think he smoked in the series). He was dying of lung cancer, and he informed us of this on the ad. My reaction was, "Good," since he was Mason's antagonist on the show.

I remember how surprising it was to see Raymond Burr in A Place in the Sun and in Rear Window.

posted by william 9:54 AM
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I remember Profiles in Courage. We had a "junior edition," with a red, white, and blue hard cover. Because my classmate Jonathan Richmond was so into Kennedy (he could recite the inaugural address by heart), I read the profile of the guy who refused to vote to convict Andrew Johnson. I'd also read a book on P.T. 109, and about how Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage in the hospital. Later, when McHale's Navy was on TV, I connected them because McHale was captain of a PT Boat too. (I remember the Ensign on McHale's Navyas well: a famous comedian and Don Knotts figure. But who was he? And McHale's desk-bound superior, who once went into a Freudian revery -- I think he thought he was talking to a sympathetic shrink, and not one of McHale's men in disguise -- and said, the first time I heard this allusion, "I had a very unhappy childhood." That this should be a salient fact, something that he'd mention, seemed interesting and odd to me.)

posted by william 7:26 AM
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From Jenn Lewin:

I remember drive-in movie theaters.

I remember Penny-Pincher magazine, which was published by Consumer Reports and meant for younger readers.

I remember Body Buddies cereal.

Jenn Lewin

posted by william 10:37 PM
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From Thomas Carl Wall:

I remember owning a Rube Waddell baseball card. Waddell was the slightly insane pitcher for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics who would run right off the mound and chase fire trucks. I remember the photo was slightly out of focus, Waddell was leaning foreward as if he had just delivered a pitch, and he was smiling. I could see how his fingers had gripped the ball. His smile was disconcerting because he faced the camera but looking off to his left. The card disappeared from my collection sometime between 1962 and 1996, a period in my life when I never looked at baseball cards. I've never seen the card again in other collections or in catalogues. So part of me is not sure I ever really owned the card (or if it existed at all) even though I can still remember holding it in my hand and studying it.

Thomas Carl Wall

posted by william 10:36 PM
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I remember Jim Ryun.

posted by william 6:51 AM
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I remember Wink. Grapefruit soda. I think it's still available in the South, or at least is intermmitently available there. It was wonderful, and I think it was the only soda that tasted best in cans. A can of Wink was just great -- something about the alkaline taste of the aluminum combined with the citric acid of the soda itself. And the soda was always slightly flatter than other sodas, which was perfect.

I remember Tab. It's still around of course, but it used to be ubiquitous, in the saccharine days between cyclamtes and aspartame.

posted by william 8:47 PM
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I remember pneumatic tubes, at the bank. This was to foil robberies. You put your deposit slip and money into a cartridge, sealed it with a satisfying click, and put it into a pneumatic tube. The teller (whom you could see on closed-circuit tv) was on another floor. I seem to recall that they used to also use pneumatic tubes at the library -- you'd put a book request or several in them, and eventually the books would come by dumb-waiter. But this memory might be a hodgepodge of several different memories.

I remember that when you took out a book from the New York Public Library (I would go to the St. Agnes Branch on 83rd and Amsterdam) they photographed the slips from the books you were taking out plus your library card. I thought this was interesting and efficent but expensive.

I remember also the library between my school in the Bronx and I think the Moshulu Parkway? A brick building. A few blocks farther was a sub shop where I leared from Lou Rossman to order roast beef subs with shredded lettuce and vinegar. Amazingly good, I remember: I've had roast beef only once since sophomore year, and that was to be polite to a dinner hostess who didn't know I was a vegetarian.

posted by william 7:08 PM
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I remember when I first got glasses. My third grade teacher told my parents that I was squinting in class. As far as I was concerned I could see perfectly well. I was reading -- trying to read -- a Modern Library edition of Ben Hur, by Lew Wallace, a dark blue hardcover with very thin pages and very tiny print, and I thought that was why I was squinting (if I was squinting at all). (I'd just seen some of the Carlton Heston movie.) So I didn't accept any of this squinting business, but it was off to my mother's eye doctor, and the various lenses, etc., and then the bad news, that I needed glasses. I was inconsolable, and for some reason I had to wait outside in the bright sun while they talked about the prescriptions, etc. I leaned against the building -- a kind of rough sandstone, I remember, with a swelling at its base at just the right height for me to bury my head in my arms -- sobbing. Some old ladies came by and asked whether I was ok: and I said I was, but I wasn't. And then I tried to tell myself I'd be like Clark Kent with my glasses, but that didn't help.

I remember that when I got them, I thought there had to be something wrong with them since they made the floor at school (green and white squares) seem to tilt. But other kids who wore glasses said that I'd get used to them quickly, and alas I did.

I remember determining one day at my pediatrician's office that if I really didn't want a shot they couldn't physically force one on me, and I screamed and fought my poor septagenerian doctor and her nurse and my grandmother for a full twenty minutes or so, just to see where it would go, before I finally relented. I don't know why I relented, except that it seemed to me there was no other way for this situation to come to an end. I guess they outwaited me.

I remember that there was a stand with perforated cellophane sheets of dozens of lollypops in my pediatrician's waiting room, and after a visit you got one of the lollypops. I think I insisted on one after the shot.

I remember that my pediatrician used to make house-calls, with her big black bag. I remember thorassic knocking, which I think is rarely done any more: but she would tap on my chest and back while listening with her stethoscope. I loved her. She would begin and end visits by washing her hands and making amazingly large soap bubbles as a trick for the kids, which would hang from between her thumb and fingers. I could never do it myself no matter how hard I tried: it seemed a secret art, like whistling with your fingers, another skill I never mastered.

I remember running home from school on 89th street, past the Home for the Aged on 89th and West End. On sunny days very old people in wheel chairs used to sit outside, and I remember one extremely elderly woman in particular. I used to run past, and think of them thinking of me and saying to themselves, "Look how young and energetic and agile he is. Oh, to have those days back! He has no idea how sad it is to be old and unable to move." So I thought I did have an idea, and that in my way I was entering into sympathy with them for their wistfulness about my own youthful obliviousness. But of course I was wrong.

I remember the extremely elderly woman, who would sometimes feed the pigeons. She was very thin and had a blanket over her and a bit of a wispy white beard. We became friends a little when she asked me to move her one day. She spoke only Yiddish, it turned out, but we could communicate through my rudimentary German. I would often move her into the sun when she asked.

I remember also being a Shabbos goy. When I went to buy something for my parents at Cake Masters, the orthodox Jews on Broadway would often ask me to buy them papers and to push their elevator buttons for them. I didn't know whether to tell them I was Jewish or not -- somehow it seemed impolite, as a way of trying to get out of this favor that they wanted me to do for them. And since I wasn't a believer I didn't feel that the truth that would have been important to them wasthat important. (Plus they weren't supposed to be using Shabbos goyim anyhow -- I knew that you weren't supposed to make your man-servant or your maid-servant work on the Sabbath.) Once I had to bring the newspaper up to this guys 14th floor apartment, and then he got out a cigar box full of change, which he scrupulously avoided touching. He told me to take fifty cents, and I thought, toying with the wickedness, that I could take it all, since he couldn't touch the money to stop me. But I didn't take anything at all, not even the 50 cents -- I just left.

I remember being surprised that certain of my friends were, first, Protestant, and then, Catholic. That seemed odd. There was a Haitian girl in my class whom I had a crush on who was Catholic. I found this out in French class where she did very well. There was (and still is, I think) a Yeshiva on 89th and Riverside (Chofetz Chaim, I believe, after the Hassidic master), and my tough Christian friends would talk about rumbles with the kids at the Yeshiva -- about how they would beat them up on their way to or from school. I didn't approve but didn't have the guts to disapprove, and talked myself into disliking the Yeshiva bochers. Then one day one of them got to talking to me on my way home from school, and although I tried to dislike him I really couldn't. He told me that he was surprised by the amazing bad language -- language it had been my recent glory to learn -- that the kids up the street would use. I felt slightly sorry for him, and slightly guilty for looking down on him and for feeling as though I'd just been confirmed in the superiority my tough friends claimed and which I realized I didn't really believe, as though he'd turned out to be a slightly younger version of myself, whom such language still shocked. But I think I see now he was very interested in this language, and not nearly so disapproving as he was affecting.

I remember the first time I heard the word "motherfucker." A special education kid in my school -- the only kid as tough as my friend Hugh Cramer -- cussed me with it one day, on 89th and West End. I remember being amazed by the powerfulness of the imprecation.

posted by william 11:30 AM
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I remember Expo 67.

I remember the World's Fair in Queens, which was not an Expo. Our class went, and I also went with my downtown grandfather. I remember the picture phones that were supposed to be the wave of the future. We had discussions in class about how we felt about them: would we want to answer the phone just out of the shower, or in our pajamas? But ATT assured us they were coming. I remember also a lot of formica, and some train ride through the future, as it was conceived then.

I remember that when I went with my grandfather I had a little toy magnifying glass, from a Crackerjack box. My grandfather showed me how to focus the sun's beams on the back of my hand, and suddenly there was pain. I was startled and a little hurt, but I think more interested than hurt. But I couldn't do it again (of course): burnt child shuns fire, or in this case the sun.

I remember the total eclipse that occurred when I was about eight or so -- we saw it in Stormville. They predicted that there wouldn't be another one until the strange science-fiction 90's or so. There were dire warnings about blindness, and I decided I would stay inside when it occured at about 4 pm. My mother acquiesced but my father pooh-poohed the idea. Then at 4 or so I climbed to the top of the hill where all the grown-ups were looking at the sky and I saw the crescent moon. "Hey, it's the moon!" I said, and my father rushed to me and got me to look away: of course it was the sun almost totally blotted out by the full moon. For the next few hours I kept convincing myself that my one-second exposure had blinded me, but of course it hadn't.

I remember the first, futuristic remote controls for TV's. They worked by sound (though I think at a higher frequency than you could hear), so that occasional loud sounds like caps or clapping or books falling could change the channel or turn the TV on or off.

I remember when cars had only AM radios, and they would fade out briefly when you went under a bridge.

posted by william 2:58 PM
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I remember "Snag on you" -- how one jeered when one was proved right.

I remember the cool kids in sixth grade being able to drum "Wipe Out" really fast on the school desks. I just didn't see how they did it -- their hands were a blur of movement.

I remember another distinction between my mother (Sephardic, lawyer, Herald Tribune reader, bus rider, etc.) and my father (Ashkenazy, CPA, New York Times reader, subway rider, etc.): she wore glasses and he didn't. I look like her and hated the fact that everyone said so (since I was a boy), and when I got glasses this intensified my sense of being placed in the wrong camp.

I remember a fight they once had (before we moved out of 2-G when I was 7 to 7-F): the first time I heard the phrases "Shut up" (her to him) and "Cut it out" (his response to her). I thought these were equally bad expletives (after I had been rebuked for saying "shut up" soon after), "shut up" being ranged on her side of things, "cut it out" on his.

posted by william 10:34 AM
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I remember my (Washington Heights) grandfather's Ford Granada. (I think it was the first car he had with the parallel wipers.) I remember cars without bucket seats, and climbing into the front or the back seat over the top. I remember lying down and sleeeping (pre-seatbelt) in the back.

I remember (more fasitdiousness) how I didn't like the fact that the crankshaft raised the floor of the car down the center. I asked my grandparents why the floor was raised, and they said it was for the propeller shaft, which I think was as close as they could come to describing it in English.

I remember that my grandmother would always turn to my grandfather and say "Milo, ti" (Milo, you), whenever she made an observation that she wanted to share with him. It was affectionate, and a kind of template for me for easy grandparently affection.

I remember that I could understand my grandmother's German, but no one else's. (I now remember also that my grandfather conducted his bridge games in German, not the more usual Serbo-Croation that he and my grandmother spoke together and with my parents and my other grandparents.) I remember her greeting her friends with what sounded to me like Kris Kott, though later I found out it was Gruss Gott. I found this out when I went to Switzerland, and actually stayed in Wengen, where she and my grandfather used to summer.

I remember that she so wanted me to write her when she was away that she would give me blank stamped postcards with her address in Wengen. I was supposed to write once a week, but she was lucky if I wrote twice a summer.

I remember Royal Crowne Cola, half the price of Coke and Pepsi, and also Cott diet sodas: "It's Cott to be good." That sounds like it would be one of the influences on my mishearing Gott as Kott, but I think it went the other way around: I remember the Cott ad because I'd already somehow been sensitized to the Austrian G, harder than the American, through hearing Kris Kott so often.

posted by william 12:05 PM
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I remember headlocks, full-nelsons and half-nelsons, and that full nelsons could kill someone, by breaking their neck.

I remember wearing my Superman uniform to school underneath my clothes.

I remember that instead of the cool red boots, the uniform had the bottoms of its tights dyed red. But you wore your own shoes underneath.

I remember the smell of the S-emblem on the costume.

I remember Batman's yellow utility belt -- somehow I think it was made of a kind of vinyl rubber, though I don't know why I think that -- it wasn't part of the costume.

posted by william 8:18 PM
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I remember pitching pennies. There was a public service ad on TV about finishing high school, which said that with a high school diploma you could go somewhere. So the choice was up to you -- did you want to do something? "Or you could keep pitching pennies all your life." So that's where I learned about pitching pennies, which my friends and I then did -- tossed pennies against the wall so that they would land as close to the wall as possible. The winner of each round kept all the pennies. This never came to much money won or lost either way.

posted by william 7:10 AM
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I remember Stratego. The smart strategic move was to place your flag (was it?) behind one of the water barriers, rather than in the back row where your opponent would think it was. Scouts, miners, bombs, one marshall. Miners were ranked 8, and so lost to almost anything but a scout, but they beat bombs. The game seems all too relevant to current events. Does it still exist?

posted by william 7:34 AM
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I remember Bridge for Juniors. My parents were taking bridge lessons with the Herings -- it seemed an adult thing to do at the time, actually a Wasp thing to do, like mixed drinks. At some point that was what you did as an adults. And they got me a bridge-teaching game called Bridge for Juniors which consisted of a board on which you set your cards down, a deck of small thick cardboard cards, maybe two-inches square, with four suits that were different colored fruits -- I remember the purple plums -- and four wooden racks (like the racks in Scrabble) for putting your cards in. The dummy's cards were face out. You figured out trumps like whist, at random: that is to say there was no bidding, which made the game rather unlike bridge. I never quite understood what the grown-ups could be learning, until my (downtown) grandmother explained bidding to me. She was an expert bridge player -- she had enough points to qualify as a life-master -- and bridge gave her an enormous amount of intelletual sustenance ever since I knew her. It turned that she'd been brought up to think cards were an evil, but my grandfather, a one-time gambler, card-player and backgammon player (he of the two opening moves convention in chess) convinced her that cards were ok, and although they had a difficult marriage -- he was a difficult man -- she was always grateful to him for opening up this life-long recreation for her. She would get very frustrated with me for not understanding bidding conventions, which she tried to teach me too fast -- the Stayman convention, as I recall. I could never figure out whether the rules for bidding based on point counting that she taught me were actual rules, or simply what you were trying to convey to your partner. She kept saying they were actual rules, but I didn't see how they could be enforced -- clearly we had deeply different philosophical views as to what a rule was. She was always disappointed that I never learned to play well: for her the game was of an extraordinary intellectual sustenance.

I remember that my uptown grandfather also played bridge. (It turned out that in Vienna in the thirties he actually played with Bertolt Brecht.) I thought of the two of them -- my father's father and my mother's mother -- as the bridge players and imagined that they had this in common. But he played a very different game, with three other old people who would come to his house on Sundays and play bridge for change and drink coffee mit Schlag -- mainly Schlag I think. I was always proud of how old my grandfather was, but there was one old lady who came to play who was even older than he was. My grandmother didn't know how to play at all, and didn't care, so I would spend time with her while the others played.

I remember that my downtown grandparents also taught me a cardgame called "Tatch," I think Yugoslav for touch. It was I guess a version of gin rummy, except you couldn't see your cards -- you just turned over the top card and tried to get rid of cards by making runs onto your opponents cards or onto a discard pile. If you touched the wrong card your opponent would call "Tatch!" and force you to play it. I guess it was a game about being caught up in patterns of play, because the intellectual content of the game was not very high.

posted by william 2:25 PM
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I remember when radios and televisons had to warm up. You turned them on and it took about ten seconds for a radio and maybe 20 for a t.v. to turn on (the sound would come on first on the t.v.). Movies set in the pre-transistor era don't preserve this fact -- they have these things turn on immediately.

I remember that when you turned the t.v. off the picture would collapse into a bright dot at the center of the screen that would fade very slowly.

I remember when it was a mark of the quality of a portable radio (a transistor radio) how many transistors it had. I remember the schematic diagrams in the 9-volt battery compartment, which I learned to read a little after getting my Heathkit Jr.

I remember likewise when it was a mark of the quality of a watch how many jewels it had. A good watch was accurate to a minute a day.

I remember self-winding watches.

posted by william 7:15 AM
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I remember tables of logarithms. They looked so cool at the end of my pink Review Text of Eleventh Grade Mathematics, which I was trying to read in sixth grade. I remember also trying to learn about square roots (and the "carat method" of finding them) and simultaneous equations from my bright orange Britannica Jr. Encyclopedia, which came as a bonus for my parents' Encyclopedia. (Almost everybody else in my school used World Book.) I didn't get very far.

I remember slide rules. My father had a beautiful wooden one, which he gave me, but I preferred my plastic one with more scales on it. I loved the hairline clear plastic indicator. I think the indicator was gone from his, which of course didn't matter, but still.

I remember that at that time people with abacuses were still supposed to be faster than people with mechanical adding machines.

posted by william 12:19 PM
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I remember 15 cent subway tokens, and when they went up to 20 cents. They were very small, smaller than dimes, and had the Y of NYC punched out like a stencil. Later token changes changed the size each time, but when they went from fifteen to twenty cents they kept the same token and people hoarded them the weeks before the change.

I remember the penny shortage. Sam Goody's was giving 2 for one credit on merchandise for every penny you brought in. I managed to find a couple of hundred and bought a record effectively for half price (I don't remember what record though).

I remember that my Chelsea grandmother always rang the bell three times when she came to visit. My mother (like her mother) had a key, but always rang (once) when she got home. My father used his key to open the door -- there was a kind of gruff and paternal coughing and clicking of the door when he got home. I always knew who it was by these signs (although very occasionaly I was wrong).

posted by william 7:29 AM
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