I grew up in
middle class splendor in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Florida. In every
new place, my family always landed at the intersection of love and confusion.
My favorite
was upstate New York, where I walked to school in the snow, tromped through the
creek in the woods, and rode my fancy Raleigh bicycle to the hilltops. In the
back yard, gazing at the sky, and when the creek in the woods froze solid, I
began my work in the family business: thinking about things, everything, trying
to figure it all out, even stuff that Judaism doesn’t think about, and that’s
saying something.
After high
school in Jacksonville, Florida, I attended Emory University in Atlanta.
The best
part of going to college was being thrown out for a semester, whereupon I
worked my ass off as a cook, and bought a VW hippie van with a bed, stove,
refrigerator and a roof deck. It carried me all around the country during the
peak years of the late Sixties. But despite the boundless lure of the road, I
did finish college, mainly because it was a smart way to avoid killing
Vietnamese farmers with whom I had no significant problems.
Upon
graduation, my draft deferment expired. But I wound up getting out of military
service by a stroke of fate that’s barely believable. It’s in my memoir, along
with my immersion in a semi-secret group which was supposed to hasten mastery
of the family business. Which is what the memoir is mainly about. That plus sex
and my grandfather. It’ll make sense when you read it.
A wide array
of jobs followed, culminating in self-taught skills in carpentry sufficient to
get me hired alongside country boys who’d never met a Jew and grew up with
hammers in one hand, guns in the other. Self-taught skills in architecture followed.
After a few more strokes of fate and some decades, I designed and built homes
for urban pioneers in the downtown neighborhoods of Atlanta.
In 2013, itching
to live somewhere besides Atlanta, I listened to my daughter Rose when she
said, “You should look at Richmond.” The sign on the door of the Virginia
Museum of Fine Art read “Open every day. Admission free.” I found a real estate
agent who is a published memoirist. She showed me some houses in case I might
move here one day in the remote, abstract future. Forty-three days later I
moved into the third house she showed me.
Maybe I like
my jobs in Richmond better than my other favorite jobs. I work for a non-profit
that serves elderly homeowners who need help maintaining so they may age in
place. Plus I became president of the neighborhood association, helped to form
a coalition around a proposed city project and joined the Richmond chapter of
the NAACP. This intersection is more love and less confusion.
I am still working
in the family business, thinking about things, everything, trying to figure it
all out. Gainfully employed, so to speak, and it’s going well. Stay tuned for
updates.
