Changing the world, one mind at a time, For What it's Worth...“For What it’s Worth” is an interview-based podcast series which focuses on exploring innovative ideas for a changing world; ideas related to people, culture, business, education, science and more. The show features well-known guests from across a variety of industries and disciplines, each presenting their views, theories, and predictions about issues related to new ways of thinking, working, and learning. From education to technology, social justice to the future of work, from politics to culture change, "For What it's Worth" explores where we are, how we got here, and whether or not we want to continue along these same paths in a post-COVID 19 world. The show will also feature “The Space [in Between]” co-hosted with Cameron Brown. “The Space” is an opinion-based exploration of a broad spectrum of cultural issues from current events, entertainment and the Arts. “The Space” is a free-flowing, non-scripted dialogue between Blake Melnick and Cameron Brown, and may appear as a stand-alone episode, or as an episode segment, you just never know... To access resources mentioned in the episode or to comment on the show, please visit: http://forwhatitsworthpodcast.blogspot.com
Chapter 3 of Out of the Fire takes us to Long Beach, New York between 1951 and 1955, where the Atlantic Ocean is both wonder and warning, Some days feel almost golden, anchored by a mother’s unbeatable cooking and the small pride of “helping” when the house floods. Other days turn unpleasant quickly.
This episode explores the emptiness inside a marriage, the pressure placed on kids as a result, and the confusing logic of neglect seen through the eyes of a small child. A moment at the beach captures this confusion, when a thirsty child is pointed toward the ocean and learns a brutal lesson about trust. As the story moves through the early school days and the thrill of baseball fandom after “The Giants won the pennant,” it also illustrates what happens when a child who feels powerless, tries to find control in the wrong ways.
The era’s biggest fear arrives at the doorstep. The polio epidemic brings quarantine, separation, and panic, followed by Hurricane Hazel and a desperate drive for live saving gamma globulin shots. We end with a hard-earned truth - the undercurrent that runs beneath Ken's memoir: our lives depend on the goodness of others, even when our home life is complicated. If this chapter hits you, subscribe to Out of the Fire, share it with someone who loves narrative podcasts, and leave a review so more listeners can find the story.
You're listening to Out of the Fire. I'm your host, Blake Melnick. In this episode, Chapter 3 of Out of the Fire, our story takes us to Long Beach, New York, 1951 to 1955. For what it's worth.
In January 1951, the month of my fifth birthday, my family moved from the Bronx to 534 East Walnut Street, Long Beach, Long Island, five blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. The day after the move, we walked to the beach. The pale winter sun, the shuddered rides, the smell of the ocean, the pounding surf. For me it was love at first sight. Long Beach. In summer we swam. In fall and winter we endured storms and hurricanes. Shells lay close to the shore then, close enough that I stepped on them and cried out in pain. We fished on Reynolds' Channel and came away with fluke and flounder, which my mother gutted and fried. The one consistent salve in my life was my mother's superb cooking. She must have been taught by her grandmother. Once a week the smell of beef stew filled the house, making my mouth water. No matter how bad the day, I knew the dinner would be good. Our property included an unusually large garden. At its center stood an old willow tree, spiny leaves cycling from yellow to green and back again. Peach trees lined the east and south sides. Every summer, pinkish yellow peaches, plump and fragrant, were picked and eaten without washing. Sticky juice dripped from mouth to chin to shirt. We gave away bushels. Mother made peach pies. My siblings and I loved the house. When hurricanes hit and water leaked in, we bowed from the basement with buckets and cups, pouring water over the front porch rail. It probably seeped right back in. But I felt heroic. My little metal cup mattered. Eventually a company came to pump the water out. Mother called the house Sam's bargain. She hated it. The mold, the sand everywhere. But what difference did it make to Sam or to us? He never noticed those things. Or if he did, they didn't bother him.
Miriam complained incessantly. Even when Sam hired maids, she fired them all, unless they left first. Zona was too heavy. Mother feared she'd fall down the stairs and die on the job. Aida was either hard of hearing or pretending to be. I always sided with the maids. I didn't understand that my mother's anger was rooted in the emptiness of her marriage. Nothing, not even the help, could soothe it. Two weeks after my fifth birthday, I was skipped from kindergarten to grade one. It wasn't because I was gifted. In 1951, the baby boomers were overwhelming the system. I was born in January. I was bigger than my classmates, and I could read. Years later, I asked my father why. You were your sister's project, he laughed. That made sense. Joan had been skipped too, in her case for genuine brilliance. Into her eighties, she still does projects, founding a hospice, serving as a university trustee, idealistic and able to organize others to share the vision.
On October 3, 1951, one block from East Walnut Street, a voice erupted from the car radio. The Giants won the pennant. The Giants won the pennant. Russ Hodges. I didn't yet understand it, but I became a fan. Bobby Thompson's home run, later dubbed the shot heard round the world, though most of the world never heard it. Being a fan seemed required for a full life. In New York, you rooted for the Yankees, patrician and powerful, the Dodgers, middle and lower middle class, or the Giants, working class. My mother and sister chose the Yankees. My brother chose the Dodgers. I chose the Giants. My father chose bookmakers. Miriam had high expectations for her children. Academic excellence. Joan accepted the challenge. David drifted toward my father's world. When David brought home poor grades, mother unleashed insults. Ignorant Airedale. David got it worse than I did. She had invested more in his success. However, much I tried to identify with maleness, my raging temperament mirrored my mother, including your occasional cruelty.
One hot summer day, mother took us to the ocean. She sat under a paisley umbrella, long white sleeves, chain smoking, reading. I was terribly thirsty. I asked for something to drink. She told me to wait. I asked again and again. She pointed at the Atlantic. There's all the water in the world. I picked up my little red pail, walked down to the water's edge, and, filling it from a clean-looking wave, drank the salty gunk, then gagged. I was confused, missing the message. I couldn't trust you. Next door lived the Dresners. Their son David was a year younger than me. One day during a barbecue, I walked into their house and squeezed toothpaste in a perfect ascending ring up the bathroom sink. When I finished, I looked in the mirror. I didn't recognize myself. I sat on the curb outside. Later I heard Mrs. Dresner screaming. Then the unmistakable sound of skin on skin. David crying. I didn't do it. It was you, mother. You did it, not me. Teachers said I lacked self-control. I had no control over anything. Not my body, not my needs, not my temper. My response to violation was passive. But with other kids, I could become a perpetrator. I pushed a boy off a stairway ledge at kindergarten. Thank God he fell on the grass. When asked by a teacher if I'd done it, I said no. Did she really buy my denial? After all, she didn't see me do it, and the deed itself came out of nowhere. Just like your deeds, mom. I got away with it. Once in the Bronx, I pushed a boy into a window. Glass shattered, blood everywhere. Mother took me inside. I waited for punishment. My mother said nothing. She opened a bottle of Dr. Brown's Selray, poured it into a glass, placed it in front of me. I drank it, waiting for the blow that never came. Did she, in a moment of clarity, understand her own responsibility in shaping who I was becoming? A cruel five-year-old boy with an uncontrollable temper. My parents bought me a stuffed poodle, bluish-gray. I slept with it every night. I made a hole in its back and pulled the stuffing out and pushed it back in. Despite ridicule, I loved it. Long after little boys were supposed to stop loving such things. I retreated into my head, built cities from wooden blocks, and destroyed them like Godzilla. But my parents' arguments filled the house. Money, allowance, clothes. I compared them to Ralph and Alice Cramden. They always made up. I prayed my parents would too, but I feared the worst. When mother threatened to leave, father slammed suitcases in the fire. Leave, see if I care, he was saying. I cared. I wanted to stop them. Tell them I was in pain. I couldn't. An Art Deco Dumont Radio obsessed me. Its warm belly, its glowing tubes, shortwave voices from nowhere. One day I heard a preacher foretelling a new flood. I imagined drowning with my family. Mother found me crying. What are you crying about? I couldn't speak. She slapped my face. The pain wasn't just the slap. At the time I did not know the word injustice, but what I felt was the pain and devastation of injured innocence. For the first time I could tell myself that she was wrong to treat me that way. But I could not bring myself to hate her. How could I love the person who caused me so much pain, whose moods and sudden violence I always feared? Because you were my mother. In the basement I watched her iron shirts. When she left the room, I touched the iron, fed all ten fingers. The pain confirmed wrongdoing. She dragged me to the sink, cold water. I learned to fear touch and crave it.
I rode my bike everywhere. Once I ran into a little girl wearing leg braces. I fled in terror. Polio was the nightmare of the times. Worse than the bomb, worse than the Holocaust. In 1954, my class was quarantined. Howie has polio, the teacher said. We were separated. Marked. Hurricane Hazel arrived days later. My father drove us through chaos to get gamma globulin shots. The ace is at the wheel, he said. Years later, those words marked his grave. I learned later that my father survived polio as a child. Were it not for the goodness of strangers, I would never have lived. The doctor who saved my father, the neighbors who got that doctor, the courage of the firemen who allowed me to survive. Our lives depend on the goodness of others. At the height of the epidemic, my father announced we were moving. To Rockville Center. Better schools, a golf club, a fresh start. We were devastated. Ten miles felt like a hundred. On my last day of school, Mrs. Alterac handed me a card. You were always the apple of my eye, it said. I stared at those words. This can't be true, and yet I ached.
Blake Melnick
In Long Beach, Ken finds beauty, terror, cruelty, and refuge, often in the same day. He learns what sustains him, what injures him, and what he must invent to survive. In the next chapter, the family moves again, and the lessons of childhood harden into identity. For what it's worth.
