For Veteran’s Day weekend, 2013.
This is where I lived for about five years after the second world war, in which my father had served as a pathologist in the medical corps. There was a Kiwanis Club contest for oratory, and I gave a talk “Why Veteran’s Housing Is Unsatisfactory, ” regaling the club with stories of paraplegics and other enlisted men living in tiny huts with kerosene stoves that sometimes exploded, injuring or killing (?) the occupants. I lost the contest to a girl who spoke about “Prejudice,” but I still got a Demosthenes medal that I treasure. One of the judges was a Democratic city councilman who had supported this ghastly project as a suitable reward for veterans and their families.
I remember my classmates who were with me at P.S. 13: they had names that were Irish, Polish and Italian; i.e., their parents were probably very recent immigrants, like the Eastern Jews who terrified the…
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