Coulda Woulda

In the summer of 1954 I got both my marriage and pharmacy license. Poetic license would come later.  I also changed address from Forest Hills to Los Angeles.

Meanwhile back in my old neighborhood Donald Trump was in the 3^rd grade attending Kew Forest School located directly across from my apartment house. The thought of it blemishes my idyllic childhood.

The bad news for the country is his chronic misbehavior and nasty tongue. The good news is that he may, one day, leave his brain to UCLA for further research. We may then discover whether it was a genetic defect, early trauma or acquired behavior on his way to becoming a superior being.

Maybe it could be traced to an election for pencil monitor that year when he insulted everyone in the class including the teacher and then promised to remedy their private grievance be it long lines, having had a toe stepped on or being bumped in a crowded elevator. When he accused the private school of rigging the election he may or may not have been sent to the principal’s office but his father was on the board of trustees so the incident would have been expunged from his record.

Kew Forest School is still seen by those to the manor born as an early prep school for future captains of industry. For me it was a chain-link fence to be scaled in order to access a grassy area where we kids without breeding could play a game of football or hit some fungo.

By 1954 my father’s corner drugstore had been closed for about ten years. He relied on those kids from Kew Forest School to buy a bottle of Evening In Paris now and then but my memory is of a boy and girl occupying a booth for hours at a time sipping a cherry coke with two straws.

I’m sorry the store folded before our illustrious candidate was born. I could have been an eye-witness to history. After Kew Forest Pharmacy closed down it was vacant for a year or more. Then one day glass wax came off the window and it became a store-front synagogue

Around 1948 I was passing by with my 1^st baseman’s mitt in hand on my way to the schoolyard. After it was established I had been Bar Mitzvahed I was pulled in to make a minyan. I mumbled the holy mumbles looking up at the Torah but feeling my father’s presence where he had presided between globes of colored water. He was a shaman of sorts.

Given the chance he might even have had some healing effect on the candidate. My father’s gift for listening could have been the prescription young Donald needed to tame his rants and check his narcissism. Whatever it was missing from the young man my Dad, given the chance, would have given him a glimpse of self-esteem without arrogance or braggadocio and permission to lose without losing face.  No, Donald, dropping a pop fly does not make you a loser nor is that G.I. who was taken prisoner and now working behind the counter making your milk shake.