so sure that Mr. Krakowitz was a jerk. I mean, I’d never seen him do anything real rotten. There was no doubt, of course, that he was a pain in the ass. You didn’t have to be rotten to be a pain in the ass. Not in 1927 anyway.
Mr. Krakowitz owned a men’s clothing store on Avenue B, between Fourth and Fifth, four blocks down from the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House. Some of the guys, guys like George Weitz, for instance, said Norton Krakowitz didn’t give a damn about the boy scout movement. He was in it for business reasons. He wanted to draw attention to his clothing store by posing as a public-spirited citizen. Norton Krakowitz? Owner of Krakowitz Men’s and Boys’ Clothes on Avenue B? A very good man. Works on the Boy Scouts. Some kind of executive on the Lower Manhattan Council. Spends a lot of time with the youngsters. Because he wants to help boys to grow up to be good men. Your son needs a suit for the High Holidays? Buy from Krakowitz. He deserves your patronage.
Anyway, that’s how some people felt. If I didn’t, or if I wasn’t sure I did, it was because it wasn’t till my bar mitzvah that my father bought me the one suit I had. I mean a whole suit. Pants and a jacket. Before that I even went to schul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the pants my father sewed for me himself and the sweaters my mother knitted for me. My feelings about Mr. Krakowitz were based mainly on the way he discharged his duties as a member of the Executive Committee of the Lower Manhattan Council. He enjoyed himself. It does not seem now to be a valid reason for disliking somebody, but now is different from 1927. I was fourteen in 1927.
Norton Krakowitz liked to sing in public, and he was crazy about Shakespeare and the Bible. On Saturday nights, after he shut up shop, he roamed the Lower East Side, from Delancey Street to Avenue B, dropping in for a few minutes each on all the settlement houses that housed boy scout troops under his jurisdiction. I have no doubt, even though I cannot substantiate my certainty by actual eyewitness evidence, that Mr. Krakowitz filled each one of these few-minute sessions in exactly the same way that he filled the few minutes he spent with us every Saturday night in the Troop 244 meeting room at the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House.
Somewhere around nine-thirty there would be a sharp knock on the door. No matter what we were doing—laying out the itinerary for a Sunday hike, burning gauze pads to make tinder for our flint-and-steel sets—we would stop doing it. Mr. O’Hare, our scoutmaster, would go to the door, open it, and admit Norton Krakowitz. It was like admitting a Japanese trade delegation to a postwar parley. There were a lot of parleys in 1927.
Much smiling. A joke or two. Hearty laughter, mostly, as I recall, from Mr. Krakowitz. Then the speech. Thirty seconds to a minute and a half on Scouting as the Road to a Better and More Prosperous America. Then the song. It was always “Me And My Shadow.” Norton Krakowitz sang it the way my father ate noodle soup: as though he would never again get a crack at another helping. End of song. Applause. Followed by the senior patrol leader (me) jumping to his feet and yelling, “How about three cheers and a tiger for Mr. Krakowitz?” No dissent. The troop came through with a “Rah Rah Rah, Siss Boom Bah, Mr. Krakowitz! Mr. Krakowitz! Mr. Krakowitz!” The recipient of this noisy adoration smiled, bowed, raised his hand, and announced: “One final word.” It was never one, but it sure as hell—no, sorry, sure as heck—was final. Like: “Vanity of vanities, sayeth the preacher, all is vanity.” Or: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Another wave of the hand, and Norton Krakowitz was off to the Clarke House on Rivington Street for a repeat performance. On East Fourth Street the Clarke House was pronounced the “Clock House.” There was a huge clock over the wide gray stone entrance.
“This bastard
Mr. Krakowitz owned a men’s clothing store on Avenue B, between Fourth and Fifth, four blocks down from the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House. Some of the guys, guys like George Weitz, for instance, said Norton Krakowitz didn’t give a damn about the boy scout movement. He was in it for business reasons. He wanted to draw attention to his clothing store by posing as a public-spirited citizen. Norton Krakowitz? Owner of Krakowitz Men’s and Boys’ Clothes on Avenue B? A very good man. Works on the Boy Scouts. Some kind of executive on the Lower Manhattan Council. Spends a lot of time with the youngsters. Because he wants to help boys to grow up to be good men. Your son needs a suit for the High Holidays? Buy from Krakowitz. He deserves your patronage.
Anyway, that’s how some people felt. If I didn’t, or if I wasn’t sure I did, it was because it wasn’t till my bar mitzvah that my father bought me the one suit I had. I mean a whole suit. Pants and a jacket. Before that I even went to schul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the pants my father sewed for me himself and the sweaters my mother knitted for me. My feelings about Mr. Krakowitz were based mainly on the way he discharged his duties as a member of the Executive Committee of the Lower Manhattan Council. He enjoyed himself. It does not seem now to be a valid reason for disliking somebody, but now is different from 1927. I was fourteen in 1927.
Norton Krakowitz liked to sing in public, and he was crazy about Shakespeare and the Bible. On Saturday nights, after he shut up shop, he roamed the Lower East Side, from Delancey Street to Avenue B, dropping in for a few minutes each on all the settlement houses that housed boy scout troops under his jurisdiction. I have no doubt, even though I cannot substantiate my certainty by actual eyewitness evidence, that Mr. Krakowitz filled each one of these few-minute sessions in exactly the same way that he filled the few minutes he spent with us every Saturday night in the Troop 244 meeting room at the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House.
Somewhere around nine-thirty there would be a sharp knock on the door. No matter what we were doing—laying out the itinerary for a Sunday hike, burning gauze pads to make tinder for our flint-and-steel sets—we would stop doing it. Mr. O’Hare, our scoutmaster, would go to the door, open it, and admit Norton Krakowitz. It was like admitting a Japanese trade delegation to a postwar parley. There were a lot of parleys in 1927.
Much smiling. A joke or two. Hearty laughter, mostly, as I recall, from Mr. Krakowitz. Then the speech. Thirty seconds to a minute and a half on Scouting as the Road to a Better and More Prosperous America. Then the song. It was always “Me And My Shadow.” Norton Krakowitz sang it the way my father ate noodle soup: as though he would never again get a crack at another helping. End of song. Applause. Followed by the senior patrol leader (me) jumping to his feet and yelling, “How about three cheers and a tiger for Mr. Krakowitz?” No dissent. The troop came through with a “Rah Rah Rah, Siss Boom Bah, Mr. Krakowitz! Mr. Krakowitz! Mr. Krakowitz!” The recipient of this noisy adoration smiled, bowed, raised his hand, and announced: “One final word.” It was never one, but it sure as hell—no, sorry, sure as heck—was final. Like: “Vanity of vanities, sayeth the preacher, all is vanity.” Or: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Another wave of the hand, and Norton Krakowitz was off to the Clarke House on Rivington Street for a repeat performance. On East Fourth Street the Clarke House was pronounced the “Clock House.” There was a huge clock over the wide gray stone entrance.
“This bastard
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