Strangers

I

When I was fifteen, in the spring of 1949, the world celebrated the diamond jubilee of the kidnapping of Charlie Ross. The curly-haired four year old was abducted from near his home on Wahington Lane. His older brother, Walter, was snatched with him. Two men, inticing them with candy on earlier occasions lured them into a cart with newer promises of firecrackers and torpedos. These guys knew what kids liked. They took the boys to Kensington, no small trip in 1874. There, Walter was sent into a store to buy firecrackers and Charlie vanished forever.

I knew the story of Charlie Ross' disappearance long before the Evening Bulletin printed the anniversary account. My mother and a lot of other mothers in the neighborhood would point out the scene of the crime, just a block away from our house. A lesson was given. "Don't ever take candy from strangers."

There was always hope that Charlie would turn up. His parents went to the end of their lives hoping. Walter lived until 1943 and two of Charlie's sisters were still alive in 1949 living with an uncertainty that now and then was revived by cranks claiming to be the long lost boy.

Criminals who create unsolved mysteries aren't universally despised. In their wake are people equally as cruel. They prey upon the miserable, pathetic conditon inherited by kinfolk of victims. One old mystery seems resolved. In 1992 bodies of the last Czar of Russia and his family were recovered. Forensic tests have debunked the romantic charade of a now deceased woman who, with help, claimed to be Anastasia, the princess daughter of the murdered Nicholas the Czar.

Tragedies like this are read by the larger public without emotional wrenching. They are insulated against an unspeakable trauma left to those so kindly called the survivors. Only when the fell hand of unkind events touches their homes can agony be "appreciated." It's not extended to strangers.

It touched my family in 1950. My sister had married the year before and mothered a son the following spring. In December her husband vanished in a blizzard while on a hunting party.

By credible speculation he was assumed to have died. Chances were that he lay under quicksand. My sister, bringing her infant son back to her parents' house, had a stone of uncertainty heavy upon her. Her husband's family held equally wan hope that he might somehow be found alive. Maybe he had amnesia.

There's the catchword that set uninvolved creeps into action. George Franks was sighted as often in his time as Elvis is now. Phone calls would send his family on frantic hunts around the country. In the years following his disappearance only one lead seemed hopeful, although the result would confirm that he was dead. A skeleton had been found after a storm in the Pocono Mountain region where he was lost. It might be him. Forensic detectives resolved the question immediately. The bones dated to the middle nineteenth century, too late to relieve another family of their unanswered questions. The publicity of this finding sent a new generation of pranksters and mediums to tease George's family. His mother, after years of responding to strangers' calls, blew her brains out one day and those who sit by windows pondering the unknown were reduced by one.

II

Most of our free time when we were kids was left to us and our own devices. I don't think that we were cheated. Whenever adults got into our activities they got into our way. If too many of us got involved in a common scheme chaperones would appear to keep us in check. Afterall, there had been precedents of uncontrolled forces that children might emulate: Attila and his gang, Genghis Khan and his, the republicans at the Bastille...and more recently the rabble of communist types at May Day marches in Union Square. Despite the chaperones, or maybe because of them, children rule the world today. It was chaperones who gave them adult ideas and adult values and some goals that certainly weren't working for their own generation. From an economic base anyway, children who are encouraged by clever adults control a big chunk of the fashion industry and the direction of entertainment from theme parks to television to sports. And of course the whole field of psychology is dependent on the warfare between them and natural order. Even capable parents tend to lose to competition.

Wise people tried to correct any problem children might leave with their elders. The Children's Crusade was a good idea; the Turks might eat them on their way to Jerusalem. Another solution was proposed by Jonathan Swift who suggested they be sold to butcher shops and solve two problems at once. Both of these schemes failed because civilization wasn't quite ready.

Why do adults spend so much time with other people's children? They're saving them from "the streets." They're saving them from their environment. They're doing what the kids' parents can't do, won't do or should do. They're augmenting experiences kids could have, should have. They're specialists. They're fulfilling a mission. They're leading a crusade.

Few are those who are doing these things and admitting that they are in a position of power. Think of it. The power is exercised to an art when they've won both the child and the parent(s). The range of motives is more fascinating than the excuses.

Organizers have a wide latitude of objectives to strive for. They can move in a number of directions from the resurrection of Hitler Youth type clubs to a barge party to Fire Island. Most organizers don't go to those extremes or even want to go in those directions. Most don't get that many troops. When they do we'll look for another children's crusade. Mercifully, we know that most organizers are doing it for money (misspent when you notice their credentials).

We were thrown into the clutches of an array of volunteers who supposed they were edifying us. At least that's what the brochures said.

"Join the Y." Okay. Crafts: make wallets, belts, trinkets for mom, lanyards, key rings. Eight thousand apprentices mutilated hunks of leather and not one vocation. We'll buy our wallets at Woolworths or Gimbels later on.

Learn to swim. Now that's worth something. "No swim suits allowed. The lint clogs the filter." Whose idea was that? My survey found our "Y" was the only one in Philadelphia that demanded nude swimming.

There were some guys watching us before we went in and after we came out of the water. Maybe some of them were lifeguards. Some of them looked familiar in an unfamiliar way. They might have been seen at the arboretum or in the men's room at the Orpheum. They went in there to smoke a lot of cigarettes and admire the urinals.

The people at the "Y" were not all useless, or bad. Most were pretty neat. The "Y" provided sports (with equipment), had a poolroom, and ran excursions to Riverview Beach where we could wear swim suits. The spectators at the pool back at the "Y" were elsewhere, probably at the Orpheum. On Friday nights, for a dime, we could watch old movies no longer shown at places like the Orpheum featuring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and retired cowboys. They would throw us out at 9:30 and we had time to saddle-up on stools at a soda fountain and guzzle lemon-phosphate cokes, for a nickel.

III

I entered the economy before my tenth birthday. If I had listened to my mother's warning I would have missed the chance and run away from the guy who said "Wanna make some money?" We forget lessons aimed at us that involve other people's misfortune expecially if there's something offered to us. Anyway, the guy who asked me if I wanted to make some money wasn't offering candy or firecrackers. They're the things that kidnappers use for bait.

Was this guy riding around in his car looking for me? The last stranger in a car that I had contact with did a lot of damage. I had run into the street between two parked cars and got whacked and spent a little time in a hospital and a little more in convalescence. "Look both ways. Cross the street at the corner." I got that advice from my parents. See what happens when you don't listen?

The man who asked me if I wanted to make some money didn't invite me into his car. With money as an incentive, I might have. For candy, I don't think so. My mother's warning (about candy) didn't mention anything about money. Any admonition had to "direct." I was nine.

He talked to my parents. He was a salesman for a nationally known magazine. He would hire me to knock on doors and beg subscriptions. I would be his delegate. A nine year old boy can get results from housewives. Adults at the door look suspicious, sleezy, stupid. Every Thursday I would deliver the magazine to my customers at 10 cents each.

My boss probably spent the afternoons in Doyle's saloon while I and other kids pounded our routes doing his work. I was happy with pennies because that was all nine year olds needed. Not today!

My mother thought, after a while, that I wasn't getting a big enough slice of the action. She thought my boss was taking advantage. She was making me unsure of what good was. Yet I was making more money working for him than for her. She decided I would have to quit my job. Bad decision, I say; I wouldn't rise to the top.

In 1948 we spent our vacation at Wildwood. I preferred Wildwood over Ocean City. One evening I noticed a knot of people down by the water's edge. I was curious and I walked down from the boardwalk and across the beach to where they were standing. A drowned man had washed ashore. The corpse was bloated. The crowd grew and stared at the grotesque remains of someone none of them knew. Half sorry that they were staring at it and half nauseated, they couldn't leave. They seemed afraid that they might miss something like a second body arriving. Eventually they would all go back to the boardwalk and eat Pork Roll and cotton candy. He would go to the morgue and make some other people sick.

Going to the beach can be like going to the car-races. There's something morbidly fascinating about the possibility that there might be a drowning or a fiery crash...if you're an observer.

The dead man attracted the first of the curious. Others came attracted by the curious. "What happened?" fell from the lips of every new arrival. Answers came readily from those who had information. He drowned. He was in the water for a couple of days. He's colored. The crowd of white people were assured that no relative of theirs lay bloated on the beach. An hysterical demonstration would wait for those who knew him.

Among those who gawked was Primo Carnera, once the heavy-weight boxing champ now past his prime and reduced to wrestling for a living in places like Wildwood. Attention moved from the dead man to the Argentine mangler. He stood next to me. I was about the size of his left leg. People would say they saw a colored man who had drowned. They would say they saw Primo Carnera. And that was all there was to say. I don't know what anyone thought about the incident. I really don't remember how I thought much beyond noticing I was about the size of Primo Carnera's left leg. It was, in essence, an impersonal encounter for all who were there, not without a little compassion, but without personal grief. In a wink strangers are dismissed; they clutter our agendae.

We went back to the boardwalk.

I was fourteen, going on fifteen and sometimes acting thirteen and by today's assessment of things, that age might be a naive twelve. When I went to the beach I would still build sandcastles eventhough little pails and tin shovels had been long discarded. If I would go to the beach now, I'd build sandcastles and guard them again until the sea crushed them and washed them away.

At night I would go to the boardwalk, a kind of heaven to fourteen year olds. My money went through a hole in my pocket that was funneled in three directions. There were games: skee-ball, pokerino, miniature golf. There were amusements; they were all designed to bend our internal organs and in some cases, our brains. Notably the bumper-cars did both and they prepared New Jersey drivers-to-be for the way they would handle their cars when they came to Pennsylvania. And there was snack-food: lime-rickeys, frozen custard, waffles and ice cream, cotton candy and other stuff consumed with gluttanous abandon just before a ride on "The Whip" or rocket rides. All of the puke in Wildwood didn't come from drunks.

Our vacation was over, almost. On the last night my parents went to a night club. My sister, sixteen, went out all dressed up to where sixteen year old girls go.

I was told to be home by eleven. It was a sure bet that my sister and my parents would return a lot later. Eleven o'clock was a concession but it still had the stamp of authority that had to be respected because that's the way things were. Anyway, I'd be exhausted — and broke — before then.

In those days I followed the fortunes of the Philadelphia Athletics with an intensity that's undefinable to those who don't love baseball. Why couldn't I do that in school?...with other things of importance? In later life that has haunted me. In later life I've seen parallels in other people who gather up great expertise in things that are valueless and fail in the crucial areas of survival and even in coherent conversations. Why?

My money was all spent early. I guess I was tired and didn't want to loaf around until eleven o'clock. I stopped at a newsstand to check the baseball results before going home.

The man who struck up some chat with me knew a lot about baseball. I had met this type at every ballgame I saw at Shibe Park. Men liked to show off their knowledge of the game to kids. They all had seen Babe Ruth. They all had stories of the heroics of great players. Kids listened to men like those. They gave history lessons that we liked.

The A's were in first place. After seventeen years of mediocrity they were winners. Everyone rooted for the A's — well, everyone in the known world.

This guy was from Cleveland. What was he doing in Wildwood? He talked up the prowless of the enemy. I countered with stats about the local heroes who were at the advantage because they were in first place.

I started the long walk up the boardwalk toward home. He tagged along, talking about baseball for a while. Then he switched over to more immediate interests.

"Did you ever walk on the beach at night far up to the end of the island? Did you notice the lights at sea where fishermen worked their trade under a black sky?"

Yes. I saw them. I heard the lap of waves on the sand away from the honky-tonk. I saw the stars by countless millions and heat-lightning dance across the heaven. I heard some moans back in the dunes. Perhaps someone was ill, or wounded.

He invited me for a walk. I declined. He asked if I would want to sit on a bench and watch the sea. He shifted back to baseball talk as an incentive.

"Naw! I think I'm going to go to bed." I was really tired.

When I turned to the ramp at my street he stayed along side me. This route would take him back into town. The streets were dimly lit and at that time abandoned to the lure of the boardwalk. He noted that it was early and we could still go up on the beach and have fun. Fun? "Naw!" I wanted to go home.

Suddenly, at an alley-way next to a supermarket he grabbed my crotch. I froze. Apparently he realized what he had done and made a second aggressive move and pushed me into the alley.

Little girls prepare for life. They play with dollies. They dress them. They undress them. They talk to dollies and have tea parties. Little boys play primitive games. They play Red Rover and tag and hide-and-seek: useless games in the civilized world.

I don't know where the civilized world was, then or now. I made all of the evasive moves that were learned in tag or as the last man of Red Rover and got out of the alley and ran and hid from a man who had made two dangerous attacks on me.

When I got home I felt he might know where I was. I sat by a window looking for shadows after I looked under the beds, into the closets and behind the furniture. I waited in terror until my sister, back from wherever sixteen year olds have gone, got to the door and I jumped into bed. I wouldn't sleep until the parents returned.

There was nothing in my childhood so frightening as that. And yet, I never told my mother, or my father, or my sister of the attack.

The girls had experiences with that kind of person. The guy on the train who had exposed himself in front of my mom and the crazy nude who jumped off the garage roof in front of my sister were publicized in table talk at home. But this seemed unapproachable in retrospect.

I had Charlie Ross' story to keep me aware of bad things. But I also had an overwhelmingly normal interplay with people who I met. I was simply satisfied with the security of parents present and the episode ended there.

The problem is that it was luck.