Travel Reference
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“When's them kids from the school coming?” we heard him shout to an invisible someone.
We walked the long way around the rotunda to let a moment pass, and then we knocked on
the door to ask if we were in the right place. After a brief delay, we were ushered into the
inner sanctum to meet Mayor Hugh J. Addonizio. He now had his suit jacket on, and he
was all smiles. He spoke in a gravelly voice.
“I'm really proud of youse guys. You're good kids. Keep it up.”
He shook our hands and gave us each a lapel pin to remember this special occasion. He
seemed just like a character out of
The Untouchables
whom Eliot Ness would have in his
sights, an initial impression that was confirmed a few years later when he was sentenced to
ten years for receiving kickbacks from the mob.
Later in my senior year, for reasons that remain somewhat obscure even to me, I bought
myself a couple of iridescent shirts and a pair of gray, sharkskin pants and started building
out a wave over my forehead. Was it was a sort of mimetic strategy driven by a sense of
vulnerability? Or a private joke? Or my first precocious attempt to experience the world in
Italian?
In any case I had at least one verifiable success in my efforts at cultivating my new “greas-
er” look. Brandeis University had organized a summer get-together for all of us from North
Jersey who would be attending Brandeis in the fall. One of those attending was a kid from
Montclair, Mark Gehrie, who would go on to become a successful psychoanalyst and a
lifelong friend. After we eventually got to know each other at Brandeis, he confessed that
when he first saw me his heart sank. He swore that I looked just like one of those hoodlum
types he'd been hoping to get away from…
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