My Remarkable Journey Read Online Free PDF

Herbie stood up—to this day he doesn’t know why he did this—and
     said, “Go home, Moppo, you’re dead!”
    Moppo ran, ran right out the doors. There was pandemonium in the auditorium. In the middle of the chaos, we could hear the
     winner of the Gil Mermelstein plaque asking, “Do I still get the award? Do I still get the award?”
    The principal looked at us and said, “Report to my office immediately!”
    We walked to Dr. Cohen’s office in panic. I was almost crying. My poor mother. How was she going to get me out of it this
     time? Brazzi was saying, “I’ll never be a doctor. I’ll never be a doctor.” And Herbie was saying, “Let me handle this.”
    When we got to the principal’s office, Dr. Cohen said, “I’ve never been so humiliated in all my years in education. You are
     all suspended from school. Go to your lockers. Take all your stuff out. Go home. Get out of my sight.”
    Herbie said, “You’re making a big mistake.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s true, we invented Moppo’s death. And you’re definitely right to suspend us. But think of the consequences. You’ll have
     to file a report with the school board. Somebody on the school board is going to say to you, ‘Let me get this straight, Dr.
     Cohen. Three nudnick kids come into school one day and tell you that a student is dead. You make one call to the house. The
     phone is disconnected. You write the student up as dead and plan a ceremony in his honor?’
    “Oh, yes”—Herbie was on a roll—“we’ll be suspended. But I don’t think you’ll ever be a principal again in the city of New
     York.” Herbie didn’t stop there. Oh, no. “Right now, it’s local,” he said. “Why don’t we just forget it?”
    Dr. Cohen shook his head, a beaten man. He went out to talk to the
New York Times
reporter, who viewed the events as more of a
Daily News
story and agreed not to write anything about it. Herbie went on to advise presidents and became a part of the Strategic Arms
     Reduction Talks team that negotiated with the Soviet Union. Brazzi became a brain surgeon in Buffalo. Moppo is still alive
     and lives in Florida. And I got my diploma with the rest of them.
    Looking back, I could compare our childhood in Brooklyn to improvisational theater. We wouldn’t have called it that at the
     time. We were just making our own entertainment. Herbie and I invented a vaudeville comedy routine called Spark and Plug that
     cracked up high school audiences. But there really was no better stage for our antics than Sam Maltz’s candy store on the
     corner of Eighty-fifth and Twenty-first Avenue.
    Maltz was a grouchy little guy shaped like a snowman. He always had a cigarette in his mouth, though I never remember him
     taking a puff. In front of his store was a gum-ball machine that dispensed a handful of sunflower seeds for a penny. Four
     booths lined one wall. There was a jukebox, a place for newspapers and candy. And a counter where you could get the greatest
     drink ever invented—the chocolate egg cream.
    I don’t know how the egg cream was named. There is no egg in it, nor any cream. The ingredients are milk, Fox’s U-Bet chocolate
     syrup, and seltzer. There’s a right way to make one. First, you pour in the milk, then the syrup. You stir a little. Then
     you fill the glass up with seltzer until you get a foamy top, then stir again until the foam looks like the head on a beer.
    Sometimes I didn’t have the required seven cents, or maybe I did, but just wanted to bust Maltz’s chops. So I’d order a two-cents
     plain. That was ordinary seltzer. I’d take a drink, lean over the counter, and say, “Maltz, do you think you could squirt
     in just a little syrup?”
    Maltz would grunt and give me a quick pump of syrup. I’d stir, take another sip, and say: “Maltz, would you happen to have
     just a little milk?”
    The joy wasn’t so much in the drinking, it was in the drama of watching how far we could push Maltz before he