Amos and the Cosmos: A Rollicking Journey through America's Heart and Soul
Amos and the Cosmos: A Rollicking Journey through America's Heart and Soul
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Overview
So starts Amos’ memoirs, a rollicking journey through the heart of America. His search for some truth in the universe is propelled by meeting his mentor, Ben, a savvy and astute observer of human folly, who introduces Amos to the “Cosmos,” where all creativity lives. Amos’ journey takes him from childhood into manhood through the tumultuous decades of the fifties and sixties, as he experiences the struggle of African-Americans for civil rights, the Beat generation, Vietnam, and Haight-Ashbury; all in search of the threads that connect the fabric of his life to the rest of the world.
He reflects on religion, family, relationships, love, war, and country amidst the historical America that has captivated him, exposing the core of his extraordinary soul along the way. Amos and the Cosmos is an insightful view of Americana through Amos’ eyes—a journey filled with humor, tenderness, and pathos.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781440189999 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 03/09/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 468 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Amos and the Cosmos
A Rollicking Journey through America's Heart and SoulBy Alan Schwartz
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Alan SchwartzAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-9000-1
Chapter One
Discovery
I THINK IT WAS the fall of 1955, maybe September, when the air was soft and warm, and I can remember the sweet smell of drying flowers and grass. I was in the attic. It was even warmer up there. I loved the attic. I loved to smell the unfinished wood. I loved things old. I loved antiques. I dreamt of the past and always imagined myself in the past. There were dozens of shoe boxes. When Mom and Dad weren't home, I'd spend hours sitting up there and smelling things old, and occasionally opening boxes. I hit a jackpot that day, old photos I had not seen before. One was really old, a large cardboard photo with a brown patina. It was of a young woman dressed in the style of the early 1900s. I knew the age of pictures because I was familiar with all old American styles-the 1900s, the 1890s, the Civil War. I turned over the picture to see if it was inscribed. Something was written, faintly, in pen in old, neat script.
My sister, Henrietta Lardy.
At first, I just turned it back over and continued looking at more recent pictures, of Mom and Dad, and myself and Susan as young children.
Actually, I think I got tired and went downstairs.
It must have been around midnight when I awoke and uttered the words Henrietta Lardy.
Aunt Henrietta-Dad spoke of her, but not in great detail. She was his sister. He really never talked about his family.
Lardy.
Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe the person who wrote the inscription stopped in the middle of Henrietta's last name and didn't know how to spell it and just plain quit. Maybe the person didn't know her last name was Lardowitz, which was our family name. It was strange-a mystery to me.
I was always a curious boy, although it was rare for me to seek help or to have my questions answered. I would go deeper and deeper into my own head to figure things out. I spent a lot of time with my own thoughts.
Normally, I would have continued to mull it over in my head for a few months, but I was beginning to develop an obsession with this, so I decided to bite the bullet and ask Dad. It was his family after all.
Dad was a quiet person, but he would answer any question completely and straightforwardly.
"Dad ... about my aunt Henrietta?"
"Yes, Amos."
"What was her last name?"
"Amos, she was my sister."
"So, I guess she was a Lardowitz."
For some reason, as with all questions to Dad, I couldn't bring myself to follow up. That was the end of it for the moment.
I went to the attic often after that. I would sit and smell the wood and snoop around old clothes and old magazines that Mom and Dad had saved. And again, as if under a spell, I would pull out of the box My sister, Henrietta Lardy. Each time I would run my hands over the picture and across the back of it, as if rewriting Henrietta Lardy.
Then one day, as I sat doing the same thing while the steady sound of rain beat the roof, my fingers took me to the bottom of the back of the picture as if I were being controlled by a Ouija board. There appeared, as if it hadn't been there before, very faintly on the margin, the handwritten words Your brother, Hardy.
I awakened suddenly, in the dead of night, with the words Hardy Lardy on my lips.
The words would float around in my head at first, one after another. They started, every night, as silent words spoken with my eyes closed. That seemed to go on for an hour. Then my mouth would open slightly, a crack, and I would very softly utter the words out loud in the dark, "Hardy Lardy, Hardy Lardy," at first without moving my lips. Then I would open my mouth wide and exaggerate the sounds. They were so perfect, floating and then rolling off my tongue and out into space, into the quiet night. I would accentuate the first syllables and then the second: "HARdy LARdy, HarDY LarDY."
It seemed to go on, every night, for six months as soon as I hit the pillow and the lights were out. I was just fifteen years old, and I abruptly stopped dreaming of girls.
It was always "Hardy Lardy."
Little did I know then, in 1955, that that moment in time would be the thread that would weave the fabric of my life together.
Chapter Two
The Early Years
My dad's name is Har Phillip Lardowitz. I was told that his family was from Europe. They were turn-of-the-century immigrants. He never really talked about them like Mom did with her family, who also were turn-of-the-century immigrants. Actually, Mom came to America with her mother and father when she was three years old. I thought Dad's first name was possibly Russian or Polish or some other European name. I never asked, really. Mom always called him Phillip or "dear." Dad was a physician. I have seen letters addressed to him as H. Phillip Lardowitz, MD. I also knew Dad had a sister, Henrietta. I never knew Dad's family. His parents died before I was born and so did his sister.
I am Amos Boris Lardowitz, or, as I was formally known in school, Amos B. Lardowitz. I was named for my mother's grandfather and granduncle. As usual in the Jewish tradition, you would be named only for the dead, nobody living. As Jews became more modern, I guess, they wanted to have more choices, for I knew many Jewish friends who were named with just the first letter of their relatives. My great-grandfather was named Amos, and my great-grand-uncle was Boris.
My mother called me Amie (pronounced Amy-like the girl's name) throughout my whole life, although occasionally I would hear, from downstairs, a loud and crisp "Amos Boris Lardowitz" in even cadence. Oh boy, I burned the potholder!
In high school my friends called me A.B. Unfortunately, it sounded like Abie. Dad called me Amos all the time.
My mom was the historian in my family, but the family history was always her family history. She never spoke of Dad's family and Dad didn't either. Actually, rarely did Dad speak compared to Mom. When he did speak, he did so sparely, and it was concise and to the point. He said what needed to be said and it was consistent, maybe because he was a doctor.
It appeared that Mom was always orchestrating our family and our activities. And when she spoke of her relatives, they were members of her orchestra also.
"Grandpa Morris [her father] carried Bea [her sister] like a kitten in a blanket."
"Grandma Bessie [her mother] would cook that boiled chicken [her favorite meal] in a broth filled with herbs; I never did find out what they were."
It seemed that all history was Jewish and obviously all family was Mom's. It also seemed that all Jewish history began on the day her family landed in America, around 1900. There was never talk of Europe or wherever they came from. Our Jewish life was centered on our synagogue and her brothers and sisters, all of whom lived within ten miles of us in New York.
When my sister, Susan, first met her future husband, he worked in a bank. I would hear Mom talk to her friends on the telephone. "Susan is going out with a Jewish banker." (He was a teller.)
Fortunately for my mom and Susan, Alvin did become a banker. He was promoted to a vice president eventually, eight years later.
"Jewish banker," I would think-I wonder, if Susan had met a Christian banker, Mom would have announced that Susan was dating a "Christian banker." Somehow a Jewish banker sounded more powerful. "Christian banker" evoked to me a person who worked in a bank that was in a church. Or as my weird mind would always think, a person named Christian Banker. And Mom would say, "Susan is dating Christian Banker."
Christian Banker, I would think-a cool name: Christian Banker III, no less. He probably played varsity football for Mamaroneck High School. He was also a National Honor Society student and president of his junior class.
Amos Boris Lardowitz, I would think-he took some pictures for the high school yearbook.
This was the daydreaming Amos Boris Lardowitz. I dreamt only of an American history. From the days of my youth, in the forties, I dreamt of Joe DiMaggio and the Yankees. As I became a teenager, I was absorbed by the American Civil War and anything that was American. From the moment I saw "Daughters of the American Revolution" in print, I wanted to become a member. In fact, when I was twelve, in 1952, I wrote them, and they responded, asking me to provide proof of my heritage. I bought American Heritage magazine and kept it under my bed and read the same issue for thirty straight days. On Saturdays, I would peruse old bookstores and buy Civil War-era newspapers and books. I would stop by every historical marker and read it three times and walk around all soldier statues seven times. There was so much American history in America. But alas, our family history seemed to stop at 1900-it wasn't even considered antique in 1953.
I was born in the Bronx Hospital on January 1, 1940. Amos Boris Lardowitz, son of Helen and Har Phillip Lardowitz, younger brother (by four years) of Susan Lardowitz (no middle name; girls didn't have a middle name). I was born in a good year, at the beginning of a decade, and on the first day of the year, so it would be easier to measure my age and accomplishments. I was not the first baby of the year in the Bronx Hospital, but my family did get a pair of knitted woolen baby slippers with the year 1940 crocheted in (which are now sitting in an old box with a family of baby squirrels inside). I was told that Dad moved the family to our new and larger apartment from one section of the Bronx to another on my birth-Americans moving up.
In the forties, my world was New York City. Its capital to me was Manhattan. From my earliest recollection, I can remember being shuttled on day trips to Manhattan on Saturdays with a teacher and other schoolkids. The Museum of Natural History. Central Park. The Empire State Building. I can still remember the smells of hot lunches, especially the soups, at the Museum of Natural History. Everything was really big. The movies were big. The theater was big. The seats were big. I guess I was small. It was the beginning of my American consciousness. My American heroes were gods. Most of them walked with their legs wide apart, like they hurt, and always with a grunt here and there. Most of them were accompanied by a musical jingle with each step. It must have been the spurs-but I never knew what they were for. Most of them carried a wide belt with shiny bullets slanted always to one side with a holster filled with my American icon, the silver six-shooter. When I saw one who appeared to be one of my American heroes without a belt and gun, I would not trust him-he must have been a teacher or something. Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott and Amos Boris Lardowitz always rode together.
There was the future also, and he was called Flash Gordon. He was always running gracefully through a doorway, pointing and directing everyone to an escape. His enemies were always foreign to me: Ming-the Merciless, no less-a mixture of Oriental and evil. Today, I would name my cat Ming. Every episode would end in near disaster. But the next week Flash was always there again-but only on Saturdays in the movie theater, of course-saving an American world from the evil Ming.
We would occasionally drive across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn, and my father would playfully say we were entering enemy territory. Consequently I always brought my toy six-shooter and laid it under the back window, looking backward and upward as the bridge passed behind me. The flickering across my eyes from the passing rapid shadows was like a surreal movie. I would look up at the cables for hiding Nazis or Japs. Manhattan was my world-my country. The Bronx was not my real home. I owned the Empire State Building. It was the center of my universe. And when King Kong was being pursued to his destiny, he found the Empire State Building just like I did.
My life in the forties was my shiny six-shooter and my bicycle and the wonderland produced by the occasional serious snowfall in the Bronx. Life was also the summer, before air-conditioning. From the time I can remember, we schlepped by car to the country, Dad, Mom, Susan, and me. For eight weeks we went. Dad would only take us up and then go back home and work, and come and visit every other weekend. We swam in a small pond where I once exposed myself to a girl, at eight years old, under water. I learned how to play baseball, how to swim, and how to act; we performed plays in a barn once monthly. We also had performers come once a month. I remember a magician calling me up on stage. He sat me in a chair, took an egg from his pocket, and announced to the audience that he was going to push the egg right through the top of my head and have it come out of my mouth. He palmed the egg and started pounding my head, once, twice, three times. He then squeezed my jaw with his hand over my mouth, and out popped the egg. In the same split second, I heard his whisper in my ear, "Tell them it came out of your mouth." I was dazed. I walked off the stage thinking the egg had come out of my mouth. Oh, the naiveté of youth.
I always remember the smells and the look of late summer. It was the time in late August when we would head back home to the Bronx. The air was warm and soft, and the light was hazy. When we walked into our apartment, the smell was new all over again. Mom would have covered all the furniture in white sheets. There was a musty smell that existed only on the day we arrived home. To this day, that smell is endearing. Years later, I wondered if Dad lived in white sheets for the whole summer.
I remember going with Dad to pick up our new 1949 Dodge. It was a four-door sedan. I was so excited. I remember playing in the backseats before he drove it off the dealership lot. It was like a house. I could go out the back doors. On the way home, I was sitting in the front passenger seat when suddenly I felt a jolt and heard a screech. I felt myself flying forward. Instantaneously, as I was moving forward, a long, large arm from my left came across my body, and I recoiled back into my seat. It was Dad's arm preventing me from hitting the dashboard. At that point and for years after, I realized how small I was, or how big Dad was. This was my first seat belt experience. It was also the last year of a small childhood lived, for 1949 was ending, and the start of a new decade was beginning-to help measure my life with.
When I was a little older, about ten, Dad would take me to his office on Saturdays. He was a general practitioner, as mostly all doctors were in the forties and fifties. Dad delivered all of my cousins, but of course, he didn't deliver Susan and me. I always remember Dad as the tallest person in a group. Actually he was probably six feet, but he was relatively thin with long, straight arms and had perfect posture (not like me), so he appeared taller than he was.
Dad's office was in Lower Manhattan, on the East Side, not far from Chinatown in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, which was closely bordered by Italians and Poles. His office was on the ground floor in a renovated store. It had a second floor, and a third that he didn't use. The second floor had two rooms. One was a storage room and the other was his personal office. He had a large desk that was darkly stained and a wooden office chair on wheels. The desk was filled with cubbyholes. It seemed to me that it was enormous. It was always stuffed with papers. The desk surface was also piled up with magazines and papers and medical records. A black telephone sat on the corner of the desk, and the only light was an overhead ceiling globe. Dad worked every Saturday except during the summer when he took every other weekend to visit with us in the country.
Dad went to the synagogue every Saturday morning at seven. He then came home at eight fifteen and made sure I was ready to go to the office. I was always excited Friday night when Dad announced that he was taking me to the office the next day. I didn't sleep well because of my excitement. It seemed that I was always awake when he left for the synagogue, eagerly awaiting his return and thinking of spending the day with him.
We always arrived from the Bronx at nine fifteen. No one was there. The first thing he said to me upon arrival was "Amos, go upstairs." There I would play, mostly sitting in his big chair. I would hear the door buzzer at about nine thirty. The buzzer was sharp and annoying. Then the door opened, and I could hear, "Good morning, Dr. Lardowitz."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Amos and the Cosmos by Alan Schwartz Copyright © 2009 by Alan Schwartz. Excerpted by permission.
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