Pearl Harbor Day

Today is the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I remember that day as the catalyst for the entry of the United States into World War II.
I remember it for the millions of people destroyed by that war.
I remember it for setting mankind on the road toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And I remember it because of an eccentric English professor I had as an undergrad.

Dr. X was fond of giving us surprise quizzes, which he called "Pearl Harbors."
He was 6 foot 4, 250 pounds, from the Deep South and with the accent to prove it.
He was the human incarnation of Foghorn Leghorn, the wisecracking cartoon rooster with the Southern drawl.
Fittingly, Dr. X was born on a poultry farm, we would later learn.

Copyright Warner Bros.-Sever Arts

He would stride into class, pause before his desk a moment and then say with a smile, "Y'all ready for a Pearl Harbor? Shoot, what'chy'all know?"
And that was just the opening volley of his singular approach to education.

He usually spoke to us with eyes squinted shut. But he had the uncanny ability to know precisely what was going on in his classroom, always.
He could detect anyone who violated his cardinal rule against chewing gum -- he called it "spearmint," regardless of the flavor -- even if the offender sat far in the back corner of the class and chewed in complete silence.
"Get that spearmint out yo' mouth," he would yell. "You can shoot drugs in my class, you can have sex in the aisles. But you better get rid of that spearmint."

Dr. X was exacting. Our answers to questions about literature had to be completely correct and unambiguous, and opinions had to be backed up.
Otherwise, we paid the price.
"Y'all are waltzin' to a rock-and-roll song," he would sputter like a Roman candle. "Y'all are talkin' baby talk. Ah goo goo goo. Y'all are drivin' holes in my brain! Holy water! Holy water!"

In one class, we were discussing Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown." Dr. X asked me some question, now forgotten, about some element of the tale. He didn't like my answer.
"Your intellectual cargo has capsized," he said with a smirk, eyes closed. "Your intellectual cargo was not too heavily laden. You're reachin' for the life preserver!"

His repertoire was as varied as it was creative.
One day, the class had been particularly diligent in our homework and the string of correct answers we gave earned rare praise. "Y'all are poppin' out ideas like pancakes from the griddle of yo' mind," he said.

The man was crazy like a fox.
He could recite entire Shakespeare soliloquies from memory. He was a yoga devotee who, despite his large frame, often sat atop his desk in the full-lotus position, eyes shut but all-seeing. Sometimes, he would stand on his head in front of his desk while lecturing.

I wonder what happened to him. I know he retired quite a few years back -- I took his class nearly 26 years ago -- but it's as if he fell off the face of the Earth. I've Googled him to no avail.
He was fond of visiting Manhattan to attend the opera and, rumor had it, to visit the porn shops in Times Square. Someone told me he may have moved to New York City.

Dr. X may offer all the wrong reasons to remember Pearl Harbor.
But he declared war on our literary misconceptions, and his X-isms are engraved in my mind.

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Avenue B

East Village
Manhattan

Untitled 1

East Village
Manhattan

Where'd you say that was?

An overseas visitor to my blog pointed out that I mention several Big Apple neighborhoods in my posts, but that to people unfamiliar with Manhattan the names have little meaning or context.
Excellent point.
So here's a map of Manhattan's neighborhoods. Now you can tell the East Village from the West, and SoHo from Chelsea.
Just click on the map to enlarge it.
Likewise, you can enlarge my photos by clicking on them.

Courtesy nycvisit.com

Desire

Along First Avenue
East Village
Manhattan

Bass slappin', toe tappin' and bare-bones rappin'

Singer/bass player Jason Stuart,
Washington Square
West Village
Manhattan

Self-portrait Sunday

East Village
Manhattan

It was as if I were there

It was a vision from the bowels of hell.
A fast-moving wall of fire raced through the building's upper floors, incinerating everyone and everything in its path.
Screaming workers trying to flee found that the elevator was knocked out.
Smoke and flames filled the stairway.
Exit doors had been chained shut for security reasons.
Workers kicked out windows and jumped to their deaths on the street below rather than be burnt alive.
A scene from the Sept. 11 attack on the Twin Towers?

The former Asch Building, home of the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in 1911

It was March 25, 1911.
A fire of undetermined origin broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory, which occupied the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building on Washington Place, just east of Washington Square in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
By the time the fire was put out, 146 garment workers -- girls and young women mostly of Eastern European origin -- had perished.
It had no parallel in New York City until the terrorist attacks of 90 years later.

Engine Company 33, just blocks from the scene, was among the New York Fire Department units that rushed to the blaze. But their ladders weren't long enough to reach the workers trapped on the ninth floor.

My living link to this tragedy was my maternal grandmother, who was 15 at the time. Like all New Yorkers who were alive then and old enough to realize what had happened, it was forever etched in her memory. Twenty-five years ago, I interviewed her on audiocasette about her memories of the fire for a college history course.
So many young girls were killed that day, she recalled.
I still have the tape.

The building was repaired after the fire and was eventually donated by its owner to New York University, whose campus surrounds it. Now called the Brown Building after the former owner, it houses research labs.

After the fire
(courtesy of Wikipedia)

Except for the bronze historical markers affixed to the side of the building, you would never know what happened there.
Most people are unaware of the horror that occurred nearly 96 years ago.
On Saturday I tried to get up to the eighth floor, where the fire started, and the ninth floor, where the workers were trapped.
The security guard was adamant: No entry without ID.

But looking up at the ninth floor from the sidewalk, it was easy for my mind's eye to reconstruct the scene. I heard the screams of the women, heard the thud of their bodies smacking onto the pavement. I smelled the burning textiles and burning flesh. I knew what it was like for bystanders on that early spring day to gaze up at the unfolding disaster powerless to do something, anything, about it.

Before walking away, I asked a student if he was familiar with the building's history. I explained that a long time ago, there was a big industrial fire.
"Oh," he said. "Was anyone hurt?"

Ghosts of cool

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Third Street, East Village
Manhattan

Allure of the word

East Village
Manhattan