Back

I was born in November 1937, well into the start of the colder weather in the East. This was good because when New York is stifling and uncomfortable, my mom wasn't carrying the largest part of the "bun in the oven". Many years later, at some time when my mom was proud of me for some public accolade, she told me her contribution to my success was "excellent prenatal nutrition. I gained 63 pounds carrying you and I saw myself in every direction". That's a lot for a person not 5 feet tall. She has an extraordinary physic empowerment. We're close friends to this day, and at 92 she still drives herself to get her own groceries. I am extremely proud of her!

We lived on a street called Featherbed Lane, now a freeway exit. When I was still too young to remember, we moved to the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, which is really part of an Island. (The Bronx is the only part of New York City attached to the mainland of the United States). If Brooklyn were a city it would be the eighth largest in the country. There was a lot of diversity of all types, although you had to move around to get to it, as we lived in a middle class Jewish ghetto. There were four of us. I have a sister; she became a mental healer and still does that with great success.

My dad was a hard working guy that spent most of his business career (that I knew about) in the women’s apparel business. He was a good figurer, real fluid with numbers. He always told me the way to have the most of what you wanted in life was to exercise good discipline, deny yourself now, husband resources and you’d be able to have much more later. He was right, of course, but kids don’t listen to that kind of stuff. Everything I wanted, I wanted with an almost painful intensity and had to have it now.

My dad had a way of asking questions that were so penetrating; they clarified the mind of the answerer. Because I was such a straight and fastidious guy, it was really strange for my dad when I brought the Grateful Dead around in the late sixties. There were several endearing and funny meetings as well as introductions, especially with Pigpen and Jerry. Picture this: there was a roomful of people and my dad repeated Jerry’s name two or three times. It sounded like, "Garcia, ... Garcia, ..Garcia, why do play so loud?" We, in the room at the old Navarro hotel, practically fell down laughing. The visual was hilarious-- my dad was a pear shaped 5ft 7inches little man and Jerry was a trim 6 footer and they were shaking hands throughout the whole exchange. It was one of those "you had to be there" moments, common in my family.

Pigpen wanted to meet my dad on that same trip we took to the East and so we went to my dad’s little company. It was a very similar story, but this time my dad could hardly say the word “Pigpen” and apply it to a person. They shook hands for a rather longish time. Pig thought my dad, Irving, was cute and funny. You could see he was suppressing a laugh, when Irving repeated his name three times. I could see Dad’s mind racing to come to terms with whatever he was wrestling with -- then the bulb went off and he said, "Pigpen! What does your mother call you?" Great question you’ve got to admit and Pig said, "My mom calls me Ron!" Irving responded, "You won’t mind - I’ll call you Ron too!" Then dad showed Pig how ladies clothes are made and distributed. Everyone had a fun time.

Over the time the Grateful Dead were getting started I called on my dad to lend us some dough, a total of about $25,000, counting all the ins & outs (never more than about $10,00 at any one time) and he was always repaid. However, for some reason, the fact that he was loose enough to give loans to complete weirdoes indicated to him that he was somehow special and cool. He segregated those checks, safeguarded them and when he wanted to impress someone with a demo of how far out he was, he’d pull them out and show them. This was a great thing for him, proof of uniqueness. Take it from me, he was that - unique.

He was mentally sharp as a tack the last time I saw him, at 92 years old, a few weeks before he died in October 2003, I think of him fondly and miss him every day. The funny thing is, he and Jerry had birthdays a day apart and there were great character similarities they shared--it's hard to explain.

These were the people and places that influenced my upbringing as well as another total stranger, whose name was Robert S. Bookman. He was the only living member of the New York Stock Exchange related to one of the signatories who created it via the "Buttonwood Agreement". Mr. Bookman liked me enough to send me to college under a private grant where he would match everyone else, in influencing my life; in essence paying for half of my education at NYU. He also was clever enough to convince me to want to go - I really got a lot out of college.