DR. KLORMAN AND THE POLICE (standard:non fiction, 1258 words)
Author: THE BIG EYE	Added: Jan 16 2005	Views/Reads: 3099/2041	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
a slice of life for a 9 year old, in the bronx, 1934: the good and the bad, or is it the bad and the good!?

DR. KLORMAN AND THE POLICE 1934 

I was 10 years old and we were playing stickball on Fulton Avenue; the
third base foul line the vertical seam which joined  the two new 
buildings,  1735 with  1745. Unfortunately for us and for Dr. Klorman, 
a general practitioner, the windows of his first floor office and 
apartment bordered this foul line. Dr. Klorman, a small, slightly obese 
man with a Groucho Marx mustache; he was always making fluttering 
movements with his hands.  For us kids he was an enemy man because the 
occasional “Spaldeen” pink rubber ball hit his windows on the foul 
line.  He kept his distance from his neighbors as well all the other 
Jews on the block. 

We were poor as was almost everybody on our block was so I didn't
consider us to be unusual.  The Depression hit us hard because my 
father couldn't find work as a metal spinner. We survived on handouts 
from my mother's family and eventually we went on New York City “Home 
Relief,” later called Welfare. From time to time, my mother would get 
odd jobs like washing  and  cleaning  house for others or  selling  
silk stockings  from door  to door.  My father sometimes rented a 
three-wheeled  pushcart  to sell vegetables in the open market on 
Bathgate Avenue,  two blocks  from our house.  At other times on 
weekends, he would sells polly seeds and pumpkin seeds in Crotona park. 


I'd heard the "family story" several times from my mother about how Dr.
Klorman was mean, and she told us children about the time several years 
ago when I was sick with a high fever.  I developed a heavy nosebleed  
which she was  unable to  stop and I remember my head  hanging over the 
side of the bed and the warm blood quickly, plip-plopping into a white 
enamel  bowl on the  floor. My mother sent my oldest brother Herby to 
fetch Dr. Klorman four houses up the street.  He came back hurriedly 
saying that the doctor wouldn't come unless he got the three dollar 
house-call beforehand.  Somehow my mother scraped together the money 
and again Herby was sent on his way with the three dollar bills balled 
clutching in his fist. This is the background for the confrontation 
with Dr. Klorman. 

He was deliberate about coming to treat me, but when a ball would rattle
his window and settle on the fire escape in front of it,  he was fast 
in there. He would push the window and reach out to grab the rubber 
ball. We knew from experience that the moment the ball landed on his 
fire escape the race was on. The kid nearest the fire escape some ten 
feet up would scramble up the serrated brick to get to the ball the 
doctor did   When the doctor won, he would place himself clearly in 
view and slowly, deliberately, he would take a jack-knife from his 
pants pocket.  He would mock-seriously examine the ball and then 
carefully slit it in two. Then he would flick the two halves 
contemptuously back onto the street. What made this conflict tragic was 
the fact that the doctor's son, a nice, likable boy,  was sometimes one 
of the players. 

One day the doctor got fed up with our window rattling, after having
lost two close encounters and he called  the police. We didn't know he 
had done this until we saw the green and white coupe approach. We hid 
the stick and ball behind some rocks in the park across the  street  
from his house.  A policeman got out of the car, looked up at the 
windows, seeing Dr.  Klorman grimly standing  there. The cop called all 
eight of us kids to them.  His son was not among  us, which probably 
explains why the doctor called the police.  They warned us not to play 
stickball and not to disturb  the doctor,  or "we'll run you all  in."  
My brother, Sid, two and half years older than  I, was playing  with 
us.  He glibly responded to  the policeman saying,   "Don't do us any 
favors." This chutzpah, (Yiddish for nerve or balls,) resulted in an 
order from the cop for all eight of us  kids to get  into the car, a 
two-seater with a rumble seat.  We were really being "run in."  They 
piled   four of us in the  seat next  to the driver,  three in  the 
rumble seat,  and one of  us, stood on the running board along with the 
 second cop.    We rode slowly to the Bathgate Avenue police station 5 
streets away..  We had passed  it many times on the way to  the Fox  
Crotona movie house which was around the corner but none of us had ever 
been inside.  And we were scared. The inside the police station it was 
dark and I found myself in a state of fear and confusion. We were 
herded up rickety wooden stairs to a big room on the first floor.  It 
was sparsely furnished with an oblong table and some heavy metal chairs 


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