Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were

I was never the smartest guy I knew. . . not by a long shot. Not to say that I was or am stupid, but I've always had a bit of an aloof air that surrounds me. So much so, that when I was a kid, the nick name that my father gave me was ding-a-ling.

The reason that I bring this up at all, was the memory of an experience in 1985 hanging onto the ledge of a building in Manhattan several stories up.

I was living in Boston at the time, sharing a 1 bedroom with my brother in Back Bay where he was attending Berklee College of Music. I, on the other hand was attending the school of hard knocks. I was hanging, not with the wrong crowd. . . but. . . with the wrong guy within an acceptable crowd of street performers in Boston.

The guy's name was Robert Kirk. Just about every week we would drive down to NYC. On the night in question, we were visiting my oldest and dearest magic pal Shawn Greer, who was living at Hayden Hall, a seedy transient hotel on the Upper West Side, between Columbus and Amsterdam near the Museum of Natural History. He told us that the room next to his was empty and that he could open the door to that room for us to crash in.

He did this by climbing out his window, stepping from his window ledge to the next and climbing in that rooms' open window. He unlocked the door from the inside and let us in. As we usually arrived in the wee hours, we were tired and went to bed. During this period of my life, I had a few other passions notably, skate boarding and knife throwing. It wasn't uncommon for us to combine the activities in Central Park at 3AM. Using trees as targets we flew down hills throwing knives and laughing wildly.

I mention the bit about knife throwing because that was usually our morning activity. An hour of knife throwing practice was always a great way to start the day. The next morning was no different. We liked to use a door with a playing card on it for these sessions. THWACK!!! Missed the card by about 3". Try again, standing 10 - 12 feet away; another throwing knife leaves my fingers, revolving end for end imbedding it self into the wooden door closer to the playing card. Again, THWACK!! This went on until we heard an angry knock at the door. We freaked out realizing that we weren't even supposed to be in the room.

I grabbed my shit and was out the window. I had seen how Shawn had held on to the brick column between the windows swinging his leg to the next window ledge to go from room to room. It happened a little different for me. As soon as my weight shifted my right leg onto his ledge, the concrete ledge crumbled. It was like a movie. I looked down and watched the chunks of concrete smash onto the sidewalk 3 stories down. Holy shit!! I focused on grabbing the wall with all the might in my fingers. Somehow I managed to get in his window. I was shaking and realizing how close to death I had come. I wondered where Shawn was as I looked around.

As it turned out, it was Shawn knocking on our door to tell us to stop making so much noise with the knife throwing.

Well. . . . OK. . . . I was STUPID. . . . and probably still am.



This was an original card from that era