CHILDHOOD AND THE EARLY YEARS

There was little to recall about baby Moses Harry Horwitz. Only that his dad intimated that he was an ugly infant, a sort of shriveled monkey. Dad should have kept that to himself, for he was reminded sharply and often by the tot's mother that he was no bargain either.

After three brothers (Irving, Jack, and Sam), I was to have been a girl, or so Jessup the butcher prophesied. And for the prediction I avoided his shop for years. Anyway, my mother conceded that if I wasn't a beautiful baby, then at least I'd turn out to be the smartest.

These memories were gleaned from bedtime stories my mother and father told me. Late at night I listened, enthralled, storing them all in my mind forever. And now, how easy for me to recall them in every detail.

When I was a little older I would stare into the mirror. Seeing my face covered with large, jagged freckles, I realized my dad was right. I would end up the ugly duckling of the Horwitz family. I soon discovered that those jagged freckles would stand me in good stead in the early 1900s.

When I was an infant I was always falling out of bed, over chairs, and off tables. I never cried, never broke any bones, never even had a black-and-blue mark. My parents and friends thought it was uncanny. I think it may have been an omen. I was about two when I did have my first real accident. My father had taken my brother Sam (who always was known as Shemp) and me for a walk down Cropsey Street in Ulmer Park, Brooklyn, near the picnic grounds. Shemp kept stopping to look into the penny picture machines. He seemed to always have pennies; I had my suspicion where he got them. I kept begging him for a peek, and he finally boosted me up to the viewer and onto the metal footrest provided so that small boys like me could be held up to watch the pictures flip by on cards. While Father had walked off to talk to another man, I was happily watching the peek-a-boo machine when a horse-drawn fire engine came roaring up the road, belching steam and clanging its bell. Shemp turned to watch and let go of me, leaving me hanging there. It seemed that I turned to take a look, too, lost my grip, and fell, hitting my nose on the corner of the footrest. After over two years of falling off of everything without a scratch, I lay there on the ground, my face a bloody smear. My father saw me, ran up, and picked me up in his arms, tears streaming from his eyes down his fiery red mustache and into my face.

A crowd had gathered around us by then. Someone directed my father to a nearby doctor. Shemp followed close behind, yelping so loud you would have thought he was the one who was hurt. I could never forget sitting on the doctor's lap. He had a mustache and a Van Dyke beard, and although I had gone through so much, the shock could not equal the terrible breath that doctor kept blowing into my face as he mopped up the blood, took a needle out of a little brown jar, and began stitching my nose back on.

When my mother saw me she figured the worst had happened. She started to cry, and that started Shemp yelping all over again. My brothers Irving and Jack had to yank him into another room with their hands clapped over his mouth. No one ever thought to ask how it had all happened, and Shemp certainly wasn't going to tell. My mother finally calmed down and began taking things into her own efficient hands. Several days later I was smiling again. Taking a good look at me and noticing that my nose, which had been cut from one side to the other, was stitched on quite crooked, she was wild! She phoned the doctor, who rushed over and took the bandage off, cleaned up my nose a little, and prepared to put on another bandage. My mother came up alongside him and, before he knew what had happened, belted him twice over the head with a broom and kept swatting him, as she would a horsefly, all the way down the steps, yelling, "You ruined my son's face. You ruined him. You gave him a crooked nose."

No one in our family or, for that matter, in our neighborhood, ever saw that doctor again. Later, we found out that he had been practicing in several areas without a license. My mother began looking all over for doctors. She was checking with everyone in the area when she found out about a Professor Beck who specialized in cases such as mine. His fee was fifteen dollars a visit, and my mother figured she'd try one visit and test him out. How far a mother will go for the love of a son! Over the years my mother proved that there was no limit.

At this time my family had financial problems. How could my mother pay Professor Beck? I can see her now, taking her shiny copper frying pan from the kitchen wall and wrapping it in a piece of brown paper; then with the pan and me in her arms, she took the elevated train and streetcar up to Dr. Beck's office, where he put me on a little table and took off my bandage. He looked at my nose and clicked his tongue several times, explaining to my mother that he would have to take out the stitches and redo the whole job. I'm sure she expected as much.

After a few minutes of conversation, my mother had full confidence in Professor Beck. I was to come back every ten days for a reexamination. During the operation, which lasted about twenty minutes, my mother's head was bowed across my ankles; she was holding my legs and sobbing.

When it came time to pay the fee, my mother told Professor Beck that she had no money and asked him if he would accept the beautiful copper pan as payment. His eyes lit up. How was my mother to know that all the copper utensils that Dr. Beck's mother had left him and which he loved so much had been destroyed in a fire? He accepted it graciously, with the understanding that in exchange for every copper pot that my mother gave him for payment he would give her an enameled one so that she would have some kitchenware.

Seven visits and seven copper pots later, Dr. Beck told my mother the bad news. Due to ruptured eye nerves, I would temporarily lose my eyesight. My mother's face went pale and, after a speechless moment, she said, "So long as God has guided me to this office, things must turn out right." And they did, although I was blind for eleven months.

During this period, Shemp was at his mischievous worst, telling our parents that I was faking the loss of my sight and using it as a cover to spy on him. This was really laughable, as it was around this time that Shemp had taken a liking to stuffing things into toilets and stopping them up.

By the time I was almost four I had perfect vision again. My nose was straight but scarred, and my hair had...