We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves

after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

-- Marcel Proust

1942-1944

Northwood School

Northwood School was situated about a mile away from the Lake Placid Club, which in turn was across Mirror Lake from the town of Lake Placid, New York. The town was famous for having hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932, so that there were Olympic-class winter sports facilities there, such as ski jumps and an ice hockey arena. These were available to the Northwood ski and hockey teams. The school comprised several wooden buildings all connected together because of the cold winters. Sometimes the temperature dropped to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit at night!

A private residential school was a totally new experience for brother John and me. We were both on scholarships because of our financial status, but most of the students came from wealthy families. For example, one of my classmates lived on one floor of an apartment building in New York City with his governess. His father lived on the floor above, and his mother, the floor below. Not surprisingly he was an emotional mess.

I was different from most, and suffered as a result. There is a strange compulsion among people, already at that age, to force conformity among their colleagues. Without it, I suppose, there would be no fashion industry, the art market would be in total confusion, businessmen could have hair of any length and might not wear ties, and there would be no need for social cliques and gangs. I think this phenomenon is driven by a primordial need for all the men in the village to work as a disciplined team when they go out on an elephant hunt. In modern times that may have morphed to fear of being different and to feelings of inadequacy. A person with true self-confidence has no need for the approval of others, at least on the trivial level. Of course, we are all social animals, and desire some sense of belonging.

At any rate, I arrived at Northwood with a couple of my favorite potted plants and a yellow leather suitcase containing my favorite chemicals and glassware. I was pale and somewhat intellectual, and went right to the top of my class. (I was unaware of this until I received a medal for “First Scholar” of the 3rd Form). The school bully found out soon enough, and thereafter was in my room on any number of evenings to pester. He was quite a character: he was known to drink hair tonic (which in those days contained some alcohol), he was physically strong, so that I was not going to mess with him; he was also criminally destructive, having at one time poked out all the lights along the path from the school to the Club with a ski pole. I endured him, but it was no fun.

My favorite course was French with Mr. Siebert. There were just three students in the class so that we had much time in direct interaction with the teacher. He was a kindly, portly gentleman who would bring in a shoebox full of picture postcards of France to almost every class. We would get through our recitations in about half an hour and spend the rest of the time looking at the postcards. The course was so pleasant that it almost felt like stealing candy! Especially when we found that all three of us ‘earned’ A’s throughout the three years I took the course. But under Mr. Siebert’s benign tutelage we not only learned the language, but we also acquired a broad view of the buildings, monuments, and landscapes of France. So now I have been to France any number of times, always feeling somewhat familiar with the country.

Incidentally, I am constantly amazed and chagrined at how often my countrymen badmouth the French, usually as a result of trip there. My experience mostly has been quite the opposite. There are really only two things required to please almost any Frenchman: reasonably good pronunciation of the language and some appreciation of their culture. As in any heavily visited tourist locale, there will be an occasional guide or waitress who is rude, but that can occur anywhere. Everyone in France has a relative in the United States. Our language is laced with French words. They gave us our greatest monument, the Statue of Liberty. And the French lost more men at Yorktown, the final battle of the American Revolution, than did the Americans! – not all without self interest, to be sure. Through the years some of our personal best friends have been French.

Another course that I also took for three years, and which I have valued all my life, was Latin. It forms so much of the base of English and the other romance languages, that it not only allows one to figure out the meaning of words in our native language, but often those in Spanish, Italian and French as well. It also leads one to become conscious of the etymology of words, again leading to a deeper understanding of, and facility with, our use of words. Reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars and other stories in the original language gave us a sense of history, not from a distance so much as having a feeling of contemporaneity.

The masters, as the faculty were called, expected and received respect as a matter of course. We addressed them as ‘Sir’. When they entered the classroom all of us stood up and greeted them with a ‘good morning, Sir’. We stayed stood until we were asked to be seated. None of the masters were pals with us, although we knew them to be supportive of our efforts and even enthusiastic about our little triumphs. We all ate in the dining room, with students taking turns to wait on the tables. Surrounding us on all sides of this hall were the coats of arms of the major colleges and universities in the U.S. on wooden plaques, with the Ivy League most prominent. Under each plaque were listed the names of the Northwood graduates who had attended. The message to which we were daily exposed was clear and obvious. When I returned many years later, those plaques were gone. Unfortunately the academic standards of the school had declined seriously.

Winter sports were big at Northwood School. The ski coach was formerly coach of the US Olympic ski team. No student was allowed to take any other winter sport until he could demonstrate basic skills in skiing. So I learned to ski, liked it, and kept with it to this day. Several of us wanted to qualify for the Ski Patrol because then we could ride the ski lifts for free. Naturally there was a serious responsibility involved. So we took a course in first aid offered by one of the masters’ wives. I learned a lot, and still value that knowledge. One of the many reasons we moved to Taos was to take advantage of the ski area and its great snow and slopes in the mountains just above what is now our home.

A typical day was to attend an all-school convocation first thing in the morning, followed by classes. After lunch we had free time for sports or hiking in the woods. In the winter there were both cross-country and downhill skiing, and the occasional informal game of ice hockey. Once I won the “Mrs. Flinner” (the Headmaster’s wife) silver cup for a cross-country race in my age group. I think I was more surprised than anyone else, although I did discover that I could beat anyone in the school in a sprint on skis. In warm weather I went out for the high jump, but I was no good at it. Nevertheless, a certain love for the outdoors – totally new for me – and the enjoyment of athleticism and engaging in sports was infusing its way into me, something that has lasted to this day.

The Baseball Team

In my junior year at Northwood I became manager of the baseball team, a world apart from any previous experience. My job was to see that the equipment was ready for the players before practice or a game, that it was all put away properly afterwards, that the lines on the field were chalked, and that the scores were kept. There was an arcane paper form for the score-keeping that enabled one to keep track of innings, strikes, balls, runs, errors, and foul balls easily, rapidly and with minimum chance of error. I enjoyed taking on the responsibility and camaraderie with the athletes, and just being out-of-doors on spring afternoons. At the end of the year during award ceremonies, to my utter surprise I was called up to receive a beautiful, white knit sweater with a big, blue N on it. I didn’t think I should have been placed in the same category as those athletes who won letters, but it was nice to have the sweater!

An Entrepreneurial Business

All of the students were required to wear jackets and ties to class and meals, a signal from the school concerning proper dress. Shoes needed to be kept polished as well. I decided to go into the shoe-shine business in order to earn some pocket money. I put a notice up on the bulletin board announcing my grand opening with the first shine to be free. In the ensuing inundation of shoes I had to hire two classmate assistants. Of course, after everyone’s shoes were gleaming, business fell precipitously, and so did our enthusiasm. I decided to close shop after just a couple of weeks – another potential career nipped in the bud.

On Sunday afternoons, after we students had been out in the snow for a couple of hours we came in for hot tea and cinnamon toast in the large living room of the school, hosted by Mrs. Flinner at her large, silver samovar. She allowed us a single piece of toast, which was loaded with sugar. So after a bit of polite conversation, we would sneak over to the kitchen door to wait for the waitress to come out with a fresh plate of cinnamon toast. She was kind enough to slow down just enough so that we could filch another off the plate.

A Strange Experience

One evening, a short time after I had gone to bed and perhaps had been pleasuring myself a bit, the school nurse entered my room. She was somewhat beyond middle age, and with silvery hair as I recall. She said that I was to come to the infirmary for an alcohol rub, something I had no experience with. I was instructed to strip to my underpants and lie on a massage table under a large, warm light fixture. She gave me a very pleasant massage with rubbing alcohol (didn’t know that that must be why it is commonly called ‘rubbing’ alcohol). Towards the end, as I lay on my stomach, something strange happened in the area of my gonads that I could not control – I ejaculated. It was totally unexpected and terribly embarrassing. I said nothing; she finished; she told me to get dressed, I suppose not yet realizing what had happened. I’m sure she had a little mess to clean up, and I’ve always wondered what went through her mind. I picture her having a bit of a smile on her face.

A Poignant Incident

One evening during ‘study hall’ the ski coach quietly came up to me and asked me to step outside. My first reaction was, “What trouble did I get into now?!” But he wanted me to accompany him on a search and rescue mission. A visitor to Lake Placid had not returned to his hotel, and the call had gone out for volunteers to try to find him. We set out on skis at about 10 pm into a brilliantly moonlit night onto a trail beyond the school where they thought this man might have gone. We skied through the woods, with perfect visibility, for about two hours without finding him, and decided we had to return empty handed. The next day the coach went back alone, as I had to attend classes. He continued where we had left off, and found the man off the trail a little ways into the woods, sitting up against a tree, with much blood around. He had slit his wrists, and died in the coach’s arms. We’ll never know whether he deliberately set out to commit suicide or whether, lost, he just couldn’t stand the cold during the night and decided to end his misery. The memory of the extraordinary beauty of skiing through the forest under a full moon contrasted against the grisly outcome remains with me still.

Miscellaneous Activities

I sang in the Glee Club, apparently with great gusto, as some of my friends complained. We did mostly popular classics along with all the football fight songs of the Ivy League colleges. During a rehearsal one time the Director called me to the front to try a solo part without any warning or prior preparation. I was so terrified that my voice quavered (or semiquavered?) and my body quaked. It was clear I was not the one for the part. Thus, alas, a great career in vocal music was terminated before it had even started.

At one point I was asked by the Headmaster to “volunteer” for the annual prize-speaking contest. Other more ambitious students had already signed up. I wrote to Mother for suggestions on what topic to choose, and she responded with a wealth of information on some of the developments and programs in China. Many spare moments during afternoons and study periods were spent in putting together a logical sequence of arguments. At the appointed time we gathered in an auditorium at the Lake Placid Club, mounted the stage under bright lights and elocuted. I didn’t get the prize, but my bully friend came up to me afterwards, and in a rare moment of admiration, said that mine was the speech he most clearly understood. I took it as a compliment!

The school was taken over by the military in 1944 to be used as a rehabilitation center for damaged returning soldiers. That meant I had to go elsewhere for my senior year in high school. Mother was living in New York City at the time, and managed to get me enrolled at Horace Mann School for Boys in Riverdale. I don’t know how she could afford these private schools, except that she was able to get scholarships for John and me. So there came to be another exciting change in my way of life, from the splendid isolation and quiet of the north woods to the frenetic hustle of the big city.

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