Stanley M. Siegel

...because if you don't write it down, it will be lost forever.

                      

Penrod climbed upon a barrel, stood on tiptoe,
grasped the rim of the box; then, using a knot-hole
as a stirrup, threw one leg over the top, drew himself
up, and dropped within.

 Standing upon the packed sawdust, he was just tall enough to see over the top.

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Why Penrod? All I can remember -- about books from my childhood -- is that Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" series were books that I read over and over again.

I don't really remember the stories, don't remember if Penrod was a childhood idol.

I do remember, however, that I liked the books and they, along with another "magic orange filter" book which I received when I had the measles, are high on my lis of rememberances.

Go figure!

 

 

 

Colleges...

It seems, except for my stint at Stuyvesant, I was destined to stay in Brooklyn for the next several years --at Brooklyn College (BC), on Bedford Avenue, where I majored in Biology (oh, I neglected to mention -- I do that a lot -- I wanted to be a Veterinarian and while at BC I worked as an attendant at the Kings County Veterinary Hospital (Drs. Grossman and Zimmerman) not to far, further up on Flatbush Avenue -- but that, too, is another story that may (or maybe not) be told elsewhere.

At BC I flung myself into extracurricular activities only paying the minimum amount of attention to the required classroom attendance and requirements.

I was a columnist on the student newspaper The Kingsman (the borough of Brooklyn is Kings County of the City of New York). I wrote "Moonbeams" --stuff about the goings on of people, places and things of BC night school life.

I also played some basketball, was the publicist for the Drama Club, an active member of the Biology Club (along with Irwin Zucker) and founded (along with Bruce Birkenhead --who went on to become a Broadway producer of sorts) the Brooklyn College Rifle Club. We convinced our Speech professor, Dr. Malcolm Cox, to become our Faculty Advisor and we became recognized as a real, authentic, competing organization. When I left BC plans were underway to have a rifle range built on campus, under the Library, but I don't know if that ever happened.

I became active in campus politics -- not as a candidate, but as publicist for candidate friends -­  Lila Buttwinick, for example (interestingly I received an email, in 2014, from Lila. She had "googled" her maiden name and found this website -- we reminisced back and forth a few times, but haven't heard from her since)..

Anyway, I was attending BC under a deferment from the Draft (the Selective Service was in existence and all eligible males were subject to military conscription for a minimum of two years unless found physically unfit or had their duty deferred due to various reason such as college, family hardship, or even "knowing" someone in authority).

It was in my third year at BC that I applied to the University of Liverpool (yup, the Liverpool in England) School of Veterinary Medicine. I was accepted and planned to go. But up came Uncle Sam (the guy in the striped top hat and flag-colored clothing) and said nope -- can't continue your deferment if you leave the country, so I had to either stay at BC, or be drafted.

I chose neither, but made a bold decision (with the help of my Faculty Advisor, Mr. Kilcoyne) to apply to the University of Alaska. That gave me an inner satisfaction of both beating the draft (for the moment) and leaving Brooklyn for the farthest north (then) Territory of the United States.

I was accepted to UofA, and sometime in 1952, took a Greyhound bus from New York City, to Seattle Washington, then a plane (Alaska Airlines) from Seattle to Fairbanks.

A guy I met on the plane had a stash of live Pigeons in a crate in the hold -- which he planned to use as bait to study Peregrine falcons. When we landed at the airport in Fairbanks, we asked a Territorial Trooper (Alaska wasn't a State yet) how to get to the University. He pointed out the main road, gave us the keys to his Jeep and told us where to leave it when we got up to school and said he'd pick it up later. That was Alaska hospitality.

 

more to come (maybe)...

If you want/need to reach me, email me at: stan@stanleymsiegel.com just click on the address.