October 28th, 1956 was my mother's birthday. Dorothy aka 'Dot' had her brood of kids living in an old Lower East Side tenement on Grand Street. She had three kids after moving from Winston-Salem South Carolina to the L.E.S. Apparently my grandmother 'Sally' had secured an apartment that was much like Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad, in that it was the family way station for relatives looking to transition from the South to seek better opportunities in New York from the 1930's to the 1960's.
Mom's birthday party plans were severely interrupted by my arrival the day before her birthday. Born on October 27th, 1956, I was almost born on mom's birthday. As I came into the world at St. Vincent's Hospital, there was a car accident on the L.E.S. that claimed four lives. As they were leaving, I was arriving. In retrospect, I wonder if this was why death was always so close by to me. I was a Four For One... Her fourth born child born on the day that four people died.
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(Mom bringing me home after giving birth to me)
I was brought into the world not knowing who my birth father was. My birth certificate showed my dad as Harry Samuels. I later found out some 32 years later that Harry wasn't my dad. She named me David due to her Christian roots and her love of the bible. I have brothers named Michael, James, and Paul. A sister named Joan, I guess named after Joan of Arc! And, Sisters Delores aka Diana Ross who she emulated ad nauseum, Renee (RIP died at age 50 of a heart attack) and brothers Blaine (RIP died of a heart attack in his 40's) and Dino, who went missing, parts unknown and last seen by my eyes in 1974! More on all of them later.
The first few years of my life on the L.E.S were interesting. At this point in time the L.E.S. was a veritable melting pot. The tenement we lived in had much diversity. All of our neighbors had one thing in common...Poverty! We were the only black family in the building. The rest were either, Jewish, Irish, or Latino. My first and best friend in the first 6 years of my life was a Jewish kid named Moishe Yim. We were inseparable. We spent endless hours swapping baseball cards and running all over the building.
My brother Dino who was several years older that me hung out with two Irish brothers named Bobby and Vincent Yara. I mention this because it was because of Vincent that my family was compelled to move out of our building. I loved 420 Grand Street because Grandma Sally lived right around the corner and she was not only the Super of her building, she was also the Super for our building too. As a kid I'd sit on the steps of our building's cellar and watch Sally take burnt coal out the furnace and shovel it into metal garbage cans. Grandma had massive arms from lugging those cans up the steps and out of the building for pick up.
Sally was a soft spoken and gentle woman who was the heart and soul of my family. She was Mother Superior. She was loved by all who knew her and my attachment to her was stronger than the attachment I had to my mother. I would spend most of my free time with her and my grandfather Herbert. Herbert was the family terror. He ran the family with an iron fist! All of my aunts and uncles feared him. While he was tough on everyone else in the family, he loved the hell out of me. I'd spend whole weekends at their apartment and even slept in the same bed as them.
