Michael Savage - A Savage Life

I ATTENDED GRADE SCHOOL IN B RONX, N EW Y ORK, IN THE late 1940s, early 1950s. What I remember most was my mom coming to school on a Wednesday before the Thanksgiving weekend and picking us up early in the day, before the other kids were let out, and taking me and my sister down to Manhattan to Penn Station to board a train to visit my cousins, my aunt, and my uncle in Easton, Pennsylvania. My father, of course, couldnt come with us; he had to stay and work. He worked seven days a week in his store. Thanksgiving vacations with my relatives in Pennsylvania were perhaps the most American part of my early childhood.

How exciting it was to be getting out of school early on a Wednesday and seeing all the other jealous faces of the kids left behind! Mom would take us downtown by bus and by subway, and it was thrilling to get into Penn Station: the big hissing trainsthe size of the train, the engine in particularoverwhelming me as a little boy. It looked like a hippopotamus, a living, breathing monster. And then boarding the train: the black men with white gloves in white clothing who worked as porters. Astounding, isnt it? And then the train would begin, a long ride to me; it was only two hours or so, but to me it was a very, very long ride. An hour or so seemed like it took all day. The train chugged underneath the Hudson River into New Jersey and, believe it or not, the train stopped on the other side of the river. It stopped to switch engines. You see, only electric engines were permitted in New York, but in those days New Jersey still permitted coal-fired steam engines, if you can believe it. And so the railroad companies switched to coal-fired, steam-driven locomotives over in New Jersey, and then the entire ride from that point on was bathed in a dense black smoke that ran behind the train, between the cars, outside the windows, all the way to Pennsylvania.

Ah, but sitting in that Pullman car, being served those delicious ham sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread by white-gloved attendants... Can you believe it? Even a poor kid could experience a sense of dignity in those days. And then when we arrived in Pennsylvania at the station, when the big monstrous train hissed to a stop and roared, emitting steam and smoke, the entire platform was engulfed in black smoke and white steam, and I didnt know if my relatives were there because you couldnt see anybody in that fog. It was such a dense fog. I was afraid that the train had gone to the wrong place, to an unknown place, and that none of our relatives would be there. And my mother would hold me by the hand and pull me through the fog. And then of course! As the fog lifted, out of the fog came the big uncle and the smiling aunt and my smiling cousins. Oh my god, was that happiness.

We would jump in their car and the first thing we would do was go to a certain restaurant on top of a hill, overlooking the town of Pittston, where it was alleged their hamburger was actually horse meat. We didnt learn this until years later, but I must tell you, as a poor kid I didnt know the difference between horse meat and cow meat. It tasted a little stringy, to be honest, but maybe thats what makes me the man I am today. In any case, one memory after another comes back from those Thanksgiving holidays in Pennsylvania with my cousins. Memories like and unlike those that you, the reader, no doubt have of your own. Shall I share a few of them with you?

How about learning how to drive a stick shift in the little Nash Metropolitan that my cousin owned (a tiny little car that looked like a clown car) and the mysteriousness of shifting? I didnt understand where the gears were or what they did. And I was amazed and thought that my cousin was an astronaut as he shifted from first to second to third, pushing his foot down against the floor. I had no idea what the shift levers were doing. But wed drive all around the town. You see, he was about sixteen and allowed to drive at that time.

Or how about he and I putting on all of the football gear, the shoulder pads, the knee pads, the helmet, and playing football in the muddy field across from his house? This was a big football town in those days; in fact, a game between Easton, Pennsylvania, and I think it was Pittstown, New Jersey, was the big high school game. And wed all go and cheer; it mustve been on a Sunday. But before that game, oh, my cousin and I were the stars. We were the stars among ourselves. I remember running all day, running as though there was no time, slipping and falling in the mud until we looked like the mud itself. Coming back to the house, being shooed in through the back door because we were so dirty, being told to leave our clothing on the back porchand it was so cold.

Speaking of the cold, I remember their dog. They had a beautiful, collie-like dog whose fur always smelled of the cold air. You know how dogs smell on a cold day, how they retain the cold as they come in? I loved to touch that dog. We werent allowed to have a dog in those days because of the apartment that we had. So to me, it was miraculous to see a family living in an actual house of two stories with an attic and a basement and a dog.

It was in that little house on Spring Garden Street that I smelled my first pizza. You say, What the heck is the big deal about that? Well, let me tell you something. I was upstairs in the attic getting ready for bed and I heard all the people buzzing downstairs in the kitchen about something. We came down and peeked around the corner and they were all looking at something in a box, a flat box. It was called a pizza. I didnt know what it was, but you know what it smelled like? Vomit. Thats what mozzarella cheese first smelled like to me. Who knows if this perception was accurate or if, in fact, mozzarella cheese was just terrible in those days. In either case, it was something I could not eat. They sure liked it, though, that first pizza.