Gene Falk can be reached at: genef2 -at- bigbit -dot- com

I will award extra credit if you can find me in this picture taken
in 2011 at my 70th birthday celebration.



I will swear to none of this but they are my best recollections of the years from 1947 to 1953.

My teachers:
First grade: Mrs. Goodman
Second grade: Mrs. Elliott, she was my favorite, I think she was young and pretty.
Third grade: Mrs. Jennings, I did not like Mrs. Jennings.
Forth grade: Mrs. Hill
Fifth grade: Mrs. Pinski
Sixth grade: Mrs. Sayres

My classmates:
James was smart.
Connie was pretty.
John was a tough guy.
Mary was nice and she lived far away.
In the after school program I liked Knock Hocky.
Ernest was captain of the Safety Patrol, Connie was his leutenent.
Bobby was the best ball player and he carried the flag in assembly.
Howard was my best friend in the class and the only one I played with outside of school.
Eugene, Howie and Danny (he was older) kissed Ellen under the stairs of her apartment house on 8th street.
Ernest taught me Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, whoops Johnny, whoops Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, ready begin.

I was once invited to Ernest's house for lunch; what made it interesting is that even though I was invited for lunch, I still brought my own bag lunch.

About me:
My parents were divorced in 1944 and my mother told me (years later) that Greenwich Village was one on the few placed in NY that had day care centers. We moved to 10 Gay Street (Apt 3B) and lived there from 1944 to 1955.

I first attended day care at a place called "Church of All Nations" and then at Greenwich House. I also went to Greenwich House camp for one summer. In the lower grades someone would come to PS 41 and escort a bunch of us (we would walk and hold hands) to Greenwich House until a parent came to pick us up after work.

In 1947, on my first day of school, my mother walked with me to school by a route that she wanted me to use when I walked to school by myself. She felt that Greenwich Ave. had too much traffic. From Gay Street we took a left on Christopher, right on Waverly, right on Charles to get to the intersection of Charles and Greenwich Ave. where the policeman was stationed. Very shortly after that, perhaps even the next day, I went to school by myself (Do 6 year olds do that today?) but not the route that mom wanted me to use; that was out of the way. I took a right on Christopher, a left on Greenwich Ave to Charles and still crossed under the watchful eyes of the policeman.

On the first day of school all the students lined up at some bathroom and we went a few at a time into the same bathroom. I was taught to push the flusher with my foot.

When I started the first grade in 1947 there were two play yards, one in the center of the building and the other on the 7th Ave. side, but not the big one that was build at some point in the late 40s or early 50s. It was a small yard with a low brick fence which overlooked the back yard of a few private homes.

In those early years the assembly room didn't have the individual chairs that it had in later years; they were all bench seats that held about 5 or 6 kids each.

There was a small audio-visual room in which we saw film-strips and movies. I was always disappointed if the showing was a film strip, movies were much more interesting.

The teachers would say they were "on duty", all the boys (maybe the girls also) thought that was very funny.

In the assembly hall we endured music appreciation. The students had to recognize 20 different classical pieces. The only thing I remember now is that one of the composers was Rachmaninoff; I liked the sound of his name.

My mother would send me to school on Jewish holidays until the day I realized it was a Jewish holiday and I was Jewish.

After getting a "U" in conduct a few times, I finally asked my mom what conduct was.

The Catholic kids got to leave school early one day of the week for "release time."

We had two kinds of bomb drills, if there was no warning, we would hide under our desks and put our head between our legs. If there was more warning we would go into the hall and sit on the floor. I will refrain from commenting in this activity.

In 1951 General Douglas MacArthur was honored with a parade down 5th Ave. to Washington Square Park. A few of us decided to skip school that afternoon to see the parade. I knew my mother didn't like McArthur and I was not planning on telling her that I had skipped school especially to see MacArthur. For some reason I returned to school with one classmate before the end of the day and was spared the pain of having the teacher call home. She did call the homes of the other kids who never returned to school that day.

My mother was a communist and in 1952 when everyone at school was talking about the Eisenhower-Stevenson election I ran home to ask my mom who we were routing for - Eisenhower or Stevenson. She told me that she was going to vote for Hallinan and Bass. (They were running on the Progressive Party ticket) After this confusing answer I returned to school and until November staunchly supported Eisenhower.

I had, as did all of us, a savings account at the Bowery Savings bank. In the 6th grade Frank Burgos and I were chosen as the monitors to collect the bank books from all the classrooms and deliver them to the office.

I sometimes worked in the office (working the mimeograph machine was the most fun). I was asked to look up the phone number of the Remington Rand Company. Since I was smart enough to know that the phone book was organized by last name, I looked up the phone number under "Rand"; it wasn't there.

I would help, at the end of the day, Mrs. Kroiser, the kindergarten teacher, put up all the chairs in her room.

Bobby Behan was the best ball player, captain of the guards, and he carried the flag in assembly, I wanted to be like Bobby.

Me and Howie Long (I know that it's grammatically incorrect but it's the way I would have said it then.) and Danny (he was older) kissed Ellen Becker under the stairs of her apartment house on 8th street.

Eugene Falk Class 6-2

My years after PS41:
After gradation I would have attended PS 3, a school which my mother thought was too tough for shy and scrawny me. She sent me instead to Downtown Community School, a private school and after 2 years there we moved to Brooklyn. I attended Erasmus Hall High School, then CCNY where I received a BS in mathematics then at Hunter collage a Masters in mathematics. I taught mathematics at JHS 44 from 1964 to 1967 and the Bronx High School of Science until 1980. In 1980 with wife Harriet and children Erika and Ken we moved to California. I worked in the computer industry until 2002 when they sent my job to India and they fired my ass and the collective asses of my whole group. I decided it was time to retire.

P.S. I recently went back to Greenwich House and remember the location of the bathroom I used and the oval track on the second floor of the Gym. I tried to go back to PS41 on Greenwich Ave. but someone moved it to 11th street (without checking with me I might add).