My life

The gambling and hot-water attractions of Hot Springs were enhanced by large brightly lit auction houses, which alternated with gambling spots and restaurants on Central Avenue on the other side of the street from the bathhouses; by Oaklawn racetrack, which offered fine Thoroughbred racing for thirty days a year in the spring, the only legal gambling in the city; by slot machines in many of the restaurants, some of which even kids were allowed to play if they were sitting on their parents’ laps; and by three lakes near the city, the most important of which was Lake Hamilton, where many of the city’s grandees, including Uncle Raymond, had large houses. Thousands of people flocked to the lake’s motels for summer vacation. There was also an alligator farm in which the largest resident was eighteen feet long; an ostrich farm, whose residents sometimes paraded down Central Avenue; Keller Breland’s IQZoo, full of animals and featuring the alleged skeleton of a mermaid; and a notorious whorehouse run by Maxine Harris (later Maxine Temple Jones), a real character who openly deposited her payoffs in the local authorities’ bank accounts and who in 1983 wrote an interesting book about her life: “Call Me Madam” : The Life and Times of a Hot Springs Madam. When I was ten or eleven, on a couple of occasions my friends and I entertained ourselves for hours by calling Maxine’s place over and over, tying up her phone and blocking calls from real customers. It infuriated her and she cursed us out with salty and creative language we’d never before heard from a woman, or a man, for that matter. It was hilarious. I think she thought it was funny, too, at least for the first fifteen minutes or so. For Arkansas, a state composed mostly of white Southern Baptists and blacks, Hot Springs was amazingly diverse, especially for a town of only 35,000. There was a good-sized black population and a hotel, the Knights of the Pythias, for black visitors. There were two Catholic churches and two synagogues. The Jewish residents owned some of the best stores and ran the auction houses. The best toy store in town was Ricky’s, named by the Silvermans after their son, who was in the band with me. Lauray’s, the jewelry store where I bought little things for Mother, was owned by Marty and Laura Fleishner. And there was the B’nai B’rith’s Leo N. Levi Hospital, which used the hot springs to treat arthritis. I also met my first Arab-Americans in Hot Springs, the Zorubs and the Hassins. When David Zorub’s parents were killed in Lebanon, he was adopted by his uncle. He came to this country at nine unable to speak any English and eventually became valedictorian of his class and governor of Boys State. Now he is a neurosurgeon in Pennsylvania. Guido Hassin and his sisters were the children of the World War II romance of a Syrian-American and an Italian woman; they were my neighbors during high school. I also had a Japanese-American friend, Albert Hahm, and a Czech classmate, René Duchac, whose émigré parents owned a restaurant, The Little Bohemia. There was a large Greek community, which included a Greek Orthodox church and Angelo’s, a restaurant just around the corner from Clinton Buick. It was a great old-fashioned place, with its long soda fountain–like bar and tables covered with red-and-white checked tablecloths. The house specialty was a three-way: chili, beans, and spaghetti. My best Greek friends by far were the Leopoulos family. George ran a little café on Bridge Street between Central Avenue and Broadway, which we claimed was the shortest street in America, stretching all of a third of a block. George’s wife, Evelyn, was a tiny woman who believed in reincarnation, collected antiques, and loved Liberace, who thrilled her by coming to her house for dinner once while he was performing in Hot Springs. The younger Leopoulos son, Paul David, became my best friend in fourth grade and has been like my brother ever since.

When we were boys, I loved to go with him to his dad’s café, especially when the carnival was in town, because all the carnies ate there. Once they gave us free tickets to all the rides. We used every one of them, making David happy and me dizzy and sick to my stomach. After that I stuck to bumper cars and Ferris wheels. We’ve shared a lifetime of ups and downs, and enough laughs for three lifetimes. That I had friends and acquaintances from such a diverse group of people when I was young may seem normal today, but in 1950s Arkansas, it could have happened only in Hot Springs. Even so, most of my friends and I led pretty normal lives, apart from the occasional calls to Maxine’s bordello and the temptation to cut classes during racing season, which I never did, but which proved irresistible to some of my classmates in high school.