Approximately forty six or forty seven years ago, while attending Joyce Kilmer elementary school on the north side of Chicago, I met this new kid with the funny name of Ishael Morgenbesser. Ishael had just moved here from the country of Israel and had almost no friends so as a first or second grader I decided to take him under my wings and teach him on how to become an American.
What does becoming an American mean to a first grader? To me it meant learning how to play baseball and football so in the early years that’s what we did. Ishael was fearless and along with his great strength, street smarts and intuition he made himself into a great athlete. The one complaint that he had was that the only reason he could not run as fast as me was because of his flat feet…
When we were not playing baseball or football we found time for other activities. We loved to grab our tackle boxes and fiberglass fishing rods and ride our bicycles to Lake Michigan and go fishing off the pier. We also spent countless hours’ slot car racing at our friend Russell’s house.
In those years it was still politically correct so we also spent many hours playing army with our toy guns. I remember that it must have been around fourth grade when I started the “Girl’s Hater Club” holding meetings in the garage behind my apartment. The only girl allowed in attendance was my mom as she delivered the milk and cookies. Ishael was there eating the cookies but I don’t remember him complaining against the girls as some of us did.
Contrary to our mom’s opinions, we were not perfect children and we did get ourselves into a few scrapes. My mom had a beautiful brand new wooden floor laid down in my bedroom and as usual Ish and I decided to play with our “blue” and “grey” civil war soldiers on that floor. After setting up our army’s on opposite sides, the object was to alternately knock down the other guy’s solders and the first one to accomplish this would win. Usually we would use a marble or small ball as our weapon of choice but this time we decided to use metal darts from a dartboard. After the battle was over we tried to wash up the holes with soap and water but it didn’t seem to help very much. There was also the infamous Charles Variety – Gi Joe incident but maybe I will leave that to tell another time.
I lived a block farther from school than Ishael did so every school day I would stop by his apartment building to pick him up. Year after year it would always be the same. I would look up to his first floor apartment window and I would yell, “Hey Ish”! Inevitably his mom would open the window, stick her head out and say something like, “Skip, he is putting on his shoes and will be right down”. To this day, I can still hear her voice in my head. She was my second mom.
Ish has an older sister Sarah that I knew quite well, but I remember coming home one day from school and Ish being quite excited. He said to me, “I just got a new baby sister; do you want to see her”? We went up stairs and sure enough there was a beautiful baby girl lying in her crib. Her name was Dinah and Ishael was so proud. It was not too many years later that Ishael had new baby brother by the name of Allen and the Morgenbesser family was complete.
High School came and my family moved to Michiana Shores, Michigan where I spent four years of High School in a small farm community. Ishael would take the “south shore” train and visit me out in the country and as I got older and could drive a car I would drive into the city and visit him. Ishael, now more commonly known as Michael Morgan had made some new friends at his religious high school. Alex Farekas, Jay Robinson, Robert Kandelman, Howie Chez, Robbie Levensbaum, Dan Bass, Marty Saul, and Meyer Shwartzstein to name a few. These people turned out to be great individuals and have become great friends and family to me. I will leave it up to them to continue the story…
Finally,
I understood Mike and he understood me. In sports we intuitively knew what the other was going to do and on the street, as well as in life, all it took was one glance and we were on the same page. He was the best friend a person could have.