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About Us
"You
can't change anyone, Monte me boy; ." So said the giant Irish NYPD sergeant to me when I was a
young boy playing on the expansive brick porch of the 74th Precinct in
Prospect Park, Brooklyn, where my father did his time as one of the few
Jewish cops on the force in the late 1950's. It was around 4 PM,
when the 8 AM to 4 PM shift changed over to the 4 PM to midnight shift
and the place was a sea of large men in blue wool uniforms with shiny
brass buttons, most of them carrying a three foot wooden club and all
carrying revolvers on their hips. You couldn't ask for a much safer
place for a child to play. I had walked over by myself from our
4th floor walk-up apartment on Argyle Road, which bordered on the park's
enormous Parade Grounds, so big it contained ten baseball diamonds(!)
complete with outfields, to walk home with my father. It may
sound crazy to parents today but it was standard for kids to go out and
play without adult supervision - wait, that isn't true. We had LOTS of
adult supervision, but it wasn't our parents, it was every single person
sitting on their stoop gossiping incessantly to each other and noting
everything that moved in case it could be fodder for a juicy story, the
solitary anti-social types watching out their open windows like security
cameras, and every single person a kid might pass on the street. It
didn't take a village to watch a kid and it didn't take a second for one
of them to scream at you if you did something they didn't like and
whack you if you persisted, if they could catch you. Walking on
the sidewalk around the sunny, windswept Parade Grounds ensured that you
wouldn't have to encounter the apartment dwellers and their watchful
eyes, though you had to dodge the occasional group of neighborhood kids
who were looking for trouble. I, however, had a safe passage
pass, i.e., my father being a cop, and so I had come onto the porch of
the precinct, which had been a huge mansion in the 1800's, during shift
change and wandered over to my father while they were recounting their
encounter with some "skells" (short for "skeletons") who'd made the
mistake of thinking they could commit some crime within sight of my
father, who'd been captain of his high school football team and could
run when he wanted to (almost never as time went by). This tale
of derring do had drawn the expected round of 1-upping stories of
bravery from the huddle and since I had no tale of my own I asked "Are
you ever afraid?" This was why I was now dangling from the grip
of this mountain of a man as he held me up, face to face, and solemnly
intoned "Domestic dispute." This produced a bad memories induced hush
and silently nodding heads on these normally loud and jovial keepers of
the peace. "I hear that call over the radio and I unsnap me
gun," he said in his strange Irish brogue. "I walk in and he's bouncin'
her off the wall so I get a bit rough with him and the next thing I know
I've got a steak knife in me buttocks. These women, I don't know what
they're thinking or drinking. They marry these men thinking they're
going to change 'em. You can't change anyone, Monte me boy, it's hard
enough to change yourself." This was the first time that a
life-saving and life changing trait of mine manifested itself - I can
recognize the truth when I hear it. I have never, ever expected to be
able to change anyone, not even to change anyone's mind. My goal has
always been to express my truth as I see it so that after I leave
someone's presence I do not say to myself "I should have said..."
The great psychic Edgar Cayce, when asked what was the highest thing to
which a soul could aspire said "To make one's home (and I always add:
one's very being) a place where a person is better off for having been
with you." I sit here writing this in our Enchanted World
emporium, confident that we have made it in keeping with Edgar Cayce's
words of truth, and I hope your reading this story will help you help
someone who hasn't yet learned that you can't change anyone, a crucial
lesson for finding happiness gently taught to me by one of the toughest
men I have ever met in my life. |
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