I attended kindergarten, grammar school, high school, and college in Manhattan. It was natural. I only left the Yorkville neighborhood for high school—LaSalle Academy in the East Village.
Hunter College ID, 1972
In September of 1972, I entered Hunter College with 16,000 other matriculating students. At orientation, I was way back in the line. When they gave me my first class schedule, I had little choice in picking five classes, and the guy who helped put my schedule together handed me the card, shook my hand, and said, “This is the worst schedule I’ve ever developed.” (Mondays 8am-11am & 3pm-5pm; Wednesdays 8am-10am; Thursdays 8am-11am & 3pm-5pm; Friday 8am-10am & 4pm-5pm.)
I played football for the Bronx Warriors in Pelham with my friend Joe Menesick. I broke my fibula a week before my first Hunter class when a jerk teammate pulled a “Geronimo!” and jumped on my leg which was hanging out of a pile after I was tackled. My first two weeks in school I was on crutches. Most kids avoided the slow elevators. I took one to the 10th floor and then went back and forth, hopping the staircase from the 7th to 10th floor to get to my various classes. I held the crutches in one arm and took one step at a time on my good foot while a thousand kids ran around me. It was impossible to hold the heavy entrance door open alone and get through it before it closed back on me. I needed help and usually slid through when a gang of kids flew through like a Peanuts comic strip soccer game. On my second day of school, late for class, I was on the stairs with a few stragglers. At the 9th floor door, a very pleasant Chinese student smiled at me and held the door. He appeared happy. I said thank-you. I put my crutches in place under my arms, put my head down and started through the doorway as the pleasant student let the monster door go. It swung swiftly and whacked me in the head. With my arms locked to the crutches helplessly, I hopped backwards and then moon-walked across the landing. I slammed into the radiator and fell into a heap. The guy had been smiling at a girl pal who ran by me into his arms as he released the door. Welcome to college!
That first semester, I took a course called “Probabilities & Statistics” for two reasons: 1) to improve my weak gambling skills and 2) to satisfy my Math & Science requirement. Eight AM, Monday and Thursday—I dreaded the first class, I don’t wake well. Got there late, opened the door and saw a tall attractive teacher wearing pumps, one bookish guy and forty nursing students, half of them Irish with those cute little noses. I was never late again.
My last year at Hunter, I hung around with Susan. We met in a Flemish Art class. Susan looked like the girl in The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer, and she was mischievous. Museum guards at the Met threatened us three times with expulsion. On a class trip, our teacher scolded us: “Seriously, you two need to grow up.” Susan and I took this as a compliment. We bought 25 cent bagel sandwiches in the old Hunter High School building and put a ton of free mayo on the one slice of Swiss or bologna. We went to the zoo when we should have been in class, and went to class when we should have gone to the zoo. Susan made Hunter better.
Reuniting with Professor Robert White, December 2010
My favorite Hunter teachers included Robert J. White (Classics) and Richard Barickman (Poetry). Professor White imitated a werewolf and launched tribal mating calls during lectures. He also turned me onto D.H. Lawrence, Edward Albee, and Pasolini films. Professor Richard Barickman taught me Hardy, Elliot, Thackeray, Dickens, and Henry James. He always wore riding boots like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights with the pants tucked in and taught me critical literary analysis. Both these guys were cool and effective teachers. Professors White & Barickman led me to a rich appreciation for ancient civilizations, Thomas Mann, and Romantic and Victorian poetry (I still own my Washington Square Press paperbacks edited by William H. Marshall). Both men loved language with all their hearts and loved their students, and we soaked it all up. Hunter College helped fill my tool box for life.
This year the old Hunter building on Lexington between 68th & 69th Street is 100 years old.
Hunter College
Hunter Cornerstone 1912
Lexington & 70th
Can you see me?
Thomas Pryor has been featured on A Prairie Home Companion and This American Life, and his work has appeared in the New York Times. He curates City Stories: Stoops to Nuts, a storytelling show at the Cornelia Street Café on the second Tuesday of the month (next show March 13th). Check out his blog Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts.
