The shop I visited for those haircuts in Jamaica was located on 166th Street, near the last station of the old elevated train on Jamaica Avenue, and a block from a bus terminal. Ben Katchor’s graphic art showing such a neighborhood perfectly describes the seedy and dilapidated atmosphere of this area.

The barbershop was located very close to the side, or stage, entrance of the Loew’s Valencia Theater. I would stand at the stage doors with my mother on one particular night of the week, when there was a drawing of some tawdry prize, as an added feature of the movie show. You either had to be inside the theater, if your number was called, or waiting outside the stage door, where the number was broadcast over speakers, and if you could fight your way through the crowd there (this was during the Depression, after all, and many people, including my widowed mother, couldn’t afford the price of admission) you could go up on the stage and claim your prize. I don’t ever remember her having won anything (whether it was a piece of china, or whatever), but I do remember standing out in the cold with her, hoping to hear our number being called.

I did infrequently actually attend the theater, most probably at a Saturday matinee. Children my age were forced to sit in the narrow side sections only, and a uniformed “matron” patrolled the aisle looking out for any wrongdoing, such as trying to sneak into the center sections. The acute viewing angle, from this vantage point, made every actor look like the “Thin Man.” This theater, incidentally, was one of the few with faux Spanish architecture (hence the name “Valencia”). Projections of clouds slowly moved across the ceiling, giving the impression of an outdoor courtyard open to the sky at night. Sometimes watching those “clouds” was more interesting than watching the movies themselves.

Getting back to the barbershop, there was a sole proprietor named Abraham Fagin, who lived on Snedeker Avenue, in Brooklyn. (I gleaned this information from his State of New York Barber License in a frame hanging from the wall.) He was a short, middle-aged man, with black wiry hair. Looking back on it now, I never saw another person getting his hair cut while I was there. His scissors kept up a continuous “clip-clip” – whether he was in the act of cutting hair or not. It was as if he had motorized fingers that worked at a constant rate. He always addressed me as “Sonny,” a convenient way not to have to remember or even know a boy’s name. I gave him a quarter for the haircut each time, and he pocketed it without comment. (Who knew about tips in those frugal days? I certainly wouldn’t be expected to).

The shop itself was long, narrow and unimpressive, with a row of 4 or 5 barber chairs (the majority unused), facing a mirrored wall, with its opposing wall also mirrored. The reflections of these mirrors naturally gave the impression of infinite space, with an infinite number of chairs. There was a high tin ceiling, and hanging light bulbs. A door apparently led to a rear room.

During my haircuts, I consistently looked down at my feet, and thus the name “Emil J. Paidar” became impressed in my memory, just as it was impressed in the cast-iron footrest.

As I said, I never saw any other customers, but there was a constant flow of middle-aged men coming and going, into the back room, and out of the back room, in and out. They could have been in training for parts as the habitués of the Bada-Bing Club, in The Sopranos.

One particular occurrence stands out in my memory, after nearly 70 years. A man opened the front door, stuck his head partially in, and asked Mr. Fagin: “Cops come?” Without looking at the speaker, the barber nodded his head, his clipping scissors not missing a beat. “Take ‘em?” Again, the nod of assent, together with the constant clip of the scissors. The man said “‘Bye” and he was gone.

I must have been going to Mr. Fagin for haircuts for several years while we lived in an apartment house nearby in Jamaica. One day during my visit, after he had completed his tonsorial efforts, and dusted me off, he said, not unkindly: “Sonny, you’re getting too big. I have to charge you fifty cents from now on.” I have no recollection where I went for a haircut from then on, but I think it was the last time I saw the name “Emil J. Paidar” until the magazine article, many years later.

Philip Wesler is a retired engineer, living in Walnut Creek, California. He is about to enter the penultimate year of his eighth decade.

“Hey, Mister–” a voice will call down the hallway just minutes before the test. “Who wrote about those mice and men? George Steinbrenner, right?”

Due to the No Child Left Behind rule, everyone takes the exam during junior year regardless of their proficiency in English. The student who’s been in the system since kindergarten takes it, as well as the child who recently arrived to America and whose second, third, or fourth language might be English. Whether they have designs on going to college after graduation or going on to become mechanics and electricians, they are going to sit for that exam.

The more students a school gets to pass, the better the school looks. As a result, many schools have pushed up the date for students to take the test. Rather than taking it for the first time in June, why not usher them in five months early and see what happens? If they pass, great, if not, get ready for round two. Better still, let’s start grading the teachers on the results.

The Department of Education has been conducting a secret pilot program where 2,500 teachers at 140 city public schools are being measured without their knowledge on student performance on standardized tests. Sadly, the local media has weighed in with typical comments and clichés regarding the teaching profession. “Imagine teachers treated like other professionals–having their performance monitored and quantified,” writes Adam Brodsky in an op/ed piece for the Post. In his late January article, Mr. Brodsky even cites Tom Brady of the New England Patriots as a good lesson to all of us regarding the power of impressive statistics. But the city recently discovered, in the most stunning way imaginable, that gaudy, blown-up stats aren’t everything.

Despite his condescending attitude toward teachers, Brodsky still raises a good point. So let’s ‘monitor ‘and ‘quantify’ some of my students on their recent performance on the English Regents exam then determine my net worth once we’re through. Out of five classes taught this past semester, I had one class of juniors, three groups of sophomores, and one senior elective. The juniors were an interesting bunch, bright, friendly, and respectful, one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve ever taught.

But before we can examine their performance on the test, as well as my accountability, we need to establish setting. My building was falsely labeled as an Impact School last year, which means it is now regarded as one of the most dangerous schools in the city. Coincidentally, before the DOE can get its hands on a building and chop it up into ‘smaller learning communities,’ it must first get it labeled as dangerous.

Once a school is branded as Impact, a script is then followed to shut the place down, and Phase I is complete. Security is intensified. Letters are sent home to parents, notifying them that their child may transfer out of a ‘dangerous’ building if he or she chooses, and incoming freshman opt to go elsewhere when it’s time to select a school. The faculty is left to shrug and wonder where all these dangerous kids are hiding, but come away with nothing. The school’s hallways then begin to shrink, teachers are excessed, and the budget is cut. The atmosphere becomes bleak, like something out of an old Western. It’s time to shoot the horses and circle the wagons because rations are low and the enemy’s closing in.

Yet the DOE machine keeps rolling. During Regents week, my school was notified that a ‘new’ school will exist inside of our eighty year old building next year (Phase II complete). It will be the same building, the same amount of kids, just with an imaginary border put into place, a brilliant new version of divide and conquer.

One of my colleagues recently began her graduate school semester. When she introduced herself and her school, the DOE official moonlighting as an instructor explained that she was familiar with the building and that the school’s fate had already been decided. “Jamaica High School is a warehouse,” she said. She then advised the teacher to stop battling the DOE, to comply with the inevitable, or transfer out.

A warehouse. Any adult who’s witnessed children passing through metal detectors each morning then frisked with scanning wands, not because they’re dangerous, but for political reasons, knows what an absolutely disgraceful remark this is.

Let’s return now to my classroom of juniors and Mr. Brodsky’s pomposity: “…Why not make teachers prove their worth?” Very well, but shouldn’t instructors be given an equal playing field before they’re forced to compete? Do Stuyvesant High School, Brooklyn Tech, or Bronx Science, three of the finest specialized schools in the city, have Jamaica’s problems to contend with? They have waiting lists to get in, while Jamaica struggles with a two year long DOE choke hold. Whose test scores do you think will be more impressive?

As I scan the list of results I find that my class ran the gamut, lots of highs and lows. Some overslept and missed the exam, while others arrived early and pulled off stunning victories. Jamal got his 97, but Forrest received a 51.

As much as I would like to take credit for Jamal’s grade, the truth is that he’s a self-starter who sits up front, takes notes, and never misses class. Forrest, however, disappeared into the West Indies around holiday time: “Going to my country, bye.” He was gone for nearly six weeks, missing all of his Regents preparation. I’m sure he was visiting family he hadn’t seen in a while, but should his extended vacation have any bearing on my teaching career? Of course not.

There’s also no need to congratulate myself when Clarissa scores a high 86. She’s quiet, attentive, and likes to read. I did my job each day and she did hers. Or Victor who managed to get himself suspended for three weeks then recorded a 47. All four of these kids were in the same class and all four of them are responsible for their test scores. Not their teacher.

When it comes time to give Jamal’s family a call to congratulate them on their son’s success, I find out that he lives in a group home. I’m taken aback on the phone. I expected to speak to the man Jamal identified as his father on parent/teacher night, but he was really just the counselor on duty.

There’s no way to explain Jamal. He defies DOE logic and statistics. He left his group home each morning, reported to his ‘persistently dangerous high school,’ where he was scanned, frisked and instructed to readjust his belt in the auditorium, then sat down to record one of the highest scores in the state. The kid’s a winner, a true New York Giant, and I would love to bask in his glory or dance in his victory parade, but I’m nothing more than a fan.

* All students appear in this essay under pseudonyms.

Jb McGeever’s stories have appeared in Hampton Shorts, Confrontation, $pread Magazine, and the Southampton Review, with nonfiction in the New York Times, the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program Report, and City Limits. He recently received an IPPIE award from the Independent Press Association for best editorial, and teaches writing and literature in the NYC public school system.

“What?” I generally responded from the other room.

For the record, I am, in fact, a great listener. But she was right, toward the “end of times,” I didn’t listen to her. But that was mostly because whatever she said whenever I was around to listen was a complaint. “You didn’t…” “You never…” “You bastard!” Although that last one was more of an observation than a complaint.

Again for the record, not only am I a good listener, when I put my mind to it, but I am a great observer as well. It is a skill I have finely honed as a result of my many years, according to my ex, of never “actually doing anything, but watching other people doing things from the sidelines.” For example, around March I tend to notice that the days are getting longer, even if there is still snow on the ground. And in the second week of August I notice that all the teaching money I had put aside during the school year to pay the bills in the summer is just about gone.

But besides all that, she was never really interested in what I had to say anyway, especially if my opinion didn’t agree with her opinion, which it hardly ever did. After all, I was a man and she was a feminist of sorts, when it suited her. I voted straight party line and she voted only for women on the ballot no matter what the party affiliation, and so we effectively cancelled each other out in local and national elections since 1976. In other aspects of our lives together, I wanted a tool shed and she wanted the house repainted and a dormer. I wanted a Porsche 9-11 and she wanted children.

So, I gradually lost all interest and stopped paying attention all together, and she managed very well without much input from me. It was a system that seemed to work and had taken us up to the point about two years away from our divorce, the summer I learned that Bernardo, the Fresh Air Fund kid from the Bronx, was coming to stay with us in August. Of course I didn’t learn about it directly from her, but by accident, as a result of overhearing the breakfast conversation of my two kids.

“What?” I asked when I heard them talking about all the things they were planning to do when Bernardo arrived.

“Mommy said Bernardo is coming to stay with us for two weeks,” my daughter said.

“And he’s going to sleep in my room,” my son said.

“What?” I demanded when my wife came back into the kitchen.

“The woman from the Fresh Air Fund is coming today for a look at the place, before they make their final decision. It is just a formality.”

“But–”

The kids stopped eating to listen to the exchange.

“Don’t you think we should have discussed it before you decided to bring some ‘West Side Story’ inner city gang member into the house?”

“Don’t be silly. Bernardo is only six years old. And besides, I knew you wouldn’t agree, so I made the decision.”

“But… You… We…” I stammered, my head spinning as I searched for valid points to contradict her argument. “August is crunch time,” I managed feebly, “and we can’t afford another mouth to feed in August.”

“You can always get a little part-time job if we need more money. I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the hardware store in town. So mow the lawn, clean up the mess around the swing set and vacuum the pool before the Fresh Air Fund lady comes.”

Crisis over, the kids went back to eating their Froot Loops.

When the woman arrived my wife couldn’t have been more charming. She laid out the redwood table with a red plaid tablecloth and all those picnic dishes she had bought from the Land’s End catalog and plied her with home made lemonade and fresh baked cookies while I refused to say a word the whole time she was there. Instead, I kept my earplugs in as I steered the lawn mower closer and closer to the patio in my attempt to pelt the two of them with grass clippings and small pebbles. But we passed the inspection. Not only was Bernardo’s two-week visit with “nuclear suburban host family” approved and scheduled for the first day of August, but I would have to take the mini van up to the South Bronx to pick him up and hope that I was wearing the right gang colors when I did.

In the days following the visit from the Fresh Air Fund lady, the house was filled with deafening silence. Or if there was any verbal exchange of information from my wife’s side of the house, I didn’t hear it. I elected to give her the silent treatment while I began to plan my strategies, both to prevent the inevitable invasion of my privacy, and to deal with it when it arrived.

I opted for the sensitive approach, assuming that my wife’s failure to communicate and consider my feelings was because she failed to understand my need for privacy, the whole “a man’s home is his castle” school of thought and simply needed to be reminded that since I paid all the bills, I had a vote on who ate at my table and slept under my roof. It was an assumption that was doomed to failure, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and in an attempt to educate her, I began dropping hints where she could pick them up. I used my computer to find some suitable clip art logo of a cop holding a stop sign and composed a letter addressed to me that I left folded carelessly in the middle of the kitchen table. I knew she could not miss seeing it, and from her past performances, I knew after seeing it out there in the open she would be unable to resist reading it. Although the name at the bottom was bogus and signature belonged to one of the secretaries at the school where I worked, the address and telephone number were legitimate, just in case my wife had any ideas about verifying the authenticity of the communication. The letter said:

The Fortune Society of America

53 West 23rd Street

New York NY 10010

212.691.7554

(The only difference between a criminal and an ex-con is a short sentence.)

May 25, 1990

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding “Cons Across the Continent,” the rehabilitation work of the Fortune Society of America. Your request to have a recently released ex-convict spend an extended period of time at your home this summer with you and your family has been processed. I am happy to inform you that a suitable candidate has been selected, and he is eager to meet all of the Scalias.

His name is Otis La Rue Washington, but the name he prefers is “Love Master,” a nickname he picked up during his years at Attica. Otis is 36 years old, and has spent about a third of his life behind bars at the Newburg Reformatory for Boys where he served one to three years for third degree sexual abuse, Altoona Prison for Men where he served three years of the five to seven years sentence for aggravated sexual battery. Mr. Washington was released after he volunteered for AIDS research. His most recently time in prison was spent at Attica, where he served five of the seven to ten years sentence for rape.

Although he is a convicted multiple rapist, you will be happy to know, that he has never employed any weapons, other than his hands, to subdue his victims. The New York State Parole Board has determined that he is currently in “remission” and would pose little or no threat to your wife and/or children. At present Mr. Washington is in the “final stages of rehabilitation,” awaiting release from a halfway house at an undisclosed location.

A representative of the Fortune Society of America will shortly be contacting you to set up an appointment to inspect your premises in order to determine the suitability of conditions in your home for Mr. Washington. This is simply a formality and I can assure you that there will be no problem placing Mr. Washington with you by early July.

We appreciate your time and interest in the “Cons Across the Continent” program, and we look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Laurie Dunkleson, Placement Director

“Cons Across the Continent”

Fortune Society of America

Although I could tell by its position and fold that the letter had been read, my wife never mentioned it when we passed one another like two battleships in the night. Neither of us said much of anything for the rest of the week, and then on Saturday afternoon a second folded letter appeared on the kitchen table.

The Fortune Society of America

53 West 23rd Street

New York NY 10010

212.691.7554

(The only difference between a criminal and an ex-con is a short sentence.)

June 1, 1990

Dear Sir:

I am sorry to inform you that the plans to place Mr. Otis La Rue Washington in your home through the “Cons Across the Continent” program have met with a minor snag.

While on a work release furlough in the upstate New York area, Mr. Washington violated one of the conditions of his release when he wandered into one of the many topless bars along Route 9W. Once inside the “Kitty-Titty Bar,” Mr. Washington ran amok among the two female dancers and three or four male patrons who were frequenting the establishment at 11 am on a Sunday morning. The exact number of victims is still under investigation by the local authorities. Meanwhile, Mr. Washington has been taken into custody and charged with two counts of first-degree rape stemming from his attack on the women, and four counts of aggravated sodomy involving the male patrons.

I have been in personal, direct contact with Mr. Washington and he has assured me that his attorney will be able to plea-bargain the charges and get them reduced to one count of jaywalking and one count of littering. He said in the telephone conversation that he should be out on the streets in a matter of days, but he will have to make an appearance in court sometime in early July to answer the jaywalking and littering charges. This will likely push back the date of his arrival for the extended home visitation by several days. Mr. Washington said he is sorry for any inconvenience and that he can’t wait to get at you and your family.

Sincerely,

Laurie Dunkleson, Placement Director

“Cons Across the Continent”

Fortune Society of America

I thought I detected a slight grin on my wife’s face when I saw her later that afternoon, but it might have simply been a flare of gas from the previous night’s Chinese food. She never acknowledged either of the letters.

And on August 1st the four of us navigated the minivan up to the South Bronx to pick up Bernardo. Of course my wife was right. He was only six, too young to be in any gang and ignorant of all those gang signs I had taken such pains to learn and flash the moment we arrived in the apartment.

His mother, who was holding on to two other children, Bernardo’s younger brother and sister, looked more worried about this Fresh Air Fund business than I did.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Gomez,” I reassured, calling back to her as we led her first-born son out of the apartment and down the stairs to the street, “we’ll take good care of him.”

The visit went without a hitch. The kids got along as well as could be expected, with a few minor incidents. The weather held up for us to use the pool almost every day. And there was more than enough money to feed everybody those first two weeks of August. Bernardo was charming and polite, and I found that I liked him better than my own two kids. I liked him so much, in fact, that I invited him back for the following summer. And I would have had him back for a third time, but that was the summer my wife and I got divorced instead.

I was oblivious to the hype and I had no idea that Super Bowl Sunday had arrived until Saturday night, when someone asked me where I was going to watch Super Bowl XL. I thought “XL” meant “Extra Large,” a size that, over the years, I have come to embrace. And I wouldn’t have known even one of the teams playing in Super Bowl XL if my friend Sister Rita, who lives in Pittsburgh, hadn’t signed her email “Go Steelers!” She told me that the “big game” was being played in Detroit, so I only assumed that the other team was from Detroit, the Tigers or the Pistons, the Edsels or some other “Mo Town” group.

It was my son Ian, the one who roots for the Yankees and bets on horse races, who informed me that the other team in the Super Bowl XL was from Washington.

“The Senators?” That was a team I remembered from my days when I collected bubble gum cards. “They were never good enough to win anything.” But he said it was the other Washington, the one out West somewhere, where it rains all the time and they have sightings of Sasquatch. “Not DC. Seattle,” he said.

“I didn’t know that Seattle had a football team,” I said, “just pine trees with space needles!”

Despite all the pressure to conform, to be a participant, instead of watching the extra large Super Bowl, I opted to sit there for as many hours watching the “Monk” marathon, reruns of a B-list TV comedy series. But I didn’t have to see a single commercial, Super Bowl XL or otherwise, thanks to TIVO. I was able to fast-forward through them all.

For my friend Gary, who is a “real sport” and the person I suspect of corrupting Ian and turning him to the Yankee dark side, Super Bowl Sunday, whatever the number, is an event beside which his wedding anniversary pales. He caters a party every year.

“The boys are coming over about 2 PM with the beer and tequila,” he announced. “I went to a new caterer who did it up big. Five varieties of chips and enough dip to float a boat. Cool Ranch, Post-Soviet Union Russian, and my own secret Onion Blue Cheese Surprise. Three hundred chicken wings imported from Buffalo because the Bills don’t need them.” Whoever they happen to be, I thought. He was trying to lure me there. “There are individual pizzas this year,” he said. “You can add your own toppings! Are you interested?”

But I wasn’t, and I didn’t – munch a chip, or mix a dip, or chip a tooth on bad take-out. Although I did manage to consume peanut butter, that new Smart Balance with Omega 3s, both smooth and chunky, that I ate directly from the jars with a spoon. So while Adrian Monk was solving murders, touching parking meters and straightening museum pictures, running through hand wipes, I did down several hot chocolates from the eight-variety flavor carton I won at the office Christmas party, from right out of the packets, without the necessity of adding milk.

Does that make me un-American? A fringe person? A candidate for being wiretapped? For having all my emails scrutinized and my personal Google searches logged and poured over, exposed for all to see? Does that make me suspect? Perhaps. Because I wear in public a sweatshirt that says “Hug A Poet” instead of “Dallas Cowboys” does that make me likely to be carted off in handcuffs like Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mom who lost her only son in Iraq? After all, besides not watching Super Bowl XL, I am opposed to one more American dying in Iraq! So am I now a prime contender for “rendition”? Am I likely to be yanked off the street into the back of an unmarked van by men in black and spirited off to some gray-market country and tortured?

It makes me wonder. And I hope the commotion I hear on the steps outside my apartment is from my neighbors celebrating the victory of their Super Bowl XL champions, and not the “Thought Police” coming to take me away!

Oy vey, when is baseball season going to start?

Go Mets!

___________________________________________________

Joseph E. Scalia, Author/Artist: FREAKs, Pearl and No Strings Attached; Scalia vs. the Universe: Watercolors From My Different Other Life

It could be a retiree’s living room. One, someone calls him Bobby, who possesses comfortable gems on his finger and windbreaker. I watch him scribble “faster” at the top of each race, not for the contenders but an incitement to himself to keep up.

I decide to put ten down on the eight horse to win because I like the sound of Crouching Thunder. Bobby says the odds are twelve to one for my choice, a four-year-old running against five-year-olds. He thinks maybe I’ll have beginner’s luck.

The competitors are listed like fates. For drinkers, there’s Vague Memory; for the hopeful, Verge of a Miracle; for the superstitious, Dark Pagan. Where there’s smoke, there’s Conflagration. Big Burn and Brilliant Joke are favorites.

Crouching Thunder loses—finishes dead last while Bobby’s pick takes first. “You’re not gonna get it today,” bellows from the speaker. Bobby tells me he was saying that long before the announcer.

So, he gives me advice for the next race: Nunez, the woman jockey, is good on turf with Strikeapose. We place our bets.

“Predatory Pidgeon, Señor Charismatic, Kielbasa Cutea, and Strikeaposerose go head to head. Softshoeshuffle comes out on top last second, and it’s Softshoeshuffle.”

We throw up our stubs.

Bobby had been warm. He just associated the wrong horse with the right jockey. I realize this on the train home: Nunez was on Softshoe, not Strikeapose, and it was Bobby’s thick glasses that had won out over both of us.

I’ve long gotten a superiority chuckle watching "mourners" on television who bring hand-painted signs, 99-cent store teddy bears, daily newspapers with 64-pt. headlines announcing the celebrity death, and acres of chrysanthemums, roses and white lilies to lay on a sidewalk somewhere in the vicinity of where the deceased lived.

I would say to myself: When did public vigils with pine-scented candles and stuffed unicorns become mandatory? Does that crying woman think Lady Di cares that she painted a sign with angels on it? She is, after all, dead, right? If I was related to someone famous, would I feel better knowing an anonymous stranger sent his or her love via a Mylar balloon?

Though I would mock them, at least those folks brought gifts they intended to leave behind in honor of the person who meant something to them. I, on the other hand, carried my 15-year-old, red-white-and-black "My Adidas" Run-D.M.C. sweatshirt to Jamaica, Queens, in order to take pictures of it among the leather hats, gold chains, unlaced-three-black-stripe-shell-tops, Raising Hell album covers, posters, prayers, notes, flowers, turntables, mourners, gawkers and fans, and then take it back home.

The fact is that I am simply not prepared to part with it.

My Aunt Judy sent me the sweatshirt as a birthday gift, from a shop in Philadelphia, when I was a high school junior in Billings, Montana. It was, and still is, the coolest item of clothing I have ever owned. It passed the ultimate test: no other kid in town had one. I would venture to guess that most kids from Hollis during the depressing inner-city Reagan days would have been surprised to know that my circle — white kids from cattle country — couldn’t get enough of rap music. Bad rap, good rap, political rap, sex rap, angry rap, loopy rap — as long as black folks were on the mic (and yes, that includes the Beasties), we listened.

More than any of the others though, Run-D.M.C. blazed the trail. In the 1980′s, Billings was as white as it got, yet cassettes were worn out while rhyming along with "Calvin Klein’s no friend of mine/don’t want nobody’s name on my behind," and "You told the Cavity Creeps to watch out for Crest." We whiteys knew the cuts long before the rap-rock hybrid made Run-D.M.C. MTV-safe.

What was it about rap? I guess it was the other. The black other. There were no blacks in my high school, my neighborhood, and near as I recall, there were only a couple of black kids in town. Radio pop, Motown classics and heavy metal were in the mix (country was the only genre we disdained), but in my stereo, the Kings from Queens ruled. I loved it, and imagined that outside of po-dunk Billings, we all loved it, and each other. I was honest-to-God shocked when I got to a Midwestern Jesuit college and found upper-class white kids casually and bitterly throwing around the word "nigger."

I knew that things were darker and crueler than Run-D.M.C. made it sound. But the sound that Jam Master Jay pioneered was already imprinted on my brain as pure humanistic joy. Not that Run-D.M.C. ignored social questions; it’s just that they sounded like three guys who ate the apple, enjoyed life on their terms and made it happen their way. The verbal dexterity, the leather suits, the fedoras, the gold chains, the video with Larry "Bud" Melman, and the wizard of the crossfade, driving the engine with the wax and the scratch, and the scratchy wax — in my head, it all added up to some raucous party that I might not have been personally invited to, but that they wouldn’t care if I crashed.

I wore the sweatshirt out. The shiny Run-D.M.C. lettering on the back had long wilted away and the white cloth material ceased to be white years ago. It’s stained, frayed, shapeless and smells like an item that’s been in a closet for over a decade. I’ve saved other mementos from my adolescence, but they’re all boxed up, kept mainly for bookkeeping’s sake. That sweatshirt, however, has traveled with me to college, to the Bronx where I lived and worked as a volunteer for a year, to grad school in Snoop country, back to Gotham, and a few other spots in between.

I hadn’t worn it in years, but I always knew it was at the ready should I get the opportunity to see the Big Beat Blaster, the Reverend and the one in Goggles. I decided to break it out for a Beastie Boys 9/11 benefit show in October of 2001. Although it was a minor battle trying to pull it over my no-longer-teenaged midsection, it was a hoot to have it on again. Fun to wear, but I’d forgotten that the My Adidas throwback had a New York City skyline across the front prominently displaying the Twin Towers. The Beasties promised special guests, but to my chagrin there was no Together Forever tour reunion and Run-D.M.C. didn’t make an appearance.

On the way to Queens last week, I stopped and bought Run-D.M.C.’s Greatest Hits. I put it in the WalkMan for the ride to the F-train’s last stop, which dropped me nowhere near Merrick Avenue. I asked a black guy walking down the street if he could help me out and learned that I would have to take not one, but two buses. He was getting on the same bus and offered to steer me in the right direction. He introduced himself as Eryq and we talked throughout the half-hour tour of Farmers Boulevard. He asked if I was a reporter. I said no, I was a "a writer for myself." I didn’t want him to think I was a news guy and not a fan. I wanted him to think I was a guy who would travel deep into an outer borough to pay respects to his hip-hop hero. I showed Eryq the raggedy-ass sweatshirt and explained how it just seemed right to take it to the Jam Master Jay memorial. He didn’t ask why. He knew.

It unfurled from my backpack and the first thing he said was, "It’s even got the Twin Towers." He told me about having seen Run-D.M.C. at Fresh Fest years back. There was a stabbing, he said, so the band stopped while order was restored and Jay made up a rhyme on the spot rousing the crowd to act responsibly. Eryq told me he was a musician from Long Island and said that he’s a huge Eddie Van Halen fan; he went so far as to add white tape to his red Stratocaster. He told me how he took a lot of shit in his neighborhood for his Guitar God worship. I told him I grew up in Montana knowing only whites, but rap was king. At the end of the line, we exchanged information, two fans of both a murdered rapper and Diver Down.

In Jam Master Jay’s honor, I’d like to say their music bridges racial gaps and batters musical assumptions, or at least it did on one bus ride through the neighborhood where it had all started. The sweatshirt was a conversation piece, even if the conversation only reinforced the broad power of popular music and the hyper-awareness New Yorkers have of the missing World Trade Center. Still, talking to someone like Eryq was what the music had been all about for me growing up in Billings; someday I’d live in New York City and have black friends and we’d listen to Run-D.M.C., just like back home, and I’d be a man of the world and it would be cool. Silly teenage fantasy? Sure, but for that ride, it felt like what I had envisioned life in New York City to be like long before I ever set foot here.

I took my sweatshirt out at the memorial and posed it for a few photographs. Nobody seemed to mind and one guy stopped to note he had the same one "back in the day." A mother told her young son how Run-D.M.C. had "started it all," and more than one passerby noted that "it doesn’t make sense" or asked "who could do this?" It was bitter cold, so the crowd was minimal and few lingered. I stayed long enough to snap some pics, smile at the collection of worn-out sneakers and sign a poster monitored by a guy with a Sharpie. A mixture of guilt and nostalgia hit me for a few seconds and I considered tying My Adidas to the chain-link fence. But then it passed. I couldn’t do it.

The sweatshirt may be an old, shabby relic that I might’ve donned ironically before it became another reminder of 9/11, another reminder of a childish vision of a utopian community where blacks and whites partied together in Gotham with Run-D.M.C. as the backbeat, and now, another reminder of the brutal murder of their musical backbone, Jam Master Jay, father of three.

The ugly reminders are woven into the fabric, but to me, the sweatshirt is still listening to King of Rock while drinking cheap beer up on the Rims with my buddies. It’s imagining that someday I’d find a way to let Run-D.M.C. know that, to me, they were it, and that yes, "music ain’t nothing but a people’s jam/Run-D.M.C. rockin’ without a band." All I can say is that I’m going to keep that sweatshirt in my closet. Every now and then, I’ll take it down, put it on, crank up "Peter Piper," and bob my head in agreement with the two men who knew him best: "His name is Jay, to hear him play, will make you say, ‘God damn that DJ made my day.’"