Recruiting Center - Fordham Road

It’s a few years ago that I tried to do shots from the parts of the Bronx that had meaning to me; from where I grew up. This was one of them, as there’s a long story connected with it. I don’t think it’s on Fordham Road any longer, but in a nutshell, when I was about eight years old, my father smacked me around real good for scratching my name into my sister’s dresser.

Turned out that she had scratched my name into her own dresser to get me into trouble, which it did.

My father was prone to fits of anger, especially after World War II – and in this case – he picked me up under the arms and slammed me a few times against my bedroom wall, asking whether I thought that money grew on trees.

With me telling him that I wouldn’t scratch my name in my dresser; and my younger sister, seeing how this whole thing had blown up, and now being scared herself, wouldn’t confess and hid in her room. And so when my dad was through with me, I climbed out my bedroom window (on the first floor) and walked all the way to this recruiting center on Fordham Road.

I didn’t really think I was old enough to enlist. But that was about as far as I could go, and the Marines took me in, and gave me lunch, trying to get my name out of me which eventually they did; and my parents were called, and my father and mother arrived by car and picked me up. My father was even more angry now, since I had embarrassed him in front of the Marines. Anyway – that’s why this is one of those touchstones of my youth. Places I could visit that would bring back memories – both good and bad.