After graduating from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL – where I was born – my dad was accepted to Saint John’s School of Law, so the family moved to New York City, specifically Manhattan, as the law school has a Manhattan campus for he to attend. We moved into an apartment in Masaryk Towers on the Lower East Side.
I am fairly certain we lived on the seventh floor, but I am certain that a law school classmate lived directly above us (a home-made sign about something was lowered to our window, which my dad subsequently lit on fire). What I remember is a fairly spartan apartment: laminated floors, venetian blinds, minimal furniture, and black steel bookcases primarily holding my dad’s record collection.
One day Mom took me on an errand to another floor, and stepping off the elevator I immediately noticed the walls were different, blackened, damaged. Mom explained how there had been a hallway fire, nobody was hurt but the hallway needed to get repaired. Ok, made sense to a four year-old.
She followed that up with a fire safety lesson: see if the doorknob is hot by putting your hand near it without touching it; put clothes or towels in front of the door to block the smoke; open a window to get fresh air; don’t try to escape by running into the hallway but wait for the firemen to rescue you. However she explained it to a toddler worked, as I (obviously) still remember it today.
Always a teacher before becoming a teacher.
