Everything But Money: A Life of Riches

by Sam Levenson

I was trapped in a no-man’s-land. Mama had said “If I have to go to school for you once more, don’t come home from school” on the very same day that the teacher had said “Don’t come back without your mother.”

4. Horse Racing: We didn’t ride the horses, but they ran, anyhow, without benefit of jockey. One kid would sneak up behind a horse and pull a hair out of his tail. The startled beast would leap in the air and start running down the street, wagon and all, while we placed our bets. 5. Straw Hat Revue: On September 15, the end of the straw-hat season, we would run a string across the sidewalk and knock off the straw “Kellys” of unsuspecting

passers-by. One kid would grab the hat and punch his fist through the crown. The kid with the greatest number of victims was the winner, or the loser, depending upon whether he got caught or not.

There was one aunt who was so old she had forgotten who she was, and there was no living relative who could remember. Even her husband wasn’t quite sure who she was.

Dementia? Yikes.

Uncle Elias was born to be an engineer. For him, fixing a dripping faucet was a creative experience. He never bought a part.

Most things were “none of my business”—even when they were talking about having my tonsils out. I got the idea finally that my mind was to be used to mind: to mind Papa; mind your teacher, mind your manners, mind your shoes. My shoes were my brother’s, my hat was my father’s, my bed was anybody’s, so I didn’t really feel entitled to a mind of my own.

Who would travel three thousand miles to see a little girl with a twisted spine carrying her sickly little sister on her back? Let no child be called “educated” until he has seen and discussed the ugly pictures and made some moral commitment to the advancement of other human beings besides himself, a commitment not to be his brother’s keeper, but his brother’s brother.

We need to take care of disadvantaged people.

music is as much a discipline as mathematics. It involves as much logic, abstract thinking, concentration, imagination and academic know-how, and in addition it calls for physical coordination, emotional projection, self-expression and creativity.

We expose our young people to so many mock rituals that the genuine experience ultimately becomes meaningless: cap-and-gown graduation exercises in nursery school, for example. As a result, fewer and fewer college graduates want to attend their own commencement exercises.

After more than one hundred years of compulsory free education, are the schools ready to acknowledge that fewer than half the people in this country ever read a book once they have left school? That fewer than one out of five ever

buy a book?

An American Tragedy, Babbitt, The Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels, Leaves of Grass, The Old Wives’ Tale, Utopia, Vanity Fair, Origin of Species, The Wealth of Nations, The Rubaiyat, and Tom Jones?

An American tragedy. Theodore Dreiser Babbit. Sinclair Lewis Canterbury Tales Geoffery Chaucer Gulliver's Travels. Jonathan Swift Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman The Old Wive's Tale. Arnold Bennett Utopia Thomas More Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray Origin of Species Charles Darwin The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith The Rubaiyat Omar Khayyam Tom Jones Henry Fielding

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