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125

In the pew in front of ours at church, sat Judge and Mrs. Hiscock. Mr. Hiscock was a judge in the New York State Supreme Court, a very distinguished-looking man, tall and gray-moustached, who attended church regularly when he was in the city. He was also a wealthy man, having a beautiful home in spacious grounds near the top of James Street hill. I used to look upon the back of Judge Hiscock's head with considerable awe as we sat in church.

In the newspaper clipping about my parents wedding, I note that one of the ushers was Henry Freeman, the man who used to be among the young crowd that frequented the Knapp farm in the early days. It may be that my father met my mother there. The names of the best man, Harry Hamlin, and the other ushers are familiar but I knew none of them or who they were or what they did except Craton Guthrie, who was my father's nephew from Ft. Worth, although not much younger than my father.

One of the local heroes to me, was Stuart Raleigh at Sedgwick Farm Club who was the city tennis champion year after year. He had a younger brother, Sonny Raleigh, who was a great hockey player at the club.

At Carey's Pharmacy, there was a clerk named Mert who was a chain cigarette smoker and I can see Mert yet, sitting on a soda fountain stool with a magazine, slowly turning the pages while he dragged on a cigarette, inhaling great, thick clouds of smoke until you'd think he'd suffocate for lack of air. His fingers were a deep yellow-brown with tobacco stain.

At North High, I knew very well a Merrill Sturtevant who lived in a modest home out on Midland Avenue, actually in Central High territory. We went on to college together and were good friends although not intimates. Merrill had an older brother, Chester, who was a couple years ahead of us at North High and was a debater. Chester didn't look healthy and not long after he graduated from North, he died of tuberculosis. It was one of my early brushes with death and it impressed me very strongly that the world wasn't always kindly and good.

One of the North High teachers that I failed to mention was Miss Sisson, the biology teacher, sharp and fairly young, who introduced us to the early stages of sex education in the study of the amoeba and other things.

Two genuine cousins of mine were Leslie and Ross Paltz, who also were descended through their mother from Joshua Forman. But they lived way up on Bellevue Hill on the other side of town and I wasn't close to them although they were in Phi Delta Theta at the time I was. But I kept in touch with Les and we saw them both in Florida in the winter of 1969 when I had my "disc."