The New York Times arrived on the front step every morning, the Bethlehem Globe Times by four in the afternoon. Life magazine came in the mail every week with images of Russia and Arabia and Kentucky and Texas, and then Alabama and Mississippi and Vietnam. The New Yorker had cartoons by Chas Addams and Peter Arno and some which I didn’t understand, the Talk of the Town, stories by Cheever and Updike, profiles of important people, including my Uncle Max, and long articles on weighty issues like DDT and the atomic bomb. The National Geographic came monthly with its yellow cover and sometimes with naked breasts revealed within its pages and a new wall map tucked inside.
We didn’t watch TV unless my father was away on business, but when he was off in Buffalo or Chicago or North Dakota defending the legal interests of Bethlehem Steel, we brought our dinners to the second floor and watched Bonanza, Perry Como, The Wonderful World of Disney, Laugh In, the Smothers Brothers Show.
It was an environment that fostered the acquisition of knowledge one needs to succeed on Jeopardy, with its wide categories of literature, art, music, science, and an environment that cultivated veneration of the people who created these objects. My parents had moved out to the “country” of Bethlehem from Manhattan in 1955, when my father left the New York law offices of Cravath, Swain and Moore for a position with Bethlehem Steel, but were not far removed from their New York acquaintances. When my father joined my Grandfather as a member of the Century Club, he brought back stories of dinners in New York with Ved Mehta and concerts by Benny Goodman.
We didn’t watch TV unless my father was away on business, but when he was off in Buffalo or Chicago or North Dakota defending the legal interests of Bethlehem Steel, we brought our dinners to the second floor and watched Bonanza, Perry Como, The Wonderful World of Disney, Laugh In, the Smothers Brothers Show.
It was an environment that fostered the acquisition of knowledge one needs to succeed on Jeopardy, with its wide categories of literature, art, music, science, and an environment that cultivated veneration of the people who created these objects. My parents had moved out to the “country” of Bethlehem from Manhattan in 1955, when my father left the New York law offices of Cravath, Swain and Moore for a position with Bethlehem Steel, but were not far removed from their New York acquaintances. When my father joined my Grandfather as a member of the Century Club, he brought back stories of dinners in New York with Ved Mehta and concerts by Benny Goodman.
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