No Risk? No Reward

I was fourteen, and the taunting words of my friend lingered in my ears, “No risk, no reward.” He had meant it as a joke. But Bart would not get on stage himself, even though he was a very advanced classical guitar player. I had only been playing for a bit over a year. I had a whole twelve chords and two strums to play. I knew seven or eight songs.

This Land is Your land? Really?

The pool club where I worked was going to have an amateurs’ night. The notice had gone up for members and employees interested in performing. My name had been suggested because everyone had heard me playing on the pool deck after my hours working in the summer camp for the younger kids. There I’d be chording on the guitar and belting out “This Land is Your Land“. Sid Glick, who sometimes offered me a lesson, said I was ready. But Sid and Bart were opinionated; they actually thought I had talent. I thought I was just fooling around.

I volunteered and was placed somewhere in the middle of the program, an inconspicuous spot, just a trifle. No one expected much except for me to get up and belt out Tom Dooley or This Land is Your Land.

I planned to surprise them. The surprise was built on a festering pot of anger. Last fall, my father had moved the family from Washington Heights, where we’d lived forever, to the border of the much tonier Riverdale. The change was because he had moved up in the company he was working for. He was no longer the “super” of our building, but was a maintenance supervisor over many of the company’s residential and commercial properties. We had, at last, some money. So we moved to Riverdale.

For those in the know, our address was ” barely” or “not at all” Riverdale. At school, I was treated by the rich kids as beneath their notice, or contemptuously by their parents. I, for my part. considered them to be opinionated, prejudiced, snotty, and bigoted. Not only was I merely working class, from a lower-income neighborhood, and roughly uncultured, but I also had aspirations above my station.

So there I sat in the afternoons on the pool deck, checking out the young ladies, practicing strums and picks from the “Folksinger’s Guitar Guide”. And plotting my revenge.

No risk? No Reward

I finally needed someone to listen to my magnum opus before I played it at amateur night. I picked Sid and Bart. Bart merely smiled and said, “Well, no risk? No reward!” and sid smirked and added, “…if you don’t mind the cost you might pay for expressing your opinions!”

So that Saturday, sometime between Cath Unger’s pair of woeful ballads, and Unckie Tobias’ Meladramatic Melodies, Lou Carreras made his performing debut with his original composition – Riverdale.

All I can remember now is the first line, but hey! that’s all you need to let you know exactly what follows: Riverdale, Riverdale, Better off in a dirty jail, far, far far away…

It was a packed house, and they were riveted to their seats. I guess because they couldn’t believe what they were listening to. I was detailing exactly how I flet about them and their community.

The experience was transforming for me. Bart decided that I was mature enough to head down to the Village that fall, and perform with a kazoo and tambourine with the Hobwalled Apple Knockers ( a whacked-out folkie group). It was the start of my internship at Greenwich Village, which led To my becoming a coffeehouse performer and many other things.

Postscript: This is pretty much actually how it all went down. No gussying up of the truth. Being that this all happened in nearly prehistoric times, the neighborhoods have changed. But this is my story, and I’m sticking to it!