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What kind of a religious background did you have? Was the home religious?

Absolutely none. Absolutely none. Both my mother and father were Jewish, but I never was inside a Temple. A lot of the kids in the neighborhood announced they were going to be Bar Mitzvahed. You know, when he's 13, a Jewish boy becomes a man. They all got bicycles for being Bar Mitzvahed, so I demanded to be Bar Mitzvahed, to the absolute amazement of my mother and father, who said, “Well, if you want to, we're not going to stop you, but where did this idea come from?” I didn't tell them I wanted a bicycle. So by heart I learned the Bar Mitzvah. Never knew what it meant, never knew what I was saying, never went to a Temple again from that day on until when people would die and I would go to funerals. Then what soured me on religion permanently was that my mother wouldn't let me ride the bicycle in New York, because it was too dangerous. So I thought the whole thing was a fraud.

How about politically? Did they have a certain view at all? Were they conservative or liberal or...?

Their lives were absolutely middle class. Everything they did was regular, was in conformity with the day. They never had a radical idea. Anybody in those days who had any money at all or any possessions was Republican. The Democrats were the socialists. The thought that anybody in our family