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summertime was to go to Coney Island, and my mother would be the schlepper. Frankie Herbst, Henry, and I would go, and like a day before, my mother would spend preparing the food, and my mother would schlep two big bags along the boardwalk to the George Washington Junior Baths, which was around 21st Street, and we would come. My mother wouldn't put on a bathing suit. She would sit in the hot sun on the beach while we were running around in the baths, and always at the last minute when we were supposed to be out, we weren't. My mother was always sending a cop in to look for us like we were lost. Which reminds me of a story about my brothers. My brothers, when they were very young, they're twins -- what's the day when you throw your sins away?

Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur, my parents went the whole family on the Williamsburg Bridge, and suddenly they looked around and the twins were gone. There were a thing -- by gosh, they fell in the river, and verybody was looking at the thing. They called the cops, and they were talking about dredging the river. Finally they found them in the station house someplace eating ice cream. I remember that as being a rather interesting experience.

How old were you then?

I couldn't have been more than three or four years old.

What were you doing going on the Williamsburg Bridge on Yom Kippur?

Throw your things -- what's the thing where you throw things in the water?

I was never that religious.

There was something where you empty your pockets and throw them in the water and stuff.

So that all the Jews from Williamsburg went up on the Williamsburg Bridge and threw off their sins?

They didn't have a lot of money in there.

But is that what really happened?

Yes. I remember that happened then. I don't think I did it traditionally. We were there for a year. My parents didn't like it.