Intermediate School 70: in a sullen, child-kicked auditorium. We gather— gather? this crowd is so small it couldn’t get arrested for unlawful assembly— we huddle to discuss New York City education with the mayoral candidates. ABZUG, BEAME, COSTIKYAN, CUOMO, sutton, koch, Goodman: snide signs on each empty chair are conspicuous by their presence. There should be signs in the orchestra pit, too: absent citizen #1 through absent citizen #800 or so. A self-singing PTA chair man wanes indignant: “I think it’s fair to say that those who didn’t appear or didn’t send a representative either don’t consider education an important matter or else they were afraid to face the questions of parents in an open forum such as this one.”
Me, I don’t wonder why beame and cuomo noshowed. Half the turn-out is Socialist Workers Party plants. Plus one man whose decline into absolute nakedness depends entirely on three strands of worn clothesline; and yet another— his woodwork so impregnated with alcohol that he is coherent only to those who have had at least six straight bourbon slugs. He will say, “I stand here anang u roigle someblast thum wull and farnum. I stand here sumble wo nung gar, gar his soshos.” That second, purely rhetorical, gar did belabor it a bit.
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