His name was Irv, he was Russian and he lived near us with his wife and four kids when I was growing up. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen and looked like a movie star. Tall and handsome with a full head of wavy black hair, he was slim, yet muscular with an athletic build. Everyone admired him. But it was hard to get to know him since he rarely spoke. And he wasn’t around much because he put in long hours at some job in New York City. On weekends, he worked on his house building, renovating, fixing and improving its many parts. I once saw him climb two stories to re-shingle its dark brown roof. Another time, I watched as he laid down new cement for a perfectly leveled sidewalk at his front gate. It seemed like there was nothing he couldn’t do, build or fix. He put a new engine in his old black Ford, and it ran for another five years. He liked to sketch people’s faces and carved realistic-looking animals out of balsa wood. Everyone looked up to him. Irv was truly the Superman of our neighborhood. People would knock on his door to ask if he could fix their appliance that had stopped working and he always managed to fix whatever needed fixing. He had a huge workshop in his basement with machines, tools and spare parts of every possible kind.
I so admired Irv when I was young and felt drawn to him whenever I saw him, which wasn’t very often. He became my hero. I wanted to grow up to be just like him: strong, skilled and able to do anything out in the world. But he was always busy with projects and had no time for kids. I felt totally invisible in his presence. I once had a dream that he said hello, gave me a hug and showed me some kindness. I imagined him teaching me how to build, fix and do all the wonderful things that he could do. But of course, none of that was possible, so I had to look elsewhere for a hero and for role models. I found what I wanted on TV, and loved to watch episodes of Superman, Flash Gordon and the Lone Ranger. They became my heroes. Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, just like Irv when he climbed to the top of his roof. Flash Gordon was always off somewhere on distant planets, much like Irv who forever disappeared into his work. And the Lone Ranger had his sidekick Tonto who hardly said anything, a perfect stand-in for Irv. Their escapades thrilled me and I spent a lot of time watching those episodes on TV. But I never gave up hope that somehow, in some way I could connect with Irv.
Legend has it that during the great New York City blackout of 1965, when public transportation stopped running and the entire city went dark, Irv was down in his basement, working hard to get the lights turned back on. Suddenly, he yelled up to his wife with satisfaction in his voice: “I found the problem!” Shortly after that, the lights came back across New York and people in our neighborhood actually thought that he had somehow managed to fix the great New York City blackout. And it’s possible that he really did fix it because Irv was a superman, a hero. But heroes are busy all the time and they’re never around much. There’s just no way to connect with them. They’re strangers. How do I know that? Irv was my father.