Ted

Yesterday, October 17, would have been my brother Ted’s (Edward Brian Lasky) seventy-third birthday.  Sadly, he died four years ago in June of 2011.  He was the third of four boys.  I was the fourth and the youngest.  He was exactly two years, nine months, and three weeks older than I.  Of the four of us, we were the closest in age.  When I was growing up, we spent a lot time together, until he went away to college in the fall of 1960.

My family lived at 30 East Oneida Street until I was eleven.  When my eldest bother, Joel, went away to college in 1950, the second eldest, Paul, moved into Joel’s old bedroom to have more privacy.  That left Ted and me all alone in our bedroom.  I shared a bedroom with him again when we moved to 327 West Seneca Street in 1956. 

When he wanted to, Ted would coax me into being his playmate.  I was always agreeable.  Sometimes when I was playing with my next door neighbor and friend, Butchie, he would coax both of us to join him in some play time activity.  He wasn’t as athletic as Paul who encouraged me to join him in playing baseball or football in the park.  Ted and I would do other activities like mimicing stories we saw either on TV or at the cinema.  He also encouraged me to “fake box” with him like they did in the movies, until one day when he missed and I wound up with a bloody nose.

Back in those halcyon days of the 1950s, there was a tradition of Saturday mornings at the Oswego Theater.  It would include a main feature with Tarzan or Roy Rogers or the like, plus a million cartoons.  Ted and I would often go, by ourselves, along with loads of other kids.  Our mom would invariably give Ted the price of admission for us both.  I guess I was not to be trusted with money.  And Ted always played the same trick on me, saying that Mom had only given him enough for himself and nothing for me.  He told me to get out of line if I had no money.  I would cry begging him to say he had money for me, but he would keep up the charade until the very last moment.  I was a sucker for this “joke” every time.

One time, Ted asked the Theater Manager to bring us up on the stage during one of his live shows during intermission.  He usually asked some kids to participate in some skit.  And one time it was us.  I was so scared to go, but more afraid not to.  And in the skit, I had to let some girl sit on my knee.  It was so embarrassing.

On our way home one time from the theater, we passed by the Police Station on West First Street and Ted insisted that we go in.  He was curious about the jail cells.  I was about 9 and he was 12.  Ted was brazen enough to ask the policeman inside to let us experience being in a jail cell.  He took us in the back, put us in a cell, closed the door, and left.  Ted was thrilled.  I cried.

Speaking of the local police, one time Ted and I were returning home from the dentist in a taxi cab.  A drunken driver hit another car on East Bridge Street and sped away from the scene, right in front of us.  A cop on the sidewalk, jumped in the cab, sat right next to me, and commandeered the cabbie to “follow that car.”  I was scared, but the chase didn’t last long.  Again, Ted was thrilled.

I remember the night we moved to our new house on West Seneca Street in 1956 when Ted and I listened to some programs on the radio, like Gunsmoke and The Lone Ranger.  At 9:30 on Saturday night, September 21, 1957, we watched the second episode of the new series, Have Gun, Will Travel, which starred Richard Boone as Paladin and with a guest star named Charles Bronson.  Since then, I have seen this episode numerous times via Youtube, always thinking of Ted.  We shared a love of Westerns.  His favorite movie was High Noon, which is high on my list, as well.

Lying in bed many a night, Ted provided me with a great deal of unsolicited sex education.  I never asked my parents anything and only my father offered limited advice.  However, Ted was an unstoppable audio source of information.  Regarding women, he was especially infatuated with Asian women.  He had a crush on the Vietnamese-French actress, France Nuyen, who is best known for her work in the film version of the musical, South Pacific.  I remember him referring to that wonderful song from that film, You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  Ted collected pictures of her and other Asian actresses and models.  He also had a crush on two non-Asian Sallies from Oswego High, Allen and Kessler.

After graduating, Ted went to Michigan State University in East Lansing.  I remember visiting him there once, staying with him in his dorm room.  It was there at MSU where he met his first wife, Joy, whose best friend, Helaine, had a sister named Bonnie, my first wife.  After I graduated from college, I moved to suburban Detroit, Michigan because Ted was there.  When I married in 1968, Ted was my Best Man.

My first wife and I were living in Queens, New York, when Ted decided to relocate there with his wife and two children in 1972.  He stayed for four years, working at WNBC radio, where he teamed up with among others, the legendary Don Imus.  Ted also introduced me to the famous sportscaster, Marv Albert.  While in New York, he published a trashy novel under the pseudonym, Brian Edwards, using my first name as that of the protaganist.  What an honor! 

After Ted left New York with his family for Florida in 1976 I don’t believe he ever returned.  I was hurt when he did not attend my daughter’s bat mitzvah in 1988, my son’s bar mitzvah in 1998, nor my daughter’s wedding in 2004.  There was always a reason.  And then when I arranged for our mother’s 80th birthday party to be held near his home in Florida in 1987, he chose not to be there as well.

Some time in the 1990s, his girlfriend, Brenda, visited New York City, without Ted.  As a prank, he arranged for Brenda’s twentyish daughter to pretend to be Brenda (whom I had never met nor seen a picture of) when she visited my office.  She was dressed as a young, glamourous doll.  After gullable me accepted this hook, line and sinker, the real Brenda, older and more conservative showed up, a little sheepishly. 

A few years before his death, I visited Ted for the last time at his assisted living facility in Broward County, Florida.  I remember we had lunch in a nearby restaurant and when the waitress arrived, he told her we were brothers, but that he was the “good-looking one.”  This was a line I had heard him use many times.

The day before he died, I told him via his son’s (Jordan’s) cell phone that I loved him.  He said he loved me, too.  Through good times and bad, he was my brother Ted.