Let me take you back to the days of “yesteryear.” No, I am not a retired lone ranger on disability with an Indian sidekick but a twelve-year-old boy born in Baltimore on Lakewood Avenue. I am wearing a yarmulka with a belt in back (Ivy League style) or sometimes a blue felt “Yid lid” marked with the luchos and “TA,” my school.

Growing up, we also knew about other letters, such as “AA,” which meant Alcoholics Anonymous, and “AAA,” which stood for the American Automobile Association. Fast forward about 40 years, and today, these letters indicate battery size. What would we do without batteries, the crucial “energizers” that help run our society? Back in my youth, we were very resourceful and didn’t require or value batteries. In fact, we got along very nicely without them. Our energy came from within, and our games were child-created and directed – no carpools, no fatherly coaching – and just fun.

They say the end is in the beginning and the beginning is in the end. Well, then, let’s continue the story of my education at the Talmudical Academy during its golden age. I ended the last article saying, “Yes, we were fathered.” Now I will go back even further in time to how it all started.

My parents were born in the early 1900s. Little, if any, organized chinuch was available. TA was just a thought in 1911, the year of my father’s birth. Bais Yaakov was 50 years in the future. My father learned with my Zaidy until Zaidy finished two cups of tea, after which Zaidy promptly fell asleep. My mother learned everything about Yiddishkeit from her mother. I remember my mother lighting candles, kashering meat, and preparing for the Seder. She did chesed: visiting the sick, delivering Meals on Wheels, and serving in the TA cafeteria on her day off from my parents’ grocery store on Fayette Street, downtown in West Baltimore. She called her parents every day, even emptying their basement when it flooded; that was after spending a long day in the store.