I didn’t realize it was paradise until two weeks ago. That was when my neighbors on a super high-end street in the flats of Beverly Hills (houses starting at eight figures) began to put up a wall between their house and my wife’s and my house. Their lot, about half an acre, had been empty for ten years. I knew nothing about what was going on until a forest of trucks and immense construction machinery arrived in front of their lot.

Then came an army of construction workers, 100 percent Hispanic. They were polite and followed the laws of the city. That means they didn’t start work until eight a.m.

But when they started, they STARTED. Loud machines. Immense thuds like the collision of a few torpedoes into an oil tanker off New Orleans in 1942.

I HATE loud noises except for the ones I choose myself. But I bore with it.

The super shock came just a few days ago.

The workers next door about six months had knocked down most of a roughly four-feet-high cinder-block wall between the yard next door and our yard. I did not say one word of complaint. I knew the City of Beverly Hills would take care of it.

But now I see that the workers and their bosses had all but completed an eight-foot reinforced cement block wall that pretty much sealed off our house from theirs. (By great good luck, the other side is on the corner and we have it highly planted but it’s low and we can see quite well into the world outside.)

However, what I thought immediately was that my house and this street, this street of people who have had an immense “liquidity event” as investment people might call it, was a world different from Harvey Road. That was the street I grew up on off Dale Drive in Silver Spring from about 1953 until 1962.

Ours was a house of beautiful “fifties modern” but much bigger. Most had been built by a builder named Nathan Platt. He is buried in a Jewish cemetery in Falls Church, Virginia, a few feet from my parents.

A few had been built individually, including the house of the fabulous Sculls, descendants of Mayflower ancestors and Lees, mighty figures on both sides in the War Between the States. (Not a “Civil War” because the South did not want to take over the North as in the usual Civil War. The Southern States only wanted to be left alone to pursue human slavery.)

Our house had been designed by a famous architect of that era, whose last name, I believe was “Palms” but my memory for names of that era is poor. It was a lovely house but a tenant farmer’s shack compared with what my wife and I have now — and won’t have much longer for a variety of reasons, largely due to its having stairs and my having painful knees thanks to a failed surgery on them.)

Here’s the main point: there were NO fences and walls behind anyone’s back or front yard. You could walk the entire length of the street behind anyone’s house and not encounter one obstruction. NOT ONE.

My next-door neighbors to the south were the Bernsteins. Their son became an EXTREMELY famous person due to his work on the Watergate “Scandal.” I put it in quotes because it’s been about fifty years and I still don’t know what Richard Nixon did wrong except to expect even slightly truthful treatment by the media and loyalty from his fellow Republicans.

However, Carl Bernstein and I were close friends. His parents, said to be Communists, were wonderful neighbors. His sister, Mary, was an early crush. She encouraged me to smoke, but otherwise was a doll and a great neighbor.

So were the Sculls, as close to aristocrats as Americans can be. David Lee Scull, roughly 18 months older than I, was also a super close friend. He went on to Princeton, founded by ancestors’ friends, to serve in Vietnam, to a brief career in Annapolis, and then to a huge success (along with his wife, Nancy) helping homeless and animals in Montgomery County. He has a daughter who is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever met. I did her the great favor of talking her out of trying to have a career in Hollywood. She was easily beautiful enough, but far too kind. My wife is the only woman I know who is staggeringly beautiful and also had a big career in the studios and also is a kind, decent human being. But she was a successful lawyer before she got off the plane in LA and she was wired like a madwoman thanks to me and my pals.

She’s still a glorious human being, by far the best human being I have ever known.

Back to Harvey Road. By some kind of demographic miracle, there were many kids my age on Harvey Road and also many my sister’s age. My sister, Rachel, was three and a half years older than I was, extremely pretty, and boys flocked around her like bees to honey. In the summer, or in the Spring or Fall, the kids in the neighborhood would hang out in front of a lovely home about four houses from our bend in the very short dead-end street. It was owned by the Greenblatts, whose paterfamilias was a liquor dealer.

The older boys, some of whose names I can recall, Ronnie Schafer, Melvin Greenblatt, Neil Stein (no relation), and none others. They would laugh at jokes we would now consider forbidden. Then Melvin and Ronnie would throw a football what seemed like impossibly long distances down the street. The other would catch it with perfect balletic skill and throw it back. My eyes were like saucers at Melvin and Ronnie’s prowess.

The Greenblatts also had an amazingly beautiful daughter named Roberta, with a breathtaking figure. We younger boys would flirt with her and she would giggle cheerily. Often there would be a barbecue and everyone could share in Kosher hot dogs and hamburgers. (No cheeseburgers. No meat with milk.)

The street had about 30 houses. About half housed Jewish families. The others were Christians. One such family were the Dieudonne’s. They had several daughters. I barely knew them but my recollection is that they were sweetly beautiful. There was also a famous family. The family of Alan Bible, a US Senator from Nevada. His elder son, Alan Jr., had a beautiful Chevrolet Impala in about 1958. We worshiped that car. In my neighborhood now, every 16 year old is issued a Ferrari or similar. I’m not kidding. Those neighbors probably have never heard of the Chevrolet Impala.

His younger son, Bill, was my classmate at what was probably the worst junior high school in history, Montgomery Hills, a seething hotbed of anti-Semitism and anti-black racism. He was a good friend to me and I often wonder what happened to him. I’m guessing he became someone very powerful in Nevada. He was a fine fellow.

After school when we were in Junior High, we would often play basketball on a large dirt lot behind the homes of three of the neighbors: The Sitnicks, whose father was a lawyer largely representing accused black criminals, the Akmans, whose family owned grocery stores, and who had a son, Jerry, who was a good student and became a successful lawyer, and the Daumits, an architect, whose son, Eugene, became a scientist. Jews: The Sitnicks’ son became a lawyer. I learned many of the basic principles of evidence from father and son. Sadly, Stanley Sitnick died very young. The Akmans’ son, as noted, also became a lawyer. He was an aggressive young man and I would have been happy to employ him. Gene was probably the kindest kid of them all. When others mocked me for my poor performance at softball, Gene was encouraging.

I was unusually tall for my age and was a decent basketball player. Maybe the best one in the neighborhood. Maybe not.

Our street was pretty much free from the acidic anti-Semitism that large infected the area. Just to the east of Harvey Road was a lovely neighborhood called Woodside Park. It was mostly restricted against Jews.

There was one family who did not belong on Harvey Road: the Kennedys. Not the famous Kennedys. But they had hoodlum friends who were hard to deal with. One was parked near my house when I drove by one day on my bike. He rolled down his window and muttered, “Out of my way, kike.”

I had never heard the word before. My parents did not want to tell me what it meant. David Scull said it was a terrible word and gently told me what it meant. Once I knew, I told my father. He went over to the senior Kennedy and complained. The Kennedys were never a problem again. It was that kind of neighborhood.

I spent a lot of time with David Lee Scull. Both of us had a lot of war toys, mostly miniature lead soldiers. We would spend hours playing choose ups of fighting men. In fact, we would spend so much time choosing up that it would be dinner by the time we had finished choosing up and we would have to stop for the day.

Time has passed. My life has taken many turns. College came around. Then law school. Then working for Mr. Nixon, the best friend the Jewish people have ever had. Then Hollywood.

I had many girlfriends. By 1966, I had a staggeringly beautiful girlfriend. Her father was a Colonel in the US Army. He had a Silver Star from World War II. He led his men to beat a dug-in Nazi unit. The surrendering Nazi “oberst” spat in my father-in-law’s face as he “surrendered.”

Col. (then Lt.) Denman’s CO handed him the Nazi’s Luger and told him to shoot the “man.” Lt. Dale Denman, Jr. USMA 1944, handed the Luger back to his CO, shook his head, and said, “I’m a Christian.” He was the handsomest man I ever met. His daughter, Alexandra, is even more beautiful and even more of a Christian.

Col. Denman had just returned from extremely violent fighting in Vietnam when I met him in July, 1966. He had been awarded the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Medal. He urged his daughter and me to demonstrate in any way we could against US involvement in Vietnam. “It’s a meat grinder,” he said. “It’s hopeless. Let’s just get out of there.”

Alexandra Denman and I have been married since 1968 with a brief time out. She is the most beautiful girl on this earth, at 76. We lost our only child, Tommy, due to wild medical malpractice, alcoholism, and an obsession with guns. That was less than a year ago: July, 2023. Alex and I are in acute pain every waking moment and many sleeping ones. But we lie in bed for hours each evening and we can get by until we see him again.

Maybe there will be no walls or fences then, too. Something there is that does not love a wall. I have to go swimming now. It’s a fabulous pool but I have to walk by that horrible wall to get to it.

I’ll write more soon.