Confessions of a Prehistoric Adman

"Confessions of a Prehistoric Adman" is Harvey Gabor's account of growing up Jewish in the Bronx to his experiences as a young man in Manhattan. He talks about the challenges of living in a neighborhood that had no cul-de-sacs, no private houses dotting grassy hillsides, no lawns. Just sidewalks and streets onto which the inhabitants of the apartment houses poured every day. With a mixture of humor and pathos some stories show the tensions that existed between ethnic groups and Harvey's private fears of confrontations and the ever-present possibility of a bloody nose. He relates what happens when the first black boy in the neighborhood wants to join the stickball game. Also, he tells why he never saw the end of the Saturday morning show at the Loews Paradise theater. How about the Irish intellectual who wasn't? Other stories poke fun at the foibles peculiar to Jewish families. His description of his experience as a teen-aged waiter in the Catskills and brush with the local sheriff is a riot. The account of his army unit trying to find their way out of Queens via the elusive Triborough Bridge will make you relieved that Khrushchev blinked during the Cuban missile crisis. Harvey then goes on to describe what it was like as a young, single man to move to Manhattan and the sometimes bizarre people and situations he encounters. He didn't need a gym; he walked the city for hours from end to end observing and sometimes participating in the fascinating happenings on the subway and streets. "Who needs green grass when you can have the deliciously sleazy Times Square in the days before Mayor Giuliani turned it into Disneyland?" he asks. Harvey and his friends, naïve and full of raging hormones, couldn't wait to hit the pavement which sometimes landed them in uncomfortable and even dangerous situations. Gabor later became an acclaimed creative director in advertising circles and his book includes examples and wry commentary on the ad world including his beef with "Mad Men." The stories are in turn, funny, sad and all true.

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