(Photo: Courtesy of Robert Caro)

At 10, my favorite spot was the mimeograph room. P.S. 93 had never had a school newspaper, but one day I suddenly felt that we should. I couldn’t get anyone to help me on it, so I wrote a few stories. Then you had to type them onto a stencil, then you put the form through a roller, and you turn the roller by hand, and one at a time, sheets come out with what you wrote printed on it. I got so engrossed. I remember somebody said, “You have to go to assembly,” and I remember coming into the assembly and somebody laughing—or maybe a lot of people laughing. I had mimeograph ink smudged on my nose and my face.

I loved the subway because I never did my homework when I was supposed to—you’d always have that subway ride. The front of the car had a window—I haven’t done this since I was a boy, but I loved to stand at the front window and watch the stations come up.