by Pa Rock
TV Junkie
Today when the name "Epstein" surfaces in the news it is almost always in a negative story about a self-made billionaire who was a rampaging pedophile and pimp with legions of loyal and extremely rich sycophants who were eager to be in his circle of friends and to join in his sexual depravity with underage girls. That Epstein, Jeffrey, was a scumbag of the first water - and so were many of his rich and powerful associates. Today he is dead, and his friends are cockroaches desperately struggling to stay hidden in darkness.
But for those of us of a certain age, the name "Epstein" evokes an earlier image, one of a high school student of Jewish and Hispanic descent in a popular television series back from the late 1970's. That was about the same time when the yet-to-be notorious Jeffrey Epstein was a physics teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan, a highly exclusive private institution.
The television series that featured the other Epstein was a comedy called "Welcome Back, Kotter," a tale about another teacher in New York City, but at a struggling public high school whose students were much less well connected and wealthy as those Jeffrey Epstein was teaching at Dalton. Kotter's school was a fictional setting called James Buchanan High School in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York. It was a rough and tumble, poor urban setting, with the central character, Gabe Kotter (played by comedian Gabe Kaplan), having just returned to his old high school as a teacher. By teaching the young toughs he found there, the new teacher was, in effect, paying for his own misadventures in high school.
Gabe Kaplan, the star of the television series which ran from 1975 through 1979 (95 episodes), was also a creator of the series and he based the school on the Brooklyn high school which he had actually attended, a move which heightened the realism of the show.
In addition to Kaplan, the show had six other main characters: Marsha Strassman as Kotter's wife, Julie; John Sylvester White as Mr. Woodman, the principal; and four male students who were known collectively in the show as "the Sweathogs" and included Ron Palillo (as Arnold Horshack); Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (as Freddie 'Boom Boom' Washington); Robert Hegyes (as Juan Epstein); and John Travolta (as Vinnie Barbarino). Each of the seven main characters (including Gabe Kaplan) appeared in all 95 episodes of the show except for John Travolta whose star was on the rise by the end of the series - and Travolta only appeared in 82 episodes.
Robert Hegyes who portrayed Juan Epstein, the skinny young kid with the big smile who stood beneath an immense Afro, went on to do a few other bits in television, and had one addtional recurring role of note: he played Detective Manny Esposito on the television crime drama, "Cagney and Lacey" for 41 episodes during the mid-to-late 1980's.
Of the Sweathogs, Robert Hegyes and Ron Palillo (Epstein and Horshack) both passed away in 2012, and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and John Travolta both survive and are each 72-years-old. Gabe Kaplan is 80 now and also still living.
Robert Hegyes was the first Epstein to garner my attention, and he was certainly a much better human being than the one on whom the world is currently focused. Juan Epstein was an authentic and gritty public school kid, both on-screen and in real life, while Jeffrey Epstein, a vain, manicured, and evil predator with roots in the very exclusive world of private schools, was at the other end of the social spectrum.
Juan Epstein made the world a happier place; Jeffrey Epstein defiled it.
2 comments:
You learn something new every day. Today I learned about the use of term “of the first water”. In today’s issue of Pa Rock’s Ramble, I read this about Jeffry Epstein …” a scumbag of the first water”. I had never heard that term before, so I supposed that Pa Rock’s clumsy fingers had made a mistake. I emailed him and pointed out the supposed error. He replied to add to my vocabulary that it is a proper term. ‘"First water" is also correct, a contemporary usage that is becoming more common.‘ Who knew? Did you know?
It was used by gemologists a couple of hundred years ago to describe diamonds of the highest quality. While aficionados of compressed, heated carbon don’t use that term so much nowadays, it is still in use today in different ways. Like the carbon lovers’ use of the term, it means something of the highest quality. So today, I learned that scumbags can be of the highest quality. I’m still a little confused with the idea that high quality scumbags can exist.
My less than first water day is probably due to having my sleep interrupted by the time change.
This from Google's AI: "of the first water" describes the highest grade, often used in phrases like "a diamond of the first water" or "a scoundrel of the first water" to mean respectively, the finest gem or the worst offender.
Although the phrase was used correctly, it probably wasn't the best way to say what I meant. Thanks for trying to keep me honest, or at least intelligible, Ranger Bob!
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