From all the years I’d spent reading every tabloid, newspaper, magazine, or periodical I could get my hands on for the mail-order business, I had begun to dream of launching my own magazine. At Harvard I had helped to found an alternative student newspaper, and I had even been involved in a similar project back in high school at Bronx Science. My dream of being in business—any business—had become more specific. I wanted to be a publisher. Now, with the cash from the brochure business, I could pursue my dreams. I bought a couple of nearly bankrupt trade journals, beginning with the Auto and Plate Glass Journal. I had visions of grandeur, but nobody wanted exposés on glass, or editorial opinions about the industry. They wanted pictures, which Father Eric and his cheap 35-millimeter camera dutifully provided, of windshield installation procedures and diagrams. I traveled all over the East and Midwest, driving from New York to Wisconsin and back a half dozen times, in pursuit of advertisers. Sure it was profitable, but the glamour of being a real publisher eluded me. Then I bought a magazine for New York taxi drivers. Really it was just a glorified airline brochure that told drivers when flights from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan were arriving in the middle of the night so they could pick up unsuspecting foreigners and give them an expensive “tour” of the city on the way from the airport to their hotels. I thought I’d spruce it up, but just selling advertising in this industry really took away my illusions. I could barely get taxi mechanics out from under the hood long enough to persuade them to advertise with me.

I had hoped to put together a string of little magazines and then trade up to something bigger, but prices for publications were going through the roof and I was always being outbid by larger publishers. My few publications were taking all my time and, relative to the brochure business, generating little profit. I was aware that the main asset I had if I wanted to get ahead was my own time. Putting out marginally profitable magazines for auto glass installers and taxi drivers didn’t seem the best use of my time, if it couldn’t serve as a base to expand to something more exciting and lucrative. Sadly I accepted the reality that publishing a few trade journals was not going to prepare me to buy the New York Times or the Washington Post down the line, as I might have dreamed. So I put my trade journals up for sale. Sure enough, a large publisher bought me out for far more than I could ever have made running the business.

At just about this time my wife (See? Perseverance pays. Debbie eventually agreed to marry me) gave me the great news that she was pregnant. I was so excited. It seemed all I wanted my whole life was to push my newborn son (Yeah, I was a sexist. I didn’t know yet how great it was to have daughters) in a carriage. I was on cloud nine for a whole day. Then, like most expectant fathers, I went into a panic. My particular panic centered on where our new baby would live. We were living in a one-bedroom apartment. Where would my son put his baseball cards and hang his glove? Where would I put his bookcase? The fact that newborn infants neither read, play second base, nor trade baseball cards did not even occur to me. I was loony. I had to find a new apartment immediately. Couldn’t take any chances on Junior going practically homeless.