Example story: Nona Bernard's interesting Rockmore experienceHere's my story about Noel. Mind you, I was 25 yrs. old, weighed 102 lbs and “feisty”, according to my ex-husband and others.
Yeah, Noelsy (as my ex-husband, Larry Einhorn liked to call him) was often a lunatic. My incident with Noel occurred early in our friendship with him (we also lived in the "skyscraper" at the same time) approx. 1971.
Noel and I were talking some at Preservation Hall before joining Larry next door where Larry and I had a nightime store in addition to our fulltime Royal St. store,"Nona's Ark" Anyhow, Noel and I were discussing the artist Bruce Brice's work and primitive artists in general (those w/o formal training) vs. trained artists. I had studied drama and writing at Carnegie Mellon and was pretty well versed about painting from my art history courses. My memory is fuzzy but I made some points and maybe Noel didn't like them and he said something derogatory about Bob Dylan (don't ask) and I countered --and then he got personal and said something nasty about me as a woman in his mysoginist way and I saw red and punched him hard in the shoulder and glanced his jaw and he slumped down against the wall. I remember Larry laughing but could also hear concern in his voice as he exclaimed, "Geezus he's got a glass jaw". I stood frightened by what I'd done.
Noel was okay just dazed and he just got up without a word, hung his head low and walked out of our store as though he were some kid who had just been punished. Larry said, "well, guess that's the end of that relationship". But a few days later Noel joined us at breakfast at Cafe Creole with Larry Borenstein and behaved as though nothing ever happened. From that point on however, I kept my distance from him (and he from me, I’m sure). Still we were friendly with him especially when he was with his girlfriend, Riva, as we liked her a lot.
There are other stories but that was the height of mine. When I recounted this to someone who knew Noel well they said, "yeah,well, Noel could be really nasty sometimes!" Understatement. I must repeat that I’m not proud of punching him and I did love his art work, his piano playing and especially his playing the violin on the rooftop of the skyscraper. He was a truly gifted man.
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