He was about to hop on the Broad Street Line and ride the subway to Central High School, which he'd not seen in 50 years.

"I left Central," he said, "and never went back."

In town for the Class of 1959's reunion, the California lawyer was staying at the Sofitel and could well afford a cab. But the subway was a reminder. He'd always felt different from his classmates at Central, the city's venerable hothouse of achievement.

Neither of his parents had gone to college. His father drove a Yellow Cab, night shift. His mother stayed home in Mount Airy with the three boys.

He'd always been driven, but driven to help put food on the table. When he was 14, his mother took him to City Hall to get his work papers - "do they still have those?" he wondered. Through school he jerked sodas and made deliveries for Babbin's Pharmacy on Cheltenham Avenue.

When he was 16, he got a job at a Stenton Avenue bowling alley, tending the pin-setting machines. "It was a little loud for studying," he said.

Middle piddle

"When you're young and dumb like I was," he said, "you don't realize how important it is to make the best use of your time."

After graduation he went to Temple, which he found easier than high school. He was still hustling on the side, jobs like selling Chevys in a coat and tie on Frankford Avenue. He ran up serious debts.

With one semester to go before graduation, he dropped out, worked some more, hung out with his friends. By then, he owed $10,000, which in today's money would be close to $70,000.

"I decided I had to do something about it." He spent a year waiting tables at the Concord Resort Hotel in the Borscht Belt, a brutal job with free room and board.

Back home, he finally put that drive to work at school. And at the end of his final semester at Temple, eight years after getting out of Central, a letter arrived from the dean. It was the first time he had ever made honors. His mother wept.

Up and up

"I have a wonderful family, a beautiful home," said the bald, white-bearded bull of a man. "I don't owe money to anyone."

The credit, he said, goes to Central. That's something he didn't see until a neighborhood reunion 17 years ago when he was 50.

"If it weren't for Central, I would have just knocked around. It was the most important influence on my life, so much focus and direction. There was no option - you had to go on to higher education."

The school's lessons unfolded within him in time-release. "It gave me the self-confidence and the self-esteem to know anything I wanted to tackle, if I applied myself, I would be successful."

We were almost at City Hall and the entrance to the subway when he turned one more time.

"Let me tell you something," he said. "Fern Rock, Olney, Logan, Wyoming, Hunting Park, Erie, Allegheny, North Philadelphia . . ." and all the way down to Snyder, the southernmost stop the last time he took the subway. He smiled at what was still in his head.

And then Irv Einhorn, late bloomer, pushed through the turnstiles and went off to see the boys.