Blowing Up The Berlin Wall

Blowing up the Berlin Wall

I do not want this to be misunderstood. It is important to understand that we are a great nation and have stood up to and fought against some very bad enemies. Many great Americans have perished defending our country from real evil -  crazy people.  This is no joke so don't view it the wrong way. When you're in the army, you're in the army. You do what you're told - what's expected of you - and everybody else in the army is your brother in arms (sisters in arms as well.)

Sure, you have to think for yourself. Of course you do. We are a free country, still, and aim toward freedom for the individual and self-determinism. I kid you not - the guys in the service in this country are self-determined to as large a degree as possible if you're actually on active duty. That's the way we are - simple as that.

We learn that growing up - "He'll kill you if you say that", and he will, and he does!

Dodge city all over the place. You get used to it.

We don't even need wars - we kill each other every day! We're Americans. I love this country of course and I am very patriotic! I make no secret of that.

I had spent about six years abroad and I had forgotten how great it was here. After I got back, I spent about ten hours a day eating ice cream and drinking coffee, chewing gum and smiling. I had been in Israel four years and then in England and Scotland for two years. It was great to be back home, but I was disappointed to find out how badly we were doing in Vietnam. I decided that Vietnam was a no-win situation. No way to win there at all. I wanted us to have a win out there, so I decided to enlist in the army, get a couple of the guys together, go over to Germany and blow up the Berlin Wall. I'm not kidding. I was gung ho! You have to be there.

Well, the army likes that kind of stuff you know. Don't get me wrong and I asked you not to get me wrong - the army is all about winning wars and battles and going through it - you know - rite of passage - beat the heck out of the enemy and have a beer and tell stories to your grandchildren. That's what it is guys - it's simple. Today, they lock you up for thinking bad thoughts about others. The real problem here is that it's wrong to beat the heck out of good people - very wrong in fact - and that's what just about tore our country apart over Vietnam. You have to understand that what you're trying to do is give the young people a chance to prove their loyalty to our country despite real risks by defending our values, and includes helping others in trouble. We seem to be losing at that today. You have to be able to take sides, resolve any doubts about who your friends are. Yet young people are punished today for asserting most forms of patriotism. Older people are punished for displaying their patriotism as well. See - we are failing here at exactly what we were all trying to succeed at - join the ranks of American Heroes. That's not easy my friends, but I had a plan.

Here I was on my way to the field artillery, young, inspired - a fire in my eyes and my sights on Berlin and its infamous wall. This is true. You laugh, but you would have come along - I'm sure. Certainly, it you've read this far down!

I would get a chance to preview this situation at company headquarters in Basic Training. There were a few desks in the office and, of course, "Top" himself. "Top" is what the top sergeant is called in the army. He's a well known character - burly, knuckles dragging on the floor, all arms and chest. Top is in charge. He's in charge of the army. He does everything. He's been in the service forever. Everywhere. His bed is a foxhole. He survives on C - rations. He likes C -  rations. Don't make any mistakes - Top would give his life for you or any other soldier if needed - he would not hesitate either. He knew that, you knew that - and so you followed his orders.

On the inside of a door hung a poster that read: "This Is Your Enemy". Underneath was a picture of a Russian soldier with an AK - 47 automatic rifle. I looked at this picture and I saw this Russian farmer that was probably drafted into the army. This was my enemy waiting for me in Berlin. I looked at Top and I looked back at the poster. Now who was really my friend. Top looked at me. I'm sure he would have charged right into hell, right along side of me if it came to that. "You get to know things about people as you get closer to killing them." Ideas started coming at me. The army knows about killing - it knows about people and survival. I started having doubts about my goal...Top looked at me. "Let's go". We had to go over my paperwork for AIT (advanced training)...

Another Way to Negotiate

Another way to Negotiate

After reviewing a recent video about how to properly negotiate for a house in Israel, I recalled my own negotiations - many years ago when things were a bit different.

I had attended a learning center in the north of Israel with my brother. We didn't speak any Hebrew and, of course, this was necessary to get around, albeit many Israelis had a good working knowledge of English. We studied along with many other immigrants from many different countries, England, Australia, South Aftrica, Ireland, Canada - these were the "Anglo Saxons". Others were the "Orientals" from Morocco. Algeria, Iraq, India - basically North Africa and The Middle East - also Europe and South America. The Orientals spoke French and Arabic and the Middle Eastern people spoke some French, but mostly Arabic and the South Americans spoke Spanish and Portuguese of course and the Europeans all the languages they speak. It was interesting to observe the different customs and ways among the different groups. I befriended many of the Moroccans and learned quite a bit of French while I was studying there as well as Hebrew. They made fun of us Americans - our accents - it was funny to see how others see us.  Arabic is not that different from Hebrew - not as different as English at all. The music in Morocco is very similar to what you'd hear on the radio in Israel. We didn't get the Beatles or Elvis - we got Farid Al Atash and Oumkeltoum. These were like the Beatles all across the Middle Eastern world.

I got fairly close with these people - all the people there, but especially the North Africans. I learned a lot of French and I got an inside track on how to get by in a country that was two thirds North African. I  also learned about living within strict socialist regimes. After all, people get by in most any kind of social system you can imagine. It is vital to know how though!

This is not a story about comparative socio- economics, it is a true story and a funny story about what you'd probably do yourself in a situation like the one I found myself in.   

I was living in a dormitory with my Israeli wife and my first child, my son, Avi, who  had been born and was only a few months old. The one bedroom apartment was very small and not really a good place to live for a student with a family. So I went to the Jewish Agency office and prepared to present my case for a new apartment. According to the Law of Israel, each new immigrant has a right to a home there. What kind of home depends on his needs and his work status as well as his own resources.

I had been prepped for this meeting because, in actual fact, it depended largely on "favors" (bribes) offered to the officials as well as any connections one might have I had been told . This had been explained to me by my Polish friends who were used to this approach in life. My Moroccan friends had offered a completely different slant about getting ahead in Israel. "The rusty hinge gets the oil - "squawk  as loud as you can - jump up and down and threaten as many people as possible, and their families." In America we don't do things this way at all. We are reasonable.

I explained my situation to the agent, how tight the dormitory was and how it was not a good place for a new baby. Also, I had a house coming to me by Law. He smiled a broad "Polish bribe smile" at me, I swear I could see him working this out. "There's nothing wrong with the dormitory - this is your house." He smiled and probably was waiting for me to offer him some kind of "favor" that my Polish friends had warned me about. I didn't know exactly what to do, but each second I was getting hotter and hotter and - finally I started calling him some real classic things that I had learned from my Polish and Moroccan friends - and I still don't know where I got the strength, but I started picking up all the furniture in the office and throwing it out the window - first floor - broke the glass too. He left the office to call the police and I just kept jumping up and down and throwing stuff out the window. I was really mad at the hopeless bureaucracy and frustrated by my own inability to make anything happen.

The police arrived shortly and took me downtown where I waited for the young magistrate to hear my side of the story. Israel is different in more ways than one it turns out. "What happened", he asked me as I explained to him how the response to my very real difficulty had upset me and "what would you have done?" He said "I would have done the same thing", and started to laugh and he kept laughing and added, "Don't do it again, it will be alright." The Moroccans were right. Another Israeli had a friend who was a journalist and advised me to tell him my story which would have been published in an English Language newspaper, but it never got that far.

What do you know, the Jewish Agency decided to award me a beautiful brand new three bedroom apartment about half an hour's drive from the University.

I had learned how to negotiate in the Middle East. It's an art. Don't forget, this was all conducted in the Hebrew Language with a few borrowed curse words from Polish and Arabic. It was a full validation of everything I had learned. I was extremely proud.   

Nine Twenty Two

Nine Twenty Two

"Nine Twenty Two"  was a banquet hall located at 922 North Broad Street in Philadelphia, probably for the better part of a century. It was called "Nine Twenty Two" by those who worked there and most everybody associated with it, including my father and myself. It was around the corner from "Fourteen Hundred", which was another catering hall situated at 1400 West Girard Avenue. My dad was the head waiter at Fourteen Hundred and I started  working there as a "wine waiter" at age seventeen.

It was a wedding and my dad had just finished showing me how to wrap the wine bottle in a cloth napkin and how to properly hold and pour it. There was a commotion at the top of the stairs where the guests entered . The father of the bride had fallen down the steps. He died. The wedding celebration continued. After all, all the guests were just arriving, the food was cooked and ready, the bar and tables were set, the band was there and the music already playing. This is a true story. No one will believe it anyway and I doubt that many will read it. Far too few people read anymore. I have not embellished it in any way.

Fourteen hundred was the seediest place you could imagine. It was leftover from the prohibition era. Someone had stored it in an old trunk in an attic. It was dusty, moldy, and yet somehow, like an old restaurant or resort,  still managed to hold onto a mysterious charm that had become the memories of so many thousands of guests. One of the partners of the catering business that ran Fourteen Hundred as well as Nine Twenty Two and several hotels in town, had owned at least one "speakeasy" back in the thirties I was told. They had bootlegged whiskey, made their own and whatever else they could get away with. When I got out of the army about twenty years later I saw him on South Street and called his name. He must have been ninety at the time. He smiled a broad warm smile and came and gave me a hug. He asked how I was doing. No one did this any more, but he did. No one else greeted me after the army, just him and his partner.  The other partner for whom the business was named had been in the Normandy Invasion. He was a ranger. He gave me a job in a restaurant he had when I got home and needed a job. He was still in the business,  He was a gambler.  The story was that he used to take the money the customer paid  from the "job", and bet it at the track. If he won everyone would get paid. A "job" was what any catered affair was called. A wedding, confirmation, bar - mitzvah, convention or whatever event was being celebrated. There were two unions in Philadelphia, the kosher union and the Italian union. I was in both. You get to know a lot about people when they're drunk. Italians drink beer at their weddings as opposed to hard liquor. I have no idea why. 

They were all crooks and gamblers and everything else that went with that life style. There wasn't one of them that would think twice to risk his life for you. They were all WWII vets. I used to like being part of it, even if it was just as a young "apprentice". I liked the way the call girls at the hotels smiled at me and treated me like crew. We worked a lot of hotels too. I liked the music. I met Red Rodney at Fourteen Hundred. I'll never forget that dusty old stage and Red and his trumpet. My dad told me, "That's Red Rodney." He was a jazz great.  I got to know all the bartenders too, and most of the hotels in downtown Philly. Don't think that's not an advantage. 

One day after I had been teaching in Philly for about five years or so, I passed 922 driving up broad street. The whole block was being razed, including 1400. You could see the stairway that led down to the basement where the food was prepared. There was a little office under the staircase where they used to play cards. You'd see them with their thirty eights in their holsters, smoking cigars just like in the movies. Some very high up city detectives as well. Don't tell anybody. They were always at it down there. Drinking and laughing and playing very serious card games for very serious money.One of the owner's brother's was machine gunned to death in Miami. He owed someone money. Not such a nice guy really. I didn't grieve. May he rest in peace. 

The whole thing was being razed. An entire era was being eaten up and chewed down by a hungry bulldozer. I watched it. It was more than a friend of mine. It was something very special that I can't quite define...

The West Philadelphia Regional Track Meet

This is a totally true story.

It was the Philadelphia Regional Elementary School Track Championships. This was very serious business for us guys. It meant, among other things, that we would be competing against our arch rival. The Mann School. The Mann School was located up the hill in Wynnefield, which, in those days, and probably today as well, was a much more affluent neighborhood than our own in West Philadelphia, which didn't have much of anything, not even a name: perhaps, "down there".  No, our socks didn't match and we smelled kind of funny, but, goodness, we were tough. No one messed with us. OK, we had less, but we played hard. Get the picture? And here we were. Showtime was just around the corner. We'd show them alright!

We decided to train for the event. The heel of my right foot still bears the scars of the training. Gosh. don't ever practice broad jumping on a sidewalk. Never do that! Well, it would heal well enough to compete in the hundred yard dash. Each day at recess and even after school, we'd be there racing and jumping and coaching and offering advice, like a band of young Indian braves whooping and jumping before a raid. It was exciting I tell you! We had strategies. Who ever heard of a strategy for running!?

As the day approached, our enthusiasm mounted. We did not yet know who would win the big race. We had many fast runners. I was among them. The fifth grade Olympics of West Philadelphia was about to happen. Who would get the gold? As I recall, they actually gave out ribbons. We didn't get any, but that's the heart and soul of this story anyway.

As the participants lined up for the big race, you couldn't hear yourself think for all the shouting, as all the kids started cheering out of their minds with excitement. I remember the shouts and the screaming and I remember thinking which of us would win and be the hero of Heston Elementary School. And then it happened. The heats were  timed. The girls' heats began. Out of the blue, mind you, literally from out of nowhere, with the wind itself, shot Beverly. I'm not kidding you. She flew. Beverly was a tall thin black girl whose legs reached up to her neck. She was a gazelle. No one knew, certainly none of us guys, but this was to be her day. I never saw a stride like hers on anybody, not even today, not even the real Olympics. "Wham, swish, whoosh", she swallowed up the school yard, like a hungry wildcat after a rabbit. 

That girl, that long legged girl who owned one dress and wore it every day to school and to the track meet as well. knocked the heck out of all of us. God Bless Beverly!

The Belmont Stakes 2004

    The Belmont Stakes  2004

From;  "The Continuing Adventures of Wooples the Cat"

     It was a terrible day in Philadelphia. It was raining fairly heavily and kind of cold too.  I had been watching the running of the Belmont Stakes with Wooples. Wooples rarely watched television but he would keep me company if I was interested in watching a program. He preferred watching the birds on the front lawn. Hed jump up on the back of the chair by the front window and peer out between the vertical blinds with an intensity that reminded me of documentaries of hunched lions peering at prey through high grasses.  But today was different. We were going to watch Smarty Jones win the triple crown of horse racing and have a Smarty Party.  I had been caught up in the Smarty Jones excitement that had  swept through Philadelphia. Smarty was going to win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia was going to be famous and the whole world would be happy.

     I had explained all this to Wooples during a commercial about Visa credit cards. Wooples assured me that he would help me root for Smarty and that he felt confident that Smarty would win the triple crown of horse racing andPhiladelphia would be famous  and the whole world would be happy.  

      The rest is history. As Smarty got nosed out toward the finish, I turned the TV off. I couldnt bear to see or hear any more. I was thrown back to 1964 when the Phillies lost the national league pennant.  We were 6 0r 7  games ahead toward the end of the season. All we had to do was win one game, one game in ten. We lost them all! Goodbye world series. Goodbye famous Philadelphia. Goodbye happy world. It just wasnt in the cards.

     Wooples was lying on the floor with his chin on the carpet, his eyes nearly closed. He turned and looked up at me. "He ran as fast as he could" he said, and shut his eyes. He shuts his eyes whenever hes sad or sympathetic. Sometimes he shuts his eyes when you scratch his back or pet him but then he purrs too.

"I dont know what happened Wooples"  - I offered, lost for an explanation. "He was supposed to win. Everyone said he was going to win. The odds were 1-5!! for heavens sake."

     We let it go for several hours. Wooples was still brooding. He broods when he doesnt understand something. "He tried as hard as he could" he said. "He ran with all his heart Smarty probably feels real bad now."

     I felt bad too. I imagined a large number of people in Philadelphia who had to cancel their Smarty Parties felt bad as well. No triple crown. No famousPhiladelphia. No happy world. No champagne. Just a big let down. Sometimes you lose Wooples. When you lose, youre supposed to feel bad. "OK", he said, and we brooded together.

Working the System

People that claim that school is a total waste of time are definitely ignorant. Certainly they haven't listened closely to their teachers or watched what was going on because there is a wealth of learning occurring there.
It was only in second grade where I first realized there was a way to beat the system. Legal Loopholes. There're legal loopholes in everything! Anything!
My favorite thing in the second grade was candy. Ask anybody. Candy is the best thing there is without a doubt. Any second grader knows that. There's only one problem - and I'm not talking about ruining teeth or appetites for dinner. The only problem is that it is absolutely forbidden - against the law - forget it - to eat candy, chew gum, display candy of any kind in the classroom. Can't do it.
Unless you're smart. And smart is why we're in school. Many of you might have missed this lesson. so we're going over it again. The key is "Doctor". Doctor is the highest level of address, the highest level of anything there is in education - almost in the world. The only thing higher is "filthy rich"!  So there's the legal loophole. If the doctor says it's OK to eat candy in the classroom, anybody and everybody can eat candy in the classroom - every day - all the time - all over the place -  it's candy day! Get it? Sure - it's coming back. Bring in a note from the doctor. That's all you have to do. All is excused. More of this later.
Now, the Smith Brothers have already set up this loophole. Remember the Smith Brothers? Those two long bearded gents on the box of Smith Bros. Cough Drops? They're still going strong. More power to them.They got away with selling these licorice, anise and sugar candies as medicine and made quite a bit of money at it - bless them - anything works for forty percent of the people - anything - just check this out! Salt over the shoulder works too. This is not the point however. And I like Smith Bros, Cough Drops - especially the wild cherry, the bubble gum, and the roast chicken very much! I like to think that you're getting this.

Private School

A new type of teaching job has come my way recently. A sort of semi-private school, both a live-in, boarding school as well as a locally "drafted from the eighth grade" contingent of students.
The sign business has been slow meanwhile and needs more promoting.
I had a story in mind yesterday, to write for you, but I can't recall it. It would have had to be a true story and, at the same time, entertaining. I can't for the life of me remember any part of it except for birds eating seeds? - possibly an experience I had as a young boy at my friend's family's farm. - we'll see.