Monday, August 8, 2016
Bush washes up ashore
It was cold - wind blew - his shirt was wet. Bush heard and recognized the sound of the waves before he saw them. He knew he was on some kind of beach, but did nor feel like troubling himself to remember where - he was too sick. "...must have swallowed too much salt water", he thought and retched. The salt water burned his throat.; It was a bad feeling and it wasn't going to go away any too soon.
Monday, July 4, 2016
God Bless America - The Inverse Square Law
Happy Birthday America!!
There's no question about it - in fact this can be plotted on a sheet of graph paper using as sharp a pencil as you'd like. The better you get - the greater you are - the more real help you are to people - that's how hard you get hit! You all know this is true I'm sure by your own personal experiences. You've seen it - you've felt it - you've watched it happpen to others - "The Inverse Square Law" - in other words if you do ten good deeds, you get back one hundred hits on the head - see - inverse (upside down or backwards) and square 2 times 2 equals 4 and 10 times 10 equals 100!! That's pretty severe and that's how it is - it's certainly a challenge.
Look at what our choices are after working as hard as we have: Clinton vs Trump - what is that?? - what is that I ask you?
The USA fought hard agaisnt the enemies of man in WWII - and look what we got back - LSD and girls with tattoos. Is that fair? I won't go any deeper - it hurts too much - not fair.
Well, if it's any help - you will be attacked as hard as you are effective in helping people - ask Israel!
So now that we've emerged as an authentic acknowleded real effective help to mankind, all I can say is -watch your back America - about half the people out there are infiltrators of one type or another - some types have no idea whatever what they are! The good news is that most of them respond to help and come around - but be careful - many of them don't!
Be careful with those fireworks - don't eat too much potato salad! Be good anyhow!!
There's no question about it - in fact this can be plotted on a sheet of graph paper using as sharp a pencil as you'd like. The better you get - the greater you are - the more real help you are to people - that's how hard you get hit! You all know this is true I'm sure by your own personal experiences. You've seen it - you've felt it - you've watched it happpen to others - "The Inverse Square Law" - in other words if you do ten good deeds, you get back one hundred hits on the head - see - inverse (upside down or backwards) and square 2 times 2 equals 4 and 10 times 10 equals 100!! That's pretty severe and that's how it is - it's certainly a challenge.
Look at what our choices are after working as hard as we have: Clinton vs Trump - what is that?? - what is that I ask you?
The USA fought hard agaisnt the enemies of man in WWII - and look what we got back - LSD and girls with tattoos. Is that fair? I won't go any deeper - it hurts too much - not fair.
Well, if it's any help - you will be attacked as hard as you are effective in helping people - ask Israel!
So now that we've emerged as an authentic acknowleded real effective help to mankind, all I can say is -watch your back America - about half the people out there are infiltrators of one type or another - some types have no idea whatever what they are! The good news is that most of them respond to help and come around - but be careful - many of them don't!
Be careful with those fireworks - don't eat too much potato salad! Be good anyhow!!
God Bless America - The Inverse Square Law
Happy Birthday America!!
There's no question about it - in fact this can be plotted on a sheet of graph paper using as sharp a pencil as you'd like. The better you get - the greater you are - the more real help you are to people - that's how hard you get hit! You all know this is true I'm sure by your own personal experiences. You've seen it - you've felt it - you've watched it happpen to others - "The Inverse Square Law" - in other words if you do ten good deeds, you get back one hundred hits on the head - see - inverse (upside down or backwards) and square 2 times 2 equals 4 and 10 times 10 equals 100!! That's pretty severe and that's how it is - it's certainly a challenge.
The USA fought hard agaisnt the enemies of man in WWII - and look what we got back - LSD and girls with tattoos. Is that fair? I won't go any deeper - it hurts too much - not fair.
Well, if it's any help - you will be attacked as hard as you are effective in helping people - ask Israel!
So now that we've emerged as an authentic acknowleded real effective help to mankind, all I can say is -watch your back America - about half the people out there are infiltrators of one type or another - some types have no idea whatever what they are! The good news is that most of them respond to help and come around - but be careful - many of them don't!
Be careful with those fireworks - don't eat too much potato salad! Be good anyhow!!
There's no question about it - in fact this can be plotted on a sheet of graph paper using as sharp a pencil as you'd like. The better you get - the greater you are - the more real help you are to people - that's how hard you get hit! You all know this is true I'm sure by your own personal experiences. You've seen it - you've felt it - you've watched it happpen to others - "The Inverse Square Law" - in other words if you do ten good deeds, you get back one hundred hits on the head - see - inverse (upside down or backwards) and square 2 times 2 equals 4 and 10 times 10 equals 100!! That's pretty severe and that's how it is - it's certainly a challenge.
The USA fought hard agaisnt the enemies of man in WWII - and look what we got back - LSD and girls with tattoos. Is that fair? I won't go any deeper - it hurts too much - not fair.
Well, if it's any help - you will be attacked as hard as you are effective in helping people - ask Israel!
So now that we've emerged as an authentic acknowleded real effective help to mankind, all I can say is -watch your back America - about half the people out there are infiltrators of one type or another - some types have no idea whatever what they are! The good news is that most of them respond to help and come around - but be careful - many of them don't!
Be careful with those fireworks - don't eat too much potato salad! Be good anyhow!!
Saturday, July 2, 2016
The Magic of the Fourth of July
It was a beautiful sunny day in Camden, NJ and "Darlin" was prettier than I'd ever seen her before - and she was pretty - all the time. She was a full year older than me and she and her brother who was even a year older than her - and that's old, especially when you're six - would explain everything to me - how to ride your bike and what each flower really was - and why bees buzzed - everything important - you know? I still look around for them when I don't understand something! That's what happens - see?
Well, there she was in short pants and a baton and all dressed up like a flag - white boots - life was just one great big parade of happy things - it just came at you like that every day - you hated when mom called you in for lunch 'cause you might miss something - you know?
Darlin (that was not really her name, but I don't want to give that out) had this long stick with a knob at one end where you held it and some kind of metal thing where you hit it against the ground on the other. You loaded caps into it and tapped it on the street and snap, crackle, pop it went off - wow - not only the prettiest knees in town, but crackety-crack, blam on the street too.
What's this all? I asked and she held up her baton with red, white and blue crepe paper spiraling 'round - "it's because we beat the English in the war." - "Oh", I answered. It was just amazing how much she knew. To this day, when I think of the English, all I see is Darlin's white boots and pretty knees hoppin' along the sidewalk tapping her fourth of July stick on the pavement - "crackety crack, blam"
"Live Free or Die"
Have a great Holiday!!
Well, there she was in short pants and a baton and all dressed up like a flag - white boots - life was just one great big parade of happy things - it just came at you like that every day - you hated when mom called you in for lunch 'cause you might miss something - you know?
Darlin (that was not really her name, but I don't want to give that out) had this long stick with a knob at one end where you held it and some kind of metal thing where you hit it against the ground on the other. You loaded caps into it and tapped it on the street and snap, crackle, pop it went off - wow - not only the prettiest knees in town, but crackety-crack, blam on the street too.
What's this all? I asked and she held up her baton with red, white and blue crepe paper spiraling 'round - "it's because we beat the English in the war." - "Oh", I answered. It was just amazing how much she knew. To this day, when I think of the English, all I see is Darlin's white boots and pretty knees hoppin' along the sidewalk tapping her fourth of July stick on the pavement - "crackety crack, blam"
"Live Free or Die"
Have a great Holiday!!
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Shmingegge
"You have to laugh..." my Mom would say.
Her name was "Shmingegge" - that was what everyone in my mother's family callled her. My father also called her Shmingegge. Her name was also Pauline. There is no information about the name "Shmingegge". There is information about the word "shmegegge", but that is neither here nor there. Yiddish in our house, in our family, was something from the "old country" - from somewhere far away and forgotten, like the language of nursery rhymes and stories that people heard and repeated and changed and the changes repeated till they sort of caught on for a certain style or sound - like "five and dime" or "c'mon will ya" - something like that. No one really was an authority on this language - you had to ask what it meant and then take it or leave it - whatever you got for an answer, It had a sort of secret code password associated with it like "Joe sent me" - and you either got in the door or you didn't - it took a lot of street savvy to get around in those days - you just didn't question these things. Her name is not as important as that everybody called her that. What was more important about Pauline was who she was and how she made a living.
Pauline wore outlandish clothing - flowered robes. She wore hats indoors - in her apartment. She was a strange person. My father forbid my mother to go see her and especially not to bring me along, Pauline used a rectangular magnifying glass to read with - a large rectangular magnifying glass with a long handle. She would hold it up to objects and read the labels on them. Her entire kitchen table was covered with bottles and boxes of stuff - perfumes and band-aids, deodorants and fountain pens, toothpaste, soap, nail polish - all kinds of stuff all crowded together - things that made no sense being together - shoe polish, mercurochrome (they used to use that for disinfecting cuts), cotton swab packages, lipsticks - things that you would find, perhaps on the shelves of drugstores or other shops. In fact, that's probably exactly where Pauline found these things see? Are you getting the picture? - because I never did - I was about ten years old and all I knew was that Pauline would talk with my mom and look at things with her magnifying glass and after a while my mom would take home a zillion ball point pens and lipsticks and stuff like it was Christmas or something - she would even give a lot of this stuff to her friends and family!!
My dad would get really mad at my mom for this. "What if you get caught" - he said. "You're not allowed to do that, don't ever go there again!" It was years - years and years - before I really understood what Shmingegge did for a living. G-d bless her - she might be alive today - she would probably be one hundred and five years old! The whole family knew her - they all went to see her from time to time. There were always plenty of ball point pens and deodorants and toothpaste around, I'll tell you that. To this day, I feel that it's improper somehow that I have to pay for a ball point pen! Pauline never charged for these things! - well probably not that much I guess.
Pauline wore outlandish clothing - flowered robes. She wore hats indoors - in her apartment. She was a strange person. My father forbid my mother to go see her and especially not to bring me along, Pauline used a rectangular magnifying glass to read with - a large rectangular magnifying glass with a long handle. She would hold it up to objects and read the labels on them. Her entire kitchen table was covered with bottles and boxes of stuff - perfumes and band-aids, deodorants and fountain pens, toothpaste, soap, nail polish - all kinds of stuff all crowded together - things that made no sense being together - shoe polish, mercurochrome (they used to use that for disinfecting cuts), cotton swab packages, lipsticks - things that you would find, perhaps on the shelves of drugstores or other shops. In fact, that's probably exactly where Pauline found these things see? Are you getting the picture? - because I never did - I was about ten years old and all I knew was that Pauline would talk with my mom and look at things with her magnifying glass and after a while my mom would take home a zillion ball point pens and lipsticks and stuff like it was Christmas or something - she would even give a lot of this stuff to her friends and family!!
My dad would get really mad at my mom for this. "What if you get caught" - he said. "You're not allowed to do that, don't ever go there again!" It was years - years and years - before I really understood what Shmingegge did for a living. G-d bless her - she might be alive today - she would probably be one hundred and five years old! The whole family knew her - they all went to see her from time to time. There were always plenty of ball point pens and deodorants and toothpaste around, I'll tell you that. To this day, I feel that it's improper somehow that I have to pay for a ball point pen! Pauline never charged for these things! - well probably not that much I guess.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Money
Plotnik's Furniture store was located on East 117th street and had the same location for over 80 years, but it had changed it's name quite a few times to suit the styles of the different Plotnik's as they became the new owners. The current owner called it "Snooks". He felt it fit the neighborhood and the times and sounded like a comfortable sofa. It was also the nickname of his girlfriend.
"Look Mitch", Bob Plotnik was grooving in a new salesman, "what are these people doing here? Do they just come in from the street to walk around and look at the chairs, are they tired, do they need to sit down?" - and without time to even think about this - "No - of course not - they're here because they need a piece of furniture - maybe a sofa - maybe a mattress - maybe a kitchen table. We don't care what they think they need - We know better than they do what they need. A "one" or a "two" or a "three" - that's what they need."
"Look Mitch", Bob Plotnik was grooving in a new salesman, "what are these people doing here? Do they just come in from the street to walk around and look at the chairs, are they tired, do they need to sit down?" - and without time to even think about this - "No - of course not - they're here because they need a piece of furniture - maybe a sofa - maybe a mattress - maybe a kitchen table. We don't care what they think they need - We know better than they do what they need. A "one" or a "two" or a "three" - that's what they need."
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Valentymbs
Valentymbs
There was a
candy store on the way to school when I lived in Camden, New Jersey, you stop
in there with your pennies and look up through
glass at the candies on display in trays and make your selections. Gosh
that was good. I'm sure most of you have similar memories. Kids like candy.
But, there
was no "Valentymbs" in Camden - at least not in second grade - I
don't know why, but the candy was really good anyway. "Valentymbs"
(rhymes with Valentines) didn't really start until the third grade when we moved to West
Philadelphia. Now, you have to
understand the association of Valentines Day with candy to an eight year old.
This is obviously the importance of that holiday - like Halloween - that's what
it's about - see? Nothing complicated here. This little story is a true story -
absolutely true - about little eight year old people.
I had a
little girl friend - I won't mention her name - but she "liked" me.
Liking someone was something that happened sometimes. Some girls liked boys -
it was hardly ever true that some boys liked girls - boys just didn't do that -
well not then - not in West Philly for
sure . That all changed later!
Anyway -
"liking" was a formal thing -
it was an accepted fact - like - "he's a good second baseman." Now you also had friends that you liked , but
that was different. That's as far as "liking" people really went. Now, I was new in West Philly and
I had to be shown around . I had to pick up on a lot of stuff that I'd missed
not growing up there - like playing
second base. There's a lot to learn when
you're a kid.
Our teacher explained that tomorrow was Valentines day and
that we each would have to buy Valentines cards and give them to the person we
liked. Well, no one understood this.
There was a lot of talk about this, among other things was the fact that you
could buy about a hundred little cards for a nickel or something at the candy
store (certainly West Philly had a candy store too) and "you should give cards to all your friends".
Well, it was Valentymbs Day and I had to make a lot of
important choices. I started writing the names of my closest friends on the
envelopes and signing my name on all the "Be My Valentine" cards. I
doubt that they have those little cards around any more. Things were more special
and "magical" in those days. Things just happened somehow.
I didn't want to slight anyone. Kids are very sensitive - they bounce back from just about anything, stay friends no matter what - but still, they're sensitive
So there it was, all the kids in the class got a card from
me. Black, white, boys and girls - they were all my Valentymbs. Boy, you should
have seen the pile of cards on my desk that I received when I got back from delivering my own Valentymbs. I was president of my class for every sememster except one all through sixth grade. This is true. I was the male lead of our graduation show and my little girl friend was the girl - boy could she sing - my own voice was cracking - every one laughed including me. Boy was she pretty - gosh - as pretty as a chocolate bar!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)