THE MOSQUITO TRUCK

As the month of May slips away, soon to be replaced by June, I think back on my Snot-Nose Days. Back then, we’d be in school for the first three weeks of June, our summer vacation beginning roughly around the time of the solstice.

By the time the school year had worn down to those last few days, things were downright steamy. This was back before classrooms were air-conditioned, and hundred-degree days were not unknown. You could get a sunstroke running around on the playground during recess.

In the neighborhood, the arrival of summer was marked by the arrival of the ice-cream trucks. Good Humor was the odds-on favorite, but we would occasionally see a Mister Softee or Bungalow Bar vendor, the last marked by his unique gable-roofed vehicle. My parents looked down their noses at the Bungalow Bar with disdain, a disdain I grew to share for no apparent reason; I never tasted one.

The real harbinger of summer was not the ice-cream men in their various flavors, though. It was the Mosquito Truck.

Yes! The Mosquito Truck, a forgotten institution in these post-DDT days. It was a Jeep fitted out with a device that generated prodigious volumes of Mosquito Fog, an opaque white cloud packed with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. Mosquitoes saw that cloud coming and simply committed suicide rather than face a horrible neurotoxic death.

How often would we kids get caught in that Fogbank o’ Death, inhaling the chlorinated hydrocarbon perfume? Plenty often. Gawd only knows what insidious damage our little bodies sustained... but at least we were not at risk for yellow fever or malaria. And, many years later, I was happy to father children that did not have two heads, or flippers, or Froggy Eyes.

You don’t see Mosquito Trucks too often anymore... at least, not here in the States, where 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-di(4-chlorophenyl)ethane is (metaphorically) as radioactive as plutonium and more tightly controlled than cannabis. The ban on DDT may have save the American Bald Eagle, for which we should be grateful... but it was nice, once upon a time, to life in a (mostly) mosquito-free environment.

Does anyone else remember the Mosquito Truck?

ZELIG

Zelig, you may recall, is the title of a 1983 Woody Allen film about one Leonard Zelig, a “human chameleon” who had no identity of his own, but who would take on the characteristics of the people around him.

I’m a little like that. Not quite the same as the Zelig of the eponymous movie, my talent is a sort of Zelig-like ability to be mistaken for a member of whatever ethnic group I find myself among.

If I’m in a crowd of Italians, everyone assumes I’m Italian.

When I am amongst Greeks, everyone thinks I’m Greek.

With Turks, I am Turkish. Russians, Russian. Albanians, Albanian. I can pass... until I open my mouth, of course.

There are exceptions. Nobody ever thinks I am Scottish, Irish, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or Asian. (Well, actually, someone once thought I was Asian. But that person was either drunk or terminally stupid.)

Perhaps the strangest instance of my Zelig-osity took place at a party She Who Must Be Obeyed and I attended in Houston some fifteen years ago. Our neighbor across the street was the Indian consul, and one evening he and his wife decided to do some Major Entertaining. The guest list included representatives from pretty much every diplomatic mission in Houston, a gaggle of consular officials from every continent - plus a handful of The Locals sprinkled in. We, along with a few of our other neighbors, served as The Locals.

As I wandered through the house with SWMBO, drink and tandoori chicken drumstick in hand, Zelig moments started taking place at regular intervals. People were genuinely surprised to find out that I was a “mere” neighbor rather than an ambassador from some exotic foreign locale. (Ireland excepted.) Things got even stranger, however...

There was a small group of bearded men wearing white robes and headcoverings sitting together in one corner of one room. When they saw me, the immediately motioned me over and introduced themselves as the Iranian consular mission. Possibly owing to the beard I wore at the time, they were absolutely convinced that I was Iranian. When I politely explained that, no, I was not, at first they didn’t believe me.

“You must be Iranian.”

“No, no - really, I’m not. Trust me on this one.”

And when they finally gave up and invited me to visit their country one day, I said I would be honored to do so.

Under my breath, I added, “Ven di Moshiach kimmt (when the Messiah comes).”

READING ALOUD

When Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm were little tykes, there were few things in the way of Family Activities we enjoyed more than Reading Aloud.

Back as far as Toddler Days, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I would read to the girls. Little Golden Books featuring Cookie Monster and Grover were huge favorites... as were others such as Bembelman’s Bakery, Eloise, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

[It took them twenty-seven years, but Hollywood finally figured out a way to bring that story to the big screen... and completely fuck it up in the process. The book, written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by her (then) husband Ron Barrett, is utterly charming. The movie? Not so much.]

We would read, read, read those books until our throats were hoarse - and then we’d read some more. The girls never tired of hearing ’em.

Elder Daughter, even back in her toddlerhood, had a frighteningly prodigious memory. After hearing a story only once or twice, she could quote great swaths of it at the slightest provocation. This posed no problem with tales such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other components of the Beatrix Potter oeuvre, but the day came when a two-year-old Elder Daughter (at the time, Only Daughter) proceeded to recite the entire text of perhaps the most politically incorrect story of all time - Little Black Sambo - to the eleven-year-old African-American girl sitting next to her on our flight from New York to Atlanta. Things might have gotten a bit sketchy had Elder Daughter’s elocution been a bit clearer... but as it was, SWMBO and I were trying to decide how both of us could fit underneath the seats in front of us.

As the girls grew older, so did our choice of Read-Aloud material change. On long car trips, we would read weighty tomes like Great Expectations and Gulliver’s Travels, the latter being one of the all-time great satirical novels.

The girls were greatly entertained... although SWMBO was horrified to learn that “Pumblechook” was actually the name of a Dickens character, not merely a deliberately mispronounced descriptor for a certain type of Body Hair.

Many years have gone by since Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm lived at home. Reading aloud is one of those family activities that has gone by the wayside... hopefully to be resumed when, at some unknowable future date, the Missus and I are blessed with grandchildren. And yet...

...a few evenings ago, the Mistress stopped by for an overnight sojourn, and out came the old Eloise books. And now it was her turn to read aloud. To us.


“Nanny says she would rawther I didn’t
talk talk talk all the time
She always says everything 3 times
like Eloise you cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t
Sometimes I hit her on the ankle with a tassel
She is my mostly companion”

Ooooooooooooooooooo, I absolutely love The Plaza

A BIT OF BOOKY NOSTALGIA

The Massapequa Bookmobile in its heyday.

One of my elementary school classmates - say what you will about Facebook, but it has facilitated some remarkable reconnections - was kind enough to pass along an article from the New York Observer about a Relic from my Long-Lost Past.

I speak of the Massapequa Public Library Bookmobile.

Back in the day, the Bookmobile was nothing more, nothing less than a Library on Wheels, a honking big trailer full of (you guessed it) books. Every day, they would hook it up to a sort of utility truck affair and tow it to a different location around town, following a carefully laid-out route. And once a week - Monday or Tuesday, if I recall correctly - the Bookmobile would show up in the parking lot of the local nine-hole muni, just a short walk from home.


Lining up for the weekly Bookmobile visit.

We had two libraries in town: the main library in the central part of town, and a branch outpost that was a few miles closer to where we lived. But back in the early 1960’s, the stay-at-home mom was much more the norm... and often, there was only one family car, which meant that she was more of a stuck-at-home mom, with forays to the library a challenge. Enter the Bookmobile:

The beloved bookmobile, originally purchased for $13,000, began its route in 1961, when mothers stayed home with children and didn’t have access to cars to get to the local library. It carried a small sampling of the library’s offerings: children’s books, biographies, romance books, science fiction books, mystery books, thrillers, religious and political books, classics, poetry and magazines. Each day it stopped in a different neighborhood so that everyone knew when it was coming. “There really was a necessity for it, and it was very well used for many years,” said [library director Patricia] Page. “But then people’s lives changed and mothers went out to work and the circulation dwindled.”

I remember that bookmobile, clear as day. I remember walking through the gravelly golf course parking lot and climbing up the steps into that trailer. I would walk along the linoleum-paved aisle, inhaling the booky aroma while scanning the shelves of books on either side, usually selecting the permitted maximum of three. Our mother would be there too, scanning the shelves for her mysteries and science fiction tomes. And then you’d get to the check-out desk at the end of the aisle, where you would hand over your library card, the librarian would stamp the due date in each book, and the Sooper Seekrit Microfillum Check-Out Machine would do its mysterious work. Then down the steep steps and back onto the gravel for the short walk home.


Inside the Bookmobile. Hey, it’s like the bastard child of a library and a Winnebago!

Alas, in recent years, the Bookmobile had fallen on hard times. Retired last July after a forty-nine-year long career and in increasingly dismal condition, it was headed for the scrap heap when a phone call came in from none other than Alec Baldwin.

Alec bought the old trailer for the grand sum of $1,000 and had it towed off to his home in Amagansett, hard by the Hamptons on the south shore of Long Island. What he will do with it is anybody’s guess, but it would make a dandy playhouse or office with a bit of remodeling. Or perhaps a neighborhood eyesore.

It’s easy to see why Alec would remember the old Bookmobile with such rosy nostalgia. Its old once-a-week stop in that golf course parking lot was right across the street from his house on Iroquois Avenue... and he and his horde of siblings were, no doubt, regular customers.

Come to think of it, there’s no reason ol’ Alec couldn’t refurbish the trailer and stock it with vintage reading material, recreating the old Bookmobile as a museum piece celebrating the rich cultural history of the Island. He could have a Joey Buttafuoco/Amy Fisher young adult section; a Jessica Hahn adult section; a Baldwin Family theatre arts/run on top of Elisson’s roof section; and a Jerry Seinfeld humor section.

Good on ya, Alec. It’s nice to know the old Bookmobile is still around... a bit of Booky Nostalgia for us old folks who remember that bygone era of stuck-at-home moms. (I wonder whether the moms have that same feeling of pleasant nostalgia for those days: I suspect not so much.)

[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Chris S. for forwarding the Observer article, and to Allan P. for the photos and section names. You’re sick, I tells ya!]

MAX

Back in the early 1930’s when Max was a lad, he would often play soccer with his friend Karl. In those days, it was, perhaps, unusual for a Jew and a Catholic to be friends - more so because this was in Poland, a place where Jews were often treated with contempt and loathing by their countrymen. But in the town of Wadowice, a stone’s throw from Kraków, the Jews and Poles played soccer together. Karl, a skilled goaltender, even would play on the Jewish team if they were shorthanded.

One day, Karl came around to see if Max could kick the ball around. But it was Saturday - Shabbat - and Max told him he could not, for on that day he would accompany his mother to synagogue. Karl may have been momentarily disappointed, yet he did not let on. Instead, he said Max should be proud that he was honoring his mother and upholding his religious traditions.

Over time, the boys went their separate ways. Karl eventually became very successful in his work, and Max soldiered on in his own business ventures. But then war broke out... and that changed Max’s life forever.

He enlisted in the Polish army, eager to fight the German enemy. It was not too long, however, before he was captured by the Russians. They shipped him off to various labor camps, where he did whatever kind of backbreaking work his taskmasters set before him. It was a rough life, but Max survived. Most of the rest of his family did not, having stayed behind to face the tender mercies of the Nazi death machine. The ovens of Auschwitz swallowed them all.

Emigration to Palestine was a temptation, then, but Max wanted to stay and help rebuild his homeland. He ended up in the electroplating business, running several factories. But the Communists came, and life - difficult enough in a land still riddled with anti-Semitism despite being virtually judenrein - became intolerable. With a handful of illegal passports, he gathered up his wife and two daughters and slipped out of the country quietly, taking the train to Paris. From there, a harrowing ten-day sea passage brought them to the shores of New York. It was 1962 when they caught their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

Some years later, a mutual acquaintance from the old days paid a visit on Karl, who was living in Italy at the time. “Do you remember Max?” the friend asked.

“Of course I remember Moszek!” responded Karl. “How is my old friend?”

* * *
Today we buried Max in the red soil of Birmingham, Alabama, his home for most of the forty-eight years since his arrival in the States. He had lived to see his family grow, resurgent in his new homeland... and to see a granddaughter’s wedding.

Not incidentally, he had lived to see Poland, his old home, throw off the yoke of Communism. The events of 1989 had to have been soul-stirring for him, even at a remove of several thousand miles... not least because his old friend Karl had been instrumental in providing the spiritual impetus that enabled the Solidarity movement to rise up and win in that historic peaceful revolution.

As Jews, we don’t necessarily subscribe to the popular view of a Heaven amidst the clouds, with Pearly Gates, wings, and harps. We believe that there is a World to Come, details about which are necessarily vague... but that there is a portion there for all righteous people. (There’s no monopoly on salvation.)

And who knows, but that Max is now reunited with his old soccer-playing buddy, who arrived in that World to Come not quite five years ago amidst quite a bit of earthly fanfare. For Karl, you see, was none other than Karol Józef Wojtyła, who became very successful indeed in his work, rising to the top of his profession... and taking the name Pope John Paul II.

WINTER WANKERLAND

Men tracht und Gott lacht (Men make plans and God laughs). - Yiddish proverb

I’m writing this from the warmth of Chez Elisson... which means there has been a Change in Plans. For She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had scheduled a trip to our nation’s capital this morning, there to visit Elder Daughter and survey the remnants of Snowpocalypse.

Alas, it was not to be, thanks mainly to yesterday’s storm, a storm that dumped all of about three inches of the White Shite on us. It’s not much, but apparently it is enough to bring the entire operations of the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (whew! that’s a great big honkin’ mouthful of an airport name) to a grinding, shuddering halt.

I logged in to the Delta website late last night and checked us in for our 8:25 a.m. flight, at which time there was no indication there was anything amiss. And the airline asked for (and received) updated contact information. Presumably, if they had to cancel our flight, they had any number of ways to tell us about it. But they did not... and so we headed off for the airport at the Butt Crack of Dawn.

With the local roads sporting a thin glaze of black ice and frozen slush, we elected to make the ten-mile drive to the Dunwoody MARTA station and take the train to the plane. That was a wise choice, especially considering the heart-stopping fun we had negotiating the hills and curves enroute: Taking the freeway all the way to the airport would have given my sphincter a permanent clench-spasm.

We rode to the airport in the pre-dawn darkness. As we approached the airport stop, the eastern horizon was lit up in gorgeous colors of deep blue and red, the twinkling lights of aircraft on their landing approach visible against the impending sunrise. When the announcer came on the PA system to tell us we were arriving at the airport, so struck was she by the sight that she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, look out your left window - isn’t that beautiful?” (Would that ever happen in New York?)



Once we arrived in the Delta terminal, we quickly discovered that things had, overnight, gone all pear-shaped. Our flight - and about 90% of the others - had been canceled. No phone call, no e-mail, no nothing. And the terminal was packed with harried travelers, queued up to reschedule their flights. Packed, indeed: the line was folded in upon itself in the manner of Disneyland, and we were told the wait was over three hours long.


Alla those “XLD” flights? Not a good sign.

A handful of foreign departures was still flying, and an even smaller cohort of domestic flights. Other than that, nothing. That miserable two inches of snow had somehow kept almost every airline from putting planes in position to handle the morning’s departures, and from there, things must have rapidly escalated into Clusterfuck Territory.

As we stood in line - for no obvious reason except to preserve the illusion that we were accomplishing something - I tried to get American Express on the phone. And after an interminable period of holding, all the while with some bouncy, jazzy On-Hold Muzak blasting in my ear, we managed to establish that we would not be getting to Washington any time soon.

Crap.

Rather than fly up late tomorrow for an abbreviated weekend (and the risk of getting snowed in on Monday), we elected, reluctantly, to biff the trip. And so we headed back to the northern end of town, seated comfortably on our MARTA train as the whole north-south axis of Atlanta flashed by, incongruously daubed with snow. By this time the sky had turned a brilliant blue; the contrast with the trees, still completely white-encrusted, was startlingly beautiful.



That’s the magic of snow, I suppose. As much as it can be a royal pain in the ass, it offers a certain amount of visual compensation - especially here in the South, where it doesn’t stay around long enough to become grimy, grey slush.

Almost before we knew it, we had arrived at our destination, the Dunwoody MARTA station. Not the morning’s intended destination, to be sure, but a destination nonetheless, where we would salve our Elder Daughter-missing hearts with hot coffee and a lazy day under the covers. And the gradually thawing roads welcomed us home.

STARS

“If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inhabiting Greater Suburbia as we do, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I rarely get a really good look at the stars. Light pollution from a myriad of sources, coupled with the smog that accumulates around any urban area, will always manage to blot out all but the brightest denizens of the nighttime firmament. It’s one of those subtle costs of living amongst large hordes of our fellow humans.


A sky full of stars over North Georgia - February 2007.

The human eye can discern about 3,000 stars, but it’s only in remote places, far away from city lights and air, that one has a hope of seeing a fraction of that number. They say that the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, yet it was in a semi-remote part of Québec in the late fall, where the air is cold, crisp, and clean, that I saw the Milky Way with its billions of stars, stretched like a hazy band across the sky. These days I get to see the stars when I make my annual foray into the North Georgia mountains... provided we get a clear night.

And I saw them again on Wednesday night, camped out atop Starr Mountain in Tennessee with Eric, the Jeremiah Johnson of McMinn County.

Now, the last time I went camping in the woods was some forty-five years ago. That was in the summertime, in the wilderness surrounding Camp Wel-Met in Barryville, New York, sleeping under the stars with a small army of fellow Pubescent Snotnoses and a counselor or two. But a few weeks ago, when Eric called me up and asked whether I’d like to accompany him on a cold-weather camping expedition, I was signing on for a different sort of adventure.

We met Wednesday at Eric’s place, the fabled Straight White Compound, and crammed our rucks with the necessary supplies. Sleeping bags and Thermarests. A two-man tent. A portable butane/propane stove and accompanying cooking vessels. Five liters of water, along with a couple of aluminum bottles filled with the Water of Life. Miscellaneous gear. Two mysterious quart-sized Mason jars, wrapped up carefully in a scarf.

“Whatever you do, don’t break that,” Eric admonished. “That’s our dinner.”

Supplies packed, we piled into the Elissonmobile and drove about ten miles to the trailhead at the base of Starr Mountain. Rather than hike the entire way up, we wisely elected to drive about a third of the way and leave the car parked in a turnout. This is trickier than it sounds: The road, an old gravel-and-dirt logging trail built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, was narrow and covered in spots by ice and tree branches knocked down by last week’s storm. But we parked the car without incident, shouldered our packs - each one weighing some 45-50 pounds - and began trudging up the road towards the top of the mountain, stopping every so often to rest our legs and take in the magnificent views to the east.

After a hike of roughly three miles, we were within a few hundred feet of the ridgeline. A reasonable expanse of flat ground was visible to the left side of the trail - Eric later speculated that there may even have been a house there in the distant past - and we decided to make camp.



Aside from setting up our tent, the first order of business was making a fire. We foraged around for some dry wood and a few rocks with which to border the firepit, and Eric set to work. Within minutes, we had a crackling campfire, thanks in no small measure to Eric’s firebuilding expertise... and the chunk of military-issue trioxane he used as an accelerant.



Fire built, we set about heating our dinner... the contents of those two Mason jars. For this we used a portable LPG stove especially suited to the task. What was for dinner? you may ask, and I will answer: Nothing less than a fine pot roast. Beef chuck, carrots, potatoes, and onions, all long-simmered in a rich broth. All we had to do was heat it and eat it, which we did with gusto.

As the dusk settled and the temperature began to drop, we hunkered down by the campfire and enjoyed a few wee drams of Macallan single malt and Jameson’s fine Irish, all the while admiring the sparkling, starry sky through the trees. Only twice did vehicles pass by on the logging road, and in no event did we have to deal with bugs, bears, or boars.

Later, as we folded ourselves into our sleeping bags and read Robert W. Service’s “The Law of the Yukon” - perfectly apropos on a frosty night - I felt a strange sort of contentment, the kind that comes with a challenge overcome. No, it wasn’t as though we were camped out with no tent in an Alaskan whiteout... but we were somewhere other than our soft, comfortable, civilized beds, and it made sense at an unexplainable, cellular level. For, somewhere buried in that reptilian hindbrain we male humans possess, there is a desire to kindle a fire and sleep in the woods out of doors that dates from when our earliest forebears crouched in hollowed-out shelters in the savannas of Africa.

When dawn broke and a hazy sun rose in the east, we cooked up some breakfast and coffee and rekindled our campfire from the embers of the night before. Then we packed up, cleaned up the campsite, and marched back down the mountain to the waiting mud-bespattered Elissonmobile.

[Hiking down a mountain, it should be noted, is way easier than hiking up a mountain.]


A hazy dawn.


Elisson, AKA Mark Frickin’ Trail.

Less than half an hour later, we were back at the Straight White Compound, enjoying hot showers, indoor plumbing, and the glories of Whomp Biscuits and MRE’s. Cushy? Hell, yeah. But it’s a lot harder to see the stars when you’re indoors...

More pics below the fold.

Dusk.


Elisson - a little light-headed.


Reading “The Law of the Yukon” by candlelight.


Morning by the campfire.


Eric surveys the valley to the east.

LUNCHEON AT THE SALT MINE

In the fullness of time, I have had Corporate Lunches in all kinds of settings. Fine restaurants, some in exotic overseas locations. Shanghai hairy crab and Singapore fish head curry. Sandwiches and salads in the office cafeteria. You name it; I’ve probably had it for lunch somewhere... with the possible exception of the local speciality of Evansville, Indiana. That’d be the Brain Sandwich, and you couldn’t pay me to eat that.

One time, I had lunch in the executive dining room at the top of the old Great Corporate Salt Mine headquarters building in midtown Manhattan... a young whippersnapper breaking bread with the movers and shakers making their way through the ranks of middle management on their way to stratospheric senior executive positions. It was a taste of what was possible, given enough business savvy, luck, political acumen, hard work, and general ass-kissing capabilities. Lucky for me, I had none of those characteristics.

The lunches I remember most fondly, though, are the ones I ate in the spartan basement lunchroom in the bowels of the Great Corporate Salt Mine’s research and engineering facility in Baytown, Texas. This was no fancy-pants corporate Dining Hall, no, no. This was bare-bones, minimalist eating at its best.

It was small, this lunchroom, with just enough room to accommodate a few tables and chairs... and a vending machine that offered vile little treats. Tuna fish sandwiches of questionable provenance. Sausage biscuits, consisting of a hard, hockey puck-like disc of sausage shoved between two halves of a biscuit as dry as West Texas itself. Kolaches, a sort of changeling jelly doughnut in which the jelly was perversely replaced, as if by Gypsies, with a heinous porky-tasting cylinder of sausage. There may have been yogurt in there, too, but nobody I know was brave enough to try it.

You showed up at noon; you left at one. Sharp. That was enough time to pound down the contents of your brown bag (unless you were desperate and/or foolish enough to take your chances with the vending machine fare) and squeeze in a game or two of chess.

Once in a while, when the donjon-like atmosphere of our little Basement Luncheon-Hall began to pall, we would pile into our cars and venture out of the Great Corporate Salt Mine’s vast refinery compound to visit one of the local establishments. There were only two that most of us would trust with our precious intestinal health: El Toro, the Mexican joint; and the Brisket Bar-B-Q.

El Toro offered up the kind of Tex-Mex grub that a New York expatriate like me - in other words, someone who didn’t know any better - could love. Simple, inexpensive fare: tacos, enchiladas, chalupas, rice and beans, and the like. The beans, refried Gawd only knows how many times, in Gawd only knows what sort of Porcine Schmaltz, had a runny consistency that no other Mexican establishment has ever duplicated. But for my then-unsophisticated palate, it was heaven. After all, as a college student, I would drive the thirty-mile round trip to Trenton, New Jersey to score twenty-nine cent sawdust tacos - by comparison, El Toro was the Hacienda de los fucking Morales.

And then there was the Brisket Bar-B-Q, where the beverage of choice was iced tea (beer and other alcohols being unavailable not only for lack of the appropriate license, but because of the staunch Baptist views of the owner), and the brisket-and-sausage combo platter was heaven on Earth. It may have been a humble little barbecue place, but it was far better than Otto’s (later to be touted as President Bush the First’s favorite) or any other Houston-area smoked meat option. Years later, I would learn how to make serious Texas barbecue from SWMBO’s daddy... and even later, I would discover Goode Company Barbecue, both of which raised the Bar-B-Q Bar to heights the old Brisket could never achieve. But I still have fond memories of that place, which taught me how smoke, seasoning, and temperature could convert a slab of tough beef into as fine a Luncheon Meal as ever I could want.

Beat the crap out of those vending machine sausage biscuits, for sure.

REMEMBERING MANNIE

Mannie was an unusual guy. What they call in Latin a rara avis: a rare bird.

How else do you describe a Jewish kid in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the youngest of seven sons? “Rare bird” only scratches the surface.

He was a sharp kid, this Mannie. Not only a high school graduate - unusual in those days - but valedictorian of his class. Had a head for numbers. The kind of head that could help a person succeed in business. But first things first. Mannie needed an education... and so he set his sights on the University of Arkansas.

Back in the early 1930’s, a college education cost a minute fraction of what it does today. But in the Depression-era South, money was thin on the ground. Very thin. Tuition, cheap as it was by today’s standards, was completely out of reach for a dirt-poor Jewish kid from Pine Bluff.

That’s when the Jewish community of Pine Bluff stepped in. Yes, there were other Jews in Pine Bluff... rare birds all, yet with sufficient numbers to constitute a community. And there were enough of them so that when they pooled their resources, there was enough money to send Mannie to college in Fayetteville.

As a student, Mannie watched his nickels and dimes. He kept a ledgerbook in which he would write down his expenses. Streetcar fare. A quarter-share in a textbook. (Who could afford to own an entire textbook? Rockefeller?) One day he found a half-dollar and dutifully noted the unexpected income in his ledger.

He pinched his pennies until Lincoln groaned, squeezed his nickels until the buffalo moaned. And eventually he got his degree.

Within nine months of his getting out of school and taking a penuriously salaried job, Mannie had paid back the tuition money the Jewish community of Pine Bluff had given him. Every thin dime.

* * *
Mannie died this past Sunday after a brief illness, waiting until his son Barry arrived at the hospital so he could say goodbye. But he had delivered his valedictory two months earlier at a post-Thanksgiving dinner, a dinner we were privileged to share with him. That night he was animated, full of life and stories... ninety-three years’ worth.

Barukh Dayan Emet: Blessèd is the True Judge. Farewell, rare bird!

HOT COFFEE

Our friends Gary and JoAnn enjoy their coffee. Like us, they bought themselves one of those Keurig machines that brews one cup at a time... it’s way faster than brewing a whole pot of coffee when all you want to do is grab a quick cuppa Joe. And thereon hangs a tale...

We had our Saturday afternoon all planned. As soon as I got back from shul, we - Gary, JoAnn, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I - were going to head out to Dawsonville, a little burg about 45 minutes north of here, wherein lies the Big-Ass Outlet Mall. The ladies do loves them some shoppage... and who are we guys to get in their way?

[OK, shopping on Shabbos is not very... shabbosdik. But I’ve been violating the Sabbath for over 57 years now, and I have no immediate plans to stop.]

We headed out on our little trip around 12:30 and stopped to grab lunch in Roswell. Forty-five minutes later, we were in Dawsonville, checking out the Bargain Merch.

Before we could so much as slap credit card on counter, SWMBO’s phone rang. It was Gary and JoAnn’s security monitoring service, calling the Missus because she is their designated emergency contact. “We’re trying to reach Gary, but he’s not answering his phone. There’s an alarm going off at his house.”

Uh-oh.

“He’s right here with us - I’ll hand the phone to him,” she responded. Turns out Gary had his ringer turned off, and he didn’t feel the phone vibrating in his pocket when the security service was calling.

Nothing gets the pulse racing when you get a call from your security service... especially when you’re more than two minutes away from home. Was it a break-in? What was the problem? It was, the security folks informed Gary, the fire alarm. Something had set it off, and when Gary didn’t answer the phone right away, the security peeps had dispatched the fire department.

A quick call to the next-door neighbor established that it was not, alas, a false alarm. Something was burning in the house! The firemen, acting quickly, broke in through the front door and found the problem: a box that had been sitting on the electric cooktop. Somehow, the cooktop had been inadvertently turned on, and the box, after (presumably) smoldering for awhile, had burst into flame.

We hightailed it out of Dawsonville without spending a red cent (a first), arriving back home a scant 35 minutes later thanks to SWMBO’s expert high-speed driving. She had had the speech all rehearsed in her head in case we got stopped:

Cop: What’s the big hurry - going to a fire?

SWMBO: YES!!!

The fire department was gone by the time we arrived. They had gone in, grabbed the burning box, tossed it in the front yard, and extinguished the fire right there: thankfully, no water squirtage in the house. Amazingly, there was little damage in the kitchen - a scorched stovetop and microwave oven (mounted above the stove) was all. The front door and its frame would need to be replaced, along with the deadbolt lock the firemen had pried open. And the house needed to be aired out, a strong smell of smoke having permeated almost everywhere and everything.

The box that had caught fire was a newly-arrived package from Keurig, filled with little K-cups of coffee. This coffee, now Double-Roasted, sat in a blackened heap in the front yard.

Gary and JoAnn were pretty matter-of-fact about the whole situation. Not a whole lot of damage where they could just as easily have been facing a disaster. It’s not a whole lot of fun to have your house reduced to a smoking pile of rubble.

JoAnn summed it up as well as anyone could. “It’s just things.” You can replace things; you cannot replace people.

Afterwards, we had dinner at our place. I offered Gary some nice smoky Laphroiag single-malt Scotch whisky, along with some smoked brisket and sausage... and he offered to punch me right in the fucking head. (Just kidding.)

As I write this, our friends are resting securely at the Hotel Elisson, where they’ll stay until the smoke-stink-removal people take the blowers away. And there’s at least one lesson in there for many of us: A stove is not a storage area. If you’re not cooking it, keep it the hell off that cooktop! (C’mon - you know you’ve done it.) The other lesson? Smoke detectors are fine and dandy, but a monitored fire alarm system provides a whole lot more protection... especially if something happens when you’re away from home. The monitoring service runs about $20 a month; it’s hard to imagine a better investment.

Now: Anyone care for some hot coffee?

BRRRR

The Weather-Pundits are predicting a shot of wintry weather here in north-central Georgia beginning sometime this afternoon. Snow, even.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of ice and snow to render this part of the country helpless. Snowplows are thin on the ground, as is salting and sanding equipment. When the roads get icy, all you can do is hope the idiot in the lane next to you - or behind you - knows not to brake or accelerate sharply, or to make sudden moves of any kind. And the hills just add to the excitement.

I’m not expecting anything like the storm we got here twenty-eight years ago, during our very first January in Atlanta - the well-remembered Snow Jam ’82. That was a real mess: snow, followed by ice, then more snow. It was four days before we could get out of the neighborhood.

Cold weather per se is not all that unusual here, although a sustained period of below-freezing temperatures like the one we’re experiencing now doesn’t happen often. It’s been colder, though. In 1985, an arctic air mass swept down from Canada on January 20 and 21, knocking the temperature down to -8°F (it was -10° here in Marietta), within a degree or so of the all-time low for the area. What was especially nasty about that cold snap was the inability of Atlanta Gas Light to push enough natural gas through the distribution grid to keep up with demand. Pressure fell, dropping enough to activate the safety shutoff switch on our furnace. That’s right: no heat on the coldest day in over 80 years. [Fortunately, we were able to get the furnace lit after things outside had warmed up a bit.]

No such low temperatures are predicted for us right now. Just snow. And I will cop to being just a little excited about it. It’s that Little Kid part of my reptilian hindbrain, in which are buried the snowstorm-related memories of my earliest days.

Tonight will be a perfect time to light a fire in the fireplace and slurp down a hot cocoa or two.

Update: It has begun...

ONE BITE AT A TIME

Years later, if you had asked Robbie exactly when it was that he decided to eat the elephant, he would have had trouble coming up with the answer.

Perhaps the seeds had been planted in his early childhood. All those elephant jokes...

Q: What’s red and white on the outside, and grey and white on the inside?

A: Campbell’s Cream of Elephant Soup.

Most kids had simply laughed at what had been one of many elephant jokes that had been circulating at the time. But Robbie was different. He had thought to himself: Hmmm. Elephant soup... what would it be like?

Growing up, however, Robbie gave no thought to elephant or other rare viands. He, like many of his generation, was a meat-eater, plain and simple. And by the time he was an adult, he was a carnivore of the first water. He liked - nay, loved - his red meat. A honking big porterhouse? Cowboy cut ribeye? Smoked brisket? An inch-thick burger, running with juice? Robbie was there. Leg of lamb was about as exotic as Robbie cared to get.

But gradually, over the span of years, a feeling began gnawing at him. Was this all there was? Surely, something more exotic was out there. Something more interesting. Something delicious. Something... big.

Inexorably, the disquieting feelings grew.

His butcher may have been the first to notice it: an unexplainable, faraway look in Robbie’s eyes. It was as if he was looking beyond the meat in the case, gazing off into the distance... but at what? When his number was called, he would, with no little effort, bring himself back to reality and focus his eyes on the slices and chunks of beef right in front of him, forcing himself through the ordeal of placing his order.

Robbie himself knew something was amiss, but he had trouble putting his finger on it. The rich steaks, the majestic cuts of prime rib, the tender braised veal shanks that he used to love had turned to ashes in his mouth. Week after week, dinner became an ordeal of pretending things were normal, pretending that he enjoyed falling to his evening meat as he had in the past.

And then, late one night, Robbie sat bolt upright in bed. Suddenly, he knew what he wanted. What he needed. What he craved.

He wanted elephant.

He wanted elephant with a white hot passion.

He wanted elephant as much as he wanted life itself. He had to have it.

Eating an elephant - an entire elephant - became an obsession. All of his activities began to focus, with laserlike precision, on the end of obtaining and consuming an elephant... no matter the cost.

With money obtained from credit cards and unsuspecting lenders - I’ll pay them back later, somehow, he said to himself - Robbie made clandestine arrangements with a few easily-corrupted officials at the local zoological garden. There was an elephant there, a superannuated old codger known as Ezekiel, who was showing signs of reaching the end of his lengthy elephantine lifespan. If Zeke were to, say, trumpet his way off this mortal coil a bit, ahhh, prematurely, why, the zoological garden would need to provide for disposal of the body, would it not? And Robbie was only too eager to help...

Thus it was that, several weeks later, Robbie was the happy owner of a blood-caked band saw and a brace of deep freezers, all packed with gargantuan slabs of freshly-butchered elephant meat. And with his larder fully stocked, Robbie now was ready to set about the business of fulfilling his new dream.

How do you eat an elephant? Robbie knew the answer to that one: One bite at a time. Years ago, he had read a story about a guy who had eaten an entire pickup truck, consuming the vehicle in tiny pieces every day over the course of several years. By God, he would do the same thing! And an elephant, he thought, would surely be more tasty than a Ford F-150.

He set happily to work.

* * * * *
It was several months later, after he had worked his way through about a third of the way through his inventory of elephant meat, that Robbie had a somewhat belated epiphany.

Elephant meat sucked. He loathed it.

It was greasy and rancid-tasting at best, gamey at worst. And not “good” gamey like venison, which he had enjoyed in his pre-elephant days. “Bad” gamey... like bear. Old bear.

Whatever was I thinking? was Robbie’s bitter new mantra.

Robbie missed beef. He missed lamb and duck and ostrich. But he had squandered his money (and all that he could borrow) on elephant, of which he had approximately three metric tons remaining. There was nought else for him but to eat it.

One fucking bite at a time.

DREAM JOB

Joe and Chelo S. were long-time residents of Chicagoland who moved to the northern suburbs of Atlanta to be with their daughter Debbie and son-in-law Sid. That’s how we met them... for Debbie and Sid were (and are) friends of ours.

We would see Joe and Chelo a few times a week, at Shabbat services and at dinner after Thursday evening Minyan... and at the occasional Big Event, like the storybook wedding of their grandson Adam in Malibu, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific.

A lovely couple, they were... and Joe had an interesting backstory, for he had had a long career in a line of work that most of us Penile-Americans would consider a Dream Job.

Joe, you see, worked for Playboy Magazine. He was the guy who prepared the printing plates... which meant that, months in advance, he saw every picture that appeared in that Venerable Periodical, as well as those that didn’t.

Joe know all the secrets. He knew that Miss March had a strawberry birthmark on the left cheek of her ass, and that Miss September had a tuft of pubic hair sticking out of the crotch of her bikini. All of these minor defects were, of course, artfully airbrushed away before the rest of us Lowly Mortals got to gaze raptly upon the finished product.

And he got to make the occasional visit over at the Mansion. Icing on the cake.

Alas, Joe is no longer with us, having suffered a stroke a few years back that sent him to a different sort of mansion... the kind that floats in the sky. But we all remember him fondly, and I think of him with just a tinge of envy whenever I walk past a newsstand.

FALL OF A WALL

For many of the younger people walking the planet today, it is hard to imagine that, once upon a time, a wall separated East and West.

Actually, there were many walls, most of them philosophical and political: the walls that divided the centrally planned economies and authoritarian governments of the East with the captialist, free-market economies and representative democracies of the West. But I refer to a physical wall, the wall that separated East and West Berlin.

The Wall was forbidding, surrounded by No-Man’s Land, topped by barbed wire, illuminated by searchlights, guarded by machine-gun nests. It was not built for defense or protection. It was no shield. It was, rather, like the walls of a prison... for those on the eastern side were trapped, unable to cross to the other side. Even family visits were forbidden, lest the good citizens of the East be exposed to dangerous alien ideologies.

The Berlin Wall came down twenty years ago this week... but the events that set that fall in motion started with Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization of Soviet communism. The glasnost and perestroika movements - latter-day attempts to create a more “human” communism - inevitably doomed it... for communism, as an economic system, can only be enforced by a heavy-handed, iron-fisted government. As the atmosphere of reform spread throughout Eastern Europe, riots and unrest struck East Germany.

I was in West Germany on October 18 1989, the day Erich Honecker - the leader of East Germany and the man who built the Wall - was forced to resign. We were on the Autobahn, enroute from Frankfurt to Worms-am-Rhein, when we heard the news on the radio. It was a little like hearing the rumble of a distant earthquake, one that would eventually swell to world-shattering proportions... reminiscent of that moment in Lord of the Rings when the evil Lord Sauron realizes, too late, that his Ring of Power is about to be tossed into the Crack of Doom and that he is well and truly fucked.

My German colleagues were ecstatic; they knew that with Honecker gone, reunification was just a matter of time. Just how little time it would take, of course, nobody could imagine.

Within two years, the Soviet Union itself would be history... and the Wall, the hated Wall, would be in the form of little chunks, all peddled to people interested in owning a piece of history.

SHAKY GROUND

Last Saturday marked the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieto Earthquake - AKA the Quake of ’89, AKA the World Series Earthquake - that struck the San Francisco area on October 17, 1989.

This was no rattle-the-dishes temblor. It was a major quake, 7.0 on the Richter scale, that resulted in the deaths of 63 people. Many of those people were killed in Oakland when a 1.25 mile long section of the Nimitz Freeway’s Cypress Street Viaduct collapsed, the upper part of the double-decker roadway pancaking down onto the lower deck. It was a scenario right out of a Disaster-Porn movie, the ultimate Bad Commuting Day for 42 hapless drivers.

We get the occasional earthquake here in Georgia, believe it or not, the most recent being just last Saturday - a 2.3 magnitude baby centered just 45 miles southeast of Atlanta. But here, about the only clue there’s a quake going on is the rattling of our glass shower doors in their frame. There are no dramatic scenes of the earth splitting open and swallowing up whole neighborhoods, no houses collapsing or roads with weird kinks.

San Francisco didn’t get off quite that easily, alas.

The thousands of Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants fans who congregated at Candlestick Park to see the third game of the World Series - the quake occurred as the teams were warming up and was broadcast live on national TV - may have been disappointed that the game was postponed... but nobody at the stadium was hurt.

I didn’t find out about the disaster until the next morning, owing to the fact that I was in Switzerland drinking massive quantities of wine and snarfing up plateloads of Lake Geneva perch with various Bidnis Associates. And it was a fortnight later, as I flew into San Francisco enroute home from China - the penultimate leg of a grueling, three-week around-the-world trip - that I could see with my own eyes the darkened hulk of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, shut down due to the collapse of one of the sections of the upper deck. It was more than just a little scary.

Listen: Everyone blathers about “The Big One,” the giant quake that will split western California away from the rest of the continental U.S. and sent it sliding out across the Pacific (or to the bottom thereof) - but the next really humongous quake may very well be one that strikes the Southeast. There’s this little thing called the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and it has a demonstrated ability to pooch out temblors measuring 8.0 magnitude and higher... which would screw us all up to a fare-thee-well. I’m trying to picture a tsunami on Lake Lanier.

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS

I’m striding purposefully down Seventh Avenue in New York City, headed for a dinner appointment, when someone tugs on my sleeve to get my attention.

“You look like a nice young man who works near here...”

I turn. It’s a semi-elderly lady, about five-foot-three, looking like she’s seen a few birthdays north of sixty-five. I figure she’s mistaken me for a local and she’s looking for directions.

But no.

“How would you like to come over to my place? We could have a nice evening together...”

Holy Fuckamoley! I’ve just been propositioned by somebody’s grandma!

“Errr, ahhh - sorry, I’m not from around here. And I gotta run. But thanks for the offer!”

Well, what the hell was I supposed to say?

LIBERTY

My friend Ron knocks another one out of the park with this post about a very special visit to a very special Lady.

Go. Read.

TAKE THREE

The “Take Three” challenge, posted at Leslie’s Omnibus, works as follows:

I send you three sentences. You write 1,000 words in any format you choose - short story, essay, poetry, screenplay, news article. You must use all three sentences. The twist is that you can use them anywhere you want in the story, as long as all three sentences appear somewhere within your 1,000 words.

I’ll select four writers at a time, posting the challenge sentences on Friday, with the 1,000 words due the following Friday.

Leslie asked me to try my hand at this, and since a 1,000-word story is like a 100-word story (only bigger), I figured I’d give it a shot. The sentences set forth in the challenge are highlighted in boldface.

* * * * *
My heart was still jackhammering as I walked away from Final Table. It felt as though a jet of pure adrenaline would squirt right out of my ears if I unscrewed the Panama from my head. There was a brick of Benjamins the size of a cinderblock waiting for me at the cashier. Somehow, I had pulled it off.

I have no idea what impelled me to enter the tournament. No fucking clue whatsoever. I had been playing penny-ante games with my buddies for years, online Hold ’Em for a few months. But I had never spent any time in a bricks-and-mortar card room. Hell, I could’ve counted the total number of times I had ever been in a casino on my fingers... and a few toes.

When Irwin and Barney suggested a trip to Vegas, I wasn’t all that excited about it. But after a while, it started sounding better and better. Barney had a friend who was a fairly serious player. Not a whale, mind you, but serious enough to get a suite at the Bellagio. (Comped, of course. Who the fuck pays for a suite at the Bellagio?) Anyway, this guy had planned a trip out there but had to bail. Instead of canceling, he offered the room to Barney. Free is hard to turn down.

Friday afternoon, I met up with Irwin and Barney at the airport. Three clock-hours later we were sitting in this huge-ass suite, figuring out what to do next. What to do next, we decided, was to grab a quick bite and then check out the casino.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not exactly what you’d call a casino hound. But I love people-watching. There’s always at least one glaze-eyed biddy sitting at the slots or the Keno machines, robotically mashing the buttons, a thin stream of spittle leaking from the corner of her wrinkly puss... a mute testament to the power of variable ratio reinforcement. Keeps gamblers coming back, you know.

There was a ten-dollar blackjack table with a couple of open seats. I sat down and bought in with a few hundred. Blackjack’s OK. Pretty much everything else in a casino is for suckers, but with blackjack there’s an element of skill.

My first five hands were bullshit. I’d have thirteen or fourteen, the dealer showing a face card. Fuck. Draw; bust; repeat. Twelve hands in, I was starting to get a little pissed off. I’d won maybe two out of the twelve, and my stack was melting like a stick of butter under Grandma’s armpit. (Don’t ask.)

Just about when I was ready to say “Fuck it,” and walk away, the cards started coming. Blackjack. Again. A five-six double down capped with a King, with the dealer busting. For the next two hours I rode a hot streak; when I sensed that my luck was beginning to turn, I colored out and stood up.

In a celebratory mood, I decided to take a walk on the Strip in the cool of the neon-lit night. Maybe I’d grab a Negroni at Caesar’s, just on the other side of Flamingo Road. Yeah. I could almost taste that cold, bittersweet goodness...

I had just turned north when I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. A “charity mugger” swinging a clipboard like a weapon and a wearing a determined set to her jaw came barreling down the street in my direction. She planted herself right in front of me and launched right into her pitch, brandishing her lipstick-smeared front teeth.

“Japanese and Norwegians murder hundreds of whales every year! Whales are intelligent! As smart as we are...”

“Sure they are, sweetheart. And they’re delicious. Ever try whale bacon? Tastes like pastrami.”

I was being deliberately cruel, but suddenly I could see a big, red “ASSHOLE!” light up in electric letters over my head. Shit, I thought. I’ve just won a pile of money and all I can do is act like a tool.

The girl had already reached the same conclusion and had turned to walk away. She was muttering under her breath; I was glad I couldn’t make out the words.

“Miss, please don’t go. I’m sorry I was being a jerk just then.” I peeled off five crisp Bennies from my roll and handed them over. “Here. Go save a few whales. Maybe buy yourself a nice dinner.” She looked like she could use it.

She smiled. As she turned to head west on Flamingo, she said, “Thanks, Mister. This’ll be a lucky trip for you.”

Next day, I wasn’t thinking about Whale Girl when I saw a sign advertising a Texas Hold ’Em tourney at the Mirage. Why not, I figured.

* * *
Poker in Real Life is way different from online. Your heart wants to jump out of your mouth half the time, especially when a couple of Kings show up on the board and you bluff that you’re holding the trips.

At first the blinds are small. People are checking each other out, testing the waters. Of course, that’s not action. Action is when the blinds start getting humongous... and the wild men come out of the woodwork.

One asshole kept pushing all-in with garbage pocket cards, winning by sheer luck. The guy was just a twitching loon who needed to be locked up before he hurt himself, much less anybody else. I simply bided my time, folding every hand until American Airlines showed up. Then I jumped on his sorry ass and sent him home.

It was then that I remembered Whale Girl. “Lucky trip,” she’d said.

That’s when I really started playing. Started taking a few big pots. Folded a few hands that I knew were traps. And when I got to Final Table, I knew I had everyone else by the shorties.

So here I am, recovering my wits after pulling off the biggest win of my life. “Save the whales,” I think to myself.

“Collect them all. Win valuable prizes.”

EQUAL... BUT SEPARATE

Another fine essay by my friend Ron Feinberg, this one posted at Like The Dew.

It’s (mostly) about Ron’s experiences as a Jewish student at the University of Georgia in the late 1960’s - a time of growing (but as of yet, very incomplete) enlightenment.

As I read accounts of newly-released transcripts of conversations between Richard Nixon and the Reverend Billy Graham in 1973, I find myself completely unsurprised... especially after reading Ron’s post.

Go. Read it all.

IN A BLACK HUMOUR

I’m enjoying a leisurely Father’s Day, now that we have returned from our annual period of Restin’ in Destin. Part of that leisure involves watching the U.S. Open Golf Championship, which is being contested this year at the infamous Bethpage Black course.

When the Open first came to Bethpage Black in 2002, they played it up as “The People’s Tournament” - the Open at a course not only open to the public, but actually owned by the state. The first Daily-Fee Muni Open! The Open Open! Tiger Woods won that one - his second U.S. Open victory - beating Phil Mickelson by three strokes and helping give the Black course an indelible stamp of legitimacy as an Open venue.

This year, Tiger is struggling, and Ricky Barnes has a commanding lead midway through Round Three. But as I watch the competitors whack the white pill around, I am transported back in time... back to when I knew every fairway of that harrowing course.

Bethpage Black, it should be explained, is but one piece of a majestic five-course complex. Ninety holes, in toto, divided up into the relatively manageable Yellow and Green courses, the increasingly difficult Red and Blue layouts, and the seriously challenging Black course. The Red, Blue, and Black courses were designed by the legendary A. W. Tillinghast, with the Black his final masterwork.

Back in the day, both Eli (hizzownself) and the Momma d’Elisson were regular players at Bethpage... and when I came of age, I was, too. But while Eli was a capable weekend golfer, Momma was out there a good three or four days a week. She was a charter member of a group that called itself the Fairway Women of Bethpage, and at various times had served as club president as well as club champion. Yellow, Green, Red, Blue, Black - she played ’em all.

There was no greater pleasure for the Young Elisson than to be invited to play at Bethpage (or anywhere else, for that matter) with one or both of the ’Rents. We’d arise at the Butt-Crack of Dawn to go and secure a tee-time (Bethpage was a ten-minute drive away), go home for breakfast, then return at the Appointed Hour to play. The round would last a full six hours, thanks to the crowded conditions, but the slow play was only a minor inconvenience. This was Golf, dammit!

Maybe it was my familiarity with the Bethpage courses that impelled me to take a job as a caddy there. For many members of my generation, 1967 was the Summer of Love... but for me it was the Sweaty Summer of Schlepping Other People’s Golf Clubs. It was a fine job for anyone who enjoyed the out-of-doors, especially anyone who had any kind of interest or ability in golf. Well, I had the interest, anyway.

It was a good education. I learned when to talk, when to be still, when to crack a joke. I learned how to tend a flagstick, rake a sand bunker, find a ball in thick woods, assist with reading a tricky green.

I also learned the value of a dollar, for dollars were hard to come by. Lugging a golf bag around eighteen holes would earn you five of ’em, plus a buck or two for a tip. If you were a glutton for punishment, you could do two loops (thirty-six holes) and make an extra five-and-tip, or carry two bags at once to double your pay. It was a hard way to make a little spending money, yet there were a few grizzled veterans who made a living at it, doing two double-bag loops a day to pull down $25 or so. Wiry bastards, they were.

The pay was the same no matter which course you worked on a given day. And so we dreaded the lengthy Black, at least as much for the misery it inflicted upon the golfers as the wear and tear it exacted upon us caddies... for misery tended to work against the golfers’ Tippy Generosity. But a job was a job, and so we would do our best to grin and bear it.

Bethpage was more than golf. In the winter, when the courses were closed to play and snow would transform them into a white wonderland of hills and trees, we would bring our sleds there. The first holes of both the Red and Black, with their elevated tees, offered excellent prospects for Hill-Sliding... and the park even operated a rope tow at the Green course for skiers.

And so, as I watch the Golfy Luminaries ply their weekend trade today, I see a different Bethpage Black. I see my Dad (Happy Father’s Day!) sinking a long putt on the Red’s fifteenth hole. I see my Mom’s tee shot carry the pond on the Black’s scary par-three eighth. I see a red cap that bears the number 99, perched on my head as I look to see where Mr. Fitzboggle’s tee shot lands. Crap - in the woods again.

I see the Bethpage Black of forty-two years ago. Maybe not quite as pretty, but every bit as challenging. I’d give my eyeteeth to play it with the Old Man once more.