Different Slants

Part 3 

In the furniture store’s office, there was a secretary who answered the phones and did all the filing as the various orders came through from all the salesmen who worked there.  She was a young black woman who set up all the appointments, called “leads” (and pronounced like “leeds”) for my father and the other salesmen to go out and try to make sales.  She was a pretty woman—I met her several times when I was a child—with a big smile and a friendly, cooperative attitude.  She was very popular with all the salesmen.

Her name was Lorene. 

One morning, in 1958, when my father came in as usual to pick up another stack of leads waiting for him in his box on the wall so he could contact potential customers and make arrangements to see them, he was surprised to see Lorene sitting at her desk, quietly crying.  He had never seen this happen before. 

After a moment, not sure if he should intrude in her privacy, he asked Lorene what was the matter?  Was she sick? Did one of her relatives die?  Could he help her somehow?  My father was very chivalrous and protective of women, and seeing her sitting there crying in that office was disturbing to him.  He told me all about this incident years later, just like he told me one hundred other stories about his life. 

Lorene blew her nose, wiped her eyes and told my father that she’d broken up with her boyfriend because he was always drunk and he kept hitting her.  Now he was stalking her and refused to leave her alone no matter how much she pleaded with him.  She was terrified and felt she was at his mercy. 

My father became angry upon hearing her words.  A completely different situation than he was expecting from her.  Flowers wouldn’t do it, this time.  He had three sisters including his baby sister Estelle, then 34 and now 86.  In my father’s immigrant world no one touched the women.  A rule had been broken. 

My father asked Lorene for her former boyfriend’s phone number.  She hesitated, unsure what this friendly Jewish man had in mind.  But then she wrote the boyfriend’s number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.  My father assured Lorene he would solve her problem.  That was his whole persona.  He would either become the Lone Ranger himself, or knew where to find someone else who would assume the role.

A few days later, my father came into the furniture store to pick up his leads from Lorene, and she quietly asked him to step inside of her little office.  He went in there, waited and then she whispered to him, 

“What did you say to him?  My boyfriend called me up last night screaming about cement shoes or something like that and then told me he was through with me, that we were over.  He said he’d never, ever call me or follow me again.  What did you do?”    

(Read on …)

By Rick Munden and Robert M. Katzman

The Situation: Rick and Mary Munden, residents of California for a quarter century, sold their house and car and gave away or disposed of almost everything else they had accumulated during that time so as to condense their life sufficiently to allow them to live their lives on a thirty-one foot sailboat.  Both are now sixty years of age.

Prior to that period, the Mundens lived on another boat in the Caribbean for nine years, leaving the Chicago area via the Mississippi River, learning to operate their sailboat as they went along.  They decided to return to the United States to have a child, who turned out to be Robert Munden.

When they felt Robert was ready to be on his own, and yearning to return to living their prior lives life on water, they bid him farewell, and left the USA in June, 2010, flying to The Netherlands and waited there to collect what few possessions they decided to keep, which they’d shipped from their old West Coast home.

Rick and I, who first met in 1961, on the South Side of Chicago when we were both eleven, will be making periodic reports on the minutia of what it’s like to shrink a shared life to a space smaller than a one-car garage.  Ninety-nine per cent of anyone each of us knows, or doesn’t know, will never live a life like the one they have chosen.  This new series of reports will examine the results of what others may consider to be an unobtainable fantasy.

We will probe, in detail, whom they meet, the problems they encounter—if any—with local governments, the weather, their boat, where they find supplies, the quality and availability of fresh food, how they make repairs, pleasures and frustrations, how they deal with illness if it occurs, how they communicate both locally and with the world, and whatever philosophical musings they, or I, may have about all of the above.  All photos will be supplied by either Rick or Mary.   I have encouraged them to supply many, illuminating as many aspects of their existance as possible.   My personal hope is not to see panoramic vistas, but more of a written and visual diary of everyday life.

This the first report about their new life, as they gradually sail south-east through Europe, with the eventual goal of landing in The Mediterranean Sea before winter sets in later this year.

*****************************************************

Q.
I wonder what you guys do all day.  Do you read, or explore the town or what?

(Read on …)

The Inevitable Postscript…five months later  

In 1963, my immigrant Grandmother, Celia Warman from Poland, gave me a $1,000 United States Savings Bond as my Bar Mitzvah gift, as she did her three grandchildren before me, to help me pay for my tuition to college in five years.  For the Jews, education is more important than gold. 

She couldn’t know, as I myself didn’t know, that I would leave home suddenly the very next year, at fourteen, and have to find a way to support myself.  But the Bond remained in a box, as time ticked by. 

By August 1965, at age fifteen, I opened a newsstand in Chicago’s Hyde Park with a friend, Rick Munden, whom I’d met three years earlier in 6^th grade at Caldwell School on the South Side of Chicago.  It was seven days a week and hard, hard work, especially in Chicago’s terrible winters.  Whatever you may imagine about the “romance’ of running a wooden newsstand when Chicago was the last city in America with four daily newspapers, well, somehow I didn’t see it that way. 

Rick decided to move on in December of 1966 and I stayed there, renaming my little corner of the world “Bob’s Newsstand”.  You may possibly be wondering, what does this have to do with Sarah? 

It’s coming.

And once again, it’s eerie, man.

In 1968, I was accepted at the University of Illinois, when tuition there was $50 a quarter.  I hear it’s somewhat higher now.  At that cost, the newsstand could pay for it, and my grandmother’s Bond slept on in the box.  I entered the school in September, 1968, and was diagnosed with cancer in December, that same year.  The surgery was done on my Christmas vacation, removing the left side of my jaw, and I went right back to school in January 1969.  

I dropped out in September 1969, deciding that I didn’t need college to figure out my future, and instead concentrated on running my still wooden newsstand.  But, on a Saturday night, November 28, 1970, the bone dry structure filled with a thousand Sunday newspapers, burst into flame and was totally consumed in hours.  It lit up the night sky and hundreds watched it burn.  I had been home sleeping for a couple of hours before the midnight shift, and when someone called me, I, too, was one of those watching my future turn to ashes.  There was no insurance for wooden newsstands, which surprised no one. 

The next day, standing in front of the remaining charred floor and a few still upright two by fours, I stood on the corner selling newspapers to shocked customers.  I was numb.  There was no heat and no roof.  My several thousand dollars worth of magazine inventory also burned up in the fire.  I felt bewildered and crushed. 

Then I remembered: The Bar Mitzvah Bond. 

(Read on …)

Part Eight (the final part): 

What went wrong, and then right…at Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah; My undelivered toast and the eerie and unexplainable 1958 incident.   

About a week before Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah party, I asked her to see if she could find a CD she could borrow from the temple’s library that played the traditional Jewish celebratory song, Hava Nagila.  When people have weddings, Bar or Bat Mitzvah’s or any significant Jewish or Israeli celebration or party, this is the song that’s always played, and then the people joyously dance to a folk dance called the Hora. 

The Hora usually involves a large outer circle with everyone holding hands and dancing in a clockwise direction.  Then, inside of that circle is another one, going in the other direction, usually with the married couple or the person being honored in the inner circle.  The music is played loudly and raucously as the circles spin faster and faster, with more and more people joining in as people overcome their shyness.  The song goes on for a long time, or until everyone passes out. 

I’m not much of a dancer, but this is one I never miss.  Or that was until, at my middle daughter Rachel’s wedding in December, 2008, it went on for too long, and too fast, twisting back and forth as the dance requires until my knee blew out and I wore a brace on my leg for about a month after that.  But man…it was a great wedding! 

So, the point is, this extremely frugal Bat Mitzvah had no band and no slick DJ.  I figured we could use the temple’s sound system and existing equipment to play dance music for the kids in general and Hava Nagila for the Hora, in particular.  It mattered to me. 

At this point in the American Jewish Diaspora, there are probably more Christians, and even Moslems, too, that have been to so many family celebrations over the last one hundred years, that there are now collectively more of them who know about this dance, than the total number of Jews in this country. 

(Read on …)

When the senior doctor (and the fourth person) finally had the opportunity to read my x-ray results and came in to discuss things with me, he informed me that I had two broken ribs.  He seemed incredulous, having heard from the earlier doctors how much pain I was experiencing, and no sleep, and then he asked me, with that exasperated tone people reserve especially for idiots, 

“Why did you wait a week to come to the hospital?  You might have had a punctured lung, or worse.” 

I thought to myself about how much work I still had remaining to do, those last three days I had to empty out my store.  I had deliberately left the hardest task for last, because I didn’t want to do it at all.  Disassembling a ten foot wide, eight foot tall rack, that only used ten square feet of floor space but held, incredibly, four thousand copies of Life Magazine from the Sixties.  I was proud of how well I’d used the limited storage space, and how durable the rack was, but never dreamed that one day I’d have to remove it.    

But to make that storage capability possible, I used two inch thick shelves, many steel brackets and a bracing buttress to keep the whole wall of Lifes from falling on the steel shelving two feet away from it.  It was very hard to build and, even if I felt fine, it still would have been very strenuous to take apart.  But I didn’t feel anywhere near “fine” and it took me two hours to salvage all that wood, instead of about thirty minutes.  I ended up drenched and exhausted. 

I thought about the thousands of pounds of lumber I had to load into trucks those last days, aided by several people who volunteered to help me do what I couldn’t do alone.  One of them, interestingly, was the president of my synagogue, evidently a hands-on guy, Mike Rosen, who spent long hours sliding the twelve to sixteen foot long shelves into the truck while I did my best to stack and sort them for unloading while staying inside of the truck. This was the morning after the accident.  It hurt to stand and it hurt to breathe.  But I had so much hard work to do.

I was still unaware of my broken ribs, but Mike could see how much difficulty I was having carrying the long planks to the truck, so he suggested that he do that part while I sort the planks by size, and not have to lift so much.  I looked at the guy, an executive who travels the world for a national company, and whom I assumed lifted nothing heavier than a laptop and a cup of coffee while flying over the continent.  He was only a bit younger than I was, so I told him my concern was that he might have a heart attack from the sudden increase in work, and I wasn’t kidding.  People do what they do, and I didn’t want someone to die while helping me. 

(Read on …)

The ceremony, falling off the ladder, and the hospital incident, but not in that order   

Part Six 

The actual religious ceremony, which Sarah shared with another boy, went perfectly. 

The temple’s longtime rabbi, Jonathan Magidovitch, provided a comfortable setting that made the event both special for the two participants and less tense for them as well.  Although he has done this probably hundreds of times, he nevertheless makes it seems fresh each time he addresses the child and blesses them.  I know he set Sarah at ease, to the limited extent that can be done as one hundred people were watching her, with half of them Christian relatives who couldn’t read Hebrew, nor were they familiar with the temple’s patterns and customs. 

Sarah was also assisted in her chanting the ancient melodies of the Hebrew prayers by the temple’s beautiful cantor, Lynda Dresher, who has a soaring voice and, initially, was a major reason I joined the temple in the first place.  When I was a child, there were no female cantors or rabbis either, so this, to me, is real progress in both equality and the quality of a religious experience.  With three daughters, I want no barriers to them. 

Sarah’s speech was an important part of the event, where she thanks people who have helped her to get to where she was, at the podium, but also to make a declaration of faith and how Judaism mattered in her life.  Not so easy to write at thirteen, but her speech was flawless and flawlessly delivered.  Many people said so to Joyce and me later on at the party. 

While our synagogue has many interfaith marriages, this was the first joint Bar/Bat Mitzvah I’d ever been to where BOTH of the children were blondes.  The concept of somebody supposedly”looking Jewish” may soon have no meaning.  Still, there was a degree of culture shock for me, being the grandchild of exclusively dark brown-eyed, dark brown-haired Yiddish-speaking Eastern European immigrants. 

 But I thought Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah in particular rather pushed the envelope on interfaith family events. 

Without too much elaboration, this is who participated: Besides Joy and I, and her sisters, Rachel and Lisa, and later David, all Jewish, Sarah’s grandmother Helen Bishop was there (her actual father’s mother) and she’s proudly Lutheran.  Joy or I drive her to her church on Sundays.  Her grandfather, Robert Coffin (her actual mother’s father), is Swedenborgian, people who follow the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborgen (1688-1772) Swedish founder of the Church of the New Jerusalem.  This is a rare case where there are less of his followers in the United States than there are Jews, not that it’s a contest or anything.  

Her (other) handsome older brothers were part of the ceremony, too.  William Nelson, 17 and Robert Nelson, 15, both Catholic, were there with their adoptive mother, Judy, whom Joy and I view as a sister to us and Sarah sees as an aunt.  Actually, it’s not all that confusing to any of us.  Religion has never seemed to be an obstacle to love, in any of our families.  Sarah had also been to Will and Robert’s Communions and nobody tries to convert anyone to anything else.  It’s confusing enough as it is. 

Lastly, and frankly, the most fascinating to me, was (Aunt) Sarah’s new baby niece, Natalia.  This beautiful child, with dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, is the seemingly unique combination of the following countries and peoples: English, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Byelorussian,  Native American (Ottawa, Ohio and Ojibwa Tribes) Mexican and best of all, Basque!  And Jewish. 

I can’t wait until someday, someone says to her, on a playground:  

“Hey, Talia!  So…where’s your family from…?” 

All of these wonderful moments occurred on Saturday afternoon, September 12^th 2009. 

(Read on …)