Different Slants

Posted on August 11, 2011

“So, Miss, I want to make Payment Arrangements”

There will be a late fee, Sir

But I’m already having trouble paying you

Sorry, Sir, but that’s the rules, Sir

I tried to call 611 to get you, but this message wouldn’t let me

Wait a minute, Sir, I’ll check on that

(pause)

Oh, that’s an automatic upgrade!

What for?

Well, you qualify for a new and better phone…

But I don’t want one

I don’t know how to use the one I already have

Oh, but Sir, you’ll be able to connect directly with the internet!

(pause)

Excuse me, Miss–but, what’s your name?

(pause)

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

by Robert M. Katzman © February 25, 2011

Hot

Hot

Day

Poor Man

Living in a

Rich Man’s town

Cars stretched out

Like a

Highway to Hell

Gotta get home

I whip around the Mob

Sail around the shoulder

Running for that

Last Green Light

(Read on …)

(Note to my Readers) Holly Rotman-Zaid is a real person, a friendly and vivacious woman whom I met at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast.  So, this letter isn’t creative writing.  But after we met, I simply couldn’t remember her last name.  European Jewish names are not normally hyphenated.  They are already difficult enought to spell one at a time.  If my last name was Katzman-Schechter, I imagine I’d spend all my time spelling it.  All my time.  So, I decided to call that woman I met  Holly-Hyphen,  which I think is a pretty cool name for anyone.  Holly likes it, in any event.

There are other good reasons I have trouble remembering people’s names, but, well…that’s another story.  In the meantime, read this one)

Hey, Holly,

I’ve thought about how you seem to understand both the exoticness of  what I do and the tremendous challenge of trying to make people realize what treasures exist in this too small store.  Getting up every day of the week to wait in what is frequently a silent store gives credence to my alternative name for this place: 

The Paper Prison:    Can’t stay.  Can’t leave.   Jewish Purgatory.

On the other hand, now you have my first book. Like most people who don’t know me, you will be very surprised by what you learn about the bottom stratum of Chicago retail people and how on the edge they live.  About how other people who believe they occupy loftier and more secure lives (as the devastating recent Recession has proven to be a fantasy) treat people whom they feel are lesser souls then they are.

I had hoped to be able to teach a class about creative writing, to show people who think they have to study other writers before they can sing their own songs. I had two years of college, left after unexpected and major cancer surgery and never took a class to learn  what I believe is innate in some people, just as people who feel compelled to sing will often do it for free, just to be heard. 

I believe some people are born storytellers, that it’s involuntary, that they must do that–record time in some comprehensible way–and then tell others about it.  Storytellers capture time in verbal nets. They must, because sometimes there are words–ideas–that are too beautiful, too powerful, to let escape into the void.

Read my first book in order, even though the stories are not especially chronological. I intended for people to read it that way and to wonder about what will likely seem to be incomprehensible behavior.  About two thirds of the way through the book, there is one story that answers that.  My relentless motivation will fall into place after that. But once you find out why, you won’t like what you learn.  True stories aren’t always so pretty.

There are nine completed books. I have also done all the cover design, photography and when there was no picture, I drew an illustration to solve that gap. My dream is to get my books into the Chicago school system, from middle school on up. After all, I’m preserving unique Chicago urban history that no one would know any other way, in a frank and often brutal first person narrative.  Where’s the other guy who wrote a history of newsstands in the middle of the Twentieth Century?  They’re all dead now, that’s where.  I’m the relic. 

Most people who read my stories online don’t scroll back very far.  Try it. Besides the recently posted Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah story, about the hard death and unexpected rebirth of one of America’s last back-issue magazine stores, read about friendship among immigrant criminals in Joy’s Diamond Ring if you want to learn more about me and my often silent universe. 

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

Part 5 (scroll down for parts 1-4)

Then very carefully guiding my hand, he tilted it so that all the valuable little critters fell neatly back into their glassine home, where all the inhabitants were equal.  He folded the top of the envelope over, returned the envelope to its appropriate slot on the black tray, surrounded by dozens of other such envelopes, and returned the tray to the yawning black safe behind him.  Buddy then placed his hand flat against the safe’s thick steel door and pushed it until I heard a distinct “click” sound as it locked itself.

Buddy then showed me a nice-looking platinum ring with all its little prongs standing straight up, as if reaching for a stone to grasp.  They looked like tiny baby birds to me, stretching their necks, waiting to be fed.  I said it would be fine, in my vast experience as a connoisseur of jewelry.  Buddy nodded, and told me to wait there in his office and he would assemble the ring on the spot.

He placed the diamond I’d selected into the ring, right there in front of me, as I stood next to him at his workbench.  He carefully, skillfully, pressed down all of the prongs, as he slowly turned the ring to attend to each one in turn, to firmly hold the diamond in place. Then he washed the assembled ring in some solution to make it sparkle.  He dried the ring, placed it inside of a little black velvet jeweler’s box and handed it to me.  That…was it.

He also handed me a certificate of authenticity stating the exact number of carats, or fraction thereof, the diamond’s color and other information my insurance company would need. Buddy then signed and dated it as I watched him.

Then, I paid him.

In cash, of course.

My Dad’s relationship with Buddy and his presence in Buddy’s office with me that day assured me that everything was kosher, as we say, even about a Lutheran.  But Buddy the Hun was no ordinary Lutheran.

My Dad’s world was neatly divided into either “us” or “them”. Friend or Foe. It was a crucial difference and all that mattered.  To him, and now to me, too, Buddy was “us”.

And also, my Dad told me that I received much more diamond than I could ever have afforded to pay for otherwise, at that time.

Where did all those diamonds come from?

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

Part 4 (scroll down for parts 1-3)

After Buddy was released from ‘The Slammer’, as my Dad always phrased it, his relationship with my Dad resumed like nothing had ever interrupted it, like World War II, for example.

Buddy the Hun was unavailable to serve his country in that war because he was already serving his sentence in that same government’s Federal Penitentiary.

When they had their first post-prison reunion in 1951, Buddy was trying to decide how to make a living.  My Dad suggested Buddy try becoming a jeweler like he himself had done, after the war.  My Dad laid it out for him: No heavy lifting, the merchandise would never break down, like say, a washing machine, for instance, and (not a small part of my Dad’s reasoning in this situation of career repair) it was distinctly possible to run a store selling jewelry as a cash business.

Buddy the Hun thought it over, especially the ‘cash business’ aspect of it.  Because to Buddy’s way of thinking, he wanted nothing further to do with the Federal Government of the United States—including paying any taxes.  He figured he’d already paid them enough in years of his life.

Buddy knew he had lines-of-credit waiting for him, and he was also fairly certain he could obtain an ample supply of easy-to-move merchandise like diamonds and watches.  What he didn’t know, like how to convincingly portray himself as an experienced jeweler, he would learn.  And his old pal Izzy would be there to help him, as long as it took.

So, with old chits to collect for time served, Buddy the Hun became Buddy the Jeweler, by appointment only.

Time passed.

Decades.

Now we’re back in December 1977.

A week before I made the decision to propose marriage to Joyce, I called my Dad—the former jeweler—and asked him where I should go to buy her a ring, since I knew nothing about jewelry, carats or what something like that should cost.  Being a jeweler wasn’t genetic.

My Dad told me he knew a guy “who would take good care of me”, and to let him make a phone call to arrange a meeting, first.  I said ok.

A couple of days later, on December 27^th, my Dad called me and told me to meet him Downtown at 5 North Wabash, under the elevated tracks, or in other words…at the location of his former store from long ago.  He must have thought I had no recollection of his place, but I did.

He told me he had an old friend there, a guy named Buddy the Hun, who would sell me a ring on December 31^st, the same day I planned to propose.

I first thought, 

“Buddy the Hun?  Is he serious?” 

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

Part 3 (scroll down for parts 1-2)

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 …)