More Cross-Pollination

Cartoons I did in the 1980s of Fritz and his then wife. Calling him a Nazi is a little unfair - but doesn't really stop me. Always go for the joke.

What a horror to discover that one of your dad's favorite relatives is an unrepentant Nazi, replete with German accent. That he was a decorated (Danish Modern, perhaps) Navy veteran of the Pacific Theater seems incongruous, but true. This is Cousin Fritz. He was to my dad all that was manly and admirable: he got into knife fights, he traveled the world, and probably killed some people. It seems to be one of my dad's greatest regrets that he didn't stick with the Army so he'd been able to fight in WWII.
When I met cousin Fritz, he was a fat, disgusting old man with unpopular (with me) views on Jews and Blacks. They were in collusion, of course. And that was what was wrong with this country. "Don't worry," my mother told me later, "we'll be dead soon and our ideas with us." But she was wrong. The ideas are still floating about, literally, in my wateraerobics class, Omblastit! It was cousin Fritz who provided us with the (what appeared to me to be sanitized) Ruhe family tree. Dad used to say that there were some possible Jews in there, especially with names like Ruhe and Seele, beautiful names that mean "peace" and "soul" in German. You wouldn't hear anything like that from cousin Fritz! There was quite a bit of family tree trimming in Germany, to make your background more palatable, and to save your sorry white ass.
Before WWI, our family received letters from the Fatherland begging that no one join the army and end up fighting their own family. I don't know of anyone the right age in that family to do so. Dad says it was awkward at school having a German name and accent. He also mentions getting in a fight with another boy, but doesn't link it to this.
Fritz fighting was another thing. Fritz had a touchy sense of pride. He was the farm manager for a nearby farm, after working on my grandparents' farm in upstate New York. He was a chaparone (or what my dad calls a "chaparoon") for the two daughters at a dance. When one young swain told the girls to get rid of the "guard dog," the girls made the mistake of telling Fritz about it, as though it were a great joke. "Dog, eh?" he said, and pulled a knife on the guy and suggested they take it outside.
At the same time that Fritz came to America and stayed with my dad's family, another cousin from a different branch came. Dad had nothing good to say about this dandy who arrived with a suit of formal clothes and seemed unfamiliar with farmwork. I think Adolph later had an illustrious career in the laundry/dry cleaning business.
My money is on Adolph, actually. I wish Dad had more stories about him and fewer about Fritz. In the end, Fritz lived in a house packed with newspapers he didn't throw out. His wife had left him (they had not been married long and she told my mother to never marry someone without first checking the state of their bathroom) and he ended his years without indoor plumbing or hygiene of any kind. I think my dad admires that.

The cartoon above comes from a collection I put together while working at the law firm. I can't publish much of it because it's a.) 99% in-jokes 2.) contains material relevant to on-going litigation and lastly, it would be a total bitch to scan and cut and paste, something I did with family pictures, but am not doing for this. I do go back over the cartoons and think some are funny and some show just how painful my life was at the time. sigh.

The Shayner Yid

After New York I moved to Boston. After doing more theatre there than in New York, I applied for a job at a law firm. My dear, old friend from college, Temple Dickinson (who is not Jewish despite the name ... not that a sensible person would think so, but not all people are sensible and he used to get Hannukah cards from one of the other paralegals) told me that they were always looking for more paralegals at his firm to go through a huge document production in a massive national litigation. And, despite my connection with Temple, I was hired.
I met some great people, most of them a great deal younger than I was because they were either just out of college or on summer break from same. One of my favorites was Jere Beck. Jere was a paralegal who was desperate to write comedy. He would write small jokes on post-it notes and read them to us during break. I can't describe Jere without referring to his brother, who looked just like Elliot Gould. So, picture Elliot Gould shorter, slender, and very very blond with bluer than blue eyes. Jere was a nervous type. He literally exploded with laughter when he found something funny.
When Jere was young, his parents split up. He said it was all for the best because they fought constantly and lop-sidedly. His mother would yell and his father would shut down. He'd leave the room and she would follow him, keeping up her end of the argument. Unlike his other siblings, Jere took sides. His father, in his opinion, was wrong, dead wrong, and that was the end of the story. Being the nervous type myself, I can just imagine how painful that was to listen to.
Jere and I were friends, just friends. I was going through a fallow period on that front at that time, one of many, so I was used to it. One day he invited me over to watch a movie, one of his favorites. He was even going to drive me so either I didn't have to take the T or he wouldn't have to explain to me how to get to his place. Jere had a car ... in Boston. I was carfree since my move to New York. He said that his family was coming over. I had heard so much about them, I thought it could be interesting or stressful, but I picked interesting.
Because he drove me straight from work, we got to his place early. He had a lot to do to get ready, etc., so he asked if it would be all right to leave me in the living room alone. That was fine with me.
His mother showed up early. She was tall and pleasant, if a bit intense. Again I felt the eyes on me. Jere introduced us and went on with his mysterious tasks. His mother asked me what my name was again and how it was spelled. Then she asked me when my birthday was. I don't like giving out my birthday. I don't mind people knowing how old I am, but I don't like giving out the date. She was sweet but insistant and I got this bizarre idea that, like my old friend Kathy's mother use to do, she was going to have a private investigator check me out to make sure I was suitable and not just some ... blonde shikseh out for the family money. That didn't seem logical. Because Jere had sided with his mother, his father wouldn't give him any money. But I supposed Mrs. Beck didn't know I knew that. She took out a small pencil and a piece of paper and wrote it all down. Then, after studying it for a minute, she gave me a horoscope reading. Well, hot-damn! I can't tell you what a relief that was. I had been picturing trying to reassure her that I was not after Jere and our relationship was not like that (which inevitably leads to further explanations about how this could be despite the son in question being a "real catch").
Slowly, the rest of the family arrived. We all sat around the room and watched "The Coco-Cola Kid" - a movie that I wouldn't show my mother.
It seemed a rather odd evening, although I couldn't put my finger on it. Was I so imposing that Jere felt he needed his whole family on hand to keep the evening from looking like a date?
It was all explained the next day, although it didn't make me feel any better, when Jere thanked me for coming over.
"That was the first time my parents have been in the same room together without fighting since before the divorce," he told me. I was there to make sure they behaved themselves. He hadn't told me, of course, so that I wouldn't be nervous.
This is not unlike my elderly aunt Cordella not telling us that she intended to die on the trip we all went on to Europe in 1972. She told my mother this on the plane on the way back. "I wanted to die while I was doing something I loved," she said. My mother had cared for Cordella all through Europe, where locations were recalled by how many angina attacks she had, as in, "Oh, Salzburg, that's where I had three!" "Cordella!" my mother shouted over the airplane noise, "we wouldn't have known what to do with your body!" "Oh, that wouldn't have been a problem," she said, "I looked it up before we left." "But you didn't tell us!" my mother pointed out. "I didn't want you to worry," Cordella replied. "You couldn't have told us if you were dead!" she was told. Oh, she hadn't thought of that.

Eponymous

For three years I lived in Manhattan. I am originally from New York state (an upstate hick), but my family had been steadily moving southward until we wound up in the southeasternmost corner of South Carolina. After a number of years of being a big fish in a little pond, I decided to go somewhere where nobody knew my name. I moved to New York City.
New York is a city full of stories, they just need someone with some flair to write them. I don't have that, I only have the stories. This is my favorite.
I was living in the worst apartment building on 82nd street on the Upper East Side, a mere block or two from actual luxury at either end. It was a studio apartment with a former boyfriend as the leaseholder. That's another story.
I was out late on a Saturday morning to pick up some things from the grocery store. I had one of those ubiquitous two-wheeled carts and, for a change, I had gone to the smaller grocery east of us instead of the Grand Union with the enormous pear out front on 86th. Living on a shoestring, I was always looking for a bargain somewhere. To get there, I had to pass a large apartment building with a lobby and doormen. I was on my way back, with a full cart when I was stopped by an attractive but snappish young man who was looking for a deli. "Not what they have in there," he indicated jerking his head at the grocery, "a real deli where I can get a sandwich." I knew just such a place. There was a great deli on Second Avenue. I directed him westward and gave him the particulars of the place. He was so grateful, but still snappish, that he asked if I would like to go.
It was still early for lunch, I had to take the groceries back to the apartment, and this was a stranger who accosted me on the street, so of course I said I'd go. We strolled back up 82nd Street to my drab apartment building and he started telling me about how he came to be looking for a deli (so unsuccessfully) at that hour.
"I'm here for my cousin's son's bar mitzvah," he told me. It was his job to give the opening blessing. Andrew (let's call him that because I promise I can never remember names) had taken the early train in from Boston. He was interning at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. That was nice. I had a friend at Harvard Law School. I went up there occasionally to see him. When he got to his cousin's apartment building, he couldn't get upstairs. The intercom system was down and the Nazi doormen were unable to reach his cousin. So there he was, hungry and nowhere to go.
We reached my building and he offered to carry the cart upstairs. I said he could help, but that it wasn't that heavy, but he insisted on carrying. On the way up the stairs he told me it was the first time he'd picked anything up since he'd had the casts removed from his arms. Hmm, I thought, he's starting the Guilt Thing early. "Casts?" I asked. Yeah, he did gymnastics and was working out on the rings when he snapped both his forearms. I looked him over. I'd seen male gymnasts before and none of them were that tall.
I unlocked the door, hoping my roommate, Fred, would be up. He had just gotten up (he worked on Broadway, keeping late hours), but the sofabed was still out and he hadn't dressed. Fred had an impressive physique from the waist up, but no ass. His chest was covered in mounds of hair of three different colors. He had a carefully trimmed beard. He was wearing tiny silken trunks and no makeup. I told him we had company. I explained to Andrew that as Fred and I had once dated, he felt it his duty to vet all my male companions. His excuse was that People Knew that we lived together and if they saw me out with someone else, they'd wonder why I wasn't with him. So, my male companions had to pass inspection. Fred looked him up and down as I put away the groceries and explained that we had met on the street and were going to the Second Avenue Deli for a sandwich. Fred then said Andrew looked "okay."
As we left the apartment building, Andrew decided that he would try his cousin one more time. We walked east to the fancy-shmancy building and when we got inside, the doorman explained that they had been able to reach his cousin by contacting someone else on that floor and he was to go right up. Andrew then explained he was going to leave me in the lobby. My recollection of the lobby was that it was pretty large and modern with lots of white marble. Andrew was leaving me there because if his cousin knew I was there, I'd be invited upstairs. If I went upstairs they would invite me to the bar mitzvah. If I went to the bar mitzvah, for the rest of his life Andrew would hear about the Time He Brought the Blonde Shikseh to his Cousin's Bar Mitzvah.
That was fine with me. The bar mitzvah was that afternoon and I had other plans. It was a shame, because I'd never been to a bar mitzvah and it would probably make a good story. Whatever I was doing was something I couldn't get out of because I remember being disappointed. Andrew left me in the lobby and I pulled off my mittens and undid my coat and scarf to wait. He was gone a very long time. When he finally reappeared, he explained that he was almost unable to get away at all. The only way he escaped was he had to admit that he had someone waiting downstairs for him. Now, of course, they had to meet me. There was no way out. He went all Dennis Leary on me, bent over, gesticulating, and running his hands through his hair.
We got on the elevator while he coached me.
"I'm really sorry, but if they invite you to the bar mitzvah, tell them you have something else to do this afternoon."
"I do have something else to do," I said.
"They're going to insist," he added, all stressed out.
"It's fine. I have some other commitment."
"And if they ask you, your last name is Schwartz!" he groaned.
Tch, such misery! Why all the tsimmis?
In the apartment, I was surrounded by the whole family. The women had their hair coiffed and protected by toilet paper swaths (as my mother used to do), but, like the men, they were in jeans and shirts. I was introduced all around as "Marf," something Andrew considered to be neutral. Their hungry eyes were on me and it occurred to me that, being in his late 20s, Andrew was being pressured to bring home possible marriage material.
They wanted us to stay and eat there, but Andrew squashed that one.
They invited me to the bar mitzvah and I told them truthfully that I would love to go, but I had a prior engagement.
Andrew extricated us as quickly as was politely possible and we walked silently to the elevator. Inside the elevator he sighed and relaxed and I, unable to contain myself any longer, burst out laughing.
"What's so damn funny?" he asked.
"Schwartz," I said.
"It was all I could think of. It's a good thing they didn't ask."
"You don't even know my last name!" I said.
"Well, what is it?"
"Shopmyer."
"Oh hell, " he said, somewhere half-past relief, "that would have passed."