Adding a Little Levity Read online

  Landed, with luggage in tow, I hesitatingly began my new life in Puerto Rico with a smiling taxi cab driver who turned a short ride to my hotel into a long one, charging me accordingly.

  Determined to fit in with 98 percent of the population, I purchased a Toyota Corolla. I even tried to mimic their driving style but couldn’t adjust the seat backward and downward enough, until I realized that most Puerto Rican drivers had ripped the front seat out and simply sat on the floor. I wondered how they could see where they were going, and such things as stop signs, traffic lights, and signs directing slow-moving traffic into the right lane. The answer was they couldn’t, which made me wish I had bought a larger, safer car.

  There was another reason why the purchase of a Corolla was not a smart one, made obvious one morning when I found my car, without tires, sitting on four milk crates. The huge fleet of Corollas on the island required servicing, and many young entrepreneurial Puerto Ricans entered the trade, working the night shift. The silver lining in all of this was that my tire replacement took a couple of days, taking me off the road, where anything goes, and usually does.

  Puerto Ricans congenitally drive well in excess of the speed limit, turn on (and leave on) their bright lights from dusk onward, and treat the turn signal stick as if it were coated with the Ebola virus. Lack of driving etiquette? Disrespect for the law? Hardly. Slow down too much, and those parts-seeking entrepreneurs will begin dismantling your Corolla while you are en route to your favorite cockfighting arena. So, the astute Puerto Rican driver will keep those predators distracted with the glare of the high beams and will refrain from using the turn signal to keep them guessing which way they are going.

  Full cultural immersion didn’t occur until my future wife, Diane, brought me to a party at her home, so I could meet her family. Puerto Ricans need to create a word, in English or Spanish, that refers to that period of time when a party is not taking place, not only to round out the lexicon, but to function as an all-clear signal for those of us wishing to avoid at least a few of these fiestas.

  The party was in full swing when I arrived. The shouting and music were deafening. People were too numerous for the space available—exactly how I had imagined it being inside a Ford Pinto with woofers. I didn’t understand a word anyone was saying, which had little to do with my paucity of Spanish language skills.

  No one understood what anyone else was saying because everyone was talking at the same time, several decibels higher than a typical fire alarm. After meeting each of the two hundred people at the party, all of whom were related, I was forced to perform my spasmodic version of salsa and merengue—again and again and again—to the utter delight of all two hundred. No one even pretended to be laughing with me, just at me, and they were not satisfied until all remaining strands of my self-esteem were erased.

  With all this “dancing,” I was getting hungry. The family eagerly offered me some appetizers, a misnomer if there ever was one, of cuajo (pig stomach) and morcilla (pig intestine filled with pig blood and rice). Why do they even bother with the rice on that last one? I politely declined, but the others around me couldn’t eat the sausage fast enough. Most of it found its way inside their mouths, although some squirted onto their cheeks and chins.

  At this very moment, a group of men entered the house playing what I learned later was called Batucada, a relentless, frenzied drumbeat, which provoked images of me simmering in a huge black kettle like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in Road to Zanzibar. I nervously wondered whether this bloodthirsty group, where everyone was related, was ritualistically playing with their food (me on the dance floor) before the final feast. I thought about escape.

  Dinner was announced, and although I was hugely relieved to find I was not on the menu, for now, I was never quite sure about later as I watched Diane’s family continue to gorge themselves. Once seated, I was confronted by Diane’s great aunt, Titi Conchi, carrying a huge pot of food and a ladle capable of knocking me unconscious should she use it for that purpose. Conchi, the family’s food warden, would somehow assess my value system and worthiness for entry into the family by my performance at the dinner table.

  After serving me mounds of whatever was in that pot—goat, rabbit, and other vermin that Diane refused to reveal to me—she watched and waited for any daylight to appear on my plate. Once she spotted it, the ladle came down with a crash, and a new blob of piping hot stew was stacked precariously on the dish in front of me. This was not a battle I was going to win, but I gamely persisted until my inability to breathe had me begging Diane for a respite, even if it meant a return to the dance floor.

  Well, Titi Conchi gave her approval. I married into the family, who gracefully accepted my continued refusal to eat blood sausage. Very quickly, I have found the Puerto Rican culture, customs, and tradition both interesting and endearing. It has been a wonderful time for me, marred only by a recurring dream of being trapped in a black kettle of rapidly warming water.

  • • •

  A FEW GOOD MEN

  The military exploits of George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower, to name a few, were the objects of my fascination as a young boy. If a book wasn’t a biography about a military hero, then I didn’t read it.

  At first, I focused only on the celebrated veterans of American wars but soon became interested in other wars and other countries. Before long, I stumbled upon, and became fixated by books recounting the martial prowess of the Israeli military and the ruthless effectiveness of their national intelligence agency, Mossad, their internal security agency, Shin Bet, and their counter-terrorism unit, Kidon. I learned that three years of military training is mandatory for every Israeli, male or female.

  These books made clear that one doesn’t mess with the Israelis, which to me, meant anyone who is Jewish. Now, I was confused. I was growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Queens, New York, and my readings forced me to reassess the parents of all my neighborhood friends. I hadn’t realized until then what a fearsome group they were. Not only must they have been exceptionally skilled militarily, but they must have also been brilliantly trained to conceal their ferocity as they settled into nondescript towns and villages like Queens.

  Irving Sugarman, my best friend Stewie’s father, had trouble walking around the block twice without resting. He didn’t seem like much of an athlete, based on the effete way in which he threw a baseball. I remember his playing catch with Stewie one day and lasting only a few throws. He complained of tightness and pain in his right arm, probably aggravating an old injury sustained from tossing hand grenades deep into enemy territory. Irving wore a sling for several months after that. He didn’t go to work during this period, though come to think of it, he had never gone to work before that either. Nothing will erase the memory, on those special summer weekends, of watching Irving struggle with his barbecue. He never could manage to ignite the coals, but he was masterful at igniting the fury of his wife, Ethel, whose fiery invective, if directed at the charcoal, would have solved Irving’s barbecue problem. Clearly, he was experienced at withstanding orders barked at him by a superior officer. I imagined Irving as a tank driver, with Ethel as tank commander, sitting defiantly atop the tank’s turret, scouring the landscape for enemies foolish enough to be within firing range.

  Izzy Moskowitz, who lived a couple of doors down from us, seemed to sleep a lot, especially on weekends and the five days between. His wife Ruth and two children said he worked as a mechanic at a gas station, but I never saw him leave the house. I would only see him, on occasion, at his door front—yawning, in pajamas or less, with hair disheveled—when I came calling for his kids to come outside and play. I presumed he must have been assigned often to delicate night operations during his military years and was still catching up on lost sleep.

  I never saw Morty Goldfarb, who lived next to the Sugarmans, without a yarmulke bobby-pinned to the side of his head. Morty almost always wore a suit and tie and perpetually seemed to be on his way to t
he synagogue. Whether he ever got there is anybody’s guess.

  He never liked to do any chores, which must be the reason he always put on a suit and tie and told anyone near him he couldn’t lift anything because of a bad back. Although not as vocal about it, Irving had a similar aversion to lifting things. So, when Morty and Irv faced a task that involved lifting, they called Ethel, who after doing what was asked, unfurled a withering verbal lashing at the two of them. It was painful to watch, but Morty and Irv, whose testicles were largely ornamental, took it in stride. I imagined that Morty was an infantry officer in the Israeli army and may have hurt his back in hand-to-hand combat with some of Israel’s most tenacious enemies.

  Herbie Silverstein lived in the apartment below us. Unlike Irving and Izzy, Herbie seemed to be working all the time. He left his house before any of us woke and returned home long after we had gone to sleep. His children told me he worked at a factory that made lamps and lighting fixtures, which could have been true because their apartment had five times as many lamps as places to sit.

  Herbie was tall but very skinny. His wife, Thelma, was nearly as wide as he was tall. Herbie was a nice enough fellow. He always wore a weak, somewhat goofy smile, and reminded me of a teenager who just completed summer sleep-away camp after winning a half-dozen participation medals. But I had the impression Herbie wasn’t very smart. He never spoke very much, while Thelma never stopped.

  In fact, I can’t recall Herbie ever finishing a sentence. Thelma believed she could better express any thought that may have accidentally entered Herbie’s mind. I figured that during his time in the military, Herbie made up for lack of strength with the leverage obtained from his lanky frame. Besides, I guessed that given his expertise with lighting fixtures, he probably headed the interrogation unit in the counter-terrorism agency. I bet more than one terrorist made the mistake of underestimating Herbie before undergoing one of his interrogations.

  The last of the fathers living on my block was my friend Jacob’s father, Sy Rosenfeld. At first, I mistook Sy for a man of leisure, if for no other reason than I always saw him hanging around dressed in pastel-colored polyester leisure suits. He was no more than five-foot-four-inches tall, and he must have been bald because the hair that sat on the top of his head never looked the same two days in a row. I am not quite sure what happened, but quite suddenly, Sy began working nights and sleeping during the day—or at least trying to since our pickup baseball games were played just outside his apartment window. At first, he would open his window and ask us politely to keep the noise level down, but that proved impossible for us.

  Before long, he would appear at his window in an uncontrollable rage, bellowing at us to quiet down, or else. I was young and certainly no doctor, but he seemed to be suffering from distemper, perhaps caused by the bite of an infected dog. Then again, it could have been the flare-up of a condition he had since his military days.

  My newfound esteem for my friend’s fathers grew with each new book I read about the Israeli military. Knowing they could snap my neck effortlessly, I hesitated to even make eye contact. And I was sure to call all of them sir, especially Ethel.

  • • •

  PUNITIVE DAMAGES

  Sometimes a guy just can’t catch a break.

  Murray Lapelowitz and I became good friends growing up in Queens Village, NY. He lived just a few houses away from mine, we attended the same school, and were in some of the same classes. We started to drift apart when I started dating and Murray did not. His name doomed him in two ways.

  Murray was always awkward around girls, but I was convinced his name had something to do with it. Murray Lapelowitz was the name of someone forty or more years old. When he was sixteen, eighteen, or twenty years old, Murray had trouble talking to girls his own age, most noticeably after he introduced himself. This continued, well, until Murray was forty years old when he finally grew into his name. Yep, forty years old and never been winked at, much less kissed. That is, until he met Ruthie.

  When we were kids, Murray dreamed of being a musician. He didn’t play any musical instruments and had no ostensible musical talent, but he certainly did dream a lot. Unfortunately for him, Murray was a Lapelowitz, the scion of a long line of tailors. His great grandfather was a tailor, his grandfather was a tailor, his father was a tailor, two uncles on his father’s side were tailors, and two of his cousins were tailors. The Lapelowitz’s, perennial fixtures in the community, were known for three generations by everyone who lived along Hillside Avenue between 217th and 221st streets. Murray was whistling Dixie, which he often did, if he thought he would be pursuing music instead of measuring and cutting fabrics for a living.

  As expected, Murray entered the family business after graduating from college and began a rigorous fifteen-year apprenticeship program under the tutelage of his Uncle Seymour. The apprenticeship started with measuring cuffs and worked its way up to altering lapels, the Lapelowitz specialty. Uncle Seymour felt Murray needed an additional year of training, but the family convinced him that Murray was now ready to be put in charge of marking garments for alterations.

  He and Ruthie met on the eHaberdashers.com dating website, attracted to each other by a mutual interest in Pinpoint Oxford fabric and Mahjong. Murray didn’t use these sites very often, but Ruthie did. He could never shake a nagging embarrassment about his name, feeling that it detracted from the image he wished to portray. He still had fleeting hopes of becoming a musician. But whoever heard of a musician named Murray Lapelowitz? He thought seriously about changing his name to Ishmael Lapelowitz but didn’t want to risk his family’s ire.

  After a few days of email, text, and video banter, Ruthie asked Murray to spend a week with her in a cabin in upstate New York. The only time she had available was in three weeks. At last, his luck had turned. The next day at work, Murray exuded a warm glow, was uncharacteristically chatty, and alternatively burst out in throaty laughter, and then in giggles. He had a difficult time concentrating on his work, sticking himself twice with a needle while altering a customer’s cuffs, and then piercing the customer’s ankle twice during the same fitting. By day’s end, Murray would ask Uncle Seymour for vacation for his rendezvous in the woods with Ruthie.

  “You can’t take that week off,” Uncle Seymour said. “It’s high hemming season.”

  Murray pleaded, bribed, and begged his uncle, who eventually relented and gave him the week off. The next day at work, Murray’s glow was fiery, he wouldn’t shut up, and his immoderate laughing and giggling led to a mild seizure. But Murray was irrepressible. Until he went home that night and found an unusual letter waiting for him.

  Murray was being summoned for jury duty by the Federal District Court on the exact day that he was to begin his weeklong getaway with Ruthie. Initially, he brushed it off, confident that tomorrow he would call the Jury administrative office and persuade them to reschedule his service for another time.

  Unfortunately, on the next day’s phone call, the court officer said that as this is a Grand Jury for a murder trial, no exceptions would be made. Murray’s neck muscles tightened, his eyes bulged, and his voice cracked ever so slightly. He had to figure out a way to postpone this. Murray called back and offered the court officer a free fitting and a discount on alterations, but to no avail.

  Realizing that the date would not change, Murray focused instead on getting released from the commitment. He alternately dreamt of Ruthie and researched ways of avoiding jury duty. He thought about applying for a federal job but remembered that he had failed the civil service exam three times. He contemplated joining the military (imagine telling Uncle Seymour!) but discovered that orientation was scheduled the same week as jury duty.

  Ruthie called to say how eager she was for this special week, cooing into the receiver, prompting Murray to grab a few fistfuls of hair from the sides of his head. Murray had one avenue left. He must get himself dismissed from serving on this jury.

  Murray did some more research and found that many attorneys wan
t jurors who can easily be persuaded one way or the other. Showing education, intelligence, and logical reasoning often makes a jury candidate less desirable to the attorney. Murray started to feel better already. He would demonstrate his intelligence and accomplishments during his upcoming interview with the defense attorney.

  When the interview date arrived, Murray wasted no time burnishing his image. After mentioning that he had once considered becoming a lawyer given his family’s extensive experience with suits and briefs, Murray told the attorney that he had studied a semester abroad at Nigeria Community College, and had founded the Queens Village, NY chapter of the Queens Village, NY Stitch and Cuff trade association.

  “He’s perfect,” said the defense attorney.

  Another clump of hair came out of Murray’s head.

  But all hope was not lost—yet. Murray still had an interview with the prosecuting attorney, who might be persuaded to disqualify him. Murray redoubled his research efforts and found that acting stubborn, as if you know everything, often resulted in dismissal; attorneys were reluctant to spend the time and effort needed to deal with difficult individuals. Murray would focus on two particular pieces of advice: question the legitimacy of the grand jury proceedings, and mention the old saying that “a good prosecutor could get a jury to indict a ham sandwich.” And use the George Carlin approach and say that he would make a great juror because he could spot guilty people by looking at them.

  Rehearsed and confident, with an image of Ruthie prancing through his mind, Murray met the prosecuting attorney. But the pressure of the moment caused him to get a little confused. He said, “A good prosecutor could get a bland jury to ignite a liverwurst sandwich,” and “I would make a grand juror because I can stop an innocent person a mile away.”