Twenty-Two Years: Time I Lived With My Mother and Since She Passed Away

Deducting the year I spent in Syracuse earning a master’s degree in newspaper journalism, I lived 22 years in my parents’ home in Brooklyn before starting my professional career in Connecticut at The New Haven Register. 

Twenty-two years. My mother passed away on this date 22 years ago. As it is this year, February 16, 1996, was a Friday. 

Two years ago I chronicled some memories of Sylvia Forseter on the twentieth anniversary of her death (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2016/02/twenty-years-ago-today.html). Naturally, there were more that never made it into that blog post. Here are some from my first 22 years with her, mostly from the years before my bar-mitzvah.

Mom was the antithesis of the “early to bed, early to rise” practitioner. She stayed up late and did not enjoy waking up early. Mom and Dad worked together in their lingerie factory. Dad would leave the house between 6:30 and 7 am for the near one hour drive up Ocean Avenue, then Flatbush Avenue, across the Manhattan Bridge and through the streets to the parking garage near their factory of the moment on Broadway, anywhere between Houston and East 8th Street. 

Mom would not walk to the subway, the elevated BMT line at Neck Road and East 16th Street a few blocks from our house, until after 9 am. It’s not that she stayed home to shuffle her three children off to school. I have no memory of her making breakfast for us. Nor did she make lunch for us as our school served a hot lunch every day. She just wasn’t ready for the morning. She enjoyed a leisurely cup of coffee and a cigarette before the hourlong ride on the train, less crowded at her preferred time than during rush hour. 

When you run your own business there’s no clock to punch in, or punch out. My parents rarely left the factory before 6 pm. My father navigated the stop and go traffic down Broadway, onto Canal Street, then back over the Manhattan Bridge and the return trek down Flatbush Avenue (idling only to secure a New York Post—back then a liberal tabloid—at the end of the Flatbush Avenue Extension near Prospect Park) before chugging down Ocean Avenue to our home on Avenue W.

She was different than most of our friends’ mothers. She went to work every day in “the city,” an uncommon practice in the 1950s. She liked to say my poor eating habits—she claimed I used to throw green peas at her from my high chair—prompted her escape from housework. In truth, her father had trained his four daughters to be vital participants in commerce, either on their own or with their respective spouses. She’d proudly tell people she was a full-charge bookkeeper, the equal of any CPA, without the high-falutin degree. 

Every Wednesday night she’d do payroll at our dinette table, tallying up the piece-work tickets each sewing machine operator completed the prior week and the time cards filled out by the hourly workers. The next day she’d walk from the factory to the nearby Chemical Bank branch to secure the necessary bills to stuff their pay envelopes. I wasn’t trusted to get the money until after I had graduated college.

The dinette table in our row house attained unparalleled status in our home. It was on that table that Sylvia emerged as an impresario of Jewish culinary arts and social entertaining. Before Rosh Hashanah she would roll dough into small triangles filled with shredded brisket for kreplach (Jewish wontons, or ravioli, your choice of international comparisons). Or she’d sit at a chair while stuffing and then sewing up helzeleh, chicken neck skin filled with matzo meal, schmaltz (chicken fat), and spices. Sounds gross, but it was yummy. (Heck, if the Scots can eat haggis, Jews can swallow helzeleh. On the subject of eating the unimaginable, she also boiled chicken feet in her soup, a, ahem, “delicacy” I never sampled, but was relished by my father and his brother, Uncle Willy—must have truly reminded them of meals back in the Ottynia shtetl of their youth.) 

For special occasions, particularly if they pertained to my brother Bernie, she’d make a crown roast, lamb chops stacked vertically in the shape of a crown. 

Among her other savory treats: sweet and sour lamb tongues, sauteed sweetbreads, gefilte fish, kneidlach (matzo balls), breaded veal cutlets, and the best chicken soup you’d ever slurp off a spoon. She never met a vegetable anybody would like eating. She was not a baker. That last task was assigned to our housekeeper/cook who made dinners for us after our mother returned to work. I’ve never, for example, tasted a more delicious pound cake than the one Bertha baked. My sister Lee agrees. Bernie was partial to her apple cake. 

Even on weekends she abstained from rising early enough to prepare breakfast for her family. If we did eat a cooked meal it was our father who played the short order chef. His specialities were French toast made with leftover challah and what he called “army eggs,” scrambled eggs with fried salami circles.

During my pre-adolescent years my parents socialized quite often. Mom enjoyed dressing up but rarely disposed of any ensemble, explaining that sooner or later the outfit or dress would come back into style and she’d be Johnny-on-the-spot-fashion-ready if she simply stored it in a closet long enough. 

To my mind she had two things that distinguished her when she dressed up. Depending on the weather, she would wear a mink stole (several tails could be attached as optional accessories), a black Persian lamb coat or a silver fox three-quarter length fur coat (she wore that coat to my bar mitzvah reception).  

And, as the daughter and sister of jewelers, she had some impressive pieces of jewelry. I would always wonder from where her jewelry would emerge as it never could be found in her bedroom. It wasn’t until my late teenage years that I was let in on the family secret. My parents has secreted a safe in a closet under the staircase leading to the basement. Dad had built a wooden frame around the safe. He placed a piece of wood in a slot in the front of the frame and draped a blanket before it to conceal its presence. Only after it became difficult for him to crouch inside the cramped closet did they share the safe’s combination with me so I could retrieve the family jewels my mother required that evening.

The dinette table also served as the location of the Friday night poker, hearts or Fan Tan card games my mother organized. The five of us played deuces-wild poker for penny-two-three stakes with two or three of my brother’s friends who would arrive shortly after we finished dinner. We kept a kosher house, but too often in my recollection I was forced to bring a pig to the table as I shook out coins from my glass piggy bank to fund my losses. 

I don’t have that piggy bank anymore, though sometimes I still have to dip into cash reserves during poker games with my friends. Not too often, but enough to remind me of fun times back in Brooklyn those first 22 years of my life.

Celebrating a Father's Birthday With Memories

Today is my father’s 106th birthday. Or maybe his 105th. My brother, sister and I were never sure. He died 18 years ago.

His death certificate records his birthday as January 5, 1911. Dad usually said he was a year younger, one annum subtracted as was the custom for boys in Ottynia, a shtetl in the Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian empire, so he would not be drafted into the army when he turned 18. Back then recruits remained in the military for some two decades, making avoiding the draft by any means no small accomplishment. On his tombstone we inscribed his birth year as 1912.

Of course, by the time our father, Kopel Fuersetzer, turned 18 the empire had been long dissolved after its defeat in what we now call World War I. Ottynia became part of southeastern Poland (today it is part of Ukraine). When he was 16 Kopel ventured far away from Ottynia to the northwest “Free City of Danzig,” now called Gdansk, on the edge of the Baltic Sea. There he lived the life of a traveling salesman until he left Europe for good, arriving in New York in January 1939.

He married our mother three years later. Working together in their lingerie factory in lower Manhattan while living in Brooklyn they raised three children, of which I am the youngest. By any standard they were successful.

He was not a perfect man or father. He was no Alan Thicke of Growing Pains, no Robert Young of Father Knows Best. Nor was he a Carroll O’Connor/Archie Bunker of All in the Family. He was human, which means he made mistakes. He screamed. He got angry. He was, like my brother’s nickname for him, the “Boss,” at work and at home.

But I learned from him the value of tzedakah, charity. Of communal responsibility and service. Of treating workers fairly and with dignity. Of being a good story teller. 

He liked to tell of the time in the 1950s when he accompanied one of his salesmen to the headquarters of C. R. Anthony, a junior department store chain based in Oklahoma City. They met with Mr. Anthony himself. By the end of the visit Mr. Anthony playfully admonished the salesman that if he wanted any repeat business he would have to bring along the storyteller again to close the deal. I think that pleased our father almost, if not more, than getting the order.

As much as some people romanticize life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, Ottynia, near the Carpathian Mountains on the train line between Kolomaya and Stanislav, was not a place our father longed to be in. His ambitions, his drive, his quest for independence led him to seek a more fulfilling way of life, first in Danzig, then in New York. 

From Danzig he would return now and then to his parents’ home—one of my favorite pictures is of him dressed in peasant pants and shirt, almost like pajamas, lying on the oversized fender of a large car in Ottynia. Yet, neither he nor his brother Willy, sole immediate family survivor of the Holocaust, talked much about Ottynia, or Danzig, where Willy lived as well for a short time. They preferred to look forward, not backward. 

Much of what I know about Ottynia comes from a video tape of the two my brother and I conducted some 25 years ago and from writings from some of his landtsmen, fellow immigrants and their descendants from Ottynia. We always were skeptical of our father’s claim to have walked miles to school and back. But our cousin, Norman Latner, in a monograph on life in Ottynia some years back, confirmed that children had to walk several miles to get to school. Instruction lasted through sixth grade. 

Norman also provided an explanation why Dad said they’d have to walk through deep snow. Ottynia, he noted, is “located at 49 degree latitude, which puts it about as far north as Winnipeg, Canada. Winters were quite cold and the summer were hot.”

Our father was active in the Young Men’s Benevolent Association of Ottynia, becoming president of the “society” for many years. He also became president of our synagogue in Brooklyn. When New York University moved to evict small apparel manufacturers from their leased lofts along Broadway, my father led an ultimately unsuccessful city hall protest.

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, to me, the Ottynia society often meant keeping track of phone calls. My father never liked to see anyone on the phone in our house. But he had no qualms using it to talk to his society brethren.

To my brother Bernie, my sister Lee, and me, Ottynia meant a tight knit group of couples that formed a monthly floating poker game, men in one room, women in another. The stakes were nickel, dime, quarter. I don’t know many Yiddish words, I am not even sure it is Yiddish—it could be Polish or Ukrainian—but one of the first foreign words I learned was from Harry Brooks. Whenever he’d need a special card to fill, say, an inside straight, before he was dealt a card, he’d call out, “Chei-cha.” I think it means, give me good luck.

During these card games I learned how to mix highballs for the players. When I was around 10, they would let me sit in for a few hands whenever my mother or father would take a break from the game. It was a lot rougher playing with the women. They took their poker very seriously. The men would coddle me. The women were after my nickels.

Poker aside, what Ottynia meant to Kopel Forseter was continuity. It meant commitment to family and friends. Ottynia meant helping those in need. It meant remembering one’s traditions and roots. 

To Bernie, Lee and me it also meant an impossible to follow melody when reading the Passover Haggadah as Willy and Dad droned on and on. 

For all its simple, peasant-like charm, if I might use that word to describe Ottynia, Ottynia must have had qualities that imbued in my father and scores of others a set of values that have served them well.  

“Today in Ukraine,” my cousin ended his monograph, “there is still a town called Ottynia, but it is not the Ottynia of the Kletters (or Forseters). All traces of a Jewish presence are gone. There are no shuls, no cheder (Hebrew school), no Hebrew texts and no chulent warming on the stove … All that remains of the Ottynia of the past, a place of hardship and a place of joy, lives on in the hearts and the memory of the few survivors, and in us, and our children if we too try to preserve these memories of the past.”

Trivial Pursuits: Baseball, Playboy, Politics

I was scheduled to be spending Tuesday night contemplating a royal flush in diamonds, or maybe spades, as part of a monthly poker game. Instead, I will be looking at a diamond flush with Royals of the Kansas City variety. 

I’m a Yankees fan, so I really have no vested interest in the outcome of the World Series which began Tuesday night in Kansas City between the aforementioned Royals and the NY Mets, except that I harbor three eternal memories involving the Royals and Yankees—Chris Chambliss breaking the Royals’ hearts in 1976 by smacking a bottom-of-the-ninth-pennant-winning home run to launch the Yanks into their first World Series in 12 years. Chambliss’ attempt to run around the bases, barreling over jubilant fans, added humor to the excitement (http://m.mlb.com/video/v2685726); 

KC’s George Brett going ballistic after his home run in the old Yankee Stadium in 1983 was invalidated and he was declared out because there was too much pine tar on his bat, a ruling subsequently reversed (https://youtu.be/PrTYdlaqtxE); 

and Willie Randolph being thrown out at home plate by Brett during the 1980 American League Championship Series. Randolph was waved home by third base coach Mike Ferraro. Owner George Steinbrenner wanted to fire Ferraro, but manager Dick Howser refused, leading to his own firing or retirement (depending on your point of view) and his subsequent hiring by the Royals, the team he led five years later to its only World Series title (https://youtu.be/3uRX9Jwqx-I).

Well, enough of Yankee history. This is, after all, a time to celebrate that other New York baseball team, not the one that has won 27 championships to just two for the Mets. I haven’t followed who the oddsmakers have labeled the favorite, but it would be hard to bet against the Mets given their starting pitchers and closer. The four Mets starters are as dominant as the bunch the Atlanta Braves trotted out during the 1990s and early 2000s and the Baltimore Orioles fronted in 1971 when they had four starters win at least 20 games. But keep in mind, The O’s lost the Series that year, and Atlanta won just one championship despite making the playoffs 13 out of 14 years and being in the World Series five times. 

If you detect a slight edge to my analysis it’s because I’m bummed out that the Mets have pre-empted poker. I even volunteered to host as a TV is next to my game table. But nooooo, my Series-starved Mets-fans compatriots are too hepped up to play and watch at the same time. 

Okay, I get it. But I do hope they care more for the future of our country. I hope they place politics above baseball and tune into the Republican Party presidential debate Wednesday night. Is that asking too much?

Barber Shop Blue: When I turned 40 Gilda threw me a surprise birthday party. Among the presents I received that night were a few copies of Playboy. During the party I went upstairs and saw 10-year-old Dan’s bedroom door closed. Curious, I opened it to find him and two friends poring over the Playboys. I discreetly closed the door before rejoining the adults downstairs.

My first exposure to Playboy was at Paul’s Barber Shop on Avenue X between East 21st and 22nd Streets in Brooklyn, a short 5-7 minute walk from our home on Avenue W. Paul’s was an old-fashioned barber shop back in the 1950s and 1960s. During my single digit years I was content to read the comic books supplied (mostly Superman and Archie) and finish off my haircuts with a free wad of Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum. 

But in my teenage years, with Frank joining the barbering staff and doing razor cuts to control my naturally curly hair, Playboys started showing up on the magazine tables. I don’t think I have to tell you, I did not read Playboy for the articles. 

Really? Here’s what ticks me off about Conservative Republicans—a friend of mine emailed photos of George W. Bush interacting with injured servicemen during his presidency with the following caption: “Have you seen any photos like these in the last 6 years? Me neither.” 

“Surely you jest,” I responded. “Please don’t tell me you are extolling the man who put our brave soldiers in harm’s way under false pretenses, the man who is responsible for more American military deaths than any president since Richard Nixon, the man who is responsible for two wars that have mired us in trillions of dollars of debt? 

“Please don’t tell me you applaud him. And please don’t believe that Obama has not interfaced with our troops. And let’s not forget that Obama has comforted too many of our fellow citizens bereft by mass killers that the NRA and its acolytes, including your friend George, refuse to stand up to.” 

Crime Story Edition, Men from Mars, Louis the Smuggler and a Tall Dark Stranger

“You left the lights on in the computer room last night,” my good wife gently admonished me early this morning as she prepared to go to work.

“No, I intentionally left the lights on,” I replied. Why? Because from 12 am to 2 am last night a police helicopter kept circling our neighborhood. When I called the police I was told there was an ongoing police investigation in the area.

“In other words, you’re searching for someone.” 

“There’s an ongoing police investigation.”  So much for confirmation.

Armed with that knowledge, I decided the last place a suspect would try to break into was a house with lights on, so I kept the lights ablaze in the computer room after I posted my last blog shortly after 1 am. 

Smart, huh? Except Gilda pointed out I left some first floor windows open and unlocked, making entry rather easy. 

Next time I’ll play more attention to those CSI television shows.

A couple of minutes ago I checked the local newspaper’s Web site. Yup, the police were trying to locate a man who twice crashed his car into other automobiles, injuring two others, and fled the scene just blocks from our home. They caught him around 4:30 am (http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/01/motorist-flees-crash-hutchinson-parkway/13464017/).

Best Sellers: Disclosure. The Bridges of Madison County. Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend. Fatal Cure. Like Water for Chocolate.

Did you know those were the top five best selling fiction novels the week of February 13, 1994, according to The New York Times Book Review? Or that the number two book in the “advice, how-to and miscellaneous” category was Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus? And that Howard Stern’s memoir, Private Parts, ranked tenth on the nonfiction list?

Am I some kind of savant to know such an obscure bit of publishing history? While I claim to be a know-it-all, the answer is quite simple—Gilda was cleaning out some “old” newspapers on her night table when even she was surprised by the age of her discovery. 

Now, if I could only find a way to use this 20-year example of newspaper hoarding to justify my habit of accumulating junk. Hmmm …

From Dump to Dumbo: Oh, to be a kid growing up now in Brooklyn, to be taken by one’s parents to Brooklyn Bridge Park, to experience the joys of playing by New York harbor. It’s a wonderland to be savored, a reclaimed landscape to be treasured for its natural beauty and man-made niches (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/arts/design/hey-mister-ive-got-a-park-i-can-sell-you.html?_r=0). 

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, the area now gentrified and embraced as Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) was to be avoided. Thanks to my father, I became quite familiar with the territory. You see, my dad had a customer near the docks for the half-slips and panties he manufactured. Near the end of Old Fulton Street, right before the water, Louis LaFlotta ran a dry goods store. My brother Bernie always called him “Louis the Smuggler,” though the only danger we experienced was the air of mystery and peril that permeated any visit to his storefront. 

We’d go on the way home from my father’s factory on lower Broadway. We’d string together a dozen boxes of half-slips and panties, toss them into the trunk and drive to LaFlotta’s. It was usually dark when we’d pull up in front of the store. When I was young, my dad would go inside. As a teenager, I would be sent in to collect the cash, hundreds of dollars, with a warning to be careful. Sailors or longshoremen were considered unsavory characters.

From LaFlotta’s we’d make a left turn onto Furman Street, under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that invariably was backed up with traffic. Furman Street never was. It became a favorite time-saving detour of my Brooklyn-prowling days.

Now that Ellie and Donny live in Brooklyn I’m retracing many of my old stomping routes. LaFlotta’s has been replaced by trendy eateries and saloons. And Brooklyn Battery Park is a car magnet. Now, just navigating the few blocks of Old Fulton Street can take 15 minutes or more. 

The old Brooklyn was definitely easier to get around in than the new Brooklyn.

Tall Dark Stranger: Flipping through the TV channels today I landed upon a rerun of Maverick, starring the recently deceased James Garner.

Sunday nights in the late 1950s at the Forseter household in Brooklyn my mother controlled the television. ABC Channel 7 at 7:30, a rotating series of westerns. Cheyenne was her favorite. She drooled over Clint Walker.  Sugarfoot starring Will Hutchins she could live without. 

My favorite was Maverick when it featured Garner as Bret Maverick. I wasn’t enamored of Jack Kelly as Bart or Roger Moore as Beau, but Garner’s Bret probably instilled in me a love of poker and the idea to keep a secret stash of cash for emergencies. Bret pinned a thousand dollar bill inside his ruffled shirt. That’s $980 more than I secret around but let’s not quibble about a few dollars. It’s the concept that counts.

BTW, for those who didn’t get the bold face reference Tall Dark Stranger, here are the lyrics to the Maverick theme:

Who is the tall, dark stranger there? 

Maverick is the name. 

Ridin' the trail to who knows where, 

Luck is his companion, 

Gamblin' is his game. 

Smooth as the handle on a gun. 

Maverick is the name. 

Wild as the wind in Oregon, 

Blowin' up a canyon, 

Easier to tame. 

Riverboat, ring your bell, 

Fare thee well, Annabel. 

Luck is the lady that he loves the best. 

Natchez to New Orleans 

Livin on jacks and queens 

Maverick is a legend of the west. 

Riverboat, ring your bell, 

Fare thee well, Annabel. 

Luck is the lady that he loves the best. 

Natchez to New Orleans 

Livin on jacks and queens 

Maverick is a legend of the west. 

Maverick is a legend of the west.

Nuts to You

Tonight’s poker game at my house has been postponed because of the snow and late scheduling conflicts by three players who previously committed to show up. If I were a vindictive man, I’d name names. But in this time of Mandela inspired forgiveness, I’ll follow Madiba’s example and not hold a grudge.

Which brings me to the real reason behind this post, inspired by the time a few years ago during another hosting of my group’s poker games when a friend got up to get a beer and was stunned by the vast quantity of nuts arrayed across the second shelf of the refrigerator. He joked about our house being inhabited by squirrels. 

Truth is, on that second shelf we have regular almonds and dry roasted almonds, slithered almonds, cashews, pecans, shelled and unshelled pistachios, pine nuts, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, chocolate covered peanuts, and trail mix packs. A true squirrel heaven. We have such a wide array of nuts because most mornings my breakfast consists of almonds and cashews combined with assorted fruit, all smothered in whipped cream. Gilda usually takes dry roasted almonds, brazil nuts and some pecans for snacking during the day. 

You might be scratching your head wondering if we’re eating the wrong stuff, but you wouldn’t be if you read Jane Brody’s column in Tuesday’s NY Times (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/snacking-your-way-to-better-health/?ref=health&_r=0). Once considered bad for you, nuts are now a first line of defense against such illnesses as cancer, heart and respiratory disease. 

Despite their high fat content nuts are said to reduce bad cholesterol. They also can lower triglycerides. Unfortunately, I started my nut regimen way after my triglycerides topped the four digit level. They’re under control now, most notably from a changed diet along with a supercharged omega-3 fish oil capsule, Lovaza. You have to be careful with Lovaza, or any fish oil capsule, for that matter. If one of the pills leaks, the others in the bottle are infused with an overwhelming fish smell. That apparently happened with my most recent Lovaza prescription. I couldn’t get the fish oil smell off my hands despite repeated washings with soap and water and a spritz of Purel. It got so bad I had to call the mail order pharmacy to complain. I suspect I wasn’t the first to do so as the pharmacist was quite apologetic and accommodating, agreeing to send out a replacement order ASAP.  

Memories From the Mail

Oliver Munday had no way of knowing, no way of knowing his illustration accompanying a NY Times Op-Ed piece Tuesday on the meaning behind Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” would evoke memories of the Nazi extermination of my father’s family in the shtetl of Ottynia, a small town in what is now the Ukraine, but back during World War II was part of occupied Poland.

Munday’s illustration portrays air mail delivery of a letter. It depicts a bird with outstretched wings, wings made to look like jail cell doors, a letter carried in its bill (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/opinion/dr-kings-righteous-fury.html?ref=opinion&_r=0). Among the treasures my father left are four postcards from his family that trace Ottynia’s fate during the war. The first three bear stamps from CCCP, the Soviet Union. The intertwined sickle and hammer symbol of the proletariat  is at the top left corner of each postcard. At the start of the war, Ottynia fell into Stalin’s hands as part of his Polish partition pact with Hitler. 

Soviet stamps and symbol are on the fourth and final postcard. Though the black ink is fading, the postmark is from September 21, 1941. In red ink, just below the middle of the front of the postcard, is the imprint of another official insignia, a bird with outstretched wings, a swastika inside a circle in its talons. Fourteen days later, perhaps even before the postcard arrived at my father’s residence at 148 Van Sicklen Street in Brooklyn, the Nazis killed most of the Jews who lived in Ottynia, trucking them to a mass grave before shooting them. Only his brother, Willy, survived from his immediate family. Their parents, their sisters and brother, and Willy’s first wife and son were killed. The Jewish presence in Ottynia, initially recorded in 1635 but perhaps from many years earlier, ended after more than three centuries.

My father left Ottynia when he was 16 to live and work in Danzig (now Gdansk). He emigrated to the United States in January 1939. As many from his village who came before (and after) him did, he joined the First Ottynier Young Men’s Benevolent Association, eventually becoming its president for many years. Two Sundays ago, the association held its 113th annual gathering. About 30 of us met in Mendy’s delicatessen in Manhattan for a luncheon, less than one-twentieth the number that assembled in the Hotel Commodore in 1950 for the jubilee celebration of the society. 

My father and Uncle Willy (who came to the States after the war) rarely talked about Ottynia. Indeed, nostalgia for Ottynia was not an emotion I would associate with any of the men and women I knew growing up who came from the town. That’s not to say they didn’t have memories of life there. It’s just that, like my father, they preferred to look forward, not backward. They lived in the company of their surviving friends, not the ghosts of the departed.

In Ottynia, my father said he ate potatoes every day. He became so fed up with eating spuds that upon arriving in Danzig he vowed never to eat a potato again. He kept that promise to himself for about a decade until one day a waitress coaxed him into trying some potatoes with his meal. Well, the rest, as they say, is history. He was a meat and potatoes man for the rest of his life. He rarely ate any other vegetable. Just potatoes. Hardly anything green ever graced our dinette table in Brooklyn. 

Though he would return now and then to Ottynia—one of my favorite pictures is of him dressed in peasant pants and shirt, almost like pajamas, lying on the fender of a large car in Ottynia—he'd always go back to the city life of Danzig. 

In my father’s house in the 1950s and early 1960s, the telephone was a necessary evil not to be used for prolonged conversation unless it was being used to communicate with his society brethren.

Ottynia had a very personal meaning to my brother Bernie, my sister Lee, and me. It meant a tight knit group of eight couples that formed monthly floating poker games, men in one room, women in another. Nickel, dime, quarter stakes. I learned how to mix highballs for them. When I was around ten, they would let me sit in for a few hands whenever my mother or father would take a break from the game. It was a lot rougher playing with the women. They took their poker very seriously.  The men would coddle me. The women were after my nickels.

Poker aside, what Ottynia meant to Kopel Forseter was continuity. It meant commitment to family and friends. Ottynia meant helping those in need. It meant remembering one’s traditions and roots. For all its simple peasant-like charm, if I might use that word to describe Ottynia, Ottynia must have had qualities that imbued in my father and scores of others a set of values that served them well throughout the four corners of the earth. What my father learned in cheder (Hebrew school) and in the public school he attended through sixth grade in Ottynia laid the foundation for a successful business and personal life that has extended into his children and grandchildren and hopefully will continue for generations.

  

What I'd Like to Hear, Part II

Having been disappointed by Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, I thought it only fair to delineate what I expect from Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats this week during their national convention. Yes, Obama inherited a blown up economy, two quagmire wars and mounting deficits. It won’t be enough to recount his successes in bringing home the troops from Iraq and setting a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. It won’t be enough to say he ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden and many other drone strikes that have decimated the leadership of al-Qaeda. It won’t be enough to say he saved the auto industry. It won’t be enough to say unemployment would be a lot worse without the stimulus package he pushed through. It won’t be enough to say Obamacare was passed. 

It won’t be enough because Americans always choose to look forward with nary a glance in the rear view mirror. So, Barack, what will you do for us in the next four years? How will you work with Congress? Will you vigorously stump for a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, or will you fight just for the Oval Office chair Clint Eastwood parodied last week? How will you convince us you would not squander a majority in both branches of the legislature if you’re lucky enough to get them? How will you show us you wouldn’t be an emasculated president if Republicans win control of the Senate? Or even if they just retain their House majority? 

Let’s be brutally honest. The last two years amply demonstrated that being chief executive vouchsafed your war powers and your foreign policy visions. But Republicans in the House and Senate effectively stymied your domestic initiatives once Democrats lost working majorities in both chambers. So as they say in Texas Hold ‘Em poker, are you going to go “all in?” Will you appeal directly to the American public and make the case for Democratic congressional and Senate candidates? Congress’ approval rating is at an all-time low because nothing, nothing is being done under the present configuration. 

You need to sell the total Democratic package. You need to set forth a vision and a program, a specific program, to get more people back to work. To create more jobs. To reduce the deficit. To prosecute white collar criminals in the financial industry with the same vigor that ordinary people face when they violate the law. To rebuild the infrastructure of our country, not with lofty words but with real projects that put people on the payroll. Will you fight for an increase in the minimum wage so working families can gain some additional purchasing power? How will you protect the solvency of Medicare and Social Security? How will you project American strength versus China and Russia? Romney has chosen belligerency. You must show strength, not appeasement. 

Romney tried to sell disappointment in Obama offset by trust in a largely unknown challenger. Obama must emerge from his convention as a battler, a leader who will fight not just to retain his job but as someone who will champion the middle and working classes with specific programs. Programs to create jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

Penny Ante

The news hardly stirred a ripple below the 49th parallel, but word came down from Canada last week that our friendly neighbors to the north are about to do away with their pennies. Because they costs 50% more to produce than what they are worth, “the Royal Canadian Mint will end its production this fall as part of (an) austerity budget,” the Associated Press reported (http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=re2DUYAT).

Hardly a press-stopper, but its implications to American society and commerce no doubt will be felt in the coming years, as our government, too, considers shelving the penny to save money. I doubt many people will lament its passing, except for those of us old enough to share nostalgic memories of penny candy bars, long stick pretzels, two-cents plain sodas, and the fun of pitching pennies against a wall.

I’ll be particularly sad as I associate pennies with one of my most vivid childhood memories—the weekly, Friday night poker games my parents ran for our family of five and two or three of my brother’s teenage friends, Jerry, Stanley, and Michael. As our home was less observant than Bernie’s friends’ homes were, they would file in one by one after their Sabbath eve meals concluded. I never knew if their parents were aware they were violating the Orthodox prohibition on touching money on the Sabbath.

I suspect we started playing poker around the time I was eight-years-old, my sister Lee, 10, and Bernie, 12. Stakes were penny-two. The games were noisy, rowdy affairs, often punctuated by complaints that Michael had sweaty hands and was bending the cards out of shape.

Our parents treated us like adults sitting across a card table. If we were old enough to play, we were old enough to lose, and lose graciously. We usually played deuces wild, seven card stud. Sometimes, jacks or better. I can’t rightly remember how much money we’d start off with, but I definitely can recall many a time I’d have to excuse myself for a few minutes while I went into my bedroom to coax more pennies out of my clear glass piggy bank. Overall, I’d say I won as often as I lost, but I surely learned more proper behavior from the times I left the game lighter, and with eyes not as dry as when I sat down to play.

We played poker for several years until our father returned from a trip to Japan when I was 11. He came back with rules for a Chinese card game, Fan-tan. I don’t fully remember all the strategies of the game, but here’s a link if you’re interested in the rules: http://www.pagat.com/domino/sevens.html.

Fan-tan kept our interest for a little while, until we began playing a version of Hearts that incorporated some aspects of Fan-tan.

For about six years, card games were our weekly Friday night diversion, except during the summer when we’d be away at camp. All that changed, however, when Bernie entered Brooklyn College. Our mother decided we needed a more cerebral pursuit, so she initiated Friday night Scrabble games. Bernie and I became quite proficient, but Scrabble did not have the same appeal to his friends, nor to our father. Lee, Bernie’s friends, and Bernie, as well, awakened to more hormonal interests. Friday night at the Forseters no longer enjoyed communal status. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the penny loses its currency status.

As Time Goes By

After almost an hour of watching everyone but me win, with only one white, 25-cent chip of my original $20 stake in front of me, I finally won a hand during last night’s birthday poker game. My friends tried to treat me with rachmanus (pity, compassion), but someone forgot to tell the god of poker to smile on my cards throughout the evening.

For a while I did have a string of good fortune. At one time I was ahead by almost $20. But the last round of seven hands during our three-hour session was not pleasant. By game’s end, I managed to hold onto just $2.75 in winnings. As they used to say about sports contests that ended in a tie, it was like kissing your sister—nice, but not really exciting (at least it’s not supposed to feel exciting).


Today’s mail brought an unexpected present from Jane and Ken G., a copy of a new book edited by Jonathan Safran Foer (author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)—New American Haggadah. Imagine my delight then when I turned on a recording of Tuesday night’s Colbert Report and discovered Stephen Colbert’s guest was none other than Jonathan Safran Foer. Here’s a link to the interview: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/410087/march-06-2012/jonathan-safran-foer


Two weeks ago while riding home listening to an NPR report on the Iran nuclear crisis, I learned about SWIFT, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a clearinghouse used by most countries and large corporations to expedite foreign transactions. The report said SWIFT was considering expelling Iran, a punishment that could severely cripple its economy even swifter (pun intended) than the economic sanctions already imposed by Western powers seeking to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Here’s a background article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/swift-may-expel-iran-s-central-bank-hindering-oil-payments.html.

Short of outright military action, expulsion from SWIFT seems to offer the most powerful means of convincing Iran it is not prudent to continue its nuclear program. There are, of course, consequences, as Avi Jorisch, a former U.S. Treasury official, explained—“We need to choose at this point if we want Iran to get a nuclear bomb or take the chance that oil markets will spike.”

Oil prices already have spiked and will go higher. But that’s a shared sacrifice, not the personal and forever endowment a death or injury would consign to military families who serve our country or any other that would raise arms against Iran. Two weeks later and I’m still waiting for SWIFT action.