Brooklyn Days of Yore

Power Broker: Stephen J. Solarz got my father involved in politics.

The nine-term U.S. representative from Brooklyn passed away Monday at age 70. Solarz taught political science at Brooklyn College when I was there (1968-69), served six years as a state assemblyman (1969-74) and began his congressional service in 1975.

Though always interested in politics, my father never involved himself in any campaigns, other than the presidential elections of the Ocean Avenue Jewish Center (OAJC) in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, my father was either president or a power behind the presidency of the synagogue. Solarz recognized his importance and sought him out when he decided to run for office.

Dad forged a paternalistic attachment to the dark-haired future congressman. He was almost 30 years older than Solarz, who, in turn, was only five years older than Dad’s eldest child. Dad would become a ground-level sounding board for Solarz. After he closed his business, Dad would help out the Solarz campaign by stuffing envelopes and other assorted tasks in the office.


Sweaty Anticipation: It was during my father’s glory days at the OAJC that the noise level in the gymnasium would build to ear-piercing extremes. Excitement would grip all those present. Moans would go up after every call. Shrieks of, “Just one more,” would reverberate against the cement walls.

No, a basketball game was not being played (I can’t remember any athletic contest ever happening in the gym). Rather, the sweaty anticipation and exhilaration emanated from the hundreds gathered for the weekly bingo game.

Bingo was a major fundraising endeavor for the OAJC back then, with my parents in charge, mom in the back room watching over the money, dad working the floor. They even enlisted me, first as a bingo card salesman and then as a game caller.

With $1,000 in prizes ($500 for the jackpot game), OAJC bingo drew players from miles around. They were a quirky lot. Mostly middle-aged women, they would engage in good luck rituals. Before the first game, some would run a lighted match under their game cards. Others would scratch their behinds to coax out desired numbers from the air machine that popped out the numbered ping pong balls. Several played a dozen or more cards by sight and memory—no chips over the numbers of the hard-backed board cards or a dab of colored ink on the the paper game sheets spread before them.

Calling the games was the most fun. I’d sit on a platform at one end of the hall, under one of the two electronic scoreboards that lit up each called number. Next to me would be another volunteer. He’d hand me the balls when they were pushed out of the machine. I’d announce the number, wait a second or two and announce it again. As the jackpot game progressed, tension in the hall would become palpable. Forty years ago, $500 was a considerable sum.

I-22, G-53, O-69, N-37. As the cards filled up, with no number producing the cry of “Bingo,” excitement would build. Despite the microphone, players would shout they couldn’t hear the numbers. It was time for the one decorum-producing remedy you could do but once a night. “The next number,” I’d intone, “is, B-Quiet.” For a moment, players would rustle through their cards, looking under the B column for the number. Then they’d chuckle at their gullibility, settle back down and, when finally, a winner was selected, lament they were just one call away from winning the grand prize.

Fundraising bingo is still played in Brooklyn, though not as often as in my youth. In case you missed it, here’s an article from Sunday’s NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28bingo.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=bingo&st=cse


Is Wal-Mart coming to town? That is, New York City?

There are no Wal-Mart stores in the Big Apple, though there surely are plans to plop them down in the five boroughs. Thus, the City Council is planning a debate next month on the impact the world’s largest retailer would have on small businesses and communities throughout the city (http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20101129/SMALLBIZ/101129912).

I could save them a lot of time and money. The impact would be HUGE. And since I’m into saving, I’m going to save myself some creative time by simply referring you to my blog of last April 30 that first commented on the bias elites have toward “Tar-Zhay” and against Wal-Mart (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/04/bite-out-of-big-apple.html). Wal-Mart is denied the same opportunity non-union, small-store busting Target, The Home Depot, Lowe’s and other big box retailers have enjoyed serving New York City residents.

Old habits die hard, which is why I’m still writing Wal-Mart as a hyphenated two-part name instead of the nouveau Walmart spelling now preferred by the corporate folks in Bentonville, Ark. I’ll try to conform, though to be accurate, Wal-Mart is the correct spelling when referring to the corporate entity. Walmart is for the stores only.

Buying Patterns

By most accounts, holiday shopping got off to a rousing start over the Thanksgiving weekend. Black Friday and Cyber Monday today brought out pent-up consumer demand.

The question now is, will the momentum maintain itself, or will consumers revert to their recent years’ practice of “U-shaped” spending, high at the start and finish of the season and almost nonexistent during the middle four weeks, causing panic among retailers and even more discounts than originally planned?

If I were a betting man, my money would be on the U-shape scenario, especially since many of those interviewed for stories said they already completed their holiday shopping because of the great deals they found last weekend and even before the official start of the madcap buying season.

Two more cautionary notes. First, Hannukah starts Wednesday night, so in major metropolitan areas, spending by many Jewish families is virtually complete. Second, news stories pointed out that many shoppers over the weekend paid cash, avoiding credit cards. If the consumer stays true to her budget, that’s troubling news to an industry, nay, our nation, that relies on impulse purchases to pump up the economy and rake in profits.

Perhaps nothing can be better for retailers than strict adherence to planned promotions, investment in style-right assortments and tight control on inventory levels. Retailers cannot be expected to stop running sales cold-turkey. As long as they resist putting the whole store on sale, they can benefit from aggressive promotions. Too often those reporters who wonder if all the sales will eat into profits don’t realize that disciplined discounts generate profit. It’s when panic sets in that profits fly out the window.

Style-right assortments apply to hard goods as well as soft goods. It’s simple—if the right goods are bought by the merchandise buyer, they’ll go out the door under the arms of contented shoppers. But no amount of discounting will get rid of dogs. The ability to select the right goods is what separates great merchants from the mediocre, or worse, the bankrupt.

Too often in the past, retailers loaded the floor with too much inventory in initial orders and replenishments. Customers came to realize they could wait them out for bigger and bigger discounts. Last year retailers started fighting back, retraining shoppers that what they saw on the sales floor would not be augmented by new shipments. If they liked an item that was at full price, or at a modest 20% off, they needed to scoop it up right away or risk not getting it at all. Expect more of the same basic training this year.

Jeter: A Risk/Reward Compromise

Let’s be adults, people.

No one wants to see Derek Jeter wearing anything but pinstripes, so it’s in everyone’s best interests to compromise (you remember compromise—it used to be part of the art of politics, but that’s a digression for another day. Today’s entry, after all, is a sports-themed blog).

The Yankee captain and the team hierarchy are reportedly tens of millions of dollars apart on their proposals for a new multi-year contract, with the latter said to be suggesting Jeter’s worth to the team is $15 million a year for the next three years. Apparently, Hal and Hank Steinbrenner and GM Brian Cashman believe Jeter’s 2010 performance is what can be expected from an aging (he’ll turn 37 next June) shortstop. Last season was Derek’s worse as a full-time player. He hit a mere .270, 64 points below his 2009 average and 44 points below his 16-season average. I won’t bore you with other vital statistics (here’s a link you can check out on your own: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01.shtml).

The point is, the Yankees must feel Jeter cannot be expected to rebound and that their $45 million offer already recognizes the other intangibles he brings to the team, on and off the field. Therefore, any improvement would be a bonus for the Yankees. As such, the Yankees should be receptive to a contract that provides incentives based on results that exceed 2010 levels.

Jeter is admired as a fierce competitor. It’s time for him to accept the challenge. He needs to accept a pay-for-better-play bonus program.

Each year of the contract, assuming he plays a minimum of 150 games per season,
* If he bats .300, he would get another $1 million (if he exceeds his 16-year average of .314, he gets another $500,000);
* If he scores more than 111 runs, another $1 million;
* If he gets more than 179 hits, another $1 million (add another $500,000 if he exceeds 200 hits);
* If he exceeds an on base percentage of .340, another $1 million;
* If he exceeds a slugging percentage of .370, another $1 million;
* If he exceeds an on base plus slugging percentage of .710, another $1 million.

If Jeter rebounds, he could earn as much as $7 million more on his proposed base salary. That would bring him nearly up to his 2010 salary of $22.6 million, not bad for an “aging” ballplayer.

The suggestion by the Yankees that Jeter should test his worth on the open market is petty, demeaning and runs counter to history, at least as far as recent New York teams go. After the NY Rangers let Mark Messier go, after the NY Knicks severed their relationship with Patrick Ewing, both teams went into multi-year tailspins. The Yanks failed to make the playoffs the year after Joe Torre’s contract as manager was not renewed.

No person is irreplaceable on any team. But Jeter is as iconic a Yankee as anyone has ever been. Both the Yankees and Jeter need to man up and agree on a contract with risks and rewards both sides can accept. For the good of the team.

Gifts to Remember

With Black Friday just three days away, the official holiday gift-giving season is upon us. Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes Sunday night he has received four really great presents in his lifetime—a tricycle when he was about five, a $10 bill, a big league baseball autographed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and, recently, a five-pound can of dry roasted peanuts (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7076431n).

No doubt, I received many great gifts as a child. Some were practical—every Rosh Hashanah and Passover my Uncle Willy would come to our home for the holidays laden down with new outfits for my brother, sister and me from his dry goods store on First Avenue off 10th Street in Manhattan. I still recall a snazzy blue suit he brought when I was around 6. In those days, the middle 1950s, boys wore wide brimmed hats, as well. Dressed up in my new suit and hat, I looked like a miniature Don Draper, without a cigarette. And, I think my ears stuck out wider.

I can recall just three really memorable presents from my childhood, none related to a birthday or holiday. The first was a reward for being a good patient. I needed several baby teeth extracted. My mother took me to a specialist in downtown Brooklyn. The oral surgeon propped my mouth open with a short, hard black rubber tube before putting me to sleep. The next thing I knew, a young nurse’s face was circling round and round before my eyes as I emerged from the ether. To reward my good comportment, my mother took me into a nearby store where she bought a six inch, pink plastic school bus hanging in a plastic bag on a display tree. It was kind of a lame toy. Nothing moved on it. It was just an injection molded plastic toy. But then, my mother was never really good at buying presents. As we got older she would simply give us money and tell us to buy whatever we wanted. She was way ahead of the gift-card trend of recent years.

A little earlier, definitely not later than my fifth birthday, we traveled to Philadelphia to visit my mother’s brother. From Brooklyn, we took the ferry across to Staten Island, this being 10 years before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge linked the two boroughs. For some unknown reason, Uncle Sol gave me a toy car. It was about 18 inches long, at least six inches wide, a grey convertible, with doors, hood and trunk that opened, rubber tires that could be taken off with a small tire iron stored in the trunk. All afternoon I played with that car on the parlor floor. I don’t ever recall seeing Uncle Sol again. There was a falling out between him and his four sisters when their mother died. I don’t know if our visit preceded or came right after my grandmother’s death. I only know Uncle Sol never again appeared in my life. We didn’t reach a rapprochement with Sol’s family (his widow, three sons and their families) for nearly 20 years, until Gilda and I married in 1973 and we invited them to our wedding. But that car stayed with me as a favorite toy for many years.

It was either the mumps or chicken pox that confined me to my parents’ bedroom when I was about seven. Mom had returned to full-time work with my father in his factory. I was left in the care of our housekeeper, Jessie. To cheer me up, she gave me an Old West stagecoach. Pulled by two brown horses (with a yellow wheel under their harness to simulate movement), the stagecoach was driven by a grizzled, rubbery man, with Andy Rooney-style bushy eyebrows and a whip in his right hand. The whole outfit was huge—the stagecoach itself had to be at least a foot in length and nine inches high. With the horses attached, the toy was easily 18 inches long. Long after the stagecoach busted up (or was thrown out in one of my mother’s periodic closet cleanings—my baseball card and comic book collections shared a similar fate), I played with the teamster until he, too, outlived youthful play dates.

A Moment to Remember

If ever there was a class and teacher high school sophomores at Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn chose to ignore and make fun of, it was the art class of Shirley Franzblau. No longer awed by being in secondary school, savvy in our knowledge of the ways and means of our private high school, we barely could contain our indifference to the silver-haired Miss Franzblau’s subject and tutelage.

But it is her class that stands out in memory more than any other. It was in her classroom, shortly after 2 on a Friday afternoon 47 years ago today, that the intercom speaker came to life to tell all about the death of a president.

November 22, 1963. I was 14. Like most of my contemporaries, I had finally achieved more than a modicum of political awareness. JFK’s inaugural address was the first I ever heard. His cabinet was the first whose members I could fully name. Similarly, I could identify the nine Supreme Court justices. A year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, images of ambassador Adlai Stevenson showing the United Nations, and through television, the world, photos of the Soviet deployments in Cuba were still fresh in my memory bank. So, too, were the press conferences John Kennedy held.

As I remember it, our class came to absolute silence. I don’t recall anyone weeping. Just stunned silence. Miss Franzblau told us there would be early dismissal. I went home to join, for the next three days, a nation watching history unfold and be changed forever.

I’ve visited the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dallas overlooking the grassy knoll. The sixth floor from where Lee Harvey Oswald fired those fateful shots has been turned into a museum. I choose to believe there was just one shooter, though I don’t discount Oswald may have been part of a more elaborate conspiracy.

I remember nothing else about Shirley Franzblau’s classes. Just one moment in an otherwise forgettable class.

Catching Up

Am I the only one who thinks the leaves have stayed on the trees longer this year? Maybe it’s the relatively warm autumn? Maybe, it’s because there have been few windy rain storms, like the one the other night? Maybe it’s global warming? Whatever, it seems the foliage has stayed with us deeper into this season than in years’ past.

By the way, our Winter King Hawthorn tree held onto a few leaves through Finley Hawthorne Forseter’s first birthday on Tuesday.


I failed to mention last week my mother’s 93rd birthday would have been celebrated last Thursday (she was born Nov. 11, 1917, in Lodz, Poland, arriving in New York about four years later). My mother enjoyed a good adventure yarn, in print or on film. One of her favorites, which she passed down to me, was The Scarlet Pimpernel. She made me read the book and we enjoyed watching the Leslie Howard-Merle Oberson film when it showed up on TV. It did so again this morning and I took the opportunity to spend some time with youthful memories.

My mom would be just slightly older than the women to whom I deliver meals each week. I always ask if they need assistance reaching something on a high shelf. No, they reply. Whether in a single family home or an apartment, they live in a one-dimensional world. Nothing of importance, nothing not needed for everyday life—plates, cups, linens—is stored outside their immediate reach.


One of the stores we frequented when our children were young was Danny’s Cycles. We bought Dan and Ellie their first bikes there. Also my first two-wheeler (a story for another day). We always said hello to Danny, whose father named the store after him and who had given the store to Danny by the time we began patronizing it.

A few weeks ago, in need of new pedals for my exercise bike, I stopped into Danny’s and asked Steve, who had been with the store for about 20 years, since he was a teenager, where Danny was. He was in Florida, retired. I was shocked. Danny couldn’t have been more than 40-45 years old. He’s doing volunteer work there, having been bought out, said Steve. I was pleased to see new ownership had retained Steve. Pleasure turned into satisfaction when Steve told me he was the new owner.


One of my relatives, who shall go nameless lest I embarrass the poor soul, recently sent me some “great literary taunts,” among which comes the following which makes perfect sense when applied to Tea Party members:

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge."
--- Thomas Brackett Reed

No doubt my relative will not be amused, being of the conservative persuasion, to the endless regret of the relative’s spouse. But if you can’t take a joke, what’s the point of sending jokes?


Conservatism creeps up on you. It’s commonly understood that as one ages one becomes more conservative, more set in one’s ways. Probably true. What I used to accept as acceptable college age behavior I now tsk-tsk at. My recent admonition against Four Loko and other alcohol-caffeine drinks might fit into that category if it weren’t for the real danger those mixtures pose. Glad to see the FDA agrees and is forcing the makers of such potables to cease and desist.

Troubling is the reaction of too many (underage) college students to stock up on the brew while it’s still in stores.


Finally, I will not embarrass myself by revealing what infinitesimal percentage of Twitter followers my blog has compared to the 5.3 million who breathlessly await the latest nail-clipping, bra-busting, hair-splitting, pout-mouthed tweet from Kim Kardashian (please, nobody say they don’t know who she is, but just in case, here’s a link from today’s paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/fashion/18KIM.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=kim%20kardashian&st=cse).

Kim, if I may be so bold to call her by her first name, might have started her notoriety with a sex tape, but she’s one helluva marketer.

Scan Me

The growing debate over full-body scanners, or the alternative full-body, including private parts, pat-down, at airport security stations evokes the outcry often heard when corporations, such as car companies, resist making simple modifications to their products because they determine it is cheaper to pay off a few claims, even death claims, than fund retrofits that may be inexpensive on a per unit basis but total tens of millions in the aggregate. How could they be so callous?, we hear. How could they rely on actuarial tables when human lives are at stake?

In the brouhaha surrounding full-body scanners, we’re hearing similar strands, but from the other side—how could the government require them when the danger of an in-flight bombing is miniscule, probably not worth the risk of radiation exposure, much less the psychological trauma of physical exposure to prying eyes? (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/the-full-body-backlash/?scp=1&sq=body%20scanners&st=Search)

People, let’s get serious. No one wants a repeat of 9-11, or a successful shoe or underwear bomber. Imagine the outcry if we could have thwarted such an event and didn’t because we were too complacent, as a government, a society, an individual. As someone who flew 30-50 times a year for 30 years, and still flies about a dozen times a year, I’m in favor of secure air travel. Get over it, America. As a middle-aged, frumpy man told CBS Evening News with Katie Couric yesterday, “If someone is going to get turned on with this body, god bless them” (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7057978n&tag=mncol;lst;5).

For the frequent flyer, including pilots and flight attendants, there is, perhaps, a reason to be concerned about the 385 scanners now in place in 68 airports. Accumulated radiation may be hazardous. But so too is use of a cell/smart phone held close to the ear (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage). I’ll be more sympathetic to the cries of radiation risk from the scanners when I see people drop their mobile phones from their ears.

New York City airports are soon to be scanner-equipped. They might not make the security exam any faster, but I will feel safer when I fly.