Waiting for the sleeping pill to kick in . . .

Waiting For The Sleeping Pill To Kick In

There are times at night, lying in bed waiting for my evening sleeping pill to kick in, all the flotsam and jetsam of memories past float in at random and I remember some things I had hoped I had tossed away forever. Things I had done and things I had left undone.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The 1930's began with the death of my mother and ended with Hitler invading Poland. All the teen years, all the growing up, all the dances, all the basketball games, all the sweet, hot kisses of new found joys, were about to be behind me. I was twenty years old, an athlete of sorts being a varsity basketball player, and through Milty Lieberman I was able to get a summer job as “athletic director” up in the Catskill mountains. It was just before Labor Day when I got off the train, heading for home when the dreadful news broke that Hitler had invaded Poland. Life was to be changed forever. My decade of being a young man in my twenties was to be given up. War, marriage, college, children filled those life-defining ten years.

It was just a question of time before we got involved in the war. What was the sense of trying to do anything about my life. Before I could even think about it, I had a draft number, relatively safe for a while. Then, one Sunday in December I was coaching a basketball team in Elizabeth, New Jersey (my younger cousin Bill was on my team) and during halftime, we learned that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. Who would have guessed that less than nine months later I would be a brand new second lieutenant stationed at the edge of Pearl Harbor with a 90 millimeter anti-aircraft battery. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is stolen!

I volunteered for the army on January 1st, 1942, with the understanding that I qualified for Officer Candidate School (OCS) but I needed about three months as a private, then a sergeant before I could apply. By the middle of March, I had passed all the requirements and was on the way to North Carolina. I had made arrangements with my sweetheart (a sorority sister of my cousin, Adele) to get married at her family home in Cranford, New Jersey. Milt Saltzman (who was on his way to the Air Force Navigator School ) was my best man.

I need to slow down here because lots of stuff was going on. I was going to be married on March 21. My father showed up and he insisted that we have lunch together before the wedding because he wanted to tell me something important.

My father remains a shadowy figure in my life. I never really got to know him. I do know that he went through a lot of money being rich, then poor, then rich, then I really don’t know. My basic feeling was being an abandoned child. In any case, we went to an Italian restaurant in Newark. It was a holdover from the speakeasy days now long gone. But, my father knew most of these guys as associates during prohibition even though they regularly high-jacked each other’s bootlegger trucks This joint was owned by Fat Sal, whose call to fame was his ability to swallow a hard boiled egg, shell and all. in one piece.

So, we nibbled on some ravioli with sauteed chicken liver and onion in an olive oil and tomato sauce that was the specialty of the house. My father had some boilermakers (whiskey with beer on the side). He had a funny, twisted smile on his face, but said nothing. I waited. What was so important? What was he about to reveal to me? What family secret for life? Nothing forthcoming. After another drink, he seemed ready to talk. “Be a good boy,” he said. That was it. I drove him back to Edith’s house in Cranford. I have a lot to say about my sweetheart, Edith, and our courtship and our marriage ceremony, but that’s another tale. Please wait.

Before leaving for OCS in North Carolina, a bunch of Spartan guys, all now in one uniform or another, agreed to meet at a bar in New York City. Jackie Barnett, Milt Saltzman, Lenny Reisner, and Harold Max were all there. We didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but it was the last meeting of the Spartans. We had a beer or two to show off our manhood and I can’t remember what we talked about, but after a while we decided to go see a stage play. We agreed on “Pal Joey,” starring Gene Kelly (so young) and including (I later found out) Van Johnson as a chorus boy. We left. I never saw Milt or Lenny or Harold again. I saw Jackie many years later, but that is still another tale to be told.

Jackie Barnett:

In the late 1980's I was in southern California for one reason or another. It’s not important. I had some spare time and I don’t know why, but it occurred to me that my childhood friend, Jackie Barnett had a career in Hollywood as a song writer for Jimmy Durante and later as a producer of girlie shows in Las Vegas, and most famous as the TV producer of the Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs tennis match. Curiosity took me to the phone book, and there was a listing for Jackie Barnett. I called and he answered. I identified myself (although he was very cautious about what I had on my mind) but I assured him I was just looking up an old friend. I suggested that we meet and he told me that he had to workout every morning since his recent heart attack, but he had a boat at the Marina Del Rey harbor and we could meet there. He gave me directions.

It was Sunday morning and I got there on time, but Jackie had to open a locked gate to let me in to the boat landings. We did the Hollywood embrace, and I followed him to his boat.

I don’t know what kind of boat I expected a Hollywood celebrity might own, but I wasn’t expecting this. It had to be about twenty feet long, some equipment for sailing and a cabin with two television sets and two telephones and not much else. It looked like it was a permanent fixture and never been out to sea. I could be wrong, but I never asked.

There was a football game on each of the TV’s. One of the phones rang just as we got into the boat. Jackie excused himself and answered the call. I could tell it was all about gambling on one of the games. He said he was putting two bills on the Rams to lose. Then, he hung up. He asked about my family and I asked about his. He excused himself as he watched the TV. He picked up the phone and said that he was going to put “nickel’s worth” on the Bears. It was Jackie’s third divorce that he was just finished with, he told me. Another phone call came and he made some more bets. How is your sister I asked for I remembered he had one and he called her a Yenta.

He went to a small refrigerator and took out a coke and a thick, fatty pastrami sandwich (talk about a heart attack on a plate!) and asked if I wanted any. I declined, but thanked him. I asked if this diet was okay with his heart doctor. He munched and spoke into the phone several more times, but never answered my question.

I managed to get to talk to him a little. I know that there had been rumors that Jimmy Durante had gotten mad at him because Jackie had hocked a diamond studded ring Jimmy had given him, supposedly to get some cash to cover a bet in Las Vegas. I got up the nerve to ask him about that. He told me that wasn’t it at all. Just some hooker stole it from him.

It was getting to be the time for me to leave. We embraced and as I was leaving, he asked a curious thing, “Tell me, was I a happy child?” I looked at him and told him that as far as I remembered he was surely a fun-loving guy. I left.

We were both about eleven years old when we met. His family lived in an apartment house on the corner of Bergen and Monticello in Jersey City. His father was a bootlegger and so was mine, but they never admitted they knew of each other. His father had a grand looking La Salle convertible with large white-walled tires and the spare tire was covered in chrome and on the right running board.

We had a friend in common, Donny Markowitz, who lived a couple of houses to the east of the apartment house. Donny kept pigeons in a coop he built in yard at the rear of his house. The three of us spent a lot of time watching the pigeons mate, have eggs, hatching chicks in time. Afterward I would walk home with Jackie along side. He was short, had black curly hair, and a nice face. He could do impressions of movie stars and celebrities. I’d say, “Do Edward G. Robinson,” and it sounded just like him (“Listen here, kid”). He had James Cagney (“Take that, you punk”) and Wallace Berry (“Aw, shucks, kid”) in his repertoire and could trot them out on command. But, best of all, he did Jimmy Durante. He knew every song that the Schnoz sang. He was funny. Years later, Mr. Durante saw Jackie perform in a small nightclub in northern New Jersey, doing his impersonation. He hired him on the spot.

Jackie was a member of our Spartan Club, and once, in a close election, he managed to make me the president. He did this with the flair of a theatrical trickster. He held the hat for the votes to be dropped in, and he palmed one of the votes that he knew was against me and had put an extra vote for me concealed in the hatband which he dropped into the hat. The votes were counted, I was the presumed winner, and the opposition called it a foul as they reconstructed their votes. Jackie just laughed at them and said the count was right. I was mortified, but being president of the Spartans was pretty important to me at the time. So much for a career in politics.

When we were about sixteen years old, a bunch of the guys we knew would gather in the cellar of Eli Selman=s house where the family billiard table had been converted into a craps table and a former round dining room table was used for poker. There were only soft drinks allowed. Most of the guys smoked . Eli was more than a year older than us and he was big. He would go from table to table taking his cut, about a dollar from each pot. Nobody complained. If you didn’t like it, don’t come back. He was also a numbers runner.

Jackie was hooked on craps. He knew every possible betting combination and the game had honest odds. He had a fistful of dollars and he got all revved up on just the rush the game gave him. He would say to me, “Hey, this is fun.” He had a nice smile.

Eli was a good host and provided sandwiches (for a price) for the players. He would say to Jackie, “Want somethin to eat?” Jackie would always say, “How about a nice big pastrami on rye!”

The boy is father to the man.