The Jews Could Use Some Cartoon Charachters

When it comes to recruiting, Christianity has it going on.

On one hand, you have Jesus hanging bleeding on the cross, appendages nailed and face distorted in pain. That's some graphic shit if your not used to it. The open casket is also kinda scary, Jews don't do that, so I didn't even see my first open casket until my mid twenties. Pretty freaky.

But Christianity also has cartoon characters, you know, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the elves and reindeer. A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way (I'm quoting Mary Poppins so you know I'm right).

Jews, on the other hand, have the Holocaust, the angel of death, fasting, atoning, 500 years lost in the desert, public circumcision, and a holiday based on the lights staying on. When given the choice, how enticing is that? No wonder we're a dying race.

The Hanuka bush was a nice try, but the cartoon characters is what reels them in. So there you have it.

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car Part 6

PUH-LEASE!!!, dear God, let me finish this story already. I never realized how long this story was until I wrote it down. So, to ensure that this is the last installment, I'm going light on the details.

After Tami left, the whole aura of the adventure changed, it got dangerous. Barry, Barb, and the babies (hereto referred to as BBBB) and I went to this "friend" of Barry's apartment. I can't remember his name but let's call him Shlameisel (there's a good yiddish lesson for you).

Anyoy-vay, Shlameisel lived about 15 miles east from Tom in a small one bedroom apartment. After we had been there for awhile, they started discussing who would sleep where. Actually, even though the apartment was small, it seemed pretty big compared to Tom's.

At some point, it was decided that the BBBB's would set up their refugee camp in the living room, and I would sleep with Shlameisel in the bedroom, where he had two twin beds......but then I realized he had pushed the two beds together while I was out of the room.

NUH-UHH! Not happening in this lifetime. When I was fifteen, I wasn't having sex with anyone, ....except myself. Let me tell you, I didn't lose my virginity until I was like eighteen. All the neighborhood boys would always ask if I was a lesbian with the hope that I would prove otherwise with their help....loved that approach, classic,.....but it never worked.

I, ofcourse, made Shlameisel pull the beds apart and put them on different sides of the room. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy and left me alone. Perhaps he sensed that I would cut his throat the first chance I got, which was true. Shlameisel was a perceptive dude.

The next day, the BBBB's went out, probably to roll a homeless person or something, and Schlameisel and I got to chatting. I was saying that I wondered where the BBBB's got the cash for the plane ticket. He tells me that they stole Tom's wallet and blamed it on me.

OH, NO, I don't think so! I walked 15 miles back to Tom's apartment, all by my little self, because I could not live knowing that Tom thought I stole his wallet. It took hours, but when I make up my mind, that's just the way it is.

When I finally got back to Tom's, he, being the beautiful man that he was, took me in and believed me when I told him who really stole his wallet. I am sooo glad I was brave enough to wander around Chicago by myself because if I hadn't, I would be sick about it to this day.

In the end, I called my mother and she wired me a Greyhound bus ticket home. My sister Beth met me at the bus terminal in Cincinnati. I was such a mess she made me walk behind her because she didn't want anyone to know she knew me, for which I couldn't blame her. THE END

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car Part 5

Barry finally resurfaced late in the evening of our third day in Chicago. He said that he had been in jail for the last 72 hours. Apparently, the big red pimp daddy Buick looking car belonged to Barry's mother and he did not ask to borrow it. She reported it stolen. The police found the car in the parking lot of his mothers beauty salon where they had just busted him for breaking and entering. The police confiscated the car and everything in it, and threw Barry into the clinker where he probably slept more comfortably and ate healthier than we did.

Once he returned, we all packed up and left Toms. We ended up at a hotel further east on Lakeshore Drive. Tami had spoken to her mom, and she had to get home like that day. Both our moms were pissed, but I was better at avoiding mine. Barry somehow came up with enough money for one plane ticket home, and it went to Tami, while I stayed for a few more days without her. So, how did Barry come up with the money for a hotel and plane ticket? TO BE CONTINUED

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car Part 4

When Barry left, he was only supposed to be gone an hour, so Barb had no money, and no nothing. That meant that the babies had no food or, even worse, diapers. Don't forget, we were in a one a room partment that had the bathroom down the hall. Those babies stunk.

By now, Tami and I had about ten dollars left between us and we weren't giving it up. We didn't tell them we had it, so we had to sneak off to eat. What I remember most was eating Vienna hot dogs, not to be confused with the sausges of the same name. If you've never had a Vienna hot dog, you've never had a hot dog. The great thing about these little restaurants in Chicago is that they have a "fixings bar" where you can load all kinds of crap onto your hot dog for free. That really worked for us.

I also remember what we spent our last dollar on. Tami had her sixteenth birthday that week, so we spent it on a Snickers bar, and I sang happy birthday to her. We sliced it like it was a cake. It was the best Snickers bar I've ever had. That's why it's good to be deprived sometimes, it makes everything so much more meaningful. Try leaving the house one day with nothing but your car keys, no wallet, no cell phone, and rough it through the day....it's good for you.

While we were sneaking around eating, Barb decided that perhaps Barry wasn't returning. He left her with nothing. All of our clothes and everything were in the car because we didn't think we were staying, we thought we were just visiting. By then, Barry had been gone for two days.

On that third evening, Barb and I left Tami with the babies, and went to the corner pay phone. Barb made the wise decision to call the Salvation Army for help. By the time we got back to Tom's apartment, and we're talking four minutes tops, the police had already arrived. We look down the hallway and there's a whole gaggle of Chicago's finest at the apartment door. We were trying to figure out if it was our door when suddenly Tami's head popped out of the gaggle. Tami is super blonde with huge blue eyes so the contrast was almost stunning and I can still picture it today....hilarious.

It turns out that the police have to come first before a social service will. Once the police determined that there was nothing in there but two stinky babies and Tami, the salvation army came. They were able to help Barb with food for herself and the babies. The next time you clean out your pantry to give to a food drive, be kind, because most of the shit they get is nasty. We're talking canned fish (not tuna) and powdered milk.

However, since Tami and I had parents we could call for help, they wouldn't help us. Me and Tam Tam were rejected by the Salvation Army. Not many people can claim that. Looking back on the whole episode, I can't believe the police didn't arrest us. I mean, what the fuck? We were fifteen year old girls from Cincinnati. We were still too stubborn to call Myra and Marilyn (I like the way that rolls), we would have to suffer a little longer before we would even consider calling. TO BE CONTINUED

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car Part Three

When Barry finally woke up from his nap, we continued on to Chicago. Once we got into town, we went straight to Barry's friend Tom's "apartment".

The building Tom lived in was on the east side of the Chicago loop, right underneath the El. The El is the public transportation train system, and in many places the tracks elevate over the buildings to save ground space. And when I say Tom's "apartment" was right underneath the El, I mean literally. You never felt a structure shake until you've spent a few days under the El, plus, you could see it up close and personal right out the window.

Let's talk about Tom's "apartment". I know efficiency apartments are common, but his bathroom was down the hall, shared with all the apartments on that floor. We're talking old school city dwelling. This is all well for a single guy, but when you stuffed four more people plus two UNICEF babies into it, it became pure comedy. Put the same people in it for three or four days, and it becomes a refugee camp. It was insane.

The inside of his "apartment" was one room, about the size of the foyer in my house, so you wouldn't really describe the layout in terms of area's as much as corners. He had his twin bed in the right corner and his kitchenette in the left corner. There was a small wooden table in the middle with a few chairs. The entire room was covered in what I guess would have been kitchen carpeting. I know this because the pattern on the carpet was the names of different foods, and we slept on that floor, and were tortured by it when we were hungry. We would wake up with the words "EGGS" and "BACON" being the first things we saw in the morning, and the words "CHOCLATE CAKE" and "PUDDING" being the last things was saw at night. Damn that carpeting to HELL! I curse it to this day.

Tom turned out to be a beautiful man, especially on the inside. He actually let us stay there. I can't remember his last name, but I wish I did, because I would absolutely find him. The one sane place in this story was Tom. In the end, you'll see how he in particular probably saved my life. This guy was a SAINT and I can't imagine why he would ever take the six of us in.

The part of the city Tom lived in would remind you of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. I've actually lived in Over-the-Rhine, right at the Mohawk Honor Roll, for several years, in a really beautiful apartment, so I'm not dissing it. Tom's part of Chicago was the epitome of true city living. Even though it had a lot of low income housing, there was also a lot of stores and commerce. If you took a left and walked straight for 15 minutes, you would be on Lake Shore Drive, and the strange sands of Lake Michigan.

Me and Tami must truly be some urban Jews, because we absolutely loved it. We weren't afraid in the least, although we wished we had more money. I had spent a lot of my life in Chicago, so it wasn't completely unfamiliar and I knew my way around. Tami, on the other hand, is always comfortable on a road trip regardless of where it's to, and she is a world traveler to this day.

So, there we were, happily ensconced in Tom's "apartment", and creepy Lincoln looking Barry says he needs to run an errand, and leaves in the car. The errand took him three days, while we were left stranded at poor Tom's place with Barb and the UNICEF babies, with no idea where Barry was, dead or alive. TO BE CONTINUED

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car PART TWO

Before I continue with this story, let me preface it with this. When I look back at this stuff, it's through the eyes of a mother, and some of the things we did scare the crap out of me. It never occured to me that my mother and sisters and friends were all back in Cincinnati worrying about me for an entire week. The thought of what that must of been like for them makes me sick.

Having said that, I will be telling this stories through the eyes of a fifteen year old. Please keep that in mind as the idiocy of this story ensues.

Last we spoke, Tami and I needed to somehow get our mothers to actually agree to our roadtrip. We took the tag team approach. First we visited my mother and told her that Tami's mother, Marilyn, said she could go. Then we visited Marilyn, and told her that my mother said I could go. I remember us sitting on the staircase with her mom, just wearing her down for like an hour until she finally said yes. I think we nagged so long and so hard that our mother's just finally gave in. We told them we would only be gone three days.

Next thing we know, we were headed to Chicago, with twenty dollars between us. We had to sit to sit in the back seat, along with the two stinky babies. The babies were the epitome of UNICEF poster children, snotty noses, dirty diapers, crying....the only thing missing were the big flies hovering around their faces.

As I mentioned in part one of this tale, the car was a big fat pimp daddy red Buick looking motherfucker. The ride was a nightmare and our first introduction to babies, which is probably why I didn't have kids of my own until my thirties.

So, in the middle of all this chaos, Barry decides he needs to pull over and take a nap. What the fuck? Who needs to stop halfway to sleep on a five hour drive. He pulls into this truck stop, and parks between all the huge semis and acts like he's going to sleep. Me and Tam Tam, we were ready to GO, so we proceeded to try and talk Barry into letting Tami drive the rest of the way. The tag team approach was far less effective on him than on our mothers. In hindsight, it was probably a good thing.

As Barry napped we chatted with Barb. Turns out Barry is from Chicago, and his mother lives there where she owns a beauty shop. We were going to stay at an 'old' friend of Barry's place, named Tom. Tom later told us he had only met Barry once or twice playing Foosball at a bar. Scary, huh?

Now that we had been briefed on the plan, we just had to wait for Barry's worthless piece of shit self to wake the fuck up. I think we may have pinched a baby since we didn't have an alarm clock. TO BE CONTINUED

Special Thanksgiving Edition 2008

Let's reminisce about Thanksgivings past. The one that comes to mind was in 1975. At the time, we were living in a house in Roselawn. It was owned by the state because they were buying up properties to build the Ronald Reagan Hwy. It actually took thirty years for the road to be built, but for the few years I lived there, with my mom and two sisters, the rent was dirt cheap.

This Thanksgiving in particular, the oven was broken. Not dead, but would only go up to about 200 degrees. None of us knew how to fix anything, and bringing in someone to fix it was definitely not something we could afford, so we would always learn to work around whatever the circumstance was.

So we cooked a turkey for like 12 hours until it was done. We had dinner at 2 a.m. I can't remember who all was there besides the four of us, but there were a lot of our friends there. Since it was so late, all of our friends had already fulfilled their family obligations, and they were all with us. It was the greatest dinner party of all time.

Living in that house taught me how to make lemonade when life gave us a lemon.

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car

The following story took place during the first week of June in 1977.

School was out for the summer and Tami and I were out of a job. We both had jobs at Baskin and Robbins, where we were paid a dollar an hour under the table, and our employers had the audasity to pretend to tax it. One day we just revolted. Tami quit first, with me soon after.

So there we were, summer in the city, two fifteen year olds with nothing but time on their hands. Mostly what we did was hang around our old elementary school baseball field, usually sitting under these immense old oak tree's. We would do this for the next three months with no reprieve but the company of our friends whose lives were pretty much in the same crusty state as ours. Everybody we knew was bored!

On this particular day, we were sitting on the bleachers, which is something we almost never did. It was Tami, this girl named Barb, her husband and her two infants who were like nine months apart. Barb was eighteen, and her husbands name was Barry and one of the kids was Barry Jr. and I can't remember the other kids name so we'll just call him Curley. Barb was 4'9" on a good day, Barry was like 6'3" , and looked just like Abe Lincoln in all those pictures of Lincoln in his youth at his old Illinois (Kentucky) home kind of pictures. I didn't know Barb well, I knew of her, and she was three years older than us so I didn't really know her in elementary school. I think Tami may have known her better.

You could pretty much say that all of us were trailor trash, except for one thing! Me and Tam Tam are Jewish girls and there's no such thing as jewish trailor trash....the two things are diametrically opposed. On the other hand, Barb and Barry were not jewish so the trailor trash impression is pretty much dead on.

Anyway, we're sitting on the bleachers bitching about how there's nothing to do in Cincinnati and that we would die from boredom and so on. Barb looks at us and says "we're driving to Chicago, why don't you two come along for the ride?"

These were magic words for two bored girls who were to0 young to drive themselves on a road trip, but had the itch to travel even at that age. We decided that, yes, this would be a most excellent summer getaway, we would just hop into Barry's big fat pimp daddy Buick looking car and drive west off into the sunset. Too bad we didn't know that Barry's idea of a "getaway" was much more literal than our own version, and very different as well.

The first step of our plan would be the most difficult; talking (read: conning) our mothers into letting us go to Chicago with people we didn't really know much about. TO BE CONTINUED

When Paula and Tami Went to Chicago in a Stolen Car

The following took place during a one week period in June of 1977.

Tami and I were inbetween jobs. We quit our job at Baskin and Robbins where they paid us a dollar an hour under the table and still had nerve to take out taxes. It's hard finding a job at 15.

Anyway, we had nothing but time on our hands. One of the things that Tam and I have in common is our wunderlust. We LOVE a roadtrip of any kind.

How I Met Tami

In my life, I have three best friends that I have known most of my life. I call them the the three t's, Tami, Traci, and Trisha. They are the sisters I never had but always wanted and know way way too much about my personal genesis.

This is all about Tami. I met Tami on the first day of kindergarden (i spelt that the way it sounds, you'll notice i do that alot). Tami was five and i was four. We were in Mrs Zanders morning class. Tami and I enjoyed many a cracker and milk together.

I have known this girl SOLID for 45 years. The only people I've known longer is my parents and sisters. We've been together through deaths, births, marriages (although i missed her first one because i had issues of my own, but that's a whole other post). Anyiwascrazyatthetime, we've been through it all. Most of it i can't write about because my boys might read this someday, and i am such not the rolemodel in this case.

Sometimes I call her Tami, sometimes Tam Tam, and even Tamala. I cannot imagine how different my life, with every circumstance still the same, except Tami wasn't there, would be today. She is part of my second hand DNA, and who I am today. That's how her constant presence has impacted my life. I know how schmaltzy (yiddish for thick and cheesy) this sounds, but it is one of the most profound relationships I have.

I have many Tami stories to share with you in the future. I've already asked her permission to open the vaults. She has had very blond hair and what is the epitome of big blue eyes her entire life....so be nice if you see her.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I just got back an hour ago after two days in that cultural mecca known as Columbus, Ohio. During the drive, you get to pass through a roughly 25 mile town, which apparently was the Middle of Nowhere. I know this because there are literally no green highway signs the entire 25 miles.

I got subpeoned, which is both difficult to spell and even worse to be the victim of. At work, I'm active in the union, and this chick named Alice got fired during her three month probation period two years ago. She's suing the union for 'non-representation' and luck be a Paula tonite, my name is all over it. So I had to drive two hours to spend the night at the Best Western by the expressway, be prepped by a very smart but scary lawyer named Dick, and the next day spend eight straight hours in a courtroom, with only a half hour break, listening to testimony I could care less about, and being questioned by a lawyer, who by the way, was a very nice and smart lady, whose face was purple by the time she got done with me. And it SUCKED ASS.

The funny thing was that I had really gone to the wall for Alice and this was a real fuck you. But, you know what, I felt so much compassion for her. She looked so sad and tired. Her lawyers mispronounced her name the entire eight hours. They kept calling her Anna and when her lawyer was grilling me, I wanted to say 'hey, atleast I know how to pronounce her name right'.

And then they produce these emails as evidence of her emailing me, and claimed I never responded. The thing was, the emails had so very obviously been cut and pasted onto one sheet. And, mysteriously, the only ones on it were from her. She omitted all of my reponses, but I couldn't testify to it because i was not an "expert witness"...yeah, fine, whatever. So they ask where are my copies of the emails?, and I ofcourse don't have them because I don't keep shit, mostly because even if I keep it I can't find it when I need it anyway. For God's sake, this all happened two years ago!

So, after advocating for Alice, I was rewarded with a law suit, a trip to Columbus, one dinner, and one lunch, two days of my life i'll never get back, and I paid for my own gas. So there you have it, no good deed goes unpunished.

It All Started in Chicago

My mother and father both lived in Chicago. My Aunt Binnie was my mothers best friend, and that's how she met my father. My Grandma Annie paid my father, Larry, to ask my mother, Myra, on a date. Originally, he did it for the money. Then he spent an evening with my mother, and returned the money to Grandma Annie when he got home. They were married less than a year later.

That led to my birth in 1961. I am the third and youngest of three sisters. We lived on the south side of Chicago and we were all born at Michael Reese Hosptial.

I was almost six months old when my first near death issue arose. We had a nanny named Gertrude, and she had found me in my crib grey and lethargic. When they rushed me to the hospital, they found out I was dehydrated and near death from a long bout with the flu.

My mother tells the story about how she stayed with me in the hospital for several days as my health teetered back and forth. They had to feed me through my ankle, and I still have the scar to this day. It's on my right ankle and has slightly bothered me all my life. I'm convinced it's all in my head, like some kind of psychic scar.

So....I'm thinking this was my only drama during that chapter of my life. Last year, I'm at my sister Beths house and we're looking at pictures. There is an old photo of us with my mom, her mother Grandma Honey, and my sisters and me sitting by a pool in Florida. I was roughly 2 years old. Beth points at the picture and says "oh yeah, that's the day we found you floating face down in the swimming pool". This I never heard of. I asked my mother about it later, and while she didn't deny it, she said she couldn't remember it either. Beth was 5 years old at the time of the incident, so she remembered it pretty well.

The Tangent Begins

John Lennon once said 'Life's what happens while you're making other plans.' This blog is about what happened to me while I was making other plans.