Doris Day RIP

Everyone's life is finally seized by the twilight and yesterday the movie actress Doris Day was promoted to the stars.

The Cincinnati native sought to be a dancer. A car accident curtailed that dream, however during the recovery the fifteen year-old discovered an unknown talent. "I used to while away a lot of time listening to the radio, sometimes singing along with the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller", she told A.E. Hotchner, one of her biographers. "But the one radio voice I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words."

Her first professional gig was at Charlie Yee's Shanghai Inn, where her voice attracted the attention of orchestra leader Barney Rapp, who suggested the blonde songbird drop the name Kappelhoff in favor of Day. It was all up from there.

She was America's sweetheart.

Clean, blonde, and white.

She was no square no matter how her publicist painted her image.

Hitchcock's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was one of the few movies the Sisters Of The Foothills played on special movie days.

Doris Day was pure.

She was friends with Rock Hudson.

Day stayed with Rock to the end.

She wasn't perfect.

Who is?

Doris Day in the 50s was a goddess of the American Dream.

Then again so was Marilyn Monroe.

Not to mention Lena Horne.

LOVE YOU LONG TIME

Walking Street was crowded with drunken marines, dok thongs, Englishmen on Ecstasy, tattooed go-go girls, shouting Arabs, Amazonian transvestites, and wide-eyed Chinese tourists. These diverse groups threaded through the gauntlet of dueling music from various beer bars and discos. The heat was driving everyone insane and alcohol was behind the wheel. The collective madness left me in the dust and I realized vengeance was better suited for the Bible. All I really wanted was a cold beer.

Sam Royalle was at Hot Tuna with his wife.

"How's it going?" Sam Royalle glowed with love.

"Everything is fine." I resisted asking, if they had seen Ae.

They would never have said yes or no, for a strange etiquette in Pattaya is that no one ever snitches, if someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend is with someone else.

I ordered a beer. It went fast. The next three disappeared even faster. Two tequilas and a whiskey broke my laughter dam. I played snooker against Pi-ek, the owner, and beat him three games to none. The most beautiful girl in the bar invited me to take her home. I was drunk enough to think it was for my looks.

Pi-ek nodded to warn of approaching danger and I turned to see Ae strut on high platform shoes into the bar. A hair stylist had affixed waist-long hair extensions. Her red satin short shorts left nothing to the imagination and a scarlet halter top covered her flat chest. Her nipples showed through the gauzy material. They were aroused by anger and she demanded, “Why you go with other lady?"

The free-lancer recognized her services for the evening were required elsewhere and fled the beer bar. I should have followed her, but this scene had been rehearsed too many times in my head to not let it play out with my body.

"She only friend."

I had heard someone tell me this before. I was too drunk to remember who.

"Why you not wait me?” Her eyes were on fire.

“Are you fucking mad?”

“Bah? I not crazy.” Ae spat with slurred hatred.

"Not crazy. I'll show you crazy."

A demon was demanding Ae’s sacrifice. The word murder strangely reversed into “Red rum.” Jack Nicholson had said something similar in THE SHINING and I remembered an editor of Heavy Metal magazine introducing me to the author as a fellow Mainiac.

Stephen King had sneered upon hearing I came from Falmouth Foresides, as if anything south of the Bath Iron Works wasn’t Maine. I never read his rip-offs of HP Lovecraft afterwards and wasn’t going to kill anyone with “Red rum” rummaging through my brain.

“You better go with your Italian.”

"You no love me no more?” She was surprised by my surrender.

If I kept my mouth shut, she might walk away, instead I said, “No, I don’t anymore.”

“Ko-hok.” She knew I was lying too and wheeled away onto onto Walking Street in triumph over another crushed heart.

"I'm not a liar."

"You lie me. You lie you too." She gave me the finger. People laughed at me. This scene was played out on Walking Street several times a night, if not more. My audience waited for the one of the two typical responses. The first was to beg her to forgive me, but I had done nothing wrong.

At least that's what I told myself, so I opted for reaction #2.

I grabbed my beer bottle from the bar.

Her Italian stood on the opposite sidewalk. His two friends were laughing at him and me and Ae. So were two transvestites. I didn't see the humor of the situation and drained my beer.

I was free of Ae. I bore no more responsibilities to her or her family. I was the God of my future.

"Good-bye."

"Fuck you, 'good-bye'. You not done me." She stuck out her tongue like a 12 year-old girl threatening to run away from home.

"Fuck you too." I chucked the beer bottle in her direction. The bottle shattered against the wall across the street. Ae ran to the Italian. He held her in his arms. It was the last thing I wanted in this world and it was all my fault.

Time hit fast-forward speed, when he charged the bar. His friends scrummed with Pi-Ek and Sam Royalle, plus several of the bar staff. The Italian threw an overhead punch. I partially blocked it with my forearm. His fist cracked on my cheek. He had a hard hand. Stars fluttered in my eyes. Ae stopped his second punch.

"Yet mung." Ae led him away from the bar. She had lose face, but if the police would show up if this altercation continued any longer and they would be looking for 'sin-bon' or tea money to squash any charges. That money was better in her pocket. She had a family to feed.

"I get you." The Italian was hot. I would have to watch my back until he left town. Once he and his friends accompanied Ae into the Marine Disco, I went over to Sam Royalle and Pi-ek.

"Why didn't you stop me from talking to her?"

"Mate, it's your problem." He ordered the bar a round of tequilas.

"Yes, never step between man and woman. Bad luck." Pi-ek was wise to the ways of Walking Street. “Good, you not hit her. You hit her and have big trouble with police. Expensive. Maybe go to hospital.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Ae’s brothers had killed fellow Thais for 5000 baht. My life was worth more than $125 and I kept telling myself that, as Ae staged several comebacks before finally leaving for Italy in late August. She appeared at my house for sex, while the Italian was at a disco. The hour was usually past midnight. She never stayed for more than an hour.

"Boyfriend smoke too much ganga. Sex not same you." Her body shone with sweat. A shadow against my white sheets. "I not finish with him. Finish with you every time."

"I know." It was a good lie and one I told myself was the truth listening to her pleas for more. Ae was a good actress and I was a better audience.

"I go soon." She didn't know the date.

"I'll miss you."

"Not yet. We do again."

She called two weeks later from the airport. Her plane was leaving in the afternoon.

"Please come get me. Take me back."

"Go outside and get a taxi."

"Can not do. He and friends watch me."

"Sorry." Three Italians versus me was bad odds. Ae actually coming back to me were even worst. I stayed where I was.

"Bonna fortuna."

Ae called me every day from Italy. Her boyfriend was a drug dealer. No one spoke Thai. The food was not spicy.

"Come get me, please."

I would hang up the phone before saying something I would regret, because while she might have left Pattaya, her soul was still in my heart. I went to a travel shop on Walking Street. The agent told me the cost of a ticket to Milan. I told him that I would think about it.

Coming out of the travel agency, I spotted Nu heading to work in her waitress outfit. I called her name. She didn't stop walking and I ran up to her.

"What's wrong?"

"I hear you and girlfriend fight." She shook her head.

“I’m an old fool."

"Big fool." Nu turned her head. Her eyes were filled with disappointment.

"I don't know why I did that. I wanted her to go. I did everything to make her go. It's almost like she did a magic spell on me."

"Magic?" This word stopped Nu from entering her restaurant.

"Yes, like love potion." The words to the Searcher's song LOVE POTION #9 rambled through my head.

"You drink something funny?" Nu was serious. Thais are big believers in magic. Ghosts too.

“I think so too.” The green liquid in the glass. “I drank this water once. It tasted bad. I saw a green stain on the glass."

"You drink aa-kom." She was horrified by this love potion. "Your girlfriend from Isaan. People from there have big magic. Not good magic. Bad magic."

"Do you know how to stop a love curse?”

“Have to have old lady make rice. She stand over rice and let sweat fall into rice. Then you eat. Love potion finished.”

“You’re joking?”

“No.”

Her next day off Nu brought an old lady at her apartment building to cook the rice and stand over the steaming pot. I thought they were joking, but both of them watched with interest as I drank the antidote. It tasted terrible. I didn’t sleep or eat two days, but afterwards I didn’t think about Ae.
In fact I didn't think about any of the women I had loved in my life.

This was good magic, except I still realized how much a fool I had been.

“Everyone can be a fool sometimes. Only all the time is bad.” Nu still refused any intimacy. “I have been a fool one time too. Maybe have big heart. Same you.”

We spoke about the potion, Ae, or us. Nu’s husband had left her for another woman and I wondered whether there were any happy endings in Thailand. She said, “Happy ending are good in movie. But only in cartoon.”

Nu accompanied me to Don Muang Airport, saying in Thai. “Thailand is very beautiful.”

“I’ll remember it that way.”

“Maybe you come back one day and you kiss me.”

It was sweet to hear after my year and a half with Ae. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll pray to Buddha you do.”

“Krup kuhn kap.” I wai-ed her, because she had smoothed over a rough spot in my soul. I couldn’t wait six month. Her lips were tender. The kiss was a short one.

My name was called for final boarding.

Nu smiled and I released her hand. I was going to America. Manny would hire me to sell diamonds for Christmas. Sherri would laugh about the love potion. Ms. Carolina would take me skiing. Maybe Bill could convince Monty to make a movie about the Italian Plan.

I would be back in Thailand for the New Year. All I wanted was a little love. It wasn’t too much to ask from life. Not in Pattaya or anywhere else in the world. Even for a fool, especially after being freed from a curse, then again everyone is a fool when it comes to love.

THAI GLOSSARY

AO, MAI AO - want, not want

A-RAI - what?

BAH - Mad

CHING CHING - True

CHOK DI - Good luck

DOK THONG - slut

FARANG - Westerner

FEN - Boyfriend

FIN - Opium

JEP-HOO- headache

JUM JAM Pawn shop

LAK KHUN love you

KHUN-GARH Old man<

KI shit

KO-HOK Liar

KOR-THOT sorry

KRUP KHUN KRAP Thank you

KWAII buffalo

Pacem In Terris

Pope John XXIII wrote the Easter encuclical PACEM IN TERRIS in 1963. The Pontiff was upset by how close the world had come to global destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his holiday missive was addressed not only the Faithful, but 'all men of good will'.

His treatise also extolled the rights of man, stating, "That every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life."

Two months later he passed from this Earth.

He was a good man, who rescued Jews from the Nazis and attempted to mediate between the USSR and USA.

His last words were in Latin, "Ut Omnes Unum Sin."

"That they may all be one."

It remains our hope.

To read PACEM IN TERRIS please go to the following url http://www.papalencyclicals.net/John23/j23pacem.htm

A Reprobate's Parental Guidance

In 1969 I smoked reefer for the first time in my VW Bug coming from Nantasket Beach. Tommie Jordan and John Gilmore were my passengers. The weed belonged to Tommie, a hockey player from North Quincy. His hair was long, at least for a hockey player, but then so was that of Derek Sanderson and he got big money for playing with the Boston Bruins.

Tommie's weed was mild, yet strong enough to strike my sense of hilarity like cobra venom.

We sat at a traffic light for three changes of red to green, laughing hysterically about nothing and very little is funnier than nothing.

Marijuana was illegal in the 60s.

It is now legal in some states, but the DEA continues to oppress smokers'

The greatest segment of the US prison population are convicted pot smoker. Teenagers are constantly lectured on the dangers of smoke.

At the end of last summer I was out in Montauk . The surfing beach town at the eastern tip of Long Island is a relaxed community. I watched the moonrise on Saturday night with my friends. It had been bigger on Friday evening, but size wasn't important this far from Manhattan or Easthampton. We retreated back to a beach shack in Ditch Plains for a BBQ filled with reminiscences of friends long gone. One woman and I vowed to save a 80s beauty trapped in Detroit. We could have reached Wendy in 9 hours, except none of us were driving after a few glasses of wine. Wendy would have to wait for another posse.

I was surprised that our host's son was in the house. This was Labor Weekend, the last days of freedom before school for a 17 year-old boy.

"Why's your son in the house?"

"I caught Todd with weed."

While my host had been straight for a decade, she wasn't a hypocrite. She had started smoking at 14. "What could I say?"

"Not much."

I turned to the teenager. Todd looked like a good kid.

"What were you smoking? Weed or sinse?"

"Hydro." Too didn't roll his eyes, which was a sign of maturity beyond his age.

"Hydro's not really weed."

I had been at Agent Rockford's underground weed plantation this Spring. Every plant had been a twin to the other like a successful cloning experiment. Rockford had handed me a mask.

"7% THC gets in the air. Too much exposure and you're high."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Rockford's reluctance to answer said a lot and I have steered clear of sinse and hydro ever since. I could have given a sermon to the grounded teenager in Montauk. Instead I asked, "How kids in your school smoke pot?"

"90%."

"That many?" I didn't doubt his number. He attended a Manhattan private school.

"The other 10% are Jesus freaks praying for our salvation."

"I only pray for our victory," I explained about Mexico's liberal drug policy. "Anything under 4 joints is legal."

"Even big fatboys?"

>"Maybe only two of those." Rasta joints burned a pile of weed. "Victory is in sight."

The teenager high-fived me.

Later in the evening my host took me to aside and said, "Thanks for the free-pot speech. Maybe you should be doing a tour. Smoke a marijuana."

"That used to be a David Peel song." No one in this generation or even the last two had ever heard about the East Village hippie dedicated to the freedom of the weed. It was too long a story to tell without going to youtubes, so I poured myself another glass of wine and watched the stars drift toward the full moon. It was a good night for it.

ps

David Peel was a good man.

Songkran Madness in Thailand

The Songkran celebration ushers in the Thai New Year as well as the coming of the rains ending the hot season. The festival is focused on Wan Parg-bpee April 15, when homage is paid to ancestors, elders and other persons deserving respect because of age or position. Younger people pour scented water into the palm of an elder so that bad actions or thoughts will flow away or they sprinkle water onto the person while uttering wishes of happiness and good luck.

In the old days, young people actually helped bathe old people. Some still bring towels so the elders can dry their hands. It was all quite charming, but the tradition has undergone some changes in recent years.

I first celebrated Songkran on Koh Tao in 1991, where I was bushwhacked by the staff of the bungalows. Buckets of water soaked me. Wet smiles and squealing laughter followed, as I chased the girls for revenge. They were remarkably fast. Afterwards we drank Mekong whiskey and had a good laugh, but fifteen years have firehosed aside these gentle practices.

Now street vendors hawked squirt guns of every capacity to hooligans ready to spray the unwary with a noxious mixture of itching powder and gutter water. Industrial drinking fueled the unholy holiday madness. Playful water fights escalated from harmless sanuk or fun into vicious shootings redressing old grudges. Pick-up trucks jerry-rigged with plastic reservoirs recklessly raced through unwary pedestrians and ya bah-demented motorcyclists imitated crackheads fleeing a 7-11 robbery.

The migration en masse creates a chaos beyond imagination on the roadways and travel time is doubled or tripled by the congestion of the exodus. Road accidents claim countless lives around the country and the injured number in the tens of thousands. Thankfully the number for 2016 was less than the previous year, as a result of an annual media blitz aiming at reducing road fatalities.

Government officials pointed the finger at traffic accidents as one of Thailand's top three serious health problems, in terms of burden of disease. Almost 30% of in-patient beds of the hospitals under the Thai Ministry of Public Health are occupied by road traffic accident victims

Longtime foreign residents opt for three methods to avoid the mayhem.

The first is flight to another country i.e. Malaysia or Cambodia if the dates coincide with their visa renewals.

In 2007 my mate Nick and I overlanded to Phnom Penh and drank ourselves senseless ay Sharkey's Bar .

Neither of us remembered much of anything, but we hadn't ended up in jail and the staff of the hotel was sad to see us leave.

The second tactic is to retreat within the confines of your apartment, condo, or house. Trips during the morning hours are not so wet, as the revelers are sleeping off their drunks. Prior to midday only children line the roads and are hardly able of get the water beyond their reach. After sunset you can travel again, though you should avoid any nightlife zones where the water frenzy continues to flow beyond any constraints of sanity.

Lastly Thais considered any Puritan disapproval of Songkran as a sacrilege against sanuk, so if you can't beat them, then join them.

Several years back my cousin, Sam Royalle, hired a truck. The driver loaded the flatbed with three titanic barrels of iced water and we armed our extended families with multi-liter water nozzles. Overloaded by ten people the pick-up's tires scrapped the steel chassis, as we cruised Pattaya's streets with the audacity of Somali tech fighters whacked out on qat.

At Beach Road and Soi 8 the girls from two beer bars deliriously chucked buckets at the passing cars. Griffin deluged them into submission with a high-powered hose. On the corner of Walking Street we unleashed a hurricane on two ranking police officers.

Everyone loved that.

Beers for everyone.

Songkran can be a lot of fun if you observe some simple rules.

Enter the water festival and drink as much as you can.

Don't bring your telephone with you or any device that might electrocute you.

Just because a girls is laughing doesn't mean she is enjoying your dumping ice water down her back.

Respect the word 'no' or mai ao.

Wear clothing that dry fast i.e. football shirts and swimming trunks.

Sunglasses are good for keeping water out of your eyes, because not all of the water smacking your mug is out of the tap.

Leave your wallet at home. Only carry money. It will get you drunk and out of trouble if you get in an accident. If the embassy has to identify you, they can get dental records.

Do not fall in love with anyone you soak. I did and it ruined by life. Before that I was a happy bachelor. A wet tee-shirt is just a wet tee-shirt.

Keep a jai yen or cool head. Tempers to flare.

During Sam Royalle's and my tour around Pattaya we soaked all comers. This win streak instilled a predatory glee in our Thai friends and Sam's tattooed wife jumped off the truck to soak several foreigners hiding behind a tree. It was supposed to be fun, but a humorless weightlifter wrenched away Dtum’s water gun. “Sopheni.”, then knocked down Dtum.

Knocking down the teenager might have been an innocent mistake, but hearing the word 'whore' snapped a fuse and I leaped off the truck with a long PVC tube. The steroid junkie lifted his fists. He was bigger and stronger, but I lashed his wrists with the plastic pipe.

His watch exploded into a shower of tiny gears. A headshot propelled him over a rack of t-shirts. I kicked the inside of his knee and genuflected in anguish. Dtum and I jumped onto the truck. She flipped him the finger and the pick-up truck lurched down Beach Road.

"You hit him like napalm." Griffin handed me a Singha beer. "Thanks for saving Dtum."

“It was nothing. Nothing at all.”

My girlfriend's face face clouded with embarrassment. My outburst had cost Mem Nah or face and my hands trembled with a fifteen year-old's adrenaline.

"You lucky not dead."

He lucky he alive."

This not fun."

I thought about saying sorry, but Thais don't know the meaning of the word, but she was right. Fighting was not 'sanuk' and since then all I want on Songkran is to have fun.

Fun fun fun. Sanuk sanuk sanuk and there’s too little of that is this world to act like a mean-spirited farang.

Gothic Flames From Notre Dame

After Viktor Malenski was murdered outside the Continental Lounge on the Far Westside by persons unknown, I fled New York to Paris. 1982 was a good year for a fugitive in the City of Light. I worked at a popular nightclub, wrote poetry in my journals, and lived in the garret of a Marais Hotel with a view of the towers of Notre-Dame.

Over my six-year stay in Paris I must have passed the soot-blackened Cathedral a thousand times. I never ignored the Gothic gem and usually entered through the front and exited through a wooden door in a recessed apse behind the main altar, haunted by a ghost of Victor Hugo.

Quasimodo, the Roi de le Couer des Miracles, had reigned the bell towers in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

The malformed man loved Esmerelda, a beautiful Gitane danseur.

The Church had no love for them.

Just another reason for my atheism.

Yet the eastern rosette window was a wonder to behold with the dawn light streaming through the carved glass.

Once I was guided through the Foret. The lead roof was supported by thousand of centuries-old planks and beams hewed from the Bois de Vincennes. The hardwood smelled of the ages.

My friend Tony from the Studio restaurant on Rue du Temple prayed to the statue of Black Michael beneath the six-thousand pipe organ.

"He was Lucifer's brother."

The angel was playing a clarion horn. Tony was into metal and said, "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath."

I had been raised a Catholic, but had been a devout atheist since the age of eight and certainly no devil worshipper. I respected the beliefs of others as long as they didn't interfere with my wicked life, however one Easter I had played backgammon at a Left Bank apartment with several Peruvian drug dealers. All night long I had beaten them mercilessly and exited with my winnings and two slender dancers from the Moulin Rouge dressed in matching gold lame short-shorts and tube tops.

Another cathedral of Paris.

The procession was approaching the main doors. I told the girls to hurry up or else we were obliged to walk to the next bridge. The three of us scurried across the cobblestones. The bishop regarded us as Satan and his hand maidens. I crossed myself in reverse. His eyes widened with horror. I smiled and blessed with with a raised palm and mouthed in Latin, "Nunc autem Christus resurrexit."

LIke I said I had been raised a Catholic by nuns, priests, brothers, and in the THE WAY OF THE FLESH Samuel Butler wrote aptly, "Learning Latin shows that you don't have to know everything in the world."

The girls and I retired to the Brasserie de Ile St. Louis to drink champagne and listen to the strains of the pipe organ. It was a glorious day in the shadow of the cathedral.

I departed from Paris in 1986.

I went back often to see friends.

In 2011 I strolled along the Seine after a rain storm.

Notre-Dame wasn't on my path until 2011.

A rainbow arced over the cathedral. The soot and car exhaust has been scrubbed from the facade. Notre Dame shone in the sun.

It had stood in that spot for over eight hundreds years and looked like it was bound to survive the extinction of man and God.

Forever.

Forever doesn't last long in the modern world.

The cathedral had fallen into neglect. The upkeep cost were only $2 million a year. The structure was falling apart at the seams and the guardians decided to replaced the two-hundred year-old spire above the main altar. Something went wrong and a fire spread up the tower melting the lead slates into molten lava. The foret burned out of control. Church officials saved what was outside the flames. The firemen geysered water over the cathedral.

The fire went unstoppable.

The spire toppled onto the roof.

The interior was abandoned to the conflagration.

In the morning the final embers were doused with water.

The bell towers had not fallen like the Twin Towers.

Dawn brought on blame and promises of renewal.

If not for Notre Dame, then for the love of Quasimodo.

He was not real, but neither is God.

Only love and compassion.

Peace.

ps France only has 34% Catholics. Let them pay for the restoration of Notre Dame after paying the victims of child abuse.

Until then Notre-Dame should remain in ruins.

In transit gloria.

TOUGH GUYS / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Brownsville has always been a tough section of Brooklyn.

The one-mile square neighborhood was actually tougher than tough.

Its unofficial motto "Brownsville! Never ran, never will!" guaranteed Kings County Hospital the title of the most gunshot victims admitted to a E.R in the USA. The US Army even set up a training program called the Academy of Advanced Combat Medicine to take advantage of the area's hundreds of gunshot and stabbing victims. Surviving the gauntlet of youth steeled Mike Tyson for his reign as the heavyweight champion of the world and molded my boss on 47th Street, Manny,for the old diamond dealer also hailed from Brownsville.

"Brownsville was always tough," the 80 year-old jeweler explained to everyone who has to listen. "I fought with Italians, Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Blacks, but in some ways we all got along. Everyone knew who they were. One day this big black kid decides to fight with me. He didn't give a reason. Maybe he didn't like pastrami. He called me out and after school I met him in the playground. He had thirty friends with him. I wasn't too scared, because a fight with a schwartzer was usually fists. Only the wops and spics carried knives. 31 schwartzers versus me. So I tell the guy, "Listen you want to fight me then we fight, but if any of your friends touch me, then tomorrow they'll be a 100 guys out here looking to square things with you." The guy, his name was Horace, looks at me and says, "Fuck it." That's how things were back then. No guns. No one dead. The next day Horace and I were friends."

Black boys and Jew boys were cautious friends in the 1940s. This urban myth lasted into the 50s, but white people fled Brownsville for the Long Island suburbs in the 60s. The Civil Rights Act had been passed to insure the progress of blacks, but Brownsville became a ghetto with the influx of cheap heroin, gun shots in the night, and a roll-back by the police, as the absentee landlords torched their tenements.

Jimmy Breslin wrote about the neighborhood in 1968.

"Berlin after the war; block after block of burned-out shells of houses, streets littered with decaying automobile hulks. The stores on the avenues are empty and the streets are lined with deserted apartment houses or buildings that have empty apartments on every floor."

Manny left Brownsville before this decay, but Brownsville remained in his blood.

He worked as a schlepper for several years in the Bowery diamond district. There the young man met the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn. Everyone said that Hilda looked like Elizabeth Taylor. They weren't lying about the comparison, except Manny's wife had sapphire blue eyes. The two opened a jewelry store on Canal Street.

Manny remained true to his roots. He didn't take shit from anyone. Not the mob from Little Italy. Not the other jewelers who looked down their noses at the young upstart or his wife's family who couldn't see what she did in the undersized starker, as the old folks call a tough guy in Yiddish. He wasn't beholding to none of them.

Street fights were not acceptable, but Manny would protect his own. Shotguns lay under the counter. His revolver was in the safe. He never had to fire either. Manny was friends with the wise guys on Mulberry Street. He was their kind of Jew.

Even after he moved uptown to 47th Street with his sons, Richie Boy and Googs. His heart was still downtown and talked that way to customers, dealers, and his help.

"He comes from the Bowery." The older family firms would criticize his gruff ways.

"Not the Bowery, I come from Brownsville." Manny was proud of his heritage and even prouder to exhibit the street prowess a boy needed in that neighborhood.

Diamonds were traded on memo. One jeweler loaned merchandise to another jeweler on the promise that within 90 days they return with the goods or the money. Honesty is a crucial element in these transactions, however not all jewelers are honest, so the odds are high that sooner or later you'll get burned by greed.

Manny depended on his tough guy reputation to avert any thefts and he was a young 70 in 1999.

Young guys aren't scared of old guys and one jeweler burned Manny for a $20,000 diamond. This was before the age of cellphones. The dealer had gone to ground. Manny had to make good the loss and never thought that he would see the thief again.

Life went on.

Money came and went from one hand to the other without sticking in anyone's pocket for too long.

One night Manny took his second wife to dinner at a midtown restaurant after playing tennis.

The midtown restaurant wasn't expensive, because besides being a tough guy, Manny was a little cheap. This vice was another legacy of a Brownsville upbringing. His second wife didn't mind the stinginess, for she used to dine with the infamous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and Luciano's 'Little Man' would split a dish with her. She always told Manny that he was no Meyer Lansky.

"He was a runt." Manny wasn't too tall either, but his height broke 5-8. A good half-foot taller than Meyer Lansky.

Size isn't the only determining factor for toughness, for another Brownsville native, Mike Tyson, was only 5-10. He KOed taller, stronger men with regularity in the early years. Iron Mike hit Leon Spinks so hard that the then-champion's eyes rolled in his head like dice.

Most of being tough was being ready to be tough and Manny was more than ready, when he spotted the diamond thief at the restaurant bar.

"Excuse me a second," he told his second wife and rose from the table.

The seventy year-old took out his tennis racket and strode across the dining room. The thief was 30, taller, and once remarked to another dealer that Manny could go fuck himself if he thought he was going to get back his diamond.

"Hey, you." Manny called out to the younger man.

"Nice tennis outfit." The thief thought he was safe at the bar.

He misjudged the older man.

Safe was home in bed.

Manny whacked the gonif in the head with the racket and made him pay for this disrespect with another couple of whacks to the ribs. His wife pulled Manny off the fallen man. Two off-duty cops were glomming drinks at the bar. They were going to arrest the two of them, but Manny was a better talker.

His older brother had been a cop in the 20th. Seymour was from Brownsville too.

The thief made up a story with hems and haws.

The cops freed Manny and threw the thief in jail. A search of the gonif's apartment turned up a steel box. Manny's diamond was still in its envelope. The cops kept it as evidence. Manny cursed them for six months.

"I'd rather have the stone back than see that piece of shit in jail."

Manny's balance of justice had been met with the beating. It was the Brownsville way of life. He got his diamond in the end. He doesn't admit to hitting the gonif, but he's still a tough guy at 80. Mean too, because something about those Brownsville street turned a tough guy mean and Manny was no exception.

He was an old mean tough guy.

We fought all day long over sales. He stiffed me on commissions. I called him a cheat. He was a piece of shit to me and I was a piece of shit to him.

One day a hard-nosed Hassidim was late delivering a diamond. My customer didn't want to wait. I lost the sale. $200 out of my pocket. $2000 from Manny. Fish was a big guy. 6-4, but this wasn't the first time that he had been slow. Brownsville has always been a tough section of Brooklyn.

"I don't need this schiesse from a goy." Fish didn't like dealing with gentiles. The diamond maven was a big person on the street. His firm sold diamonds to Tiffany and Harry Winston. A gross macher.

"That's apparent from the way you treat me, sie gesund." I was not a goy, but a sheygutz.

Ten minutes later he was at the exchange, itching for a fight. Fish unbutton his black rekel undercoat and Prince Albert frock coat. They were both a size XXXL

"I should hit you." His fists were clenched in rage. He had a reputation for the first punch.

"Hit me once if you want." I hated fighting fat guys, but I was a tough guy too back in the 70s, 80s, and some of the 90s. I've been a tough guy in the 21st Century too, but with decreasing success. I maintained my stance, which was a few inches out of Fish's reach. "But if you try a second time then I'll take out your teeth."

"Slow down." Manny came to the counter. "Fish, we're here trying to make money. If you say you're going to give us a stone, give us a stone. Don't make so much drama about the goy saying something about your beanie."

"Beanie?" Fish sputtered with outrage and his left hand grabbed his yarmulke, as if he was trying to distract me.

"Yarmulke. Beanie. It's all the same to me." Manny hasn't been to temple in since his father Jake passed away at the age of 98. He had been run over by a truck and caught a cold. The cold was what killed him. Jake was a tough guy too. Manny's father came from a part of Poland that was just like Brownsville.

The Yiddish word for tough is hart.

"It's a yarmulke." Fish was an observant Hassid.

"Just like I said." Manny stood his ground.

Also out of Fish's range

The big Hassid eyed the both of us and shrugged off the moment.

Life on 47th Street was about making money or nimmt geld. He threw a packet and a memo on the counter.

"Here's your diamond."

Manny practiced religion after work. He had great faith in the power of wine.

We sold his stone later that afternoon.

Manny complained about the small profit I squeezed from the customer.

"Better a little than nothing."

"Best more than a little."

Manny smiled with a laugh. He was still a tough guy. A piece of shit too, but he was my piece of shit.

And the tough guy from Brownsville wouldn't have it any other way.

Never ran, never will!