Stay Interesting

by Jonathan Goldsmith

  “Izzy, put it on the bill,” he’d say, and wander off, a chubby Pied Piper with the children trailing after him.

  My grandfather would wake up before dawn, take a shot of slivovitz with his coffee, then wait for an Irish cop to meet him and accompany him to fetch his bundle of newspapers and escort him to his store, because the neighborhood was so dangerous. Particularly in the dark of early morning.

  “Let’s go, Izzy,” the cop would say in his Irish brogue, knocking at the door, and my grandfather would lace up his black high-button shoes and disappear into the darkness of the morning and the hostile streets.

  • • •

  Isadore was gentle and honest, yet he tried to be proper and formal in every facet of his life. To all his suppliers and vendors, for instance, he signed his paperwork with the same closing: “And obliged, I. Goldsmith.” He was proud of that, and he toiled for years, never taking a break. Finally, the family decided to send him on a vacation. To New Jersey. He didn’t want to go. He’d never been on a vacation, and he certainly didn’t want to start in his advanced years. All he knew was work. But they sent him away anyway, despite his protests. A few days later, my grandmother received the following note from him:

  My Dear Minnie,

  I want to come home. I’m going crazy. I can’t sleep. There’s no noise. It’s too quiet. Can I come home? I love you. I miss you, Herbie, and Milton.

  And Obliged, I. Goldsmith

  What a salutation. He may have only sold candy and cigars, but he did so with pride and humility. I can still see his weathered hands and remember the fun we had playing the “hand game”—the one where one player places his or her hands over the other person’s hands, and the bottom player tries to slap the upper hands before they are pulled away. I never knew the name of the game. But I didn’t need to know specifics to have fun playing it with Grandpa. He smelled like old newspapers, and that was a good thing.

  My grandma stood all of four foot ten, but she stood tall. A spirited woman, a woman to be reckoned with, she was a suffragist who marched down Fifth Avenue with William Gompes (the head of the Shirtwaist Union), and made the best blintzes I ever tasted. She ran the roost and later was president of the Over 80 Club at the shul.

  Adventure Is What You Make of It

  Brant Lake was a summer camp in the Adirondacks, just down the road from the Borscht Belt, where the scions of the schmatte (also known as the garment industry) sent their children to summer camp. With his gentle demeanor, experience in sports, and off-season job as a teacher in physical education, my father was a natural choice to be head counselor and run activities during the summer. He couldn’t afford the fee to send me. So he made sure I was part of the deal with the camp’s owners to secure him.

  I can still see Brant Lake Camp itself, a collection of wooden cabins nestled under the long arms of trees, the forest covered in pine needles, and bunks that smelled of musk and pine sap. The center of the camp was the lake itself, an oasis of freshwater where I learned to swim and dive. I remember my father holding out his hands to catch me. I would jump to him, overflowing with joy. I trusted him completely.

  This was during the war years. At night there was the crackling of radios that some of the counselors, as well as the older kids in the bunk, huddled around to listen to reports of the Germans bombing Paris and live broadcasts of Joe Louis making his campaign through the heavyweight division. During the day, we played the usual camp games, like color war, set off in our canoes, and learned how to shoot with bows and arrows. If I was lucky, my father would have an hour to spare, and we’d set out to the edge of the lake with our rods to make a few casts in a spot where he thought I’d have a good chance to catch a fish, if only I could keep the hook out of the trees and not tangled on my pants or stuck in his fingers.

  When the time wasn’t right to fish, we’d go on adventures. I remember him taking me on a hike through the woods after camp one afternoon.

  “We need to be careful,” he said cautiously, looking around.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “This is Indian country,” he murmured, slowing down, careful not to make sounds with the forest floor crunching underfoot. I slowed down too, peering through the trees, expecting to see a flash of feathers from a headdress, a smear of war paint, or a charging horse coming our way.

  Then, up the path, my father pointed at a tree.

  “Look,” he said, concerned, and as I followed the line of sight leading from his finger, I saw it. It was an arrow, wedged in the tree.

  I moved closer to him.

  “Let’s go back,” I said. “Let’s go look for Indians another time.”

  “And look over there,” he said, getting excited. There was another arrow in another tree.

  I grasped his hand tightly, fearful of an imminent attack.

  “Don’t worry, son,” he said, patting my head reassuringly. “We can handle them.”

  When he was there, I knew we could.

  I was in awe of him, and so were the others in the camp, for his quiet control and masterful handling of conflicts. All the kids looked up to him. But they couldn’t have him. He was my father.

  Only years later did I realize my father had placed those arrows in the trees. Incidentally, this would not be my last experience with bows and arrows at camp. But that’s a story that will come much, much later.

  The Longer It Waits, the More the Truth Hurts

  I remember one time in particular when I lied to him. He taught me something I would never forget. We were at Brant Lake, and I was in the dining room with my bunkmates. The dining room was in a larger building, like a log cabin with long wooden tables. We all were sitting down when another boy approached our table with his food tray.

  I was always on the lookout for ways to get a laugh, so I stood up, pretending to be a gentleman, and pulled out a chair for my bunkmate. Just as he was about to sit down, I yanked away the chair. The boy fell instantly, crashing onto the dining room floor, in pain, his dinner splattered all over his shirt and pants and the floorboards of the mess hall. All the others at the table were howling with laughter. I’d done my job, entertaining them to get their approval. Mission accomplished. I got a cheap laugh at my buddy’s expense.

  “What happened?” one counselor said, rushing over and looking at the fallen boy and his lost dinner.

  I was grinning.

  “You did that?” the counselor said.

  “No,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  The counselor didn’t buy it.

  “I want you to go to your father, and I want you to tell him what you did,” he said.

  As head counselor, my father sat with the older campers. It was the longest walk of my life, heading over to his table in shame. My chin was quivering in fear, as I wondered what he’d do. I’d never had to confront him like this.

  “Daddy, I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I got into trouble for something that I didn’t do.”

  He didn’t yell at me. He patted me on the shoulder, calming me down. I survived! And I was confused. Could lying be this simple?

  Later that night, I was about to fall asleep when my father entered the bunk and took his seat on the edge of my cot as he usually did. He didn’t start with his usual bedtime story.

  “Son, I think that you didn’t tell me the truth today,” he said.

  I sunk into my cot, wishing I could hide. I couldn’t tell if the other boys were listening to our conversation, but I lowered my voice to keep them from hearing.

  “I lied to you, Daddy,” I said in a petrified whisper.

  For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he put his arm around me.

  “Well, if you lie to me, I blame myself,” he said. “There must be something about me that you can’t tell me the truth. And I feel very badly about that.”

  Wait a second. Why would he blame himself
for a prank that I pulled?

  The guilt was overwhelming. My father had done nothing wrong. I was the culprit. I didn’t have the courage to tell the truth. As he turned the tables, I learned a very important lesson. I never lied to him again.

  That’s not exactly true.

  I never lied to him again, except for one other time. There are a lot of stories I’ll tell. That won’t be one of them. It is mine, and mine alone, to live with.

  Your Most Prized Possessions Shouldn’t Be Possessions

  My father loved to fly-fish. He also loved the gear, the philosophy, and the craftsmanship that he could put into it. He grew up in New York City, so how he learned to fish I’ll never know, nor did I ever learn the origin of his passion for the sport. Some kids have dads who teach them golf. Others play baseball or soccer. We fished. We’d spend the weekends waking up at dawn to head upstate to fish the Esopus, the Neversink, and the Beaverkill or just to tune up his equipment. He tied beautiful flies. He sent away for the finest equipment from around the world: His hooks came from England, as did the oilskin pouch he used for tobacco. There were reels from Hardy, a famous manufacturer, that were the best to use—and the most expensive. He used a tiny sharpener to hone his hooks, and he picked up fly feathers from Abercrombie—peacock furl and wings, necks of pheasant, and gamecock plumage. When he caught the first fish of the day, he’d place his tackle box, complete with a little vise attached to hold the hook, on a rock. He’d open up the belly of the fish with his knife to see what the fish were eating, then implement a process that’s called “matching the hatch,” or tying a fly to mimic the fishes’ diet.

  It was an art form, and he loved his equipment so much. Yet he gave me complete, unfettered access to it. Sometimes, I couldn’t understand why. One time we were on Lake Mahopac in upper Westchester County, New York. My mind was elsewhere. I had been fighting with my mother and stepfather. Staring out into the ether, wondering how I could escape them and live with my father, I dropped his favorite Hardy reel.

  I reached to grab it, but I was too late. In the water, I watched the reel slowly shine and flip and flop and shine until it could be seen no more, gone into the murky depths. I panicked. I’d lost one of my father’s most treasured possessions. I worried he would be very upset—and more so if he knew what I’d been thinking about when it happened. But instead he put his arm around me and told me not to worry.

  “It’s only a reel,” he said. He went to the car, came back with a spare. “Let’s keep fishing.”

  He never made me feel guilty for anything. Not that he always approved of my choices. He was firm but fair and loving. He loved the finer things for their utility. To him, objects weren’t to be enshrined and worshipped.

  “If it’s any good, don’t leave it hanging on a wall,” he’d say.

  Every Challenge Is a Chance to Build Your Strength

  Eventually, visitation time would end. I’d get back into my father’s car, and he’d drive me to the Scarsdale train station, where my mother would be waiting impatiently to pick me up. My mother loathed anything to do with my father. Anything he gave me and I liked, she looked to take away. My cherished BB gun and literary portals to sub-Saharan Africa would be first, I knew, after I’d gotten endless chores and instructions I am sure had been specifically tailored to upset me. Perhaps they were going to force me to change my ways and finally become a good boy. Not likely.

  If I was hungry, she restricted the food. Or forced me to eat things I didn’t like. As a child, I had a poor reaction to eating fish. So fish made its way onto the menu frequently, along with the dreaded spinach and the other vegetables I liked least. I loathed the color brown; sure enough, the outfits she picked for me ranged the spectrum from brown to other shades of brown. I was routinely sentenced to hard labor in the backyard, forced to endure hours in the summer heat obeying her dictatorial orders and trying to keep pace with her constantly changing mind: these flowers here, those bushes there. My playtime was directly related to my work output: no swimming until the work was done. Conveniently for her, the work was never done. I can still hear her screaming at me, preparing me for a life as a serf.

  One day, I excitedly ran home from school to show her the first B I ever got. I was so proud. “Fine,” she remarked. “But it should have been an A.” My incredible achievement in scholarship, dashed.

  The best part about home was the drive to and from home with my father. There was a wonderful feeling when his 1947 Mercury would arrive at the railroad station on visiting day. The car sported cracked paint, broken-in seats, and a large trunk that doubled as a gym locker—stuffed with fishing reels and rods, tackle boxes, basketballs, baseball bats, old gym shoes and towels, a jump rope, a deck of playing cards, and a few sets of dice. But it was his chariot. In that car he spirited me away. In that car he taught me to drive. I was eight. He was a jock, and while he was always dreaming up an invention or two, a scheme that could have made him and his good-time friends who lingered around Madison Square Garden rich, he liked nothing more than healthy competition. He adored the time with his friends, his fishing, and me.

  When the visits ended, always too soon, my mother would stand there waiting, the engine of her car running, pressuring me to hurry up. I tried not to cry. I wasn’t always successful. Sometimes, my father wasn’t either.

  “Flex your muscles, kid,” he’d say, pointing to my puny biceps. “Life is a long game. We’re only at the beginning.”

  What’s in a Name Matters Less Than What’s in the One Who’s Named

  Unlike my father, Jerome S. Lippe was the embodiment of wealth. My stepfather had manicured nails coated in that matte polish you’re not supposed to notice but always do. His hair was combed so perfectly that not one stray hair got away from the others. He wore things I had never even seen before: shiny cuff links, silk Sulka ties only, silk handkerchiefs, and imported watches, the entire ensemble monogrammed with “JSL,” his initials. He also wore high socks with sock garters, ensuring that a wrinkle would never form under his trouser leg. He smelled of Vetiver and Vitalis and was always draped in a custom suit and reeked of arrogance and pomposity.

  Jerome was a successful manufacturer of housewares. He had his own company, Leipzig and Lippe, and an interest in a company called Basketville, out of Putney, Vermont, that made baskets of all varieties. He also manufactured barbecue grills, which he claimed to have invented. Apparently, he had never heard of cavemen. He met my mother through another model working in his showroom and proceeded to buy her. Just like other things he wanted. She never put up too much resistance. He first asked her to model for him. She had always wanted to be an interior designer, and he offered her a position in his company. She was talented and ambitious. She went about redesigning his baskets, offering a unique touch: hand-painting them. His business grew greatly as a result, and they spent a lot of time together. My father’s suspicions were inevitable and soon after proved true. A divorce was imminent.

  After their wedding in Havana, Cuba, we all moved in together at 10 Park Avenue, a luxury hotel in Manhattan, and Jerome began to shower me with a number of wonderful bribes in exchange for my affection. I happily played my first role. I remember the giant yellow balloon he’d given me for my birthday, along with an armada of toys and a personal introduction to his world. His office was on Broadway and Twenty-Sixth Street, only a few blocks from the hotel where we lived, and I’d accompany him during the workday when not in school. Every morning we’d have the same breakfast—scrambled eggs, moist; white toast, buttered heavily; bacon, crisp; orange juice—all presented to us by his servants, from a collection of silver pieces, like we were royalty. We’d head into the office and receive many warm salutes from his employees, whose affection had been purchased, like that of everyone else he came into contact with. I’d follow him to the barbershop after work, where we were greeted by Maurice, his barber, who quickly made his face disappear in a combination of hot towels and mounds o
f shaving cream. Then it was on to the Old Crow Restaurant, where he kept his own table.

  “This is my son,” he’d say proudly, showing me off to the maître d’ and waitstaff. I always smiled and played along, but deep inside, I knew I wasn’t his son. And he wasn’t my father.

  The honeymoon was over quickly. Living in a hotel was claustrophobic, and we soon moved out to Scarsdale, a ritzy enclave in Westchester County, outside the city. The house itself was not as large as a mansion, but it was close, and Mother had all the accoutrements she wanted, plus her garden and gardeners. And the unpaid staff: me.

  She decorated each room, picked the wallpaper, and soon began quarreling with Jerome over a variety of issues—again, involving me. Jerome, a smug and arrogant man, could not accept the fact that I would never treat him like a father, and once it became clear that he could not buy my affection and we’d never get along, he turned on me, assigning me chores and tasks “to teach me a lesson.” I’ve remained unclear all my life what the moral value of fetching him scotch and freshening up the jar of peanuts during the Giants football game truly was. He wanted a son of his own, but after birthing me and being saddled with all the burdens of motherhood, Mother did not want to have another child.

  That’s probably why he coerced me into giving up my father’s name. It would be easier to use Lippe, he told me, as it was constantly uncomfortable having to explain my different name in school. It tore me apart to abandon my father’s name, but characteristically, my father put up little resistance. He said he allowed it to happen because he hoped it would make things easier for me.

  Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name?” For me, everything. It wasn’t until 1975 that I reclaimed my birthright. Shortly after I did, I was making a collect call and was asked to spell it out.