WWII and A Diuretic

"Regrets, I have a few, too few to mention.", My Way, Frank Sinatra...

While watching a WWII film the other evening, the duffel bags we all carried, when transferred, were prominent. We were all so proud and felt so macho carrying them on our shoulder. We all felt special, particularly when the civilians stared at us.

Carrying all I owned in one bag did seem a little weird.

Before getting on board the troop transport we had to empty out our duffel bags for inspection. No booze on board permitted. I had a couple of loaves of bread.Passed inspection with the Sgt. not realizing that my Pop had hollowed them out and each loaf had a bottle of Haig and Haig Pinch scotch bottles.

Hoarded the booze until our unit was transferred to a landing craft for the 'fun trip' from the Philippines to Okinawa. Sleeping on the hard fucking deck had little appeal for me so I traded the 2 bottles of booze with an officer for 3 cots, for me and two buddies. The other GI's hated us for our 'comfort'. The officer got loaded.

Some pundit on TV the other day said that, 'life is short', a very trite old line. At 91 that line is, for me, a fucking bullshit line. Life seems particularly long in the early morning, having had, generally a lousy night of fitful sleep with fears of impending doom generating bad dreams plus needing to hit the head every few hours.

The risk to reward ratio of not getting my ass out of bed at 12:00, 2:00 and 4:00 AM and stumbling to the john was clear. Get my ass out of bed or piss in the bed. A no-brainer choice.

I do enjoy having the insane fantasy from time to time that my schlong could get as stiff as the rest of me, instead of it being a God damn dripping faucet fueled by a diuretic.

Knowing how to drive in the 1940's was not common and it made a half-assed big shot out of me. I could drive from our camp up the hill to our observation post. Being a $50 a month chauffeur/radio operator was wonderful. Suited me fine. Loved driving the Jeep up the hill.

Observation post? Yeah we had an installation overlooking Crescent Beach and the Straits of Juan de Fuqua where we were supposed to watch out for strange ships, aka Japanese, entering U.S.waters.

Sounds like a joke now but it was serious business in 1943. Puffed us out with self importance.We were protectors of the US coast line.

My time was spent in the observation post looking out the fucking window, learning Russian (not well), improving my skills as a typist/radio operator, pissing off Lt.Hamil and fantasizing about living out my wet dreams.

"Regrets I have a few, too few to mention.", My Way, Frank Sinatra

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Risk Everything, Regret Nothing.

Moderation is fatal (and plenty fucking boring).

"Feshbach, you've done such a great job as a radio operator that I'm going to put you in for PFC.", said Lt. Hamlin in 1944 at Camp Hayden,Washington.

"Give the fucking $4 a month to someone who needs it. Being the ranking Private in the barracks makes me special so I'll pass." That exchange greased the way for me being transferred, very quickly, at my request to an outfit scheduled to go overseas, aka combat.

AA reinforced my dislike of 'people pleasers'. A fate not for me. Gotta have, for balance, people in my life, who like me and people who dislike me.Without a filter between my head and my mouth it was a certainty that a lot of people that I would meet would dislike me.

Being overdrawn, after going sober, at the bank, almost $900,000, in 1980 dollars, made living and sleeping with the fear of impending doom a big part of my life. I was driven, insanely, to supporting my divorced (thank God) ex-wife, my kids, a few friends and my own fucking big time spending which included just giving money away. Never could handle having someone else pick up the lunch or dinner check. Masochism at its finest.

But I always believed in my earning power and my Pop's mantra that, "In America the money is up to your knees. You just have to know how to bend down and pick it up." A life time of going up like a rocket and down like a stick was my schtick.

Israel was my creme de la creme of immoderate living until it wasn't. Deciding to raise money to drill for oil in Israel really sealed my fate with the Princess.We had a great swap going. The Princess thought that I was bizarre, I thought she had a real boring streak in her.

The problems that the Princess had with my Israeli efforts started with my virtually giving up all of my income to concentrate on connecting with the Israeli bureaucracy and super Jews who thought that I was stupid.

Finally, I waved the flag of surrender. $500,000 give or take poorer and with the undying resentment of the Princess except when I took her along on one of my many trips to Israel.

Then there were Donn and Daisy Tognazziny. Having written a tome about Walt Disney the thought came to me to promote the stock in Europe. Donn was based in Zurich, worked for the same bucket shop as I did and we struck a deal for him to help me peddle the Disney stock in Europe. This kind of coincided with my Israeli efforts so I invited Donn and Daisy to join me in Jerusalem all at my expense. Very dumb.

The Princess was right in labeling me as 'bizarre', but now at 91, busted on my ass, I have no regrets and am without Italian Alzheimer's where you forget everything except the grudge.

And again, as the Italians say, 'If you can't stand ingratitude, never do anything for anybody.'

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A Veteran's Day Reverie: Bullets, bullets everywhere...and not a drop to drink.

Where were you when.....?

In the thirties we had Poppy Days in the whole United States, including the Bronx, with American Legion WWI Veterans standing on street corners selling poppies celebrating Decoration Day and Armistice Day.

Armistice Day was was really special.11:00 AM on the 11th day of November commemorated the signing of the World War I Armistice.

The whole of the United States came to a dead fucking halt at exactly at 11:00am. Grade schools, high schools, people at work, Mommies screaming at kids, everything came to a dead stop. Cars stopped moving, clerks quit selling, teachers quit talking. It seemed as though the whole world quit breathing for 2 minutes.

Decoration Day was originally a commemoration day for the Civil War dead of both sides. It morphed into Memorial Day which commemorates all US war dead. (Naturally, it was switched to a Monday to give everyone a three day weekend.)

Armistice Day morphed into Veterans Day to celebrate veterans of all US wars. The greatest beneficiaries of both holidays are the retailers, resort owners and asshole politicians who use both days as excuses to run off at the mouth. Except they do have great old war movies on TV.

'Those were the days my friend.We thought they'd never end.'...Fiddler On The Roof..

The Brits still celebrate their Remembrance Day with Poppies Galore. Men and women both wear them.

Standing on the Coke line while in the hospital on Saipan: The Japanese soldiers left in the hills hadn't read the Marine Corp's press releases and didn't know that the U.S. had 'taken' the island. Almost every afternoon came wham, bam, slam! Out of the fucking hills flew the bullets.We learned that the term 'gun fire' was for the movies and 'bullets' were for the real war world.

The guys in line scattered like whores in a whore house being raided by the police.We went for the ditches.Why we thought that diving into open ditches was safer than just standing in line just beats the shit out of me.We just felt like we had to move.

The most bothersome thing about those flying bullets was that when you have been hit once you know that you're not omnipotent and sometimes it's you in the line of fire and not just the other poor son of a bitch. You had always believed getting hit was for someone else.

But the most annoying result of the bullets from the hills was losing my place in the Coke line. Me and my gimpy leg were slow to stagger back and I always ended up at the end of the fucking line.

Officers didn't know from standing on line for a coke or a God damn O'Henry bar.We played poker for slices of the O'Henry bars. Shooting craps in the latrine of the hospital for real money was for post WWII Korea and on the deck of the hospital ship.

Bernie Feshbach & Buddy Goldfarb - Tinian 1945

But then, what the hell were you going to do to kill time in a hospital for the ambulatory, on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere, that you had never heard of. Swimming never seemed to be an option though we did go swimming when on Okinawa after the war ended. Saipan is now a resort destination for the Chinese. Who'da thought?

And why Coke and not Pepsi or O'Henry and not Baby Ruth? We were sure that some assholes behind desks in the states were getting paid off. Turns out we were mostly right.Graft for government contracts during WWII was very real.

My Pop, during the war, volunteered to manufacture, at no profit, the sheepskin vests used by the Air Force and some asshole government contract officer wanted a payoff. Patriot for a price.

'Drop your c...s and grab your socks.' was the sergeant's screaming wake up call in the States. On Okinawa, Saipan, Tinian, etc., sleeping was edgy and playing with yourself was not so important.

~

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Ah, the thrill of it all when you're around 13 years old in 1936 and living in the Bronx, the Capitol Of The Universe. You inveigle 50 cents from your Mom, take the Gun Hill Road bus to the Jerome Ave. elevated to get to 34th St.

Spend 20 cents on a Nedick's hot dog and orange drink then on to the real goal: the sporting goods section on the 5th floor of R. H. Macy.

Swinging the baseball bats, trying on real leather baseball gloves and fingering the leather footballs. All, over the top wonderful. No money to buy anything, but imagination ruled while fantasizing that I was Carl Hubbell, Babe Ruth, Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh. Never fussed with the tennis or ski stuff. Those sports were for rich people not Bronx street Jews.

Finish the downtown visit off with another hot dog and orange drink or a chicken pot pie at the Automat.Then back home, happy as a pig in shit or a clam in mud.

Suddenly, 34 years whipped on by while I accumulated a wife, four kids and a dog plus a Jewish mansion in Portola Valley with a mortgage. Acquired, along the way, a reputation in the investment world as a successful stock broker and oil and gas guru and damned proud of it. Jewish mansion? More house than I should have signed up for.

Get in the bag SAP flying first class to NY from SF. Need the booze to keep me elevated. Lay over in N.Y., stay at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, keep on keeping on with the booze, pick up a hooker, pass out, no sex, get rolled.

Felt really awful but didn't miss a beat. All alcoholics have one thing in common: feeling like shit a lot of the time, with suicidal thoughts. But God blessed me by allowing me to be a 'functioning alcoholic' which meant that I only fucked up from time to time, not all the time so I thought that I was okay.

Go to Israel the next night, not feeling too swift or too fucking smart (aka really stupid). Flew El Al, First Class, sat next to the head of Mossad. Not much conversation. Pretty anxious to have 'a little of the hair of the dog that bit me'.

Drinks served in very small glasses. Being a high velocity drinker I asked for my third scotch over ice within 10 minutes of taking off, the flight attendant looked at me like I was a bull with a bastard calf and asked with that Israeli intonation, "Another one?" (emphasis on "another") just like home, with another Jewish broad making me feel guilty about drinking but not guilty enough to stop.

As we approach the airport in Israel, the back end of the plane exploded with people singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem giving me goose pimples. As with lots of Jews, I had the feeling of  'coming home' although, at that time, there were more Jews living in NY than lived in Israel.

This was only a few short years after the '67 war and not too many years after Israel's War of Independence and Zionism was really flourishing. And I was/am a Zionist. Hitler convinced me that Jews had to have a country of their own, a country of last resort.

Checked into the King David Hotel and had a small suite overlooking the Old City. Loved hearing the calls to prayer for the Arabs.There were two young American women (kids) in the lobby lounge who were in tears.They were out of cash and couldn't cash a stateside check from a Mom. The Israeli's had cashed too many rubber checks for American Jewish tourists. So with boozy feelings of warmth I cashed it. The check was good. The Mom later wrote me a note of thanks.

In the beginning of my ridiculous and futile effort to raise a fund to drill for onshore oil and gas in Israel, I went through several months of trying to connect with someone in the Israeli bureaucracy with zero success. Very fucking annoying trying to help someone who wouldn't even return a phone call.

So one night, while a little little bit in the bag, I phoned Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, spoke with someone in her office who put me in touch with Zvi Dinstein, the Israeli Energy Minister who naturally turned me over to someone else.Wading through Israeli bureaucracy was not like spending a day at the beach.

Trying to raise money to drill for oil in Israel was a great ride for me with no regrets. I grew to love Israel and its over the top rude people. I have always contended that if you combine the rudeness of a New Yorker with the rudeness of a Parisian, you have an Israeli. But I loved them for what they were and are: a relentlessly creative and imaginative people and culture, rudeness and all.

Being a slow learner it took me 13 months of traveling all over the U.S., calling on rich Jews and commuting to Israel,to realize that I was pissing into the wind.The rich Jews would consider technology investments but wildcat drilling was off their radar screens.

Mr.Gruss (Joe) said it all when he said that charitable giving to Israel worked for him, shooting money down dry holes was not for him. Mr. Gruss was already a very successful oil and gas operator in West Texas.

Lesson learned? Moses should have turned right instead of left and the Jews would have all the oil instead of the Arabs.

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