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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