A Bronx Jew Slopping Hogs

'You're not fit to sleep with the pigs', the ultimate farm country insult. Been there, heard that. My reaction?

'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on and the army behind it.' Slopping and castrating hogs in Iowa was not for a Bronx Jew. Farming is an art and I was no farming artist.

Throw in a big city guy with a fuck you, in your face attitude, and you have one unhappy guy pissing off almost everyone. Yeah, the Princess and my first father-in-law tried to tone me down. No chance.

Me and most of the other people in Mason Fucking City, Iowa (aka River City) had one thing in common: a mutual disrespect and dislike of one another. Actually, I enjoyed wiring everyone for sound, which I did on a daily basis. Got my heart rate up. Great aerobic workout.

Sitting on a fucking tractor going up and down rows, plowing corn, milking cows, having chickens (those filthy little things), vaccinating hogs, driving a dying bull to Ames, going to livestock auctions where everyone smelled like shit, including me, was both boring and annoying. A far, fucking cry from going to the theatre, Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden. I even missed schlepping around to art galleries with the Princess.

Losing my financial ass was also really boring. The only things that kept me going were my kids, my liquid protection (booze) and the white hot bond of anger between the Princess and me. Why I stayed married to that broad for another 20 years really escapes me.

So, I bought a set of 25 White Face Herefords to breed, out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Table top backs: wonderful looking animals. I needed a bull to breed them so I bought a purebred Hereford bull from a neighbor. Turns out that the bull had a 'broken tool '.

(Lesson #1- Beware of farm neighbors/friends offering you "good deals").

I put the bull with the cows in a pasture of a farm I was managing (A Bronx Jew as a farm manager is stuff comedies are made of.) Charlie Pippert was the farmer's name. Strong as an ox, he was. Every week I would drive my pickup truck forty miles on those gravel, country roads to Charlie's place with the radio blaring.

Charley, who I blamed for that purebred bull staying alive while its schlong died, was in my stream of consciousness on a daily basis. Naturally, blaming Charley for the bull's impotence was nonsense but being pissed off at Charley became a soul satisfying project.

Fantasizing about telling Charlie off and beating the shit out of him really turned me on. I was 28 years old.

One day, after the bull was long gone, I had to go to see Charley. While driving in my pickup truck those forty unbelievably awful fucking miles, I rehearsed what I was going to say to Charley and what his response to me would be. Almost an hour, on gravel, of this fantasy conversation wired me for sound. I imagined my part of the conversation and then conjured up his responses. I became increasingly angry with Charley. In fact I became absolutely wild with his fantasy irresponsibility.

As I pulled into the farm yard, Charley and his wife came down the farm house steps. I got out of the truck, strode around the front of it and shouted "Charley, you dirty son of a bitch!" and hit him. His wife screamed and threatened to call the sheriff but I felt that no one was going to "talk" to me that way, and Charley had it coming.

Getting back in back into the pickup, with my blood boiling I drove home and had a few pops to calm down. Booze always calmed me down until it got me wired. Was it any wonder that the Princess thought me, 'bizarre' (Her word describing me to others and me.)

So there I was, sitting in the hog house on a below zero night in Iowa on the ready in case one of my sows had trouble "coming in" (giving birth). The next thing this Bronx Jew knew, my hand was inside the sow helping extract baby pigs. When it was over, I was sick to my stomach and almost heaved my guts out.

(Lesson #2 - You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and making a hog farmer out of a street guy from the Bronx is damn near impossible.)

And then there was the time I bought 100 feeder pigs from a farmer out of Missouri. By then I was certain that I knew what I was doing and I insisted on a vaccination certificate from the farmer for a deadly virus.

I did not stop to consider that the "honest Missouri farmer" might be giving me a phony certificate, which he did. The pigs grew to 100 plus pounds, became hogs, became sick and started to die. The rendering works truck came by every day to pick up the dead hogs and we had to vaccinate the remainder.

Grabbing and holding on to a 100 pound hog by a hind leg while another guy gave him the shot was some kind of a work out. The hogs eventually stopping dying, but I lost my ass.

One year I purchased a bunch of Red Duroc pigs to feed out. Put those filthy, fucking animals in a small feed lot which restricted exercise. They started dying on me. The vet came out and promptly told me that they were dying of heart attacks. Getting fat with no exercise is as bad for hogs as it is for people.

Another hard earned lesson.

And when there was wet hay or wet corn to be bought, I was the mullet (a fish that's easy to catch) with my mouth wide open ready to be reeled in. And the friendly Iowa farmers fucked me at every opportunity, which I deserved. Once a mullet always a mullet.

When my four year sentence was up, I happily left Iowa. Those unfortunates who got to know me and grew to dislike me were as happy as pigs in shit with my leaving town. Me too!

A Bull With UTI / Donald Trump aka 'Ole Orange Hair'

So there was this high priced pure bred Black Angus bull, stretched out in the pasture away from the cows he was supposed to be breeding. Not natural.The veterinarian opined that the fucking bull had a urinary tract infection and was partially blind in one eye. We forced the bull back on his feet and led him back to the farm yard. The son of a bitch stumbled into an unknown well pit, poked his other eye out. He died as we entered the grounds of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa which was 120 miles from the farm yard.

So much for a Bronx, Jew farming in Iowa. My specialty as a farmer was to snatch disaster out of the jaws of defeat.

If it is true that one of the three most dangerous people in the world is a Jew with an attorney, then Donald Trump, Ole Orange Hair, should be Jewish. Law suits are one of Trump's specialties.

In the olden days, the 90's, Cipriani’s in the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in the Big Apple was my favorite stomping ground. It had a low ceiling and was loved by women who had bodies of Auschwitz survivors, boobs by Dow Chemical and lips puffed up with Botox. Dressed by Bergdorf Goodman, the women, single, divorced and married thought they looked beautiful. I thought they looked like shit. As phony as three dollar bills.

Trump, a big guy, would stand under the lights under the low ceiling. His wig would take on an orange glow. You sort of expected Gypsy Rose Lee to show up and do a burlesque routine with the Man With The Orange Hair. What a fucking pair to draw to.

Me and Donald Trump aren't even kissin' cousins and I would be stunned, one surprised Bronx Jew, if Ole Orange Hair would even remember me. He most certainly saves his memory for people he can still use or sue or preferentially, in thinking about his wonderful self. He is a fabulous person. Just ask him. Even with that big gut of his escaping from his shirt.

Trump was well on his way to real estate bankruptcy (circa early 90's) when Dale Frey, John Myers and David Wiederecht of the General Electric Pension Trust took that narcissistic, egomaniac in hand and saved his business ass. Taught him how to leverage his name into something with a franchise value and acquire real estate interests, at no cost to him, along the way.

Trump had a well deserved reputation of a low cost builder. GE Pension had taken possession of what was then known as the Gulf Western Building on the corner of 59th street and Central Park West on which the Trust had a mortgage.

The fucking building was vacated because it swayed in the wind. David Wiederecht and Trump came up with the notion to build a hotel around the remaining stripped down framework. Trump had no money; his father had saved his ass from personal bankruptcy a few years earlier.

Dale and John came up with the idea to have Trump take charge of the rebuilding process, build a hotel around the stripped down framework and Ole Orange Hair could earn an interest, out of the profits of the hotel, which he did. (Suzie Mills, the manager of the Trump International Hotel, deserves enormous credit for the success of the hotel).

This has been Trump's formula for the bulk of his ensuing success, putting his name on all those fucking buildings. Put up zero money and earn an interest in the properties. If the deal fell flat then Trump sued the owner to have his, Trump's name, taken off the property.

While the hotel was being built David Wiederecht thought that it would be a good idea that The Genius and I should meet. So I put my fat, lower case, bronx, jewish ass on a airplane and flew to New York for lunch with the self proclaimed genius.

Flying to N.Y. for lunch was something I did with some regularity which highlights what was a major stupidity problem of mine. I really thought that I was a big shot. Time has proved that to be a major fucking piece of bull shit. Trump and I met in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel for lunch. Mr. Wonderful, David and me.

In those days, Trump "controlled" the Plaza and there was a regular parade to our luncheon table of his acolytes, genuflecting for Trump who was in hog heaven. Trying to have a conversation in between Trump's pontifications to his worshipers was impossible.

By the time lunch ended, I was wired for sound with frustration at being treated rudely and with zero respect. And that, after what I considered to be a major league effort to get to The Big Apple (I was no longer drinking and getting blasted on airplanes).A total of 10 ridiculous hours, coming and going, in a fucking tube.

After 'lunch', I got back to my hotel and called Trump's office. I told his assistant that I wanted to see Trump again, immediately. His assistant told me that his calendar was too full for me which almost pushed me out the fucking 10th story window.

I pointed out that I had taken a serious trip from California to see him and that he absolutely owed me the courtesy of 20 minutes of his time. She phoned me back and told me to get my ass over to his office right away and the Great One would see me.

Our ‘conversation’ could have been on Saturday Night Live.

What an arrogant, self consumed guy he was/is. He told me that once a person spoke the first five words of a sentence he, Trump, knew what the other person had to say and that he, Trump, didn't have to listen any further. After a few more minutes of this bizarre ‘conversation’, I told Trump that "if they knew what ADD was when he was in the third grade that he would still be in the third grade and that his mind had the staying power of a moth on a hot light bulb".

But history does says that Trump is a bright guy if a boor as well. I never had the desire to ever see him again though I did spot him again in Cipriani's. He was standing under a bright light fixture which made his hair shine ORANGE. Bizarre. He looked right through me. Shit, I couldn't, wouldn't do him any fucking good so he didn't 'see' me.

P.S. Without GE Pension Fund and the education and financing Dale, John and David provided him, Trump would have been another very smart failed RE operator who earlier had needed his Daddy to bail him out. Trump was fighting bankruptcy of his Atlantic City gambling emporium with interest on a loan coming due. His Daddy bought enough chips to cover the interest and didn't cash the chips in.

"Those Were The Days My Friend. We Thought They'd Never End "...

There was a resurgence in unemployment to 25% around 1936.

Hard times had returned, in spades. But my genius immigrant Pop, never seemed to miss a beat. He and my Mom were fabulous parents. We never really knew that the hard times were making their lives very tough. When Monopoly came along we were the first on our street to have the game. That was truly a big fucking deal.

In 1939 it looked as though a high school diploma and me were not to join up with one another. My folks then insisted that I go to an expensive summer school and take a French language course. In New York City, in order to graduate high school, you had to complete a two year language course successfully, something I hadn't been able to do.

So, the summer of 1939 was the Summer of French for me, going to the Rhodes School on the Grand Concourse. Yeah, I finally passed French the following school year having taken fucking French for three years to get two year’s credit. Me and my friends thought that the French were weird because they seemed to speak with a lisp.

My needs when growing up were simple. They revolved around sports and avoiding bringing my report cards home (talk about living with a constant fear of impending doom). Plus if they knew what ADD was when I was in the third grade, I would still be in the fucking third grade.

I once told that to Donald Trump, about Donald Trump.

Trump had the attention span of a moth on a hot light bulb. Except when he was talking. He just loved the sound of his voice. Trump hardly 'heard' anything anyone else was saying. He just waited for the drone of your voice to stop, if he even let you talk, so that he could start talking. While undoubtedly a bright guy he lived inside his own fucking echo chamber. Trump had inadvertently taken the 13th AA step. He was totally powerless over his own bullshit.

Between starting school early and skipping a grade, I graduated from high school at 16.Going to Evander Childs High School on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx wasn't like spending a day at the beach.We had 'Up' and ‘Down’ stairways. And God help you if you were caught going up the down stairway. If you were caught going up the down stairway or vice versa you automatically became a dangerous fucking criminal.
 

Evander High School

The school had 'Flying Squads’ of students who were to see to it that we didn't violate any of the fucking school cockamamie behavioral rules. Those guys were physically feared. To this day it is my conviction that the ‘Flying Squad’ kids became adult thugs and criminals.

We had some 11,000 students and four sessions at Evander. The senior classes started 8:00AM, the freshman at 12:00 noon. Sophomores and juniors at 10am and 11am respectively. Most of the teachers were killing time til retirement. Putting up with street kids who had big mouths and smart ass comments made those teachers about as useful as tits on a boar pig. Ole 'teach' mostly didn't care. Most of the kids were first generation Americans and very street savvy. Drove the teachers nuts.

The Jewish kids were intimidated into trying to get top grades by their immigrant parents who wanted the kids to grow up to become doctors, lawyers and college professors. Dentists didn't make the cut. My parents didn't have a fucking clue what the hell an investment banker was. They pretty much thought that bankers were 'gonifs', not to be trusted.

There was a shack across the street from the school that sold Italian salami sandwiches for a dime. Oh Henry bars were a nickel. We knew we were getting fucked, being charged a penny for a cigarette. That came to twenty cents a pack when you could buy (if you had the money) a whole fucking carton of 10 packs for 50 cents or a nickel for a pack of 20. We couldn't take the cigarettes home. They were an absolute no, no. But we all smoked up a storm, outside of the school when we had the pennies. Didn't inhale, didn't know how to, didn't even think about it.

The neighborhoods supplying students to Evander went downhill in recent years and the school became the first high school in NYC to have metal detectors to monitor the students. Finally closed the son of a bitch down a few years ago.

All my friends were a few years older than me and a few years better athletically. I was tall for my age but short for my friends. Any street smart kid knew that if you brought the basketball, football or baseball and bat you had to be chosen when they picked teams. My Pop understood that rule, so I always had the basketball etc., and so I always got to play. Even in the worst of times my Pop saw to it that I was guaranteed a slot on a team. Whether I was tall or short made no never mind, they had to let me play, if they wanted to play.

Yeah growing up when the streets were our playgrounds has turned out to be a great experience and something to be savored.

The World Series at Yankee Stadium in '36, '37 and '38

To paraphrase W.C.Fields, 'I spent most of my money on booze, wives and my kids. The rest, I just pissed away.'

In the thirties it cost $1.10 for a right field bleacher seats in the Yankee Stadium to see the World Series games, twice the regular season price of $.55 cents and who the hell cared? We thought that we were the luckiest, fucking kids in the world just to be there.

George Selkirk was playing right field and we loved him. We could almost touch him while we shouted words of encouragement to him. Selkirk had replaced the one and only Babe Ruth. As they used to say in vaudeville, ‘How do you follow the banjo, act?

Ruth's greatest line by far, was when confronted by a reporter that he, Ruth, was making more money than the then President of the United States, Herbert Hoover. Ruth said,’ “I had a better year than he did.”

But seeing The Babe was special. He would talk to us bleacherites. He was one of us. We always watched him, with fascination, trot into the dugout, always, superstitiously, stepping on the second base bag. And he had a beautiful, rhythmic swing. He looked great, even when striking out.

Buddy and I would arrive at Yankee Stadium for the Series at around 5:00 a.m. After a bus and subway ride, leaving home at 4:00am, we would talk baseball with those around us who were also waiting to get into the Stadium. Talk isn't quite right. We would scream to argue our cases that our favorite ball players were the best in baseball at their positions.

If you couldn't name the 25 players on your favorite team, their batting averages and ERA of the pitchers, you were a really dumb schmuck to be ostracized by us geniuses. All of us waiting for the gates of heaven to open to let us into the fucking ballpark.

The only NY Giant ball players worthy of discussion with Yankee fans were Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell. The fucking Polo Grounds was in Manhattan and compared to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, was a 'piece of shit'. (It was later torn down because it really was a total piece of shit.) Giant fans on the waiting line, dared not open their fucking mouths about the Giants except to mention Mel Ott or Carl Hubbell.

1937 Official Program

Nobody cared that we were just early teen age kids who had hardly squeezed a tit, much less having been laid. Nah, as we used to say, we were not blued, screwed or tattooed. Young or old the only thing that mattered in that fucking line was how much baseball you really knew. And Buddy and I knew enough to be accepted by the hardnosed, know it all, bleacher based, baseball fans.

The gates into the ball park would open at around 11:00 a.m. We had been on line, screaming and shouting for 6 hours. At noon, out would come a marching band to entertain us. Then Army, Navy and Marine drill squads would strut their stuff. We were truly awe struck with their precision and the bleachers would go wild with applause after each drill. The big, rich guys in the grandstand seats which were reserved hadn't begun to arrive.

Right before the ball game started, the so called "Clown Prince of Baseball" would come out and do some stunts with a baseball in right field. He would end up at home plate with another ball player on third, and they would start to steam the ball at one another all the while closing the gap between the two. The crowd just roared with every throw, waiting for one or another of the ball players to miss and get clobbered.That never happened.

The outfielders would put on an exhibition of throwing the ball to home plate without a bounce. Myril Hoag, a little guy and center fielder, was really good at it. (In later years Joe DiMaggio would do the same.) Today's entertainment at a ball park is to watch those overpaid jerks high five one another.

To get the day's action started, Buddy and I would take the bus and the subway to the ball park. We would bring sandwiches that my Mom had made for us the night before and at least a pound of peanuts. We weren't going to get fucked at the Stadium and pay a dime for a lousy small, bag of peanuts when we could buy a pound at the grocery store for less than $.25 cents.

My Mom would give me $2.00 to cover the whole shebang; $1.10 to get into the game, 10¢ for subway carfare coming and going, and all the treats that I could get for 80¢. Hot dogs and cokes were a dime each...although we complained loudly that a dime for a fucking coke was a total rip off. But Buddy and I were in hog heaven. As happy as pigs in shit.

We didn't know that we were living in the Great Depression. We weren't just 'making do'. $2.00 gave us all that we wanted. We were living high on the hog. Watching our idols in person, waiting to get their autographs as they left the Stadium, going up to the Concourse Plaza Hotel, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, where they stayed just to see them.

We didn't bring a baseball glove to the ball park. If you were fucking lucky enough to have a ball hit your way you were expected to catch it with your bare hands. No, one wanted to take the chance of somehow losing their hard to come by baseball glove which had been 'broke in' plus being dark from being well oiled. We would oil our glove with Mazola Oil and then tie it up with the ball in the center, to guarantee that our glove had a pocket. And looked like a major leaguer's.

As long as I didn't have to show my folks my chronically awful report card, my life, Great Depression or not, was perfect. Life was simple then.

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

Eyes Wide Shut: the Old Normal : Growing Up in 1930's New York

'My father was never a kid. He was born 33 years old.' … Joe Feshbach

The term 'street smarts' was invented because the streets were our play grounds. If you could survive in the rough and tumble world of the street with the always overhanging threat of getting your fucking brains beat out, you became street smart.

The alternative was that you were considered a dumb schmuck. Going both ways came natural to me with my often empty head.

In the thirties the N.Y. Daily News and The Mirror cost 2¢ each. The New York Times, which cost a nickel, was considered the paper of the intellectuals. Shit, it didn't even have funnies. The nickel cost made it special.

The Wall Street Journal? Never heard of it. We'd hear guys on the radios, spewing numbers. We didn't know what the hell they were talking about and we didn’t fucking care.

In New York City there were evening newspapers coming out your ass, 4 of them: The Sun, World Telegram, N.Y. Post and the Journal. We often bought the Post which was often trying to seduce readers with coupons. Enough coupons and you could get First Edition books and enormous fucking dictionaries. The Jewish immigrants, like my folks, believed that education was everything and the Post in those days with its book offerings was a vehicle.

The movies cost 10¢, except on Saturdays and Sundays when you got a double feature for 15¢. (I was at the movies December 7, 1941).

An allowance? How ridiculous. You got nickels, dimes and the occasional two bits by asking, sometimes pleading. But God help any loose change lying around. It disappeared.

My Mom, who would know that I was the thief, said nothing. My Pop's business went through bankruptcy but we barely knew it. My parents were fabulous and almost always succumbed to my entreaties: a dime for the movies and a nickel for candy.

For big occasions, the family would go downtown together from our home in the Bronx to downtown at the Yiddish Theatre.

The right field bleachers, great seats, at Yankee Stadium cost 55¢ including double headers. I saw Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzari, and Frankie Crosetti. Baseball was a "way out" of hard times for everyone except blacks and the occasional Jew (Hank Greenberg a Jewish baseball idol, married a Jewish Gimbel).

NY YANKEES

Jews who married Shiksas were often ostracized by the Jews as were the Shiksas, by the non-Jews. The Army was another place for unemployed guys. Not a good place for Jews or blacks.

Boxing was for blacks and Jews. Tennis, skiing and golf were for the wealthy. We thought that there was something "wrong" with tennis players or else why were they dressed in all white. The six day bike race at the Garden was a big thrill. Going to the Garden for the rodeo was a real highlight.

The Garden was the Capital of The Sports Universe. Basketball, prize fights and hockey. The horse and dog shows at the Garden had zero appeal for us street kids. No one I knew owned a dog or rode a horse much less owned a fucking horse. We wondered how the Garden could have the fights on Friday night, college basketball on Saturday and hockey on Sunday.

We played stick ball, stoop ball, king of the hill, roller skate hockey and kick the can in the street. Pitching pennies against the stoop was "big time". Clear ‘emmies’, aka marbles, were premium. Today you seldom see groups of kids playing in their neighborhoods or even in the school yards after school. We would rush home, drop off our books and head for the streets to meet our friends and play the sport of the season.

I got my first bike when I was 12 (1935). It was a used bike, and I was so excited. Later on an Uncle bought me a new one for my Bar Mitzvah. We were sure that he was rich beyond belief. It was a Roll Fast with balloon white wall tires. My friends were really envious and when I let them take a ride on it I was fucking King Kong.

The Irish dominated the Police Department. My best friend was Jimmy McNiece whose old man was a patrolman. The Italians controlled the Department of Sanitation and the Jews drove the cabs and opined incessantly.

They, and I, could talk about anything for 30 minutes even if we didn't know a fucking thing about it. And enjoy it.

Horse and wagons would come down the streets loaded with fruits and vegetables that were being hawked by the guy 'driving' the wagon. Once in a while the horse would refuse to move as he unloaded in the street. Horses smell by nature and if you throw in manure, the result ain't too swift.

A big pizza cost 50¢ and a Pepsi to go with it was either a nickel or a dime. Ice cream cones were a nickel with a double scoop a dime. A banana split with everything but the kitchen sink and free sex cost 25¢ (huge "treat").

You bought kosher pickles by reaching into the pickle barrel and pulling the pickles out. Bakeries really made bread (rye, corn, white and pumpernickel) and bagels were truly very Jewish water bagels not fucking baked bread with a hole in it.

My mother could buy chickens with or without the feathers. Plucking a chicken made a hell of mess. Some stores carried live chickens and you would choose one and they were killed while you watched. It was almost as bad as sitting in the front row and watching a circumcision.

Puke inducing. I avoid circumcisions, ceremonies and funerals. I don't need any help in feeling like shit...

The Great Depression? For me it was a great growing up time. Who knew? Not me.

Israel History Lessons

In 1970 there were more Jews in New York City, than there were Jews in Israel. But after all, Jesus was a Jew. L. Ron Hubbard? No chance, though he sure as hell was smart enough to be a Jew.

The '67 Israel, Arab war was still fresh in most every Jew's mind. My generation of Jews remembered the virulent anti-Semitism that had been prevalent in the pre WWII United States, joined by France, Great Britain and of course the cradle of it all, Russia. So becoming a Zionist was a natural for this Bronx Jew.

Being, in 1970-71, too fucking smart, by half, the idea to create a Private Equity Fund to drill for oil in Israel took over my life. My first ex-wife screamed like she was being raped. (Sex was never her thing). The Princess, who thought me (in any event) bizarre, used my idea to constantly point out that there 'was something wrong' with me. I didn't do one helluva lot to prove her wrong.

Being 'wrong' in the eyes of The Princess generally meant that I was on the right track. So, away I went in my flying fucking balloon. And fly I did; 7 times to Jerusalem in 13 months. The King David became a home away from home. The food was awful except for the desserts which were fabulous. Helped keep my cholesterol count at a near dangerous level.

Setting up meetings with the Israel energy hierarchy for their knowledge and their cooperation, so that I could raise money in the States to drill for oil and or gas in Israel, was often like pissing into the wind. Wading through the Israel bureaucracy wasn't like spending a day at the beach. Took a phone call to Golda Meir's office to get out of spinning my wheels. Never spoke with Ms. Meir but her office put me in touch with the Energy Minister, Zvi Dinstein.

The Princess was dead right. The deal fell flat on its fucking face and, as it turned out, rightfully so. The Princess, no slouch at the 'I told you so' game, stuck that failure in my ear at every opportunity and there were lots of them.

15 years later, a swollen prostate and an Israeli avant garde solution to the problem landed me in the King David for over two months.

I went weekly to Petah Tikva where Bellinsin Hospital was located, to get my prostate fried. During the week, with my schlong on fire from my prostate treatment, I spent a lot of my time at the King David swimming pool ogling the beautiful Sabra women. They were knockouts before they became breeding machines. Then they acquired the broad, fat butts of women who are knocking too many kids out of their ovens. Very fucking sad.

In those times Jerusalem provided employment for many Arabs, particularly those from the Old City. The bartender at the King David was an Old City Arab resident. He called himself an Arab not a Palestinian. The maids were all Arab. My Sunday Petah Tikva driver was a very tough little Sephardic Jew from Algeria…tough as fucking nails. In those days, there was no love lost between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Israeli Jews. Israel is not without prejudices. Try black Ethiopians.

Sundays I would drive to the Bethlehem market place to buy fresh fruits and fresh baked bread from the Bethlehem Arab Christians and Muslims. My room overlooked the Old City and hearing the early morning horns calling the Arabs to prayer was a kinda welcome alarm clock for me. Driving through the Old City, through the Damascus Gate and through the 'four sections': Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish was always an adrenaline boost for me.

Dinner at the Blue Dolphin in East Jerusalem with Teddy Kolleck's chief assistant, Shula, a wonderful person, was fun. The restaurant was 50% owned by a Jew and 50% by an Arab. The food beat the hell out of the King David's awful fucking food where they could destroy a fish by sauteing it. Chicken was an invitation to choke to death.

Today’s unbelievable animus of the Arabs and Jews alike, which has grown from an undercurrent of resentment, is for me, both sad and frightening. Israel is also caught in the 2,000 years of war between the Arabs.

As long as the Sunnis and Shiites continue their 2,000 year war, there is no end in sight for Israel. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ says it all.

A Reprise Request To Celebrate ' A Clean Tour de France'...And Immigrants

Moderation is fatal. (And Plenty Fucking Boring.)

The Tour de France, at that time, 2008, was dominated by rouges that had drug infused monumental rides. Grunt riders were being paid hundreds of thousands a year, the so called stars millions and the King, Lance Armstrong, was making multiples of tens of millions.

And schmucks like me turned our backs on our suspicions. I guess we thought that if we closed our eyes cyclist drugging would just go away. But personal cycling was the milk of the God's for me. I had been riding 3,500 to 4,000 miles a year for many years, well into my 80's, and spent almost zero time worrying or even thinking about those druggies.

But in the middle (to be the end) of my road biking addiction, there I was, on my lower case, sorry, 88 year old, bronx jewish ass. There was an ambulance nearby and a bunch of people hovering over me as I became conscious, after a nasty bicycle crash, which had left me unconscious.

I had an IV stuck in me while I struggled to get up and said that I wanted to get back on my bike, as though I could, to ride home. Shit, even my helmet was dented. My hard head seemed to be unscathed.

Being 88 years old, dressed in Lycra, pretending that I was in training for the Tour de France, without drugs, was a great fantasy. But if you can't bullshit yourself, who can you bullshit?

The Lycra emphasized my ever present and ever depressing ugly, fucking pot belly. Win, lose or draw, with an Eddy Merckx racing bike, dressed to a cyclist’s nines, I still looked like shit. A fat old man trying to ride and look like a 40 year old.

The fucking ambulance ride to Stanford Hospital's ICU facility was severely uncomfortable (Too bad Hitler wasn't a cyclist.) Probably the longest 15 minutes of my life.

The ambulance guy cutting off of my high priced, $250 Assos Lycra bib really did bite my ass. Shit, I was only bleeding a little bit. Maybe the ambulance guy thought that the Lycra would cut off my blood flow, starting with my legs.

Avoid teaching hospitals if you can. They are loaded with 30 year old geniuses with little practical experience and who don't know shit from a rainy day and who will spend all their time scaring the hell out of you. Spend enough time in a teaching hospital and you will become a borderline hypochondriac, at least.

But just getting into the hospital and going to ICU was a lesson in needing fucking health care coverage. Without the VA and Medicare I am chopped liver. The bill started with a mind boggling $28,000 just for admission to the hospital plus another $28,000 for admission to the ICU. Fees easily paid by hedge fund geniuses but not by the common folk.

Then came the actual treatment charges which came to another $50,00 for total of over $100,000 for 18 hours in ICU. The insanity of the bill was highlighted by a $600 charge for less than 5 minutes, to show a physiotherapist that I could walk.

90 days later while not fully recovered, macho-pacho, jackass me went out for another bike ride. New Lycra, pot belly, Eddy Merckx bike and all. Still, basically still looked like shit.

Lost my balance unclipping and on my lower case bronx jewish ass I went again back first. Falling, while unclipping, even by professional cyclists, is as common as taking a piss. I had fallen several times but this time my first impact was flush on my back on a concrete road and I was virtually paralyzed except for my groaning fucking mouth.

Palo Alto supplied the ambulance to the Veterans Hospital ICU. This time for a week being unable to walk, have a bowl movement or piss and needing a catheter to drain my bladder. Talk about feeling like shit all the time with no respite from feeling really stupid.

Then came an awful month in a terrible rehab facility with a catheter stuck in what is left of my schlong for the entire month. Throw in not being able to walk for the month which made me grow to respect people stuck in a wheel chair or even stuck with a walker. Not being able to walk for a month, then using a wheel chair before graduating to a walker, totally dependent on others is a grim lesson in humility.

My stay at that terrible fucking rehab facility with a catheter stuck in me for the month resulted in a Urinary Tract Infection and back in the VA ICU unit again for a week.

My Grand kid, Jake, drove me down to the hospital, at 2:00 in the morning, with me screaming at him to ignore the God Damn red lights.

And God bless immigrants. Without Filipino, Hispanic, Vietnamese, Chinese and Indian doctors and aides our hospital system comes apart at the fucking seams. The upside of all this action, for me, is that I lost 15 pounds. Still look like shit, but didn't break any bones or my spirit.

God takes care of drunks and fools and since I qualify on both scores, I’m mostly okay but with no positive effect on my dead sex life. With all the rehab effort you'd think that my limp noodle would come alive again. No chance. As Willie Nelson so famously said, "I'm sorry that my dick died before the rest of me".

You are fucked if you can't laugh at yourself and if you don't recognize how ludicrous life can be and laugh at the humor of it all.

Looking in a full length mirror while naked makes me really grateful to be single. Talk about laughs.