Reflections of Dad..Music…

I’m looking out over the Gulf of Mexico – my favorite place to be – home. I’m eating matzos. The sky is mostly overcast, it’s windy and cool; tourists are  not overjoyed, but for  locals, like us, the lack of sun in the Sunshine State is of short duration, so we read, watch movies, eat popcorn, as Jayne and Mary are doing. I’ve got music playing in my headset – Grooveshark – my mix of classical Mozart, Beethoven,  Latino Pedro Infante, Southern Gospel Gaither Chorus, standards Sinatra, Torme, Mathis, 20’s real old Caruso, Jolson, Hawaiian Israel Kamakawiwoole, Brother Cazimeros, Folk Peter Paul Mary, Brothers Four, Klezmer Cracow Band, Giora Feidman, ….Klezmer? or klezmorim? Ever hear it, or heard of it?

A few months ago, wandering around Downtown Disney, we came across a group playing Klezmer music, (not drawing much of a crowd in today’s society of folks who think Rap & Hip Hop are music), but we sat down and listened, and enjoyed. (Sample? YouTube “Klezmer”..).

My Dad was born and raised on the Lower East Side of New York at the beginning of the 20th Century, in a mostly Yiddish speaking neighborhood. As a kid, he’d take me by Q17 or Q65 bus and Flushing IRT subway,  from our home in Flushing, Queens, to his 'growing-up' area to go to my violin lessons at the 3^rd Street Music School Settlement (obviously on 3^rd St East 3rd St), or to go to the Boys Club of New York on East 10^th St, or just to walk around, get a pretzel, an egg cream, and in Tompkins Square Park, listen to rag-tag musicians: klezmorim.

A life that came, and went.

 My Dad was Jewish, and when he saw my German, from Germany, Mormon Mom, in the Midtown Manhattan Post Office on West 38^th St – he was a stamp clerk, she had come in to buy stamps – he said to his fellow clerk, and longtime friend Ralph Bellone: “I’m going to marry that beautiful  lady”. (Of course he didn’t know Mom was a Mormon, Mom probably knew he was Jewish: he  looked it (Yes, ‘looked’ Jewish – nothing anti-semitic  intended) and his name plate read Samuel Berkman.  It was 1937…Hitler was already the Dictator of Nazi Germany and on an Anti-Semitic  rampage. Dad asked Mom to go for a cup of coffee, she said yes, (although she had Postum), he closed his ‘cage’, told the guy behind Mom to go on Ralph’s line and the relationship began.

And, nearly ended, months later, when Dad asked Mom to marry, and she replied: “You need to be baptized a Mormon first”. Dad thought about it for maybe  10 seconds: his family was, obviously, going to be very upset, the Mormon Brooklyn Ward they’d be going to, was a hot-bed of 'wannabe', and, real Nazis, who would be very  unfriendly, (He didn’t know this, but it turned out to be true), he was a 37 year-old bachelor, supporting his parents and various younger brothers and sisters (it was still Depression conditions in NYC), yet…yet… he loved her, was devoted to her, (and wanted to have a violin-playing son, who would give him a violin-playing granddaughter who’d give him a violin-playing great- grandson named Samuel Berkman), so he said “Yes”.

The matzo is King David brand, made in Jerusalem, and sold here in Florida by Publix, and appropriate for me to be eating: it is the 6^th day of Passover, and, Good Friday, a confluence of Jewish history culminating  in my thoughts of my Dad, music, and life.

Only my sisters, and my cousin Cynthia on Florida’s East Coast share any memories of my Dad…

And I, I  think of him very often: he’d love living in Florida, eating King David matzos, listening to all his favorite music, looking out over the water, waves, and sand…living the life I live.. (except he’d be 114 years old in June..probably wouldn’t know he’s eating a matzo, living in Florida, looking over the Gulf, listening to music…but I’d know)…

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