The King of Handball

By Raanan Geberer

Originally published in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood 

By any standards, Mark Margolies, who is now in his late sixties, lived an uneventful life. He was modest and soft-spoken. Even after he graduated from Brooklyn College, he lived with his parents until he was 30, mainly staying in his room, working only sporadically, and reading philosophy books. Then, on a weekend hiking trip, he met Gabrielle, the teacher who was to become his wife. She helped him get a job as a lab assistant, which he kept for the rest of his life. The two of them then proceeded to raise two children.

Margolies, however, had one overriding passion. That was handball. He loved any kind of handball – one-wall, four-wall, black ball, pink ball – and its derivatives like paddleball and racquetball. Even when he was a kid, once the exercises were over in gym class, he’d head to the handball court.

Once I asked Mark, whom I met when I worked near his co-op in Brooklyn Heights, whether he played any other games, like basketball or softball. “Well, I learned to swim because I had to. Once I tried touch football,” he said. “It was horrible!”

When I asked him how he got into handball, he said his father, a working-class Jew from Brownsville, worked for the Post Office, but his passion was boxing. “He was a boxer,” Margolies said, “and he trained for boxing by playing handball. He would go to the Betsy Head handball courts in Brownsville, and I’d go with him and watch.” At the same time, because Mark was very shy and had no friends, he never got into sports like the other kids.

“You know the last time I went to a baseball game? The last year the Dodgers were in Brooklyn—1957,” he said. “My brother took me. I sort of enjoyed it, but I never had any real desire to go again.”

Soon afterward, his family moved to the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. From there, it was an easy walk to the Brighton Beach handball courts, the mecca of New York City handball. Everyone, he said, played there—kids like him, guys in their seventies, A-level tournament players, beginners. Sometimes he’d half to wait a half an hour to get on a court, but he didn’t care. He was hooked.

“When I was playing handball,” he said, “it was like I was taken to another dimension. There was such high energy, I was in such a state of ecstasy, that it was like I was removed from the world. Many of the courts had night lights, so sometimes it would be midnight and I didn’t even know it. My parents had to come down and get me. I’d play singles, doubles, sometimes two against one – it didn’t matter, as long as it was handball.”

As time went on, playing on the neighborhood courts got a little boring for him. So he’d get on the trains and go to different neighborhoods all over the city. Even after he got married and moved away from Sheepshead Bay, he continued to go to the courts in Brighton Beach, where the best, most competitive handball players held forth. He went to neighborhoods that most of his peers considered dangerous, like Bushwick or Central Harlem. “Are you kidding?” he’d answer, after someone feared for his safety. “The guys there are some of the best players. They put their all, every part of their body, into it!”

He stopped playing for a few years after he had kids, but when the children got a little older, he went on his handball trips every Saturday and Sunday, while Gabrielle stayed home and pursued his own interests. Once, I asked whether he went to all five boroughs.

“Well, I went all over Brooklyn and all over Manhattan, up to about 168^th Street. I never went to the Bronx – it was too far. I didn’t like Queens, didn’t play there except when I worked in a school there. I’d play on my lunch hour, in the schoolyard. The other teachers loved to play me, the custodians loved to play me, even the kids played me. They thought I was over the hill, but when I started to play, they couldn’t believe it!”

Hearing this story, I asked whether he was an “A-level” player. “Definitely not—I was a B-level player. But who cares!” he answered. “Besides, A-level players in handball don’t get that much recognition anyway—it’s just that they get into the record books.”

 When Mark was about 45, his wrists were beginning to go, so he switched to racquetball – “not paddleball,” he’d say, “the wooden paddle was too heavy for me.” He joined a local gym, and had almost as much fun on their indoor racquetball courts – well, almost as much – as he had when he played handball. When his legs and his back started to go, he switched to ping-pong, but soon, he wasn’t even able to do that.

I saw Mark recently, just sitting at a counter at a local diner near his home and staring straight ahead. His hair was white, his beard was gray and matted, and he had a cane at his side. If you didn’t know him, you could easily mistake him for a street person.

“Been playing any ball lately?” I asked politely, thinking that the answer was no.

“No. My doctor forbids it—you know, my back,” he mumbled.

“Do you go to the handball courts at Brighton Beach to watch?” I asked, trying to salvage something good for him.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “But that’s all I can do.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I sympathized.

“I’m not sad,” he said. “Handball gave me more than 50 years of fun. I’m can’t complain!”

The Singing Dentist of Bensonhurst new version

By Raanan Geberer
Published in "Bensonhurst Bean" 12/11

“When you begin/Begin the beguine/It brings back the night/of tropical splendor….”

Dr. Pearlstein sang as he looked into Rob’s mouth and started poking around, the curbed probe in one hand, the tiny mirror in the other. Ever since Rob had moved to Brooklyn last year, in 1987, his father had tried to get him to see Dr. Pearlstein as a dentist because Dr. Pearlstein was a cousin and had grown up with his father in the old immigrant East Bronx, and finally, here he was. Dr. Pearlstein’s office was on the second floor of a rundown two-story building on a nondescript commercial street in Bensonhurst whose only redeeming feature was the Italian bakery next door. You walked down a long, narrow hallway to get to Dr. Pearlstein’s office.

“A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H/ I got a gal in Kalamazoo/Don’t want to boast but I know she’s the toast/of Kalamazoo…”

Rob had never heard of a singing dentist before. Not only does he sing, he thought, but he seems to sing only the songs of his own era, which would be the late 1930s and early ’40s. It’s incredible that this guy is still practicing, he thought. He must be in his late 60s, past retirement age. He idly glanced at the wall – here was a diploma from “New York University Dental School, June 1949.” Probably went to dental school on the G.I. Bill, he thought. Suddenly, he became alarmed when Dr. Pearlstein picked up a drill.

“What are you doing with that drill? Aren’t you going to give me an anesthetic or an injection?”

“Well, the X-rays show that the cavity is very small and very near the surface, so we don’t need it. Open your mouth—you’re so good, you’re the best, you’re the champ. Here it comes. I’m not lazy!”

`I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle/As we go merrily along/And they say, ain’cha glad you’re single/And that song it ain’t too far from wrong ’ …You’re doing great! Don’t worry about anything. I’m the master! ` He was a famous trumpet man around Chicago way/He had a boogie style that no one else could play’ …You’re so good! Okay, rinse out your mouth!”

Rob bent over, grabbed a paper cup and rinsed his mouth. He watched the blood going down the drain. He had hardly felt anything. “There! That wasn’t so hard, was it? ” Dr. Pearlstein asked. “I’m gonna do the filling now! You know, your father did some amazing, heroic things! Like the time he ran into the battlefield and carried the wounded lieutenant on his back to safety! They were gonna give him a medal for that, but, you know how it is!”

Rob had never heard that story before. Then again, his father rarely talked about his past. “Did you know my father’s brother?” he asked the dentist.

“Sure I knew him!” Dr. Pearlstein answered. “I remember when he left for Palestine in ‘47! He was promoted to major in the Haganah, the first major in the new Jewish army, and the next day, he gets killed in the fighting in Jerusalem. And he didn’t even have to be there–they wanted him in intelligence, but he had to be on the front lines. What are you gonna do?”

Rob was going to ask another question when….

“Okay, we’re gonna put in the filling material next. Here it comes! Stay still! I’m not lazy! Moon over Miami/Shine on as we begin/A dream or two that may come true/As the tide comes in…….’ Okay, just a little bit more. Just stay still. You’re the best! … Bor’chu es adonai hamvoroch/Boruch atoh adonoi hamvoroch leolom voed/Boruch atoh adonoi/Eloheynoo melech ha’olam... OK, we’re done here, kid!”

“I heard you singing that Hebrew brocho, ” Rob said, referring to the blessing over the Torah that Dr. Pearlstein had just intoned. “Wouldn’t those Hasidim I saw in the waiting room object if you sang that when they were here?”

“Fuhgedaboutit!” Dr. Pearlstein responded, cheery as ever. “Don’t worry about them. They got nothin’ to say! OK, see you next time?”

“What should I pay?”

“Don’t pay anything! ’Cause you’re a relative, I’ll fix the insurance form so the price will be very high, so what they give me will cover what you should pay!”

“You don’t have a secretary?”

“Naah! I used to have a secretary, but if I did now, I’d have to charge you guys more! OK, kid! Give my regards to your father…..NEXT!!!”

The Brooklyn Work Group--What's Missing

By Raanan Geberer Originally published in Brooklyn Daliy Eagle BROOKLYN — The recent report by the Brooklyn Work Group of the New York State Department of Health’s Medicaid Redesign Team was in the news recently. Many people were relieved that the team didn’t recommend any hospital closings, although it did recommend the consolidation of several hospitals that are in dire financial straits. Lost in the particulars of the report, however, was the actual makeup of this Brooklyn Work Group. It was chaired by Stephen Berger, chairman of Odyssey Investment Partners, “a New York investment firm that specializes in private corporation transactions.” Berger also chaired the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century in 2005-06, a commission that was criticized by many as the “hospital closing commission.” It closed nine hospitals statewide, including Victory Memorial in Brooklyn, Parkway in Queens and Cabrini in Manhattan. As for the other four members, they are all healthcare and government executives. Ramon Jesus Rodriguez has served as CEO of two HMOs; Elizabeth Swain is the CEO of the Community Health Care Association of New York State; William Toby is a longtime federal health administrator, and Anthony Webb has served as the commissioner of several state agencies. What’s missing here? What’s missing is any input from the health professions or the local communities. This is a commission that deals with hospitals, after all. One would think that some physicians who chair medical departments at local hospitals and/or act as professors of medicine would be represented. Nurses, who work with patients on a day-to-day basis, should also be represented, as should the healthcare unions. And what about public officials and leaders of civic organizations? These people are represented in almost every other temporary government task force that I’ve ever heard of. For example, would a task force on the Gowanus Expressway or the Second Avenue Subway be made up of only transportation engineers? I doubt it — it would also include representatives of nearby communities. Finally, since this report involves public funds dispensed by the state to local hospitals, shouldn’t the state legislature also have a say? In this case, however, the Brooklyn Work Group is only made up of financial and high-level managerial professionals, all of them with strong ties to the highest levels of what Jack Newfield once called “the permanent government” and “Occupy Wall Street” protesters more recently called “the One Percent.” It’s very likely that the one of the main objectives of the study is not to improve healthcare delivery and health services, but to protect the interests of the state’s business and government elites. At times these objectives may coincide. Increasingly nowadays, unfortunately, they do not. For the majority of people in a district to have no say in whether services in their local hospital are expanded, cut back or ended is not compatible with true democracy. * * *

Time for a Jewish `Guardian Angels'

by Raanan Geberer From Brooklyn Daily Eagle BROOKLYN — Back in the late 1960s, as thousands upon thousands of Jews were moving to the suburbs or into co-op apartments and private houses in “newer” neighborhoods, most of those who were left behind in older Jewish neighborhoods, such as East Flatbush and Brownsville, were elderly. Often, these isolated, elderly Jewish men and women were repeatedly attacked and robbed by young thugs and gang members. At that time, a Brooklyn-born rabbi named Rabbi Meir Kahane (although, as it turned out, he was known by several other names) had the idea for an organization known as the Jewish Defense League that would patrol these “changing neighborhoods,” protect these elderly Jews and learn self defense. Unfortunately, Kahane soon linked his Jewish advocacy with a specific, ultra-religious, right-wing philosophy. Among other things, Kahane maintained that Orthodoxy was the only denomination of Judaism worth anyone’s respect; that the only real solution for anti-Semitism was for all Jews to move to Israel and that those who weren’t were basically sitting ducks; and that Israel should be governed by a theocracy and expel all Arabs within its midst. Based on these ideas, which were at variance with those of the majority of American Jews, it’s no surprise that the Jewish Defense League became a magnet for extremists and unstable personalities of all types. It eventually faded away. The recent anti-Semitic attacks in Midwood, however, in which cars in a Jewish area were set afire and benches and builders were defaced with swastikas and “KKK” graffiti, tell me that something like the original Jewish Defense League concept is needed. The difference is, however, that this should be a REAL “Jewish Defense League” without Kahane’s extremism. It should include Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, unaffiliated and atheists; Zionists and non-Zionists, those for whom Judaism is a central function of their lives and Jews who haven’t set foot in a synagogue in five years, Democrats and Republicans. The sole criteria would be a desire to fight virulent, violent anti-Semitism. No one with a felony record would be admitted. This group would learn karate and judo and patrol areas that are at risk. Their main priority would be to inform the police about any incidents and to hand any perps they find “in the act” over to the cops. However, they should be willing to use martial-arts techniques if necessary. Maybe what I’m thinking of is more like the early Guardian Angels than anything else. At any rate, these are my ideas, and I hope someone will carry them out.

A food autobiography--Part one

My first entry concerns the lowly knish. At the local delis when I was growing up, you did see the proletarian square potato knish that was also sold from hot-dog carts, but you also had meat knishes and kasha knishes. And once you had one of those, you knew that you were through with the square potato knish forever. Later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, you began to see a great variety of knishes in the city – cheese knishes, pineapple cheese knishes, cherry cheese knishes, spinach knishes, sweet potato knishes – and I loved them all. Many of these originated with the famous Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes in Brighton Beach but could also be found elsewhere – even at a “Coney Island Knishes” eatery in Penn Station. Well, food fads come and go, and today it’s once again hard to find knishes except for the square kind, although I recently found a spinach knish and a kasha knish at Murray’s Bagels on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea. Hopefully, knishes, in all their glory and variety, will become popular again someday!

An All-Digital World: A Fool's Paradise?

By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle In the beginning, there was the LP, or long-playing record. You also had the lower-budget cassette. This was replaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the digital CD. Now, according to some recent reports, the CD is being phased out with the assumption that anyone who wants music will do it through online downloading services like iTunes and Amazon. Indeed, within the past decade the unthinkable happened: Virgin Records and Tower Records, both powerhouses in their day, both hit the dust. Devices like the Kindle are also all the rage, and in January, news reports indicated that sales of Kindle books have outpaced those of hardcovers (apparently, paperback books are still convenient enough to carry around). With Kindle, of course, you also download the books over the internet. And e-mail replacing written letters is an old story. So few people write actual letters, aside from New Year’s cards and such, that your mail is now likely to consist mainly of advertisements. No wonder the Postal Service is considering ending Saturday service. But before your clap you hands in delight and say, “How neat! Far out!” (or whatever exclamation that people say nowadays), consider this. After 9/11 there were thousands of government subpoenas for e-mail records and/or phone records, and in very many of these cases, the requests were granted. The government last year lost a court case about a request to access e-mails without a search warrant, but the issue hasn’t gone away. What happens if or when, in the distant or not-so-distant future, a totalitarian dictatorship comes to power in the United States and declares martial law? Then all of you hip, with-it, digital people will find that the government will know who you write to, what you write, what you buy online, what books you read, what you listen to. Already, many employers are spying on people’s ostensibly private Facebook accounts to find out more about prospective employees. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but maybe an all-digital, all-online world is a fool’s paradise.

Class Conflict

By Raanan Geberer “Where too,” asked the heavy-set, plaid shirt-wearing, fifty-ish cab driver. “The Accord Conference Center,” we answered. Like many New Yorkers, we didn’t own a car. This time we decided to try to save some money by not renting a car. Instead, we took the bus up to New Paltz, then called a cab. “Yep,” the driver said, “two people came up here today.” As we turned onto a mountain road, I asked, politely as I could, “What other kind of work do you do?” I couldn’t imagine that there were full-time jobs for cab drivers in a town where everybody drove. “Driving my cab is it for me,” the guy said, laughing. “But is there enough business for a cab company here?” He pointed to a roadhouse coming up on the left side of the road. “You see that bar?” he asked. “Plenty of guys go there on Saturday night, get drunk, then call me or one of the other guys to drive them home. Then, the next morning, they get sober, they call us to drive them back there to get their cars. We make lots of money that way!” “Is that the only bar in town?” my wife asked. “The only one around here, that is,” he said, passing a fishing equipment and guns store. “And tonight, they’re gonna have a band, so it’s really gonna be busy!” I didn’t even have to ask—I knew it would be a country and western band. “By the way,” the guy asked, “do you mind if I smoke?” “That’s OK,” my wife answered. He guy lit a cigarette. “Yep, I’ve done everything—I didn’t have the education a lot of you city people have. I’ve worked construction, drove a school bus, been a salesman selling stuff from the trunk of my car, now a cab driver. So we’ll see how long that lasts. Yep, since I’ve been divorced I moved around all over the country. Find a few rooms above a store, buy a few sticks of used furniture and it’s home!” Trying to change the subject, I asked, “I heard about the stock-car races around here. Isn’t it true that the chief of police himself takes part in the race?” “Yeah, he races every year! He’s got a great car, too … Here we are! Let me help you get your bags out.” • * After three days, we headed back to the city. The same guy drove me back. In New Paltz, we got onto a shiny new Trailways bus. Little by little, I began hearing a conversation behind me. I turned around and sneaked a look. An extremely well-dressed older man and woman were talking. Both of them spoke in the precise, well-modulated tones of Ivy League graduates. “Yes,” the woman said, “this is an experiment that turned out well. It saves us some driving, for a change, and the bus is very pleasant and roomy.” Something about them interested me. They didn’t seem like typical bus riders. He continued to listen. “Where do you plan to go after we get off? I was thinking of a little place in the Village….” “I don’t like Greenwich Village. There’s a wonderful little place in the East 80s where we can go, it’s a marvelous French brasserie. Their Salade Nicoise is to die for!” “What about the food I’m carrying in this container?” “We can have it tomorrow.” “Such wonderful food I made. Beet-flavored pasta with goat cheese, fennel and peppercorns in truffle oil!” “So, Angela, I’m curious about your deal.” “It’s terrible that it fell through – a wonderful country house, a smaller house behind it and a large amount of land. And, you know, it was a million-dollar deal.” “You know,” the man said, “the thing to do is to buy some property, rent it out, then use the proceeds to buy more property. That’s what my son did in the south of Spain. He bought a condo, rented it out to tourists, then used the proceeds to buy another one. He owns five condos now.” “Is that your son who went to Princeton?” “No, that’s the other one. This is my son who went to Yale.” I contrasted their conversation with what I heard from the cab driver who drove me from the bus station to the conference center last week. Here was living proof that there were at least three Americas – the upper-crust world of this couple, our middle-class existence, and the world of marginal people like the cabbie. The only way he would ever meet these two is if he was working as a handyman in their house. I looked out the window and fell asleep. My wife jabbed me gently to wake me when we reached the Port Authority bus terminal. People were standing up, getting their bags. And then, through the din, I heard a loud shriek: “Oh, dear! I must have put the lid on too loose! This is a catastrophe!” And there, on the floor, were the remnants of some beet-flavored pasta with goat cheese, fennel and fresh herbs in truffle oil. Carefully stepping over it, we moved on.