Features
How Norman Stein, a long-time teacher in Winnipeg Jewish schools transitioned into an enventful career in the music business
By BERNIE BELLAN
In May 2021 I began what was supposed to have been a two-part story about the life of a man, Norman Stein, who left an indelible impression on so many Jewish students during his teaching career in the Jewish school system, which began in the 1950s and ended in 1967.
But – I’ve long been a procrastinator; it’s taken me over two years to return to Stein’s story.
Now 91, Stein left Winnipeg many years ago, but he still recalls his years teaching here – at the Talmud Torah, Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate, and the Rosh Pina Hebrew School, with great fondness.
When I published that initial story about Stein’s teaching career, which I began by delving into his childhood growing up first on Pritchard Avenue, later on Redwood, and finally on St. Anthony, I attempted to transcribe a line in Yiddish that I had recorded Stein as saying, but I mangled that line.
Here again is the anecdote Stein related about one time when he had wandered off on a Friday evening into the Ukrainian Labour Temple on the corner of Burrows and McGregor:
“Anyway, one Erev Shabbes – I was three or four, I snuck into the theatre and the manager asked me who I was looking for?
“I told him I was looking for my mommy. He said, ‘You just sit here’, and the next thing I know I’m watching the Priscilla Lane sisters playing tennis in their white shorts. I remembered that.
“The manager called me out and said, ‘Your mother’s here now.’ And I wondered, how could that be? because my mother doesn’t even know I’m here. I go out and there’s my mother and Mrs. Rubinfield, who ran a grocery store a few doors down, and had a pay phone – which they avoided using on Shabbes – but they called the police and the police asked, ‘Is there a favourite place he likes to go?’ and my mother said I like to go to the movies, so the police said: Maybe he went to the Labour Temple.’”
As Stein explained what happened next, when he was confronted outside the Labour Temple by his mother, Mrs. Rubinfield, and a “Bobby” who was with them, in addition to being scolded for wandering into the movie theatre, the Bobby added: “And you didn’t even pay”, to which, Stein said he answered (and remember, this is a four-year-old) – and this is the line I got completely wrong: “M’tur nisht trugen kein gelt oif Shabbes” – “You mustn’t carry any money on Shabbes.”
It may have taken me 26 months for me to correct that adulteration of the Yiddish language, but when I contacted Stein again recently to ask him whether he’d be willing to continue with the story of his Winnipeg years, the first thing he told me is how miserably I had failed in trying to transcribe that line.
Despite that very grave error, however, Stein did tell me that he quite enjoyed the May 2021 interview piece. I told him that piece also evoked a very strong and warm response from many of his former students and that many of them had told me they were very much looking forward to the sequel.
I ended the first part of my story about Stein by noting that, in 1966, he was involved in a very serious car accident when his car was rear ended by a truck. He said, “That’s a period I don’t remember well… I was in a coma for some time. I was a nervous wreck. My doctor suggested I go to some place relaxing, so I went to Hollywood.”
Thus began the next chapter of Norman Stein’s life, which we now take up here:
Stein was working for RCA Records in the A&R (artists & repertoire) department. One day a young, barefoot Black girl came in with a demo tape. She said her name was Natalie Cole (daughter of Nat King Cole).
Stein asked her why she didn’t take her demo tape to Capitol Records, since that’s where Nat King Cole had a recording contract? “She said she didn’t want to be attached to his apron strings,” Stein explained.
Apparently though, Natalie Cole was upset with Stein “and she stormed out of there.” I asked Stein whether there were any other memorable moments from his time in California, and he mentioned that he was still in the United States during the time of the Six-Day War in June 1967.
“The Israeli Philharmonic was touring in the States at the time and I did some PR for them. There was a celebratory concert at the Hollywood Bowl and the guest artist was Jack Benny.”
While he was still in California, Rabbi Witty, who was the then-principal of the Talmud Torah and Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate had phoned Stein and had asked him whether he would be prepared to resume teaching the humanities courses that he had taught to students in Grades 7-12 at JWC for years, including courses in the history of music and the history of art, philosophy, and library science.
I remember taking Stein’s course on the history of art. Part of the course was devoted to a study of architecture. Stein recalled how enthusiastic so many of the students in my particular class were when he gave us an assignment to “take photographs of sites in Winnipeg that would be comparable to some in Ancient Greece by the way they photographed.”
Stein did resume teaching those courses in the fall of 1967, but when he asked to take a leave of absence to attend various music conventions, Tamara Wiseman, who was the vice-principal of the Talmud Torah at the time thought that “it wasn’t fair to the students that I had to leave town to go to conventions to pursue a career in music,” and without even being given a chance to say good bye to his students, Stein was told that he should just “leave.”
I said to Stein that I had heard from someone by the name of John Einarson, who is arguably Manitoba’s foremost music historian – and who gave a brilliant presentation during a recent Jewish Heritage Centre event titled “The Soundtracks of our Lives” about Jewish musicians in Winnipeg through the years, that Einarson had worked for Stein at a time when Stein was selling records out of the back of Strain’s Camera Store on Portage Avenue.
I asked Stein whether he began doing that around the time his teaching career ended (in 1967)?
“We couldn’t get into Polo Park (because Polo Park wouldn’t allow a record store at that time) so we opened in the back of Strain’s (which was owned by the late Manny Wiseman. One of Manny Wiseman’s sons, Bob, went on to become one of the founding members of Blue Rodeo.)
“People were only going up to the camera department and we rarely got anyone coming into our section,” Stein observed.
In 1969, Stein made the move that was eventually to lead to a 10-year period when he achieved his greatest recognition in Winnipeg – with the opening of the famed Opus 69 record store.
“There was space above Clifford’s Ladies Wear “(at 412 Portage Avenue, the corner of Kennedy and Portage), Stein continued. (Cliffords was owned by Johnny Pollock. One of Pollocks’ sons, Harold, went on to become a renowned classical guitarist.)
Thus began Opus 69. Around the same time Stein became host of a nightly program on CKY FM called “Now Flower.” Randy Moffat was the owner of CKY at the time and he was so impressed with the program – and the number of different recordings that Stein was able to play that CKY “even put a console in Opus 69 with live broadcasting by a DJ between noon and 6 pm.”
I remarked that I remember well that second floor location for Opus 69 and how popular it was.
Stein suggested “that small location became the most popular record store in Winnipeg.”
In a 2016 article for the Free Press, John Einarson wrote about the huge impression Opus 69 made on music fans in Winnipeg when it first opened: “Once Opus 69 opened in the spring of 1969 on Kennedy Street just south of Portage, above an optometrist’s shop, it became my destination for music. Opus 69 specialized almost exclusively in rock music and had the most extensive selection in the city, including imported recordings, as well as listening stations to sample before you purchased.
“I remember the first time my friend and I did that, never having used headphones before,” recalls Grant Edwards.“We were busy yelling to each other until one of the workers asked us to please stop yelling as no one else in the store was listening to headphones.”
Unfortunately, while owner Norman Stein had great taste in records, his business acumen was wanting, and when Opus 69 moved to the more spacious ground-floor store on Kennedy north of Portage in the early ’70s it was under new ownership. However, it continued to boast a wide selection and knowledgeable staff.”
Around the same time that Stein was running Opus 69 he also had a company called “Campus Records Distributors,” which sold records to university bookstores across Canada. Campus Records was eventually bought by Deutsche Grammaphone.
As John Einarson noted, “Opus 69 moved to a new location on Kennedy Street (across from what used to be the Town and Country), but by the early 1970s Norman Stein was no longer the owner.” (He told me, during our interview, that he didn’t want to get into what happened with the business. Suffice to say that, by 1979, Opus was in receivership. Stein had long been out of the picture when that happened.)
Stein said that he remained in Winnipeg with his ailing mother until she passed, in 1980. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Vancouver. He did talk about his career in Vancouver, but I said to him that I preferred to keep the focus on Winnipeg.
Before our conversation ended though, Stein said he wanted to tell me one more story from his childhood – when he was about four. The story had to do with the quaint Jewish custom of “shlogn kapores,” during which on Erev Yom Kippur a chicken (or a rooster) is waved over one’s head and one’s sins are transferred to said chicken or rooster.
Here’s how Stein described how the ritual was practiced in his home – and what happened one year: “You have a tablecloth over a table, you take the live rooster and swing it around your head and say certain prayers from a Siddur (prayer book). When you do that you put the live rooster under the table, then you take it to the shochet for Yom Tov.
“Well, this rooster kept pecking at my wrists and hurting me but I was holding on tight, so I threw the rooster under the table. When I pulled it out, it had a limp neck. It was dead. I bawled my head off because it meant the rooster could not have absorbed all my sins. My mother was upset because she didn’t have a tarnigol (Hebrew for rooster) for Yom Tov.”
I asked: “Because it wasn’t slaughtered properly?”
Stein replied: “How could it be slaughtered? I choked it to death. It had an overdose of sins!”
I said to him that so many of his former students offered reminiscences, both in our newspaper and in the Facebook group “1950s and 60s Winnipeg Jewish Students”, about his having been their teacher, that I wondered whether he would be amenable to hearing from former students.
I mentioned to him that one of the contributors to that Facebook group was David Steinberg. I asked Stein whether he had ever had Steinberg as a student? That led him to tell this story:
“When I was teaching in the Rosh Pina Hebrew School the synagogue youth group had socials and David performed his jokes on stage. As I was teaching him, he knew, as an opportunist, that I had some connections with Chicago. He wanted to go to Second City – the famous comedy thing. He could not get in, but he could if he was a yeshiva student. So I wrote a letter to the yeshiva on his behalf and he got accepted into the Hebrew Theological College (from where Stein had also graduated) and, after that the Rosh Yeshiva said to me: ’So where is your David Steinberg?’ He disappeared after a while and Second City had rented in the Jewish community centre across the street from the yeshiva. I never saw him again until one year – it was around 1970, I went to Greenwich Village and saw a poster for a folk music group. At the bottom it said ‘opening act: David Steinberg.’
“A door opened and who comes out but David Steinberg? I said ‘Dudi?’ and he said, ‘Uh, your face is a little familiar…Oh yes, Norman, here’s my business card and we’ll have coffee in my private apartment ….and I never went to his apartment.”
I asked Stein whethe he would be amenable to my putting his phone number into this article so that former students could get in touch with him.
Although each time I’ve phoned Stein, we’ve had very pleasant conversations, I’m not sure whether he would have the stamina to engage in phone convesations on a regular basis with former students. Still, if he’s tired or preoccupied doing something else, I’m sure he would let anyone know. And, even though he says he has trouble remembering things, I certainly didn’t find that to be the case. Stein did say that he wouldn’t have any objection to my putting his phone number into this article, so here it is: 1-604-269-0961. Remember, he’s in Vancouver, so bear in mind the time zone that he’s in if you do plan on calling him.
Features
Part 4 of the delusional Winnipeg con man story: The guy in LA who figured out who everyone else was that had been conned
By BERNIE BELLAN This is the fourth part of a story about a delusional Winnipegger who believes he is someone of great wealth and has spent the better part of 30 years contacting people all over the world telling them that he wants to invest in their businesses or projects.
The other three parts have been posted here at: Part 1: “The delusional Winnipeg con man who actually believed his own elaborate con and led one victim in Africa to consider committing suicide”; Part 2: “Meeting the con man for the first time in 2021; and Part 3: “An explosive email arrives in my inbox on January 16.”
As I noted in my last chapter, it was some time after that January 16 email arrived before I realized it had been sent by the person I’m calling Rick here – even though the email was supposedly sent by someone else. I still don’t understand why Rick chose to disguise the fact that he was the one who sent the email that detailed the litany of deception that the man I’ve been calling Fred Devlin perpetrated.
There are so many things I still don’t understand about Rick. He’s gone from being extremely cordial to vicious and back again to being cordial.
At first I didn’t keep a record of all the texts I received from Rick. He kept throwing out names I had never heard of – as if I had any idea what he was talking about. I tried to get him to slow down, just tell me who all these different individuals were whose names he was citing.
Rick kept coming back to one name in particular. I’ll call him Jonathan. Rick wrote that Jonathan was trying to get the RCMP in Ontario (where apparently Jonathan lived) to conduct a criminal investigation of Devlin. Since texts are often jumbled I had to keep asking Rick to explain why Jonathan, in particular – out of all the names Rick had mentioned to me who were victims of Devlin’s vast cons, had a story that might convince a police force in Canada to investigate Devlin. What about the others? I wondered. Didn’t they all have reasons to file complaints with police forces.
Over a period of days – in which I was constantly exchanging texts with Rick (I should explain that I’m mostly retired and can devote myself to writing about stories that grab my interest, as opposed to what I used to have to do previously, which was often to write about subjects in which I had no real interest.), I kept asking Rick more and more questions to get a better idea of the scope of Devlin’s activities through the years.
I told Rick that the January 16 email I had received whetted my appetite to the point where I would publish on my website that email along with my own story how I had come to meet Devlin. My original intention was to keep adding to that story as I learned more information about Devlin’s bizarre pattern of duping individuals into thinking he was rich and powerful. However, as I’ve already explained I was intimidated into pulling that story off my website once I got that libel chill letter from a lawyer.
Even though I chickened out on that one, I told Rick I still wanted to pursue talking to the various individuals he had named in various texts whom he described as having fallen prey to Devlin’s machinations. In time I was able to speak to seven different individuals, all of whom gave me permission to record my conversations with them. Strangely enough, once I had wrapped up speaking to everyone who I thought could offer a piece of the puzzle that is Fred Devlin, I was contacted by one more individual, whom I happen to know very well. That person’s name had come up in some of Rick’s texts – and not in a favourable way.
That particular individual said they knew their name had been discussed in negative terms by one or more of the individuals with whom I had spoken and they wanted to set the record straight – but not on the record. They kept me on the phone for more than two hours, but always insisting that nothing they had said could be reported. So, what was the point of their calling me in the first place? I wondered.
That particular conversation, frustrating as it was, was no stranger than some of the other conversations I had with some of the other individuals whose names had been mentioned at various times in Rick’s texts. Conversations were often meandering and had little to do with the story I was trying to chase down. But, I’m a good listener – and I let everyone who wanted to ramble on do that. Trying to make sense of what they told me had happened between each of them and Devlin wasn’t easy and I kept coming back to the original question that first occurred to me when I met Devlin: How long would it have taken you to realize the guy was a nutcase?
Following are excerpts from texts I received from Rick – and remember, I din’t have a clue who he was talking about in most cases. Again, names have been changed to protect individuals’ identities where they asked not to have their names divulged. The texts may seem somewhat disjointed and incoherent, but reading them will give you a sense of how wide a net Devlin cast in his delusion that he was a hugely successful businessman.
The first text here begins with a reference to someone named Bryan. I had been told earlier by Rick that Bryan Hunter was with the RCMP and was working on an investigation of Devlin at the behest of Jonathan who, as I noted earlier, was urging the RCMP to investigate Devlin.
“…just waiting for Bryan to get to work on Tuesday so he can transfer the case from York police to Winnipeg RCMP and get started with the investigation
“Charlie in Africa is still getting death threats and harassment from random strangers
“Avi … is ready to speak with you now and share his story about Fred – his number in Vegas is …
“Also Dan Winthrop is ready to speak with you now too. He’s the guy Fred used to fly around the world to these imaginary meetings to buy millions of dollars of planes and airports and all kinds of crazy stuff. He’s been with Fred for years doing this and has all the evidence and stories about everything. His number is …
“I’m still trying to get Jonathan Soloway to call you but he has trust issues with journalists
“Once you talk to Avi and Dan, you’ll have all you need.
“I’m telling you man this is almost like a major motion film it’s so beyond crazy.
(The following text is about someone whom I’ll call Dan thanking Rick for the work he’s done to try to bring Devlin to justice, also referring to being willing to talk to me.)
“Dan says ‘Thank you so much I do really appreciate the tone of your email and also your great work. It was very timely for you to do this and the end result from my 40 year project was absolute devastation. Fred destroyed and lied in person to top executives of an international company for years and now I’m in the mud because I associated with him. Yes I definitely will talk with this guy’ (That would be me).
“ ‘I will probably fly to Winnipeg to have a chat with him. I’ve been reviewing my story in my head and trying to make it succinct. So I will send you my story before I talk with this guy. Your timing was absolutely excellent. I don’t know if my work will ever continue that I’ve spent so many years on. But you as a businessman and a publisher knows what it’s like to persevere. I accept the suffering that I’m going through now and better to face that Fred is a psychopath now than further down the road. Fred definitely needs to be stopped and is using the names of top leaders in Winnipeg as companies that he says he owns.
“ ‘So you’re doing great work and I honor that.
“ ‘Thank you’ “
A couple more weeks passed between texts with Rick. I wrote to him: “…you keep saying charges are about to be laid, and from what I can see all that the RCMP have done is assigned a case number to Jonathan’s complaint.
“It’s hard for me to believe that the RCMP was taking the complaint seriously.”
Rick responded: “You have no idea the obstacles and challenges we’ve been through to get to this point. I’ve already cried about every obstacle along the way, so I’m not gonna repeat myself and bore both of us. I understand I’m just frustrated and I want this to be over with and I want that psychopath to be locked away, so he can’t hurt any more people.
I wanted to know though, what exactly Devlin had done to Rick that caused him such anguish. I asked him: “Can you quantify how you lost millions of dollars? Was it put into some sort of investment?”
Rick responded: “I didn’t lose millions through a direct cash investment. The loss was through reliance and opportunity cost over roughly two years. Fred promised a $10 million investment to acquire and scale my magazine and represented that $1 million would be advanced to stabilize me personally while the larger transaction was finalized. Based on those representations, I stopped pursuing other investors, shared my full business plan, disclosed confidential and personal information, and spent thousands of hours in daily calls, planning sessions, and operational preparation with Fred, my staff, and outside collaborators.
“We had approximately 20 people lined up and ready to execute once funding arrived, and the company’s growth was effectively put on hold while we waited. During that time I passed on other legitimate opportunities and investors because I believed the deal was real and imminent. The financial loss is the value of years of diverted labor, stalled growth, foregone funding opportunities, and business damage caused by reliance on repeated promises that were never fulfilled. That is what I mean when I say I lost millions of dollars.”
I returned to asking the original question that had been troubling me from the first time I received that original email on January 16: “How can so many highly intelligent people have been conned by Fred – and for so long? I smelled a rat the first time I met him. What was it about him that persuaded so many ostensibly intelligent people to go along with the nonsense he was spewing out when what he was promising could never be backed up?”
Rick responded: “That question is exactly the right one, and it’s really the heart of the story.
“Fred didn’t succeed because people were unintelligent. He succeeded because he was highly adaptive and targeted people’s specific vulnerabilities. He didn’t tell the same story to everyone. He mirrored each person’s values, language, and aspirations, then slowly escalated his claims once trust was established.
“In my case, I’m highly intelligent and have run a successful media company for decades, but I’m also autistic. That combination can mean I take people at their word. I’m less attuned to manipulation cues, and I’m more willing to suspend disbelief if something feels theoretically possible. Over time, especially with constant contact, that matters. When someone speaks with absolute confidence day after day, hour after hour, the brain normalizes the claims.
“The unifying factor across victims wasn’t stupidity, it was money used as leverage. Fred consistently dangled imminent, life changing financial relief. Promised investments, salaries, ownership positions, acquisitions. Once people believed funding was coming, they reorganized their lives around it. They stopped pursuing alternatives. They waited. That waiting is where the damage happens.
“He also used social proof. He placed people into roles within a supposedly massive organization, introduced them to each other, referenced meetings with officials, institutions, and high status figures. Each person assumed someone else had already verified the claims. No one realized they were all operating on the same unverified promises.
“Some victims were vulnerable due to age, idealism, faith, or personal hardship. Others were experienced professionals who believed they were seeing only a small piece of a much larger, already validated operation. Fred exploited optimism, trust, and the very human tendency to believe that extraordinary opportunities sometimes really do exist.
“In hindsight, the claims were impossible. But cons don’t work in hindsight, they work in real time, incrementally, when skepticism is postponed just a little longer each day because the payoff is always right around the corner.
“That’s how intelligent people get caught. Not all at once, but slowly, while trying to act in good faith.
“I’m absolutely willing to go on the record and share every aspect of my experience in detail, including timelines, communications, documents, and the specific representations that were made to me over the two year period. My goal is transparency and preventing further harm to others. I will also work with everyone I’ve interviewed and spoken to so that they can share their stories with you directly as well.”
After reading that particular text – which was well written, I came to the conclusion that the January 16 email I had received had been written by Rick, not by Charlie. I wondered why that was, so I asked Rick why he had used Charlie to send that email? Rick refused to answer that question and said that he felt like he was being “interrogated” by me. I told him that his response only added to my puzzlement over this entire story – which I still find so baffling to understand. Rick’s responses to subsequent questions became increasingly frazzled.
In our final exchange of texts – when I persisted in asking him why he had written that January 16 email, not Charlie, he wrote: “You’re throwing a monkey wrench into the whole thing right now by being a little too pushy and a little too aggressive
“This is always been about stopping Fred from taking more victims, not about you writing a story about our traumas
“The only person who benefits there is you”
In the meantime, I wanted to begin speaking to others who had been victimized by Fred Devlin.
The first person I spoke to by phone is someone I’m going to call Dan Winthrop.
Features
Israeli Government Report Ranks World’s 10 Most Influential Antisemites
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published this week its official ranking of the 10 most influential antisemitic figures in the world in 2025, and the No. 1 spot was given to social media influencer Dan Bilzerian, who is running for US Congress in Florida.
The Armenian-American entrepreneur and US military veteran is a prominent critic of Israel and Judaism who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. He has said he wants to “kill Israelis” and thinks Judaism is “terrible.” He recently claimed antisemitism is a “made-up term” and there is a “big Jewish supremacy problem” in the United States. He formally filed paperwork earlier this month to run as a Republican and unseat incumbent Jewish Rep. Randy Fine in Florida’s 6th Congressional District.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is the world’s second most influential antisemite, according to Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which highlighted her use of terms such as “genocide,” “siege,” and “mass starvation” in reference to Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip.
Third place was given to Egyptian comedian and former television host Bassem Youssef, followed by far-right American political commentator Candace Owens in fourth place and Palestinian-British journalist and editor Abdel Bari Atwan in fifth.
The list includes American imam Omar Suleiman, Denmark-based doctor Anastasia Maria Loupis – who has shared online conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel – far-right commentator and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and conspiracist Ian Carroll.
Rounding out the top 10 is far-right podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who regularly promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish influence.
Israel said the 10 most “prominent influencers in the global antisemitic and anti-Zionist arena in 2025” were selected based on “both the severity of their actions/statements and the scope of their influence” related to their activities last year. “Each of them has expressed antisemitic views or promoted false information related to Jews, Israel, or both,” the ministry explained. The list does not include individuals with formal political or government positions.
Each individual was ranked based on their influence on social media, but also other factors such as their repeated appearances on news channels, “perceived influence on public opinion, and prominence in certain communities.” The ministry also took into consideration each person’s “level of impact and risk,” which includes how often they upload antisemitic and anti-Israeli posts on social media. The report was released ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah.
In a separate section of the report dedicated to antisemitic and anti-Israel influencers in the US, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs singled out YouTuber and children’s educator Ms. Rachel, who has “increasingly used her social media accounts to amplify pro-Palestinian messages and criticize Israel.”
“Her posts have been interpreted by pro-Israel organizations as one-sided and hostile to Israel, and organizations such as StopAntisemitism have accused her of spreading anti-Israel or pro-Hamas propaganda and called for an examination of her activities,” the ministry stated.
Features
4000 Quarters for my Uncle Lew – a new story by David Topper
Introduction: David Topper has been featured on this website many times. His stories about Albert Einstein have drawn huge audiences, but David’s interests range far beyond writing about science. Most recently, we have featured stories about “Jews in strange places.”
If you want to find all of David Topper’s stories that have appeared on this site, just enter his name in our search engine (the magnifying glass). Here’s David’s latest story – but be warned: As David told me, it’s a “story”:
I adored my Uncle Lew. He was one of many uncles in the large extended family on my mother’s side. Of course, this means that there were many aunts too. But there were not many cousins – at least, none my age. And I was an only child; so I guess you could call me an “only cousin” too. At least when I was very young – say, from ages 6 through 12 or so – until many cousins were eventually born. In all, it seems that I was alone, in those early years.
But I’m digressing already, and I just want to tell you about my grandmother’s brother, my Uncle Lew. You see, he lived in the same city when I was very young, and he came to visit a lot – especially on Sundays, when there was a large gathering of the extended family at my grandmother’s home, with lots of food. He came with his wife, Aunt Lil. But it was Lew who was especially nice to me. He always came with jokes; jokes that the adults laughed at – and I did too, but often not really knowing what was funny.
Most importantly, for me, sometime during the visit, Uncle Lew would sneak up behind me and put his hand in the right side-pocket of my trousers. I knew what was happening, and so I’d just walk away to a quiet part of the house, reach inside my pocket, and pull out a shiny quarter. Rubbing it in my hands, thinking about what I might buy, and putting it back in my pocket – I was happy, and set for the week to come. You must realize that this was sometime in the late 1940s and into the 1950s – and a quarter was worth a lot to a kid. These were the days when a penny could buy a nice treat at the candy store nearby where I lived. And, well you do the math: a quarter was worth 25 pennies. Yes, I adored Uncle Lew, although I’m not sure I would have used that word at the time.
Speaking of money. I remember that the family, especially the men, talked a lot about money. I’m not sure that many of them had a lot of it, since most were of the working class. Maybe that’s why they talked about it. Although I suspect that rich people spend a lot of time talking about money too. Yet, what do I know?
I mention this because, at some point – I don’t remember the date or my age – but Uncle Lew and Aunt Lil moved to another city. Thus: no more shiny quarters in my pocket at the Sunday dinners. Instead, I listened to the talk, mainly among the men, about Uncle Lew. And as best I could surmise: Uncle Lew owed people money that he didn’t have, and so he had to skedaddle to save his skin. It made me think about my quarters, and if I had put them in the bank, maybe I could have helped Uncle Lew pay back his debts. But now it was too late. Uncle Lew was gone and I spent all the quarters on myself – my selfish self, I thought sadly.
But Uncle Lew was not completely out of my life. A few years later he came to town for a short visit. He came for a weekend; and had Sunday dinner with the family. I guess he thought it was safe enough. And nothing happened. So, he did it again, a few months later. And so it went. Thus, Uncle Lew was not out of my life completely. And yes, a quarter was deposited in my pocket on the Sunday dinners. As well, by now, I had a bank account; and I occasionally put Uncle Lew’s quarters in the bank – just in case he might need a loan someday, I thought.
Oh, I forgot to mention: he now came alone. From the talk of the adults, I figured out that he and Aunt Lil were divorced – something my mother later explained to me, because in those days it was not a common occurrence. And people were often embarrassed to talk about it.
Now fast forward several years to the late 1950s, when I was in High School. One day Uncle Lew appeared out of nowhere, carrying all that he owned in a few suitcases. I don’t know why, but he stayed with us. Being an only child, I had a room of my own and so the family got a cot from the basement and they put it in my room. I was okay with this, since I always liked Uncle Lew and was glad to know that he was safe with us.
Our first night together – I in my bed and he a few feet away in the cot – was memorable. Because, in the middle of the night, I woke up and saw a spark of light moving around the room near Uncle Lew’s cot. I guess I forgot to tell you that Uncle Lew was a smoker. Of course, smoking was common in those days, so it was no big thing that he smoked. In fact, if you watch any movie from that period, every time people walk into a room and sit down to talk, someone takes out a pack of cigarettes and they all light up. But I digress, again. Anyway, as you may have surmised, the spark of light moving around in the dead of night was Uncle Lew having a smoke. He was so addicted to cigarettes that he couldn’t get through a night’s sleep without one. And so it went: night after night.
Also, at the time he moved in with me, I was working on building a model airplane out of balsa wood. I usually worked on this in the evenings, after I did all my homework. The parts were strewn across a table in my room, and Uncle Lew often watched me assemble the plane – saying he hoped to see the plane actually fly someday. He said he enjoyed watching me put the thing together (since he seemed to have nothing else to do), and I enjoyed the conversations. I glued pieces of balsa wood together and he smoked cigarettes, depositing the ashes in a tray on my table.
In a short time, I came to understand why Uncle Lew was here. When I was at school during the day, my relatives were taking turns driving Uncle Lew to the hospital for treatments. In those days, people didn’t talk about some things directly. Especially cancer, which was a word that was often spoken in a hushed voice. So that was it; he had lung cancer.
At the same time, Uncle Lew was seeing a dentist for the pain he was having with a tooth in the right side of his mouth. He showed it to me one day, while I was working on my airplane. He was sure that the dentist knew what he was doing, and Uncle Lew was looking forward to getting it removed and replaced with a new tooth. We didn’t talk about the cancer, but looking back on this I can only surmise that Uncle Lew was in denial – or he was overly optimistic about the cancer treatments.
In a short time, the tooth was removed and replaced by the false one. Uncle Lew was elated, and told me that it was the best $1000 he ever spent. Yes, $1000 for the tooth. I don’t know where he got the money. And I’m afraid to ask, for obvious reasons. But I now also question the ethics of that dentist, allowing a patient undergoing cancer treatments to spend so much money. But maybe the dentist didn’t know. Then again, where were my relatives in all this? I am only thinking of this now. As for all things in life while growing up: what is, is reality for that time, and you just go with the flow. Only later, looking back, do you see the quirks and foibles of the past.
Indeed, did I think of helping Uncle Lew with his dental bill? I had a bank account. And some of that money was from deposits of Uncle Lew’s quarters. I don’t know. What I do remember is that not long after the new tooth was planted in his mouth, relieving him of that pain, the cancer got worse – and he spent the rest of his days in the hospital. And that’s where he died.
At the funeral I wanted to mourn. To grieve at the loss of this beloved uncle, who lived with me in the last stage of his life.
But I kept thinking about that tooth – that damned $1000 tooth. While saying the prayer for the dead, the Kaddish, I wanted to concentrate on the meaning of the prayer – even though I couldn’t read Hebrew. But that costly tooth kept flashing in front of me – like the spark of Uncle Lew’s cigarette in the middle of the night.
Even when the body was lowered into the grave, and I took my turn throwing several shovels of dirt over Uncle Lew’s plain wooden coffin – in my mind, I was doing the math: how many quarters are there in $1000?
In a way, on that day, and in my mind, I really buried a tooth – and it just so happened that a body came along with it.
My one consolation in all this is that about a few weeks after the funeral, I finished building my airplane; and I took it out to an empty ball-field near where I lived. Just me and my airplane.
The propeller was attached to a rubber band, and so I wound it up and gave it a push. It took off, rising up, almost as high as the trees beyond the outfield. Then it banked a bit toward the left; and, after heading back towards me, it moved in a circle – almost overhead. It continued circling – rather as if it were caught in a tornado – moving down and down.
When it crashed into a heap of shards of balsa wood right next to me standing on the pitcher’s mound … I laughed, a deep laugh – a laugh that turned into crying. A deep cry – a cry I sorely needed.
Sitting in that empty field next to my shattered airplane – looking up and beyond the trees – I screamed to the sky. “There are 4000 quarters in $1000.”
I walked home, and went to my room. Sitting at my empty table, I said to myself out loud. “I guess I should build another airplane. What do you think Uncle Lew? Let’s go to the store and use some of those quarters to buy another model airplane. Maybe this one won’t be jinxed. What do you think?”
But before leaving the house – and for the first time since Uncle Lew died – I was able to fold up that cot and put it back in the basement.