Who Knew?

by Ruth Lampert copyright September 2008

I'm Jewish, all right. I have a Jewish heart, a Jewish sense of humor, Jewish taste buds, and Jewish guilt. But I was raised in a tradition of "secular Judaism" in which these traits flourished in a climate devoid of formal Jewish education or religious practice. The only thing I knew about "kosher" was the connotation in the saying "that doesn't sound kosher to me," and a vague image of bearded, skull- capped men who didn't eat pork.

My father -- a kind and deeply moral man -- was philosophically opposed to organized religion. He probably would not have approved of the summer camp I went to the year after he died, when I was 10.

We called it "Camp Chi," pronounced "shy," although today I wonder if it wasn’t the Hebrew word “Chai,” meaning “life.” Be that as it may, the director’s name was definitely “Mother Seiman." As I think about it now that sounds more Catholic than Jewish, but Mother Seiman she was. I paid very little attention to her until the evening of My Sin.

Camp life was O.K. -- I liked the songs, and can still sing all the words to "I'm a hayseed, I'm full of seaweed..." and "Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro" and "Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother" -- but in a lot of ways it was dumb.

For example, cabins rotated the task of setting tables for the evening meal. On my Eve of Transgression I hurried to the dining room hoping no one would notice that I was a little late (I had probably been lying on my cot day-dreaming, as usual) and the other girls were hard at it, pushing and shoving as they grabbed utensils from a large wooden box which, if I thought about it at all, I probably assumed had formerly served some other storage or packaging use, since printed on the side in big bold letters was the word "MILK." Probably the little individual milk cartons had been delivered in it, I may have thought.

My dopey cabin-mates were all crowded around it in a frenzy of gathering spoons and knives and forks, and I wondered, in my sensible way, why some of them didn't just avoid the crush by taking utensils from the nearby box labeled "MEAT"- - probably brisket had been delivered in that one. I took what I needed from it, finished my share of the tables in short order, and slipped back to my cabin, my cot, and my interrupted day-dream.

Halfway through dinner -- which I didn't think much of, mostly just cheese-filled blintzes -- the door flew open and Mother Seiman stormed in from the staff dining room. Face blazing with fury, voice strident with rage, she bellowed something about having "just learned of this blasphemy... someone with a twisted sense of humor...I expect a confession by morning or everyone in the offending cabin will be punished...bla bla bla."

What the heck was she yammering on about, I wondered? Oh well, grownups were strange, and besides, I wasn't feeling too well. My throat was sore, and my head ached.

The next morning I was in the infirmary. I stayed there until Mother (mine, not Seiman) picked me up and drove me home where Doc Kraut said I had a strep throat and was I a lucky young lady that a new wonder drug called "sulpha" was available for just such cases.

So much for Camp Chi and Mother Seiman and her inexplicable temper tantrum. Growing up I became exposed to more traditional Jews and learned, among other things, about dietary laws, including the injunction against mixing milk and meat at the same meal.

Those boxes. MEAT. MILK. The tantrum became all too explicable.
I never have kept kosher. I do scrupulously observe a personal dietary law, which mandates eating lox, bagels, and cream cheese every Sunday morning at a deli.

I espouse the spirit of Reform Judaism described by the late humanistic Rabbi Leslie Freund, whose father was an orthodox Rabbi. Leslie recalled the day he realized he really didn't believe the words he was chanting, but, he said, “I still loved the music."

That metaphor continues to inform my spiritual life. So it is that on the coming Yom Kippur I will sit, as I do every year, with fellow Jews and examine my conscience. Have I been complacent? arrogant? unkind? self-righteous? etc. etc.

I know that getting strep throat was not punishment for my childhood sin of ignorance at Camp Chi, and no God I can imagine would expect me to ask forgiveness. Still, I offer up a little apology to Mother Seiman, and if a Higher Power hears me, hey...
Couldn't hurt.

Geezer Power:
A New Spin on Senior Scams
Copyright by Ruth Lampert, September 2008

Don’t just whine about it - beat them at their own game. As a chronologically gifted person, (my grandson’s creative term for “elderly”) you are in a position to: make scamming an equal opportunity activity. Scam the scammers! Turn a lemon into lemonade!

Here are some tips for effective telephone pitches to help you get started:
“Hello young fellow, (or ‘young lady,’ or if in doubt, ‘my friend’)”how are you today? Did you know there are thousands of elderly folks out there who have no one to leave their money to?” (this point gets a pitiful quaver in your voice, suggesting you may be one of them.) “All you need do is sign up for my seminar on ‘Beyond Roofing Rip-Offs With Retired Rubes...’ Yessir, this fantastic event will be advertised on national TV’. tomorrow for $999.99 – registration is yours at a special one-time only price of for only $18.75 just be using your credit card. Act NOW: I can take that information immediately on this here phone!”

Or try this one:
“Send $50.00 in cash (envelope must be marked by midnight tonight) for a full audio-cassette or compact disk recourse of instruction on ‘New Scams With Old Folks.’ This gem is by a A WELL KNOWN promoter, the very same con artist you have seen on late night television explaining “How I Made a Fortune With Nothing Down in the Scam Market.”

Hey there old timer, you weren’t born yesterday – far from it.
You’ve seen what Geezer Power can do politically. Let it work for you financially! You know you’ve been ripped off a time or two in your long life – here is the chance you have been waiting for to scam the scammers! How do you know who the scammers are? I will provide you with this and other vital information – information available no where else – just as soon as you tell me your credit card number, expiration date, and those three numbers on the back “

Win-win propositions aren’t the sole property of the younger generation you know. If you are wondering how to get the telephone numbers of MILLIONS of these so-called baby boomers, well, you know how to reach me.

And phone calls are only the beginning. There is also e-mail, text messaging and who knows what other new-fangled technologies are on the horizon? But don’t wait. The old-fashioned way was good enough to get you to invest in Nigeria, and it’s good enough to work in the USA.
Operators are waiting to take your information. You won’t regret it, I promise you. Would I lie?

Have a great evening!

The Scarlet Letter II

copyright by Ruth Lampert August 2008

When I was young, "virtue" meant saving your virginity for your husband. Strict guidelines governed "necking" and "petting;" “going all the way" meant virtue went out the window (usually a back-seat window) along with virginity.

Now that I am "of a certain age," you might think primrose paths pose no terror, but in fact only the name of the path has changed; the route itself remains wickedly similar. Today "virtue" means hanging on to a low cholesterol reading with the same determination as we once clung to that other anatomical gem.

(Fortunately, low cholesterol can be regained, and while I have heard that virginity is automatically restored after seven years of abstinence, I have my doubts.)

Thus we see the tenacity of early training, or interject, as we call them in the psychotherapy trade. I acknowledge that as an anti-stress technique I occasionally indulge in foods with a slightly naughty fat gram content or lick my lips over a handful of potato chips. But I exercise control, knowing that regardless of the temptation, setting limits is my responsibility.

This wicked world is full of seducers who will say anything to get me to indulge my baser tastes, but it's my body that will bear testimony to moral lapses.

Refusal can be gracious: "Don't think I'm not tempted. If I was going to indulge with anyone, it would be with you." And I've been around too long to fall for that old line about how if I really cared I would submit; I know that if my saying "no" means the ends of the relationship it wasn't worth preserving. There are plenty of women (or "girls" as we called them back in those benighted days) who, desperate for affection, will gobble down a double order of fries, but I have standards and values thank you.
So while I'd like to say the devil made me do it last night, I have to accept responsibility for my downfall.

Temptations were enormous. The setting was romantic, complete with Italian food, Italian music, and an Italian man. I was properly restrained with the salad, saying no to the Caesar salad dripping with egg-yolk dressing, and demurely accepting the more innocent mixed greens. I began to get a bit wayward with the foccacio, so voluptuously spread with fragrant oil. And then -- I can't explain what happened -- I could feel my resolve weakening, and it was as though a voice in my head was taunting me: "Still the good little girl, aren't you? Grow up! Everybody does it!" And down that slippery slope I went, reveling in deep-fried zucchini, lost in the rapture of fettuccini alfredo, until, passing passion's point of no return I surrendered to the Double Decadent Chocolate Torte.
I had gone all the way.

The man insists he still respects me. And maybe, it’s true that the scarlet letter "S" he placed around my neck stands for "Sweetheart" and not "Slut." He maintains that anything we do by mutual consent is healthy and beautiful because we love each other, and are husband and wife.
What a line.

House Calls

copyright by Ruth Lampert June 2008

“What’s a House Call, Mommy?”
No kid, a “house call” isn’t when you call your brother from your bedroom on your cell phone to his bedroom on his cell phone. And no, smartie, it isn’t a greeting one dwelling makes to another.
When you overheard Grandma say to Grandpa, “I wish we still had house calls,” she was talking about something that existed in the old days (not necessarily “good,” but definitely “gone”) before there were things like cell phones and computers and HMO’s.

I myself am old enough to remember House Calls, so let me explain how they worked. When you were sick, you called the doctor, and spoke to him (rarely was it a “her) or his nurse (almost always a “her.) He said things like “How high is your temperature?” “Put ice on it” and the classic “take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

If you were still sick the next day, he drove to your house before he went to the office. Yes, that’s right, he drove right up to your house himself, carrying a reassuring black bag (no, not a backpack) full of magical potions and pills as well as a stethoscope and thermometer. Lots of times just the sight of him and his black bag was enough to start the patient back on the road to health. Usually he was a little portly, a little bald, with a kindly smile If you were a child, he seemed elderly. No matter how old you were, he seemed wise.

Sometimes people called in the middle of the night, and the doctor might be a little cross and say “Why did you wait so long to call me?”
before recommending you take two aspirins and call him in the morning. l. If you were really in bad shape, he’d come over, in spite of his wife’s grumbling that he let his patients take advantage of him.
Call 911? That hadn’t been invented yet. Yes, of course we had police and firemen, and ambulances to rush people to the hospital after accidents and heart attacks, but I have no idea who you had to call or what you had to do to get one. Perhaps you could make that your project and report back to us. .

I also remember the days before antihistamines. My periodic attacks of hives were presumed to be the result of an allergy, but to what no one knew (somehow “strawberries” were high on the list of usual suspects.) The only thing that brought a measure of relief was Calamine lotion, liberally applied. *

I even remember the dawn of “wonder drugs.” I have written elsewhere about my camp experience with kosher food and strep throat and I recall that when I was sent back home with the mother of all sore throats, Doc Kraut dashed over immediately from his office above the corner drug store, (which also supplied marvelous ice cream drinks at the soda counter, but that’s another story, which will probably eventually appear on this blog.). Doc was more jovial than usual as he said, “You’re lucky you came down with this now instead of last year. Now we have medicine, called Sulpha that cures it. You’ll be up and about in no time.”
And I was. It wasn’t until many years later that I developed an allergy to sulfa, and then to the even more wonderful wonder drug Penicillin. These reactions could have finished me off; fortunately in each case huge dose of antihistamines cured the cure that was worse than the disease. But I digress.

Returning to the theme of House Calls:
They were still an accepted part of life the night my Dad died in his sleep. I remember my mother on the phone, not to 911, but to Doc Kraut. The next thing I knew he was huffing and puffing up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. He looked very stricken himself; he and my Dad had been buddies for lots of years.

He came out of the bedroom where my Dad was still stretched out on the bed and said in a shaky voice, “There’s nothing I can do... He’s gone.” I don’t know if I if I actually cried out “But you have to do something, or he’ll die!” or if I just thought it to myself. And I don’t know if under the same circumstances today a call to 911 would be life-saving. It’s pretty certain that the high blood pressure he had had for years would be treated. And who knew about cholesterol back then? So you see, it cuts both ways.

But back to olden, though not quite so golden, times: we were living in Tucson when Brian, then about 11 years old, was bitten by a spider, and had a severe reaction. The local doctor came over right away and took care of him – and of me, the anxious mom. Now you’ll probably think I’m making this next part up, but I swear it’s true: Two days later I got a call from the doc, saying “You know, I’m not easy in my mind yet about our young man. I’m going to be making a house call this evening right down your street, so I’ll drop by and see him just to ease my mind.”
I don’t know if he charged for that visit or not. Probably not – after all, he was in the neighborhood and it only took a couple of minutes to “ease his mind.” (His mind!)

The way we paid the doctor was different then too. . You’ve probably heard your folks talk about “HMO’s” and “Health Benefits” and maybe even “Medicare” – all that stuff hasn’t really been around for so very long, not per my time table. …

During times when there wasn’t much money, which, in my particular case seems to have been times beyond number, I sent the doctor $10.00 a month toward our balance. It was like a little annuity for him (I’ll explain “annuity” another time, honey). Month after month, year after year, that $10.00 came in regular as clock work, because as soon it came close to being paid off, someone else in the family got sick. From his point of view, I guess getting a whole lot of ten dollars every month, plus the money the rich patients paid in fall, added up o.k. (This was in the city – I don’t think he ever got paid in potatoes or chickens the way country doctors did. Or so I have heard.)

We old timers have lots of stories like this to tell. We tell them because, for one thing, that’s what old timers do.
Hey, you knew when you logged on this wasn’t MyFace.com. .

*Author’s note: Out of curiosity I just checked Google to see if Calamine lotion is still available – it is, but guess what; sometimes there is a severe allergic reaction...