OT: Writing in general

[Tatnic]

From 1952 to 1955 my dad was stationed at the blimp base in Key West, Fla. His squadron would routinely fly down to Quantanamo Naval Base with the blimps just to get in their required flight hours every month. He took me with him on the blimp on numberous occasions. He and his buddies would go into Havana whenever they were going to be there for a few days layover. It was a long drive as Guantanamo was on the lower more southern end of the island and Havana was on the northern end of the island. We would pass thru the entire northern coast of the island on the drive to Havana. Dirt poor country and people but in those days they had a better life than under Castro. It is without a doubt one of the most lush and beautiful places in the world. Their beaches and water are unsurpassed and their tabacco is without a doubt the finest in the world. Havana was teeming with people and for a kid of 8/9 years old or so it was exciting to say the least. On top of that my dad and his crew were as wild a group of sailors as you would find anywhere. Castro ruined the island and set it back years. The US and organized crime had a playland unmatched in splendor and they let it get away from them by believing Castro in the initial stages of his revolution.

no question that's a valuable piece of real estate, very run down but lots of potential. I hope some day it will be free and open to tourism....and think of all the ball players just wasting away down there!

[skiracer]

no question that's a valuable piece of real estate, very run down but lots of potential. I hope some day it will be free and open to tourism....and think of all the ball players just wasting away down there!

I SAY WE GO IN AND TAKE IT OVER JUST FOR THE CIGAR TABACCO. VERY HARD TO GET REAL CUBAN CIGARS PLUS THE COST. THE REAL CUBANS COST MORE THAN GOOD YERBA. PLUS THE BEACHES ARE A LEVEL OR TWO ABOVE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. PACIFIC RIM AREAS HAVE SOME VERY NICE BEACHES AND WATER BUT NOTHING MATCHES CUBA IN MY ESTIMATION. NO WAVES THOUGH.

[SundialMan]

The Chessboard story

The Chessboard

The following story is entirely true. But if I had seen this tale unfold in a Hollywood movie, I would said that it was the type of feel good tripe a politically correct and lazy writer would have passed along to his coked up director for instant approval. I might have even walked out of the theater at that point.

Shortly before my father died, he came home from Florida to stay with me in what was his former apartment in New York. It dawned on me that he was hoarding some items up North, perhaps for their sentimental value, that would be better put to practical use by the living. A water pipe repair necessitated the removal of items from the lower kitchen cabinets, including a large Dutch oven pot and meat grinder - along with their reentry into my memory. Since I wasn't going to grind any chicken croquettes, I gave this and others item to a homecare worker who came to help out every day. Thus I started to rearrange my physical reality by removing some unnecessary items from my home.

The chessboard story began with an old olivewood chessboard with a base that folded over to become a rectangular box. The accompanying pieces were some Danish modern-style abstractions which made it nearly impossible to tell a knight from a pawn, a bishop from a queen. This is the type of set a tourist woman who did not play chess would buy as a gift for her husband. That tourist woman, in this case, was my late mother. My father never used the chess set or even the handsome board which lay gathering dust on the lower shelf of a coffee table.

I haven't played chess since childhood and a short time after my father's death, I decided to give the board away, after removing the confusing chess pieces. I headed off for a local Catholic church near my home which ran a small shelter for senior men, a place where I could drop it off quickly without much bureaucratic hassling. The nearest charity store of my Jewish faith had closed its' doors years before.

I started to cross Queens Boulevard, a wide divided highway with traffic islands and signals, that bright summer day with the chess board under my arm. Three quarters of the way across, I walked by two young black men in their mid-late twenties driving in a convertible with the top down, stopped at the traffic light. One of them said to me, "That is a nice chess board you've got there." I particularly noted that he called it a chess board and not a checker board. In an instant, I decided to hand the board over to him, to his (and my) amazement - and his joy.

"It's olivewood," I said. "It's made in Israel. It was my late father's. There is no chess set inside." He had not driven on as the light changed, so we continued to talk. "I was going to give it to that church on the corner, but I might as well give it to you instead." I also thought to myself that a young man would get more years of use out of it - and he already cherished it on first sight. The young man was still amazed. I don't recall that he said anything at first, but then he replied, "God Bless You," before continuing on his way.

God had, indeed, acted to get the chess board to its appropriate new owner - and not make it an impersonal act.

Jack

[SundialMan]

Update on real Exodus 1947 story/Dr. Holly's book

I received a copy of Dr. David Holly's book "Exodus 1947" (second, updated edition from 1995), published by the Naval Institute of Annapolis and learned significant new details I feel compelled to pass along to you. Dr. Holly also appears on camera in the Maryland Public Television DVD made in 1999. Dr. Holly is listed as being a former American University professor and currently Chairman of the Department of Government Affairs at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He is from the area, but may be retired of at this point. His book also states that many people shared confidential details with him and wished to remain anonymous.

According to Chapter 11 of Dr. Holly's book, starting on page 103, the General Warfield was purchased by Jewish shipping professionals in New York. But Moses Speert, a prominent Baltimore Zionist and clothing manufacturer, was greatly involved in supplying the empty ship, most probably at some personal expense and definitely a personal legal risk. As page 101 of the Holly book states, "Moses I. Speert, drawing upon his extensive contacts among the industrialists and commercial suppliers of Baltimore, served effectively as a kind of local quartermaster general. In a special warehouse, hidden away from public view, he collected the bedding, rations, ship equipment, stores, and even canned water that would be needed." The ship had been previously purchased in NY by Jews in the shipping business.

The other Man of the Cloth was the Methodist Minister John Stanley Grauel. He turns out to have been an actual sworn in member of the Hagannah, the underground Jewish army in Palestine. When they landed at Marsailles, he traveled to Paris to get a valid visa and was accompanied by Hagannah agents with the Brits looking for the whole bunch of them.

Another Baltimore Jew involved in the Exodus venture was Dr. Herman Seidel, a 67 year old general practitioner. He had an office at 2404 Eutaw Place near Druid Hill Park, in what was a Jewish neighborhood bordering an African-American one, where he served members of both communities. He had come to Baltimore in 1903 from Lithuania. As pages 100-100 of the Holly book states, "Dr. Seidel raised money, although his efforts in parlor sessions and telephone calls around Baltimore took second place to several more important functions. Primarily, he collected medical supplies - drugs, dressings, and instruments - from his contacts in the large pharmaceutical houses around the city. These supplies he assembled in his home and conveyed to the docks at night." He also examined many crew members of the Exodus and tested the knowledge of a Navy pharmacist's mate on his knowledge of obstetrics because of the pregnant women they knew would be among the refugees.

I could argue (as an amateur attorney or amateur Talmudist) whether the purchase of an empty ship in disrepair constituted "buying" the General Warfield/Exodus 1947. The full price of putting her to sea included the considerable extra cost for the physical repair, rewiring and then the outfitting of supplies. In that sense, Moses Speert, Dr. Seidel and other Baltimore citizens who gave donations all paid for the ship in significant part - and took risks of jail time if Harry Truman weren't elected in 1948.

This is a great book. I also learned that the ship came ashore at Normandy late in the D-Day invasion time, but while Normandy was functioning as the only Allied port with the sunken mulberries (concrete dock supports). After the Allies captured the French Channel ports, the President Warfield acted as a Seine river ferry for Allied troups going to and from the front.

In reading further into Dr. Holly's book "Exodus 1947," skimming before putting it away, I found this...

The General Warfield/Exodus sailed from Baltimore, hit the Atlantic storm and returned to Norfolk where money was raised among Jews with the participation of the Methodist minister Grauel and crewman at those meetings. Also, Jews in the US Navy base nearby got them some repairs and supplies to make up for the waterlogged and battered items on the returning ship. The ship then was in the middle of the coal strike, but its' NY agent Capt. Ash had commercial contacts at a fuel supply in Paulsboro, Delaware (across the river from the current Philadelphia Airport). There the ship got fuel,but had to go to Philadelphia for more repairs. It was in Philadelphia when the Hondoran ambassador in NY told Capt. Ash they would have to end its Hondoran registration. Ash made some quick phone calls so that when he and the ambassador took the train from NY and arrived at the dock in Philadelphia, the ship had just sailed for the Azores and France to pick up the refugees.

The General Warfield/Exodus's being in Philladelphia was an chance accident of travel needs, like someone stopping for gas in Rochester on the way to Buffalo. There were zero or close to zero Philadelphia Jews involved in this project, as far as Dr. Holly's book is concerned - or willing to talk to him on the record.

Jack

[mrmarket]

Sundial...it was great meeting you yesterday. Thanks so much for supporting the little Tigers...

Ernie

[Tatnic]

The Chessboard

The following story is entirely true. But if I had seen this tale unfold in a Hollywood movie, I would said that it was the type of feel good tripe a politically correct and lazy writer would have passed along to his coked up director for instant approval. I might have even walked out of the theater at that point.

Shortly before my father died, he came home from Florida to stay with me in what was his former apartment in New York. It dawned on me that he was hoarding some items up North, perhaps for their sentimental value, that would be better put to practical use by the living. A water pipe repair necessitated the removal of items from the lower kitchen cabinets, including a large Dutch oven pot and meat grinder - along with their reentry into my memory. Since I wasn't going to grind any chicken croquettes, I gave this and others item to a homecare worker who came to help out every day. Thus I started to rearrange my physical reality by removing some unnecessary items from my home.

The chessboard story began with an old olivewood chessboard with a base that folded over to become a rectangular box. The accompanying pieces were some Danish modern-style abstractions which made it nearly impossible to tell a knight from a pawn, a bishop from a queen. This is the type of set a tourist woman who did not play chess would buy as a gift for her husband. That tourist woman, in this case, was my late mother. My father never used the chess set or even the handsome board which lay gathering dust on the lower shelf of a coffee table.

I haven't played chess since childhood and a short time after my father's death, I decided to give the board away, after removing the confusing chess pieces. I headed off for a local Catholic church near my home which ran a small shelter for senior men, a place where I could drop it off quickly without much bureaucratic hassling. The nearest charity store of my Jewish faith had closed its' doors years before.

I started to cross Queens Boulevard, a wide divided highway with traffic islands and signals, that bright summer day with the chess board under my arm. Three quarters of the way across, I walked by two young black men in their mid-late twenties driving in a convertible with the top down, stopped at the traffic light. One of them said to me, "That is a nice chess board you've got there." I particularly noted that he called it a chess board and not a checker board. In an instant, I decided to hand the board over to him, to his (and my) amazement - and his joy.

"It's olivewood," I said. "It's made in Israel. It was my late father's. There is no chess set inside." He had not driven on as the light changed, so we continued to talk. "I was going to give it to that church on the corner, but I might as well give it to you instead." I also thought to myself that a young man would get more years of use out of it - and he already cherished it on first sight. The young man was still amazed. I don't recall that he said anything at first, but then he replied, "God Bless You," before continuing on his way.

God had, indeed, acted to get the chess board to its appropriate new owner - and not make it an impersonal act.

Jack

nice story Jack...nice deed too. I disagree that God had anything to do with it but its still a nice story.