Carmela was a stumpy woman straight out of a 1930s situation
comedy, who looked and acted old, but was not old, that supporting utterly
dependable character the rich people in such flicks always depended on to make
things run smoothly.
She wore old lady’s dresses and old lady’s perfume, and
during the first years that I worked for Cosmetics Plus, she sat outside Donald’s
office like a guard dog. She fiercely defended his privacy, if only in the nicest
way.
She drove a Baracuta, the envy of all the workers in the
warehouse complex, who grumbled about such a fine machine being wasted on such
a character such as she. As with everything else, she drove it like an old lady
might, and only to get to work or to drive her sister somewhere.
While Donald boasted about being a self-made man, it was
Carmela he depended on, until later, when he expanded and bolstered his image as
a modern businessman by bringing on younger, more modern women to as part of
the secretarial staff, leaving Carmela as something of an outdated model,
dependable yes, but hardly hip.
She was moody even back in the old warehouse, a condition
some claimed was the result of “that time of month.”
Most assumed she was still a virgin, an old maid from birth,
and later when the warehouse expanded, some cruel members of the staff offered $100
to any guy brave enough to take her virginity.
There were no takers, even among the well-meaning, because
she had a put-off air that would only let a person get so close, but no closer.
She reminded me of a petrified aunt, a large nose, deep set
back black eyes, a dark complexion. She was short and perched like a bird
behind her desk, utterly efficient, but not someone to inspire even the most
remote sense of tenderness.
Jokingly, people said she walked like a duck and talked like
a goose, and quacked when upset, her head and shoulders moving side to side.
Sometimes, when I came upon her unawares, I found her starting
off into space, her expression filled with intense loneliness, which vanished
the moment she became aware of me.
She lived with her sister somewhere in West Caldwell in a
garden apartment, and constantly complained about her mostly male neighbors who
constantly parked in her parking spot, especially in winter after a snow storm.
She and her sister were twins; I never met her sister.
Carmela spoke of her sister as if an echo, a mirror image of
herself. She spoke of her often, but it was as if she kept her sister in a
drawer, putting her back when not needed.
Nobody seemed to know much about Carmela’s parents, or what
made these two sisters cling to each other the way they did. I always got the
feeling she felt as if her parents were always looking over her shoulder.
Donald didn’t seem to care much about where she came from,
only glad he had her when he did, and always jumped when she asked him for
something.
When she complained later at the new office about the increased
work load, Donald went and hired an army of young women to help her.
None of them ever met with Carmela’s approve, and
eventually, she became more and more isolated as they flocked together, often ignoring
her.
When Donald fired me in May 1978, I walked out of his office
in utter shock, drove down Route 46, only to realize I still had the keys to
the warehouse and had to go back, marching back into the reception area with a
much dignity as I could muster, dumping them on Carmela’s desk, then in a huff,
turned around and walked right back out.
I was then still under the illusion I was in the right, though
I also feared Donald would have the police show up at my house to recover the keys
or to accuse me of ripping him off in the middle of the night.
Now, all these years later, I do not believe any such event
would have occurred.
But I remember riding away from the office the second time
how empty and lost I felt.
I had worked for Donald for four years and this for good or
bad gave me some sense of purpose. Without the job, I had only an apartment,
but no real identity. I had become so focused on hating Donald; I had had no
thought of anything else.
Fortunately, my meeting with John Telson earlier had set up
my new job at Wine Imports, which turned out to be a whole different experience
entirely, and a whole new set of characters that included Louie the Bottle Man,
Cowboy the Truck Loader, Cosmos the Drug addict, John Telson the alcoholic, Dan
the Supervisor, and, not least, Roger the owner’s son, and many others whose
names escape me.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and by the end of that
year, I managed to get myself fired from that job, too, and largely for doing
the same thing I had done with Donald.
Roger apparently had paid off the shop steward to allow the
company to violate some of the union rules, and while most of the others were
too scared to do anything but bitch, I wrote a letter to the head of the union,
Tony Pro, the man most famous for authorizing the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.
Panic ensued at the wine company as the shot steward held an
emergency meeting in the break room to find out which son of a bitch had
written the letter. Since I wasn’t yet in the union, I stood outside staring in
through the dirty glass as the sweating faces. Roger was in the room with them,
and both he and the shop steward made each man sign a form saying he had not
contacted Tony Pro.
The only one who refused to sign the form was John Telson,
nor did he rat me out, knowing perfectly well that I had.
Later, he came out to the parking lot with me.
“I always thought you were a trouble maker,” he said. “Now I
understand you’re what’s left of the 1960s.”
A few days later, Roger met me at the door to the warehouse
and told me the company would not need my services any more. Roger had clearly
spoken with Donald, and put two and two together about who wrote the letter to
Tony Pro.
He looked scared. Apparently, the shop steward had
disappeared aka Jimmy Hoffa.
This time I didn’t feel the same sense of shame as I
eventually did with Donald, I knew I had done the right thing.
The next day I applied for unemployment.
A few years later, I ran into Cowboy in Allendale, who
informed me Wine Imports had closed it doors for good, the whole gang scattered
to the wind.
John Telson had taken off for California with his wife, only
run into me on River Drive while I was jogging, telling me how his whole life
had changed, but he still considered me his friend.
I said yesterday that Michele was my motivation for turning
against my boss in 1978, which is only partly true.
She became an excuse to do so.
After four years working for the cosmetic company, the job
had worn badly on me.
While our boss, Donald, was kind of employees at times, he
was also an elitist, keeping himself distant from us, and encouraging Stanley
is supervisor to do the same.
Donald seemed to like the idea of being rich. And like many
people who earned their way to wealth (even though his father was a successful advertising
man in the 1950s), Donald tended to hide more and more behind Stanley.
But it was largely office politics that ruined the place for
me.
John Telson, who had come before the 1975 Christmas season,
began to play spy and special envoy for Donald through most of 1977 and has –
as he admitted later once while drunk – plotted to take my spot as supervisor,
when Stanley finally got promoted.
Two important revelations came to mind. The first was the
fact that competition for the higher-level jobs scared the shit out of me. The
second revelation was that I didn’t really see the promotion as important, even
though I was supposedly destined to take Stanley’s place behind the big window
that overlooked the warehouse.
Stanley had very little power as was proven when I became
the manager of the night shift during the 1977 Christmas season, and Stanley
felt threatened by how well I did.
This suggested that once he rose up to the next level, Stanley
would become even more controlling than Donald had been.
Much to my shame later, I felt threatened by John and harassed
him until he quit his full-time position in May 1977 – although he came back
part time during the 1977 Christmas season.
It is ironic when I knew my time with Donald was coming to
an end, I arranged to have dinner with John on a Friday night in May 1978 and
he arranged for me to get hired at his new place of employment.
The letters I had sent to all of the manufacturers were a
ticking bomb which I knew would lead to me getting fired. I’d hoped to quit
first.
The following Monday, Donald called me into his office,
confronted me with one of these letters and asked who had written it, and when
I said I didn’t know, he pulled out copies of my fictional stories and said the
type face matched.
He fired me on the spot.
A month earlier, he had issued me a warning after he had
overheard me talking to one of the other employees about their moving on – I did
not see a future in the warehouse for any of us.
Donald suspected I might be trying to unionize the workers
against him, an idea he absolutely hated. While he could do nothing about
outside forces possibly trying to do something like this, he would not tolerate
betrayal from someone like me who he basically had treated well over the years.
The fact that I had no such unionizing plans never came up
on our conversation.
I guess he saw my letter writing as part of this effort,
rather than simply an act of revenge for Michele and perhaps the whole spying
by John.
Fortunately, my letters did not destroy his business because
I later regrated the whole act and would have had to have lived with the guilt.
I vaguely wondered if I had succeeded, Donald might have
reached out to some of his brother’s mafia friends, a brief if paranoid
thought.
As it turns out, my actions appeared to have no effect, and
later, Donald would expand his business even further.
Life went on inside the cosmetic warehouse as if I had not
existed.
I spoke about my second Michele yesterday neglecting to
mention that the boss was not the only person at the cosmetic warehouse to
abuse her.
Michele, who had come to work in the outlet section sometime
in 1977, was born and raised in primarily white neighborhood in Caldwell,
spoiled a bit by successful white parents. If she actually knew a black person
personally, it was someone from one of the more successful Essex County
families who were a white and white people.
Like many suburban girls, Michele had an imaginary
perception of other black people, either as villains or victims of society.
This did not alter much when she finally met “real” black
people when she attended William Paterson College – a school that had a
significant population of underprivileged students from places like Paterson.
Even then, the blacks she met were not the hard-core street
people, but those struggling to make their way up in the system, aided by
Affirmative Action, Pell and other grants geared towards providing blacks with
an equal opportunity.
As a dancer, however, she got a chance to work with dance
programs at Passaic County Community College, located in the heart of Paterson,
where she met blacks and Latinos alien to her hometown of Caldwell. But even
had this not been the case, she was part of the school’s artist community which
gravitated to the dying and discredited Marxist culture, spouting old social
justice slogans from the 1960s most students on campus didn’t want to hear –
although in New York’s Cooper Union recently, the Marxists plotted their
return, and I suspect she might well have leaped into the renewed movement with
both feet.
As school, she hung out with black students, dating black
men, and, in fact, was romantically involved with a black man when she came to
work in the outlet, something that did not sit well with many of the white
warehouse workers who grumbled about it, and not always out of earshot.
These same workers, knowing of my attraction to Michele,
mocked me for coming in second to a black man. And for the first time in many
years, I heard a number of horrible black jokes resurrected. I didn’t argue the
point. I wanted Michele to give up her boyfriend, not because he was black, but
because I wanted her, too.
She seemed as confused as I was, and during those times when
I drove her home, she seemed to linger on the edge of inviting me inside, where
I might take her into my arms.
I got to hold her only once, and this after a dispute over
my picking up lunch from a local eatery and her failing to call the order in,
so I got stuck waiting out my whole lunch break for the chef to make it up. I
yelled at her; and then saw how hurt she looked and immediately regretted it,
wrapping my arms around her small frame as I told her how sorry I was.
It occurred to me then just how easy it was for strong
people to abuse weak people, power over others that startled me, one of the
rare moments of enlightenment I would get again later when I worked for Two
Guys in Garfield.
This led directly to my trying to destroy the company since
what I had done to Michele was nothing compared to what the owner was doing to
her on a daily basis, keeping her cooped up in the computer room where he
verbally abused her to underperforming a task she’d not been hired to do in the
first place, which she did not want to do, but needed to do in order to keep
her job.
She became an emotional wreck.
Then one day, she called in sick, unable to take the abuse.
She didn’t come in that Friday or on the Saturday to deal with programming
orders.
The owner fired her. Later when she tried to collect
unemployment, he argued she had been a horrible employee, routinely coming in
late (which was not true). Unemployment initially rejected her claim. She was
unable to pay rent and got evicted.
Two women named Michele had a huge influence on me in the
early days of 1978.
One was a regular patron of the band, Sleeper, and the Red
Baron club in Cedar Grove where the band played regularly.
Pauly had ill things to day about her, I was acutely
attracted, and could have gotten involved with her if she’d not scared the crap
out of me, especially during that party on New Year’s Eve when she came onto me
like a storm.
She had blond hair and always wore provocative clothing, on
that night, a silk blouse unbuttoned enough to show her cleavage, and thin
enough to show how little if anything she wore beneath it.
She usually had her pick of any of the musicians, but for
some reason, she picked me to seduce and I – in a fit of stupidity and panic –
rejected her and did so in a way that burned all future bridges between us,
slipping a somewhat judgmental poem into her purse as I fled the party.
A year and half later during the luxury of my unemployment,
a girl in a yellow Volkswagen frequently passed me during my jog along the
river in Garfield, beeping the horn at me and waving, with me finding out only
later it was her when she reappeared during a performance of the band I worked
for.
“You smiled at me,” she said. “You need to do more of that.
Not just at me, but at any girl.”
It was words of wisdom I’ll never forget.
The other Michele came about at my job in the Cosmetics
company, who equally attracted me but for totally different reasons, a dark
haired, small-boned girl who hoped to make her living as a professional dancer.
She became something symbolic, a focus of my dissatisfaction
with a job in which I felt trapped.
I should have quit the job, but privately stewed, hoping
some miracle would cause the company’s demise as the card company where I had
previously worked.
I actually planned for the company’s destruction in what the
owner would later call “Industrial Sabotage,” but I referred to as revenge over
how the owner had mistreated Michele.
I guess looking back it was a mixture of both.
I was still radical enough to believe in that phony 1960s
regurgitating of union propaganda about workers’ rights and power to the
people.
I disliked the fact that the job had become more mechanized
after moving into the new location, first with rolling conveyors and later
mechanical belts, a real scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie with me as a
hapless Charlie Chaplin.
This must have showed because the owner of the company
decided to offer the job as assistant warehouse manager to somebody else.
I was already primed when the boss started berating this
Michele, who he had hired as sales girl in his outlet, then graduated to
operate his brand-new computer, yelling at her over her inability to learn the
system fast enough or for the minor mistakes she made.
She put up with it because she figured she would sooner or
later move on to a career in dance and wouldn’t need the job.
Then, during one of the heavy floods noted for this neck of
the woods, Michele and her boyfriend got their car stranded in the parking lot
of Willowbook Mall and while pushing it to higher ground, she broke her ankle,
not a crippling injury, but one that destroyed any hope for her to become a
dancer.
Knowing she was trapped, the owner heaped on abuse,
eventually forcing her to quit, and then refusing to allow her to college unemployment
-- she getting it only because I testified at her hearing about the abuse that
had forced her to resign.
With her gone, I got angrier, and set about reporting on the
boss to all the companies he did business with, his business based on a
somewhat unethical practice of redistribution that most of the salesman turned
a blind eye to – but not their bosses. When my letters reached each company,
the sales people complained to my boss, and he fired me.
I’m not the only one that has a problem with Stanley’s
treatment of Gary. I’m just the only person willing to say something to Stanley
about it, when other workers at the warehouse are too scared of losing their
jobs if they do.
I always thought of him as a calm and decent person. Yet
here, he savaged Gary, relentlessly accusing the warehouse’s newest driver for
no reason.
While Gary had a lot to be desired as being the perfect
employee – constantly late, slow, taking too many water, cigarette or bathroom
breaks – he was not the ogre Stanley made him out to be, constantly watching
Gary’s every move through the large picture window of his office at the top of
the warehouse, yelling unnecessary commands over the PA at him. Everybody in
the place could hear Stanley abusing Gary.
“I don’t see what this is all about,” said Kevin, the Dead
Head Stanley had hired to help for the Christmas season, a broad-shouldered boy
of about 23, who might have been a high school linebacker if not for his long
hair and his laidback anti-jock attitude. “All Gary did was drop a box and the
stuff in it wasn’t even breakable.”
I told him it didn’t matter, busted or not, and that with
Stanley, Gary needed to be extra careful, even though all of us have dropped
stuff from time to time, sometimes breakable stuff, too.
“I need a break,” Kevin snarled, lighting up one of his Pall
Malls, sucking in the smoke that would eventually kill him, or at least
contribute to that awful unhealing wound in his chest doctors would later call
“cancer” as he stared out the back door windows, the afternoon sunlight
cascading through the trees that bordered the church yard and the historic
graves.
Kevin was a throwback to the late 1960s, like those die-hard
deadheads I knew in the East Village, less concerned about getting ahead than
in having an untroubled life.
Stanley had hired him for the holiday season, needing the
extra set of hands to deal with the heavy orders we always had from late August
until a few weeks before Christmas.
But Kevin hated the hassle Stanley brought to the warehouse
each day, as if Stan outlined his attack on Gary at home and deliberately
orchestrated events with which to put Gary in a bad light, and Kevin – no fan
of Gary at all – just didn’t like the scene.
“I’m thinking about quitting,” Kevin said, expelling the
smoke with a sigh. “I can’t take this shit anymore.”
Although barely into his early 20s, Kevin had not aged well,
his face full of wrinkles his pot use could not cure, growing old at a faster
rate than the rest of us, perhaps the first inroads of the cancer that would later
kill him.
He ran his thick fingers through his red main of hair which glistened
from recently loading an APA truck with outgoing deliveries.
“I’ve been thinking about quitting for a while,” he said.
“Me, too,” I told him, although we both knew I might never
leave, trapped humping boxes of cosmetics for the rest of my life, rolling a
stone up a high hill only to have it roll down the other side.
I had already become a prisoner in my own life, my existence
locked into two cells, the need for the Friday paycheck, and the more
significant prison of my own life. I would not step out of this place without
knowing there was some place else I could reach easily, and I saw nothing like
it any time soon.
Not long later, Kevin was gone, before the end of the holiday
season, leaving us shorthanded, though it was Gary who later informed me Kevin
had signed on at William Paterson College, still looking for a path that was
not the path the rest of us were taking.
November 19, 1985 I'm beginning to believe that there is no such thing as
right and wrong in American business only illegality and even these last are
only important when you get caught. and more important than any of that is the power derived
from the whole experience. A natural inclination to feel superior arises out of the
acquisition of money much like the feeling that some Germans felt during the
first 3rd of this century about their Aryan heritage, an economic fascism
derived from the ability to hire and fire and sometimes spoil a person's life forever The difference between Donald Gottheimer in 1974 when I
first started working for him and in 1978 when I was fired is remarkable. Just as the spread from when he started in his garage as an
independent minded son of a Jewish working-class person affected his ego, too. It was buying the building in 1976 that really turned him
around, making him realize something about himself that had not been evident
before: he was important. This led to a roller system (manual at first then later
motorized) from which he could squeeze more efficiency from his loyal employees. Still later the computer and his new house added jewels to
this industrial crown and further isolated him from the realm of his parents He was above us common Folks This newfound superiority had to be enforced, however, with middlemen. It is not good for a man of position to deal with too many
underlings which is why he hired Stanley. But Donald was a bad capitalist. in spite of his effort to
separate himself from the working class, he couldn't quite get away from his
own roots. He always had to dirty his hands to feel real about himself. Phil, the middle owner of the Dunkin in Willowbrook, is a
better capitalist, rising in a similar way to Donald. Only Phil lacks the ethics that Donald had or managed to
shed them when Donald couldn't This is not to say that Donald was right or even close to
being ethical any more than Craig at the card company was before Donald. We are simply talking about levels of competence and
conscience Craig was sometimes a jerk with a streak of kindness. He
wanted desperately to be important, to act as vicious as normal capitalist
might. But his basic good nature killed all his chances. Frank, one of the original owners of the Willowbrook Dunkin,
learned about capitalism the hard way. He latched onto a real shark named Yacenda,
a man so lacking in conscience he was bound to go somewhere in this world. Frank reacted with bitter admiration for this capitalist
when Yacenda sold out the business under him – Frank was a minor partner – a true
capitalist buying and selling small fries like Frank. Yacenda knew this money-making game and its vicious rules
that allowed one player to gut another player, paying attention for the most
part only to the legalities, never wavering from the basic concept that small
fries are meant to be eaten in a business various of evolution in which only
the fittest survive. This would not be bad if only the game players got hurt. But
their actions often destroy other people’s lives in the process of change, the
small people the people who do all the work.
Stanley
decided to stick with Donald because he had a family support.
And
so, began the daily trudged from his home in Belleville to the Fairfield warehouse
complex on Bloomfield Ave.
Since
Donald had started the business in 1968, Stanley must have started with him
right from the beginning.
I
was aware of him as the neighbor next door after I started at the card company
in 1972.
And
he was still there when I got hired as driver in June 1974.
I
had had such frequent contact as a neighboring employee that the transition was
easier than it might have been had I gone to a strange place because I knew him
and knew he knew me.
I
needed to learn was the job the stops and to put up with Donald unpredictable
moods.
Stan
and Donald were both moody but in different ways.
Donald
was manic, an agitated gerbil not much different from the Energizer Bunny,
always moving, always ambitious for something more than he had. If he did not
yet have a complete clear vision of what it is he wanted, then he had a clear vision
of the road that would take him somewhere better than it was at any given
moment.
Stan
was a turtle. He followed the same road Donald did but did not -- despite his
dreams of success -- seem in a hurry to get anywhere.
Sure,
he wanted to make more money and wear white shirt. Yet once he fell into the
situation with Donald he trudged along as if he really had nowhere to go nor
wanted directions on how to get anywhere.
More
to the point, the products Stan was hired to pack scared the hell out of him.
Accustomed
to dealing with steel -- which was for the most part indestructible -- Stan
suddenly faced items contain in glass, perfumes and fragrances so costly he
sometimes handled them as if they were nitroglycerin.
Stanley
was so obsessive in his need to pack everything so securely that an atom bomb could
not have caused it to break -- though some drivers might have managed it.
Orders
took many times longer to get ready than was actually necessary. This seemed frustrate
Donald to no end and was the source of the most disputes between them, one the
urging the other to hurry in a constant game of the unstoppable force seeking
to move the unmovable one.
While
Donald disliked damaged goods, he already set up a system with the
manufacturers to get credit for anything destroyed in shipment. We had whole
shelves dedicated to these, a thankless and stench-filled task of going through
them set aside for off-season when we mostly had little else to do.
Stan
would have done better had he pursued a career as a teacher since he tended to
lecture me or anyone else as we worked.
He
often talked about his past and how disappointed he was with the bargain he had
made with Donald, yet -- as if a bargain with the Devil -- he could not get out
of it.
Working
across the backing table from him, I learned a lot of how he'd come there about
his early years at the steelworks in Harrison.
“I
grew up with metal,” he told me. “My old man made me sweep up the shavings
during summer vacations when I was young. Then took me on as an apprentice when
I was still in high school.”
Stan
blistered his fingers on hot metal and he pulled splinters of steel out of the
backs of his hands -- the scars of both showing like shameful tattoos he kept
from sight as often as possible.
When
his hands were not in his pockets, he kept them hidden in a box and when
exposure was unavoidable, he gripped a clipboard to expose only his thumbs.
Stanley
never talk to me about his personal problems. But over time -- especially when
he became manager at the new warehouse -- I would overhear him on the phone
with his wife, talking about a bounced check or a telephone bill from her long-distance
calls to her sick sister in California.
Stan
repeated talked about those seven years of hell, keeping himself going with the
idea that the hell would end when the day finally handed him the diploma.
“I
hated steel,” he said. “I hated it smell when the torches cut it. I hated the
touch of the warm metal when I had to help move it after it was cut. The place
was always hot, and I was always dirty, sweating my balls off and stinking of
metal even after I took a shower. I used to go out for dinner sometimes with my
family and I could smell the metal in the restaurant. I wanted to quit the job
a million times, but I knew I could not afford to I kept telling myself it
would get better and wouldn't always be like that. That's what got me through
those seven years.”
He
told me he saw himself working in an office building in Manhattan or Newark as
one of those “soft men” with “soft jobs” he always saw you going into and
coming out of buildings made of glass, carrying briefcases, and dressed as if
every day was a graduation ceremony -- suits always pressed nobody breaking out
in a sweat.
While,
he didn't get a solid job offer from the places he applied to, a few brought
him in on as trial jobs slightly better paying then the mailroom. They were not
at all what he thought the degree would qualify him for.
“I
didn't feel right in any of those places,” he said. “I kept looking around and
scratching my head wondering what I was doing in a place like that. Nobody
seemed to do any work or very little. When I asked someone what they needed me
to do next, they told me to slow down and not make them look bad by doing too
much work. I know I should have stayed
in one of those places if I could have then I wouldn't be putting in the kind
of hours I am now.”
Donald’s
offer seemed attractive at the time.
“He
said I wouldn't make a lot of money at first but that I would be on the ground
floor of a growing business,” Stanley said. “If I showed a little patience, I
would end up better off than I would if I worked in one of those corporations.”
Later,
after we moved to the new warehouse, Stanley came to really regret his choice.
“It's
like I never left the steel company,” he said. “but instead of being out on the
floor doing honest work, I'm the boss I hated when I was working, and everybody
hates me the way I hated my boss back then.”
Born
in 1950, Bruce came into an age different from the ones of his brothers, just
as I differed from my uncles who were born before or during the war.
Bruce
was roughly my age and so suffered many of the same issues adapting to a career
as I did.
Barry
and Donald while different in their approaches from each other were both very
practical men with very practical ambitions.
Bruce
had none or if he did, they were so vague he could not easily articulate them,
and I got the feeling he was more than a little intimidated by his father and
brothers while at the same time seem to love them dearly.
I
worked with Bruce a few times twice while working for Donald, once or maybe
more while working for Barry -- and all those times I got along with him well
but got the feeling he could not take himself seriously and so did not expect
anyone else to either.
I
learned later that I actually replaced Bruce when Donald and Stanley hired me.
Stanley
did not trust Bruce, found him too flaky -- a prejudice Stanley would later
display again when Gary got hired to be the new driver at the new warehouse a
few years later.
I
also think Stan did not like relying on his boss's brother and may have imagined
Bruce running back to Donald if Stan gave him too much of a hard time--
something I could not imagine Bruce doing since I suspect Donald scared Bruce
as much as he scared me or even Stanley.
Bruce
resembled Barry more than he did Donald though did not dominate a room when he
came into it the way Barry did.
Bruce
seemed less substantial and less likely to look you in the eye unless he already
knew you and liked you and trusted you. At the same time, he struck me as
someone who didn't trust anyone easily though he clearly trusted and respected
his family.
I
most likely encountered Bruce first when I worked in the card company warehouse
next door. But I did not recall him except as that other guy who worked with
Stanley and drove the big red truck to make pickups and deliveries.
After
I worked for Donald for a few months Stan would mumble from time to time how
unreliable Bruce had been,
Stanley, like Donald and Barry, was born in
that practical generation side that did not quite understand the emerging
generation so closely associated with Woodstock and the Beatles. Stanley could
not get the idea in his head that people could live carefree, a passing fad
that helped ruin many of us who actually believed the hype the way Bruce seemed
to.
I
had more extensive contact with him later in 1974 when Donald brought Bruce
back to help with the Christmas rush.
He
and I got to interact more extensively, and I found I actually liked him
despite the negative hype Stan had fed me, and Bruce seem to like me
He
liked the fact that I laughed at his lame jokes and I liked him because his
jokes were lame.
He
was unpretentious and seemed to accept who he was without any pretense of being
someone important.
At
the same time, he struck me as someone suffering deep wounds which I could not
comprehend since his family seemed to love him and he never took the world
seriously enough for it to bring anything remotely hurtful into his life.
Stanley
didn't trust Bruce to pack orders or to pick up merchandise on the road. So,
Bruce largely loaded and unloaded trucks and ran for cases of merchandise we
ordered him to get when we picked our orders -- a kind of workhorse but one who
seemed to accept his role as if he expected nothing better or wanted anything
better either.
Bruce
apparently worked on and off for Barry at the beauty supply in Verona and
appears to have lived with Barry from time to time as well.
His
duties for Barry appear to have varied -- from picking orders for deliveries to
various beauty salons to making deliveries himself on a route that covered
nearly all of Northern New Jersey. But Barry
seemed to have one or more drivers and Bruce for the most part went along as a
helper.
This
was Bruce's role during a week or two long stretch when one of Barry's drivers
called out sick and Donald lent him me as a driver.
Tt
was literally the blind leading the blind.
Since
Bruce was supposed to direct me because I was not familiar with the routes, we
got lost as much as we found what we were looking for.
We laughed,
joked, complained, exclaimed, cursed and generally made other fools of
ourselves,
Yet
as I recall it was the toughest week or two of labor I ever did, and despite my
enjoying being lost with Bruce I was grateful to get back to Stanley and the
less strenuous pickups and deliveries Donald demanded from me.
I
saw Bruce only once after that during the long week when Donald, Barry, me,
John Telson, Shark, Stanley and others gathered to make the final move from the
old warehouse to the new,
It
was a move that was more than just a move across town but one that altered the
world as I knew it though I did not know it at the time.
Because
we were so caught up in what we had to do, I could not tell if Bruce was happy
or sad or even satisfied and whether he had yet found direction or someone to
love or be loved by.
I
never saw him again, but I heard about him about a decade later when I worked
for a local newspaper and someone told me -- I don't recall who maybe Gary -- that
Bruce had died.
I
never got the details. I still don't know them.
Yet
I feel the loss as if -- even not seeing him -- I had lost a friend.
Donald
was born on VE day, marking the final defeat of the Nazis in Europe, an event
of such monumental significance to Jews that Irving and Ruth must have seen
this as a positive sign for the future.
The
family had moved from Newark to Rutherford and lived in a brick house just off
Park Avenue – the main thoroughfare – on a relatively quiet street, Gouverver –
closer to State Highway 3 than to the traffic circle that marked the center of
town near the railway station.
Rutherford
was one of those towns that clung to prohabitionary rules meaning it served no
alcohol. But it was progressive enough to give Ruth parking tickets, as were
reported to the local newspapers in those days.
Rutherford,
where Donald would later set up one of his first batch of retail stores, was
located near Wallington, Garfield and Lodi where my family resided at the time,
and near Passaic where I would live for a time while working for him at his new
warehouse of Kaplun Drive in Fairfield.
Although
geographically closer to St. Mary’s and Beth Israel hospitals in Passaic, Ruth
gave birth to Donald at the more distant Irvington General Hospital, a massive
relic of the 19 th century that sat on an imposing hill, later neglected and
torn down.
This
was located near where the Garden State Parkway would later intersect Route 78
when both were constructed more than a decade later. At the time, the main
highway was Route 22 which connected Newark, Elizabeth, Bayonne and Union with
the inner parts of the state.
Irving’s
successful career apparently allowed him to move over the next few years to
west to the Livingston and West Orange area, part of a massive exodus of Jews
from the inner city. His kids eventually attended local schools there, with all
three attending West Orange High School, graduating in the 1960s.
As
the middle child, Donald makes me think of that old rent-a-car commerical which
claimed number two had to ry harder.
It’s
hard to say for certain if Irving favored one son over the others and whether or
not he hoped for Barry to live up to all the potential he showed in childhood.
But Donald’s later success must have impressed Irving, partly because Donald
seemed not to have all those talents Barry ddi, and so Donald had to work
harder to get ahead – and for him to have gotten as far ahead of his two
brothers as he did must have come as a complete surprise.
Known
in his senior year of high school at “Don,” Donald was aparently involved with
a school group called Cowboy Consolidated (Cow-con), a booster club that
supported all the sports teams know as the West Orange Cowboys.
Unlike
Barry, who took up wrestling and swimming, and his other brother, Bruce, who
took up tennis, Donald does not appear to have been involved in sports while in
high school – unless you consider jewelry-making a sport.
Yet
as a member of Cow-Con, Donald and others were responsible for setting up the
annual bonfire, football pep ralleys and distributing the booster tags most
students from West Orange High were expected to wear. The group also held
poster parties where the members designed posters that would later be put up
around the halls of the school.
Donald
was also a member of the International Relations Club that took an annual trip
to the United Nations among other activities.
Donald’s
classmates at the time painted a whole different picture of him than the Donald
I encountered as his employee. To them, he was a gentleman with a kind heart.
And perhaps this was accurate the the Donald I met felt compelled to put up a
front, scared of being to close to those who worked for him. Indeed, even his
relationship later with Stan seemed full of controdictions, a sincere effort to
share wealth and success but still maintain distance – something that Stan (and
I at the time) clearly misread.
While
Donald may have come to high school as a geek – and somewhat freewheeling – he
didn’t leave school that way, graduating a changed man, more dignified in some
ways than Barry who had preceded him.
For
those of us looking back at Donald’s frequent exclamations of “Where’s Susan,”
who he meant remains a mystery – although most of his classmates likely knew at
the time. He could have meant any number of Susans that shared clubs and
classes he attended, although I’d like to think he meant one of the particularly
popular cheerleaders.
While
Donald like Barry got involved in community organizations, Donald seemed to
focus more on his Jewish heritage and in helping Jewish immigrants. This may
have been his motivation for getting involved in Valley Settlement House, a
non-profit service organization that helped people in the four Orange towns, as
well as Newark, Maplewood and Irvington. Although the immigrants the
organization has well elped changed over the years since, many of those helped
at the time where Jewish immigrants making their way to the United States from
Eastern Europe.
Donald
also got involved with the Young Men’s Hebrew Associatin located at the time on
Chancellor Avenue in Newark – which was then making plans for its move to
Northfield Avenue in West Orange. He most likely got involved with the centers
first Israel Exhibtion and Trade Fair held there in 1963.
The
Y’s original mission was to help new Jewish immigrants assemulate in urban
areas like Newark, Jersey City and Bayonne. But after World War II as Jews
began to move out of the cities, the Y’s role changed and became a key element
in helping Jews move from the cities to the suburbs with the goal to keep Jews
enaged with the Jewish community.
This
not to say kids who belonged to the Y didn’t have fun, enjoying a variety of
activities as well as trips to museums in New York City or even to the Naval
base in Bayonne or the Ford Plant in Mahwah. This last is somewhat ironic since
Donald’s son, Josh, would later play a critical role in rescuing what became an
ailing car company.
How
and where Donald met his first wife, Gwenn Kuskin remains a mystery to me as
well. But their paths could have easily crossed during his trips to Bradley
Beach, a sea side resort within spitting distance of Deal where Gwenn lived at
the time.
While
the Kuskins lived in Deal, the primary Jewish community was in Bradley Beach,
and the Kuskins were very involved in their temple while living there.
Bradley
Beach, two towns south along the ocean from Deal, was one of the few towns that
allowed Jews in the post war years. Brooklyn Jews discovered Bradley Beach long
before they started buying up land in Deal in the 1970s. Magen David
Congregation opened in the summer of 1944 after which Jewish families began
renting bungalos in Bradley Beach the way my family did at the time in Seaside
and Point Pleasant.
While
it is too much to hope that Donald and Gwenn became high school sweetheart or
had a summer romance, they ironically must have passed each other during those
years.
Although
Donald was a history buff in high school, he apparently had less lofty goals
than his brother, Barry, and attended Rutgers to major in Finance, opening
Cosmetics Plus shortly after graduation.
If Irving’s
professional life lived up to the hype of TV's “Mad Men,” his personal life fit
the mold of that classic TV show “My Three Sons” and the lifestyle as a Suburban
family that America coming out of World War II ached to embrace.
Irv most likely met Ruth
in Newark. They married in 1941 and had their first son, Barry in 1943. Donald
the middle son was born in 1945 after the family had moved to Rutherford, and Bruce,
the youngest in 1950.
The three boys could
not have been more different had they been born to different parents, and the
expectations for their success must have been immense.
Whether or not it is
inspired sibling rivalry, I'm not certain, since all three brothers seemed
entwined in both professional and private ways.
Yet as the eldest and
perhaps the most gifted of the three, Barry must have felt the most pressure to
achieve -- even though Donald must at the same time felt he had something to
prove, standing in the shadow of an elder brother.
Barry oozed eloquence
even his father lacked, breaking the mold of the stereotypical Jew by proving Jew
kid from a Newark family could be cool.
He dressed cool, acted
cool, and hung out with cool crowd in high school, engaging in sports like
wrestling and swimming that gave him the macho most teens in the 50s craved --
and which made him extremely attractive to girls and he was drawn to them.
Because Barry and
Donald were born about two years apart, they attended West Orange High school
together briefly.
This must have been a
burden for the geek-like Donald who hung out with geek-like friends and took up
geek-like things such as jewelry making rather than sports.
While Bruce, born
five years after Donald, may have seemed more fortunate in that he had not the
shadow of either of them hanging over him, there must have been some residual
effects from both Barry, who was popular among teachers and fellow students,
and the extremely studious Donald.
Bruce, who graduated
in 1969, apparently started working for Donald, who by that time had already
gone into business, and had seen his business grow out of his father’s garage,
and decided Bruce could help him – something that didn’t completely work out
since I was hired in 1974 to replace Bruce – although Bruce continued to work
for Barry, when Barry opened his beauty supply company in Verona.
In high school, Barry
was a classic 50s middle-class kid, wearing his hair Elvis style, and when he
wasn't wearing some sort of sports-jacket he wore button down shirts with long
collars called high rollers considered very cool at the time.
Early on in high
school, Donald looked very much like his father with thick-rimmed glasses and a
tendency to wear bizarrely pattern shirts geeks often mistaken school. He would
later more than make up for this -- perhaps taking lessons from his brother --
and in some ways exceeding Barry in tasteful attire.
Even the way Barry
looked defied most of the stereotypes of Jews. He was fair-haired, almost Aryan
in his features, and had a noble even an arrogant look -- like a young prince
assured he would someday inherit his father's crown. He was that self-assured
and equally ambitious.
Even when I knew him,
he had the habit of repeating the word “seriously” something he was noted for
in high school, a phrase that might have defined the seriousness of something
he said or as a putdown, questioning the validity of some statement made by
someone else.
As Aryan as he might
have looked, Barry did not abandon his Jewish roots. He became a member of
United Synagogue Youth, which was a youth movement for conservative Jews to use
as a stepping stone to leadership as young Jews learned values and skills for
leadership.
He also seemed to
follow in his father’s footsteps by giving back to the community. While still
in high school, he volunteered frequently at the nearby Lyons Veterans Hospital
as well as the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation located in his hometown of
West Orange -- a hospital that had a close relationship with the still
struggling nation of Israel.
Often called “Barr”
by his closest friends, Barry got involved in a remarkable variety of other
activities in high school from photography the horseback riding along with
wrestling and the school's swim club. He may also have had literary ambitions,
since he was also involved with the school's literary magazine -- although he
may have been there only for the girls.
For all of Barry's
academic prowess, he was every bit a classic 50s teen -- the kind exemplified
in the later film grease or Pleasantville. he loved music and collected records
and knew very well the social benefits of dancing and became a member of the
social dance club.
Even more symbolic of
that era’s teens, he worked in The Valley Sweet Shop as a soda jerk -- not
terribly far from where he would set up his beauty supply business a decade
later and easy stroll to South Mountain Reservation which was a tangle of
trails that several local teens used as a Lover's Lane.
Barry exuded
self-confidence from the way he combed his hair to the way he tilted his head,
even engaging in public speaking early in his high school as if he already assumed,
he would need it in a later career. His plans to study law in college may even
have been his first steps towards a career in politics.
He was bold arrogant
and seemed to believe he could not fail to someday obtain greatness.
It was difficult to
know if the same schemes he later in hatched in his life went through his head
even then: the land speculation, the business venture after business venture,
or even a brief stint in movies (though this also had a dark side) -- schemes
that seemed determined to outdo all the accomplishments of his father.
Barry married Gina LaRiccia in
April 1977, inheriting the already established Gina’s Discount Beauty Supply,
where I would work briefly with his brother, Bruce, making deliveries. This was
a big to do with the reception held at the posh Glen Ridge County Club. Donald
served as his best man.
But Barry had other business
interests back in Newark where he apparently hobnobbed with a different kind of
crowd, The Lucchese crime family, the smallest of the five major New York crime
families. While this group mostly dealt in narcotics, it delved into a few
other sidelines that included hijacking, gambling, loan sharking, illegal
landfills, and pornography.
At the time, the northern Jersey
branch was headed by Michael Taccettra, best known for the 21-month trial in
which he beat the rap against the feds – one of the longest mob trials in
history. Unfortunately, he was convicted in charges out of state, and could not
run his organization. Leadership fell into the hands of his younger brother,
Martin – with whom Barry had a close relationship.
Martin had been around for a while.
I knew him in the early 1980s from his operating of several rock and roll clubs
in northern and central New Jersey.
It is hard to tell if Barry’s
relationship started that early, but most likely did. He had significant
financial troubles in the early 1980s and may have turned to Martin and others.
Federal authorities believe Barry became the finance guy for some of Martin’s
operations.
The New Jersey branch in the early
1980s had grown in power with large loansharking and gambling operations in and
around Newark.
Michael and a number of his high
ranking members were indicted in 1985. The trial started in 1986 and ended with
Michael and his associates being found not guilty in 1988.
In fighting, partly due to things
that came out in the trial, created factions inside the organization, and there
came an order from the New York faction to “whack” the Jersey Crew. Michael and
Martin quickly sided with New York saving themselves, and won them uncontested
leadership of the Jersey branch.
This came at a time when Bobby
Manna plotted in Hoboken the murder of New York crime boss John Gotti and his
brother, Gene. Federal authorities swept them up in early 1989.
In September 1989, Martin and Barry
were charged in another scheme to bilk manufactures of video equipment. Barry
had already left his mark as executive producer of two b-rated horror movies,
released in 1987 and 1988. But in this scam, he was seen as the money man
behind the operation.
Martin with Barry’s help had set up
a video production company in 1987 ordering a vast amount of products on
credit, which they promptly sold to pornography movie makers for cash – then
went out of business, stiffing their creditors.
The charges were filed in
California. Martin and Barry surrendered to the feds in New Jersey and got out
on $50,000 bail.
Lawyers for Barry and Martin
claimed media had sensationalized the whole business transaction by tying it to
the $1 billion California pornography industry. Both men denied wrong-doing.
In December, the two men – faced
with five counts of grand larceny and one count of conspiracy – challenged the
legality of their arrest. A month later, both men dropped their challenge and
agreed to go to California – and apparently prevailed in court.
But the feds kept their eye on
Barry, and a year later, his home was among dozens of homes and businesses in
four counties raided by the FBI where records were seized in an effort to find
data on money laundering and insurance fraud schemes. Martin and Barry again
apparently prevailed.
Somewhere in the middle of all
this, Barry and Gina parted ways. She apparently was still married to him
leading up to the federal investigations, but by 1991, Barry found a new bride.
On St. Valentine’s Day, Barry remarried to Kim
Blanton, who apparently retired to Florida after Barry’s untimely death in
2002.
For the last decade of his life, he
appeared to settle down to running family business which included Thymer Health
Care, Carrara Marble Company – both still located in Fairfield, and the Garden
State Hospice, in Cranford – a for-profit nursing home. He had gravitated into
the nursing home field as a result of his company supplying medication carts
for nursing homes. He had also invested in hospices in Oklahoma and Louisana.
“Hospice is a win-win-win situation
in a nursing home,” he was quoted in one report. “The patient gets extra care,
the nursing home gets help taking care of the patient and the family gets
additional support.”
He called it “a tremendously under
served area and highly competitive. But he also noted to turn a profit, the
hospice must serve seven to ten patients in each nursing home.
“If we operate efficiently, we make
a profit,” Barry said.
By far a sadder story and
significantly more significant involves Irving’s youngest son, Bruce.
Born in 1950, Bruce came into an
age different from the ones of his brothers, just as I differed from my uncles
who were born before or during the war.
Bruce was roughly my age and so
suffered many of the same issues adapting to a career as I did.
Barry and Donald while different in
their approaches from each other were both very practical men with very
practical ambitions.
Bruce had none or if he did, they
were so vague he could not easily articulate them, and I got the feeling he was
more than a little intimidated by his father and brothers while at the same
time seem to love them dearly.
Bruce graduated West Orange High
School in 1969, nearly a decade after Barry and Donald did, and apparently was
hired on after Donald started Cosmetics Plus in 1968. He most likely worked in
one or more of the retail stores, until they closed, and worked in the Pia Costa
warehouse prior to my arrival there in June 1974.
I worked with Bruce a few times
twice while working for Donald, once or maybe more while working for Barry --
and all those times I got along with him well but got the feeling he could not
take himself seriously and so did not expect anyone else to either.
I learned later that I actually
replaced Bruce when Donald and Stanley hired me.
Stanley did not trust Bruce, found
him too flaky -- a prejudice Stanley would later display again when Gary got
hired to be the new driver at the new warehouse a few years later.
I also think Stan did not like
relying on his boss's brother and may have imagined Bruce running back to
Donald if Stan gave him too much of a hard time-- something I could not imagine
Bruce doing since I suspect Donald scared Bruce as much as he scared me or even
Stanley.
Bruce resembled Barry more than he
did Donald though did not dominate a room when he came into it the way Barry
did.
Bruce seemed less substantial and
less likely to look you in the eye unless he already knew you and liked you and
trusted you. At the same time, he struck me as someone who didn't trust anyone
easily though he clearly trusted and respected his family.
I most likely encountered Bruce
first when I worked in the card company warehouse next door. But I did not
recall him except as that other guy who worked with Stanley and drove the big
red truck to make pickups and deliveries.
After I worked for Donald for a few
months Stan would mumble from time to time how unreliable Bruce had been.
Stanley, like Donald and Barry, was
born in that practical generation side that did not quite understand the
emerging generation so closely associated with Woodstock and the Beatles.
Stanley could not get the idea in his head that people could live carefree, a
passing fad that helped ruin many of us who actually believed the hype the way
Bruce seemed to.
I had more extensive contact with
him later in 1974 when Donald brought Bruce back to help with the Christmas
rush.
He and I got to interact more
extensively, and I found I actually liked him despite the negative hype Stan
had fed me, and Bruce seem to like me
He liked the fact that I laughed at
his lame jokes and I liked him because his jokes were lame.
He was unpretentious and seemed to
accept who he was without any pretense of being someone important.
At the same time, he struck me as
someone suffering deep wounds which I could not comprehend since his family
seemed to love him and he never took the world seriously enough for it to bring
anything remotely hurtful into his life.
Stanley didn't trust Bruce to pack
orders or to pick up merchandise on the road. So, Bruce largely loaded and
unloaded trucks and ran for cases of merchandise we ordered him to get when we
picked our orders -- a kind of workhorse but one who seemed to accept his role
as if he expected nothing better or wanted anything better either.
Bruce apparently worked on and off
for Barry at the beauty supply in Verona and appears to have lived with Barry
from time to time as well.
His duties for Barry appear to have
varied -- from picking orders for deliveries to various beauty salons to making
deliveries himself on a route that covered nearly all of Northern New Jersey. But Barry seemed to have one or more drivers
and Bruce for the most part went along as a helper.
This was Bruce's role during a week
or two long stretch when one of Barry's drivers called out sick and Donald lent
him me as a driver.
It was literally the blind leading
the blind.
Since Bruce was supposed to direct
me because I was not familiar with the routes, we got lost as much as we found
what we were looking for.
We laughed, joked, complained,
exclaimed, cursed and generally made other fools of ourselves,
Yet as I recall it was the toughest
week or two of labor I ever did, and despite my enjoying being lost with Bruce
I was grateful to get back to Stanley and the less strenuous pickups and
deliveries Donald demanded from me.
I saw Bruce only once after that
during the long week when Donald, Barry, me, John Telson, Shark, Stanley and
others gathered to make the final move from the old warehouse to the new,
It was a move that was more than
just a move across town but one that altered the world as I knew it though I
did not know it at the time.
Because we were so caught up in
what we had to do, I could not tell if Bruce was happy or sad or even satisfied
and whether he had yet found direction or someone to love or be loved by.
I never saw him again, but I heard
about him about a decade later when I worked for a local newspaper and someone
told me -- I don't recall who maybe Gary -- that Bruce had died.
Barry appears to have made a living
– on and off – as a used car salesman from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.
Bruce married Sandra Candura in
May1975. Born in Newark in April 1951, Sandra was a graduate of Belleville High
School and received her bachelor’s degree from Montclair State College. She
taught on semester at East Side High School in Newark, where she taught English
and English as a second language before she was hired as a teacher at
Belleville Junior High in 1974 where she taught remedial English for three
years.
In 1977, Sanda was hired as a
reading specialist at Belleville High School.
She was already well-traveled
having made several trips to Europe as a college student. In 1972, she was
among 14 students that went to study at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
A year later she took a three-week
sojourn in early 1973 that oddly enough included a close friend of mine. Some
of the students remained in London, while others went on to visit Munich,
Vienna, and still others remained in Paris at the Sorbonne to study for the
winter semester.
She and Bruce lived in Belleville
for most of their marriage, although apparently moved to Caldwell in the
mid-1980s where they both died on the same day, April 16, 1988.
Because the police reports are
filed in some dark basement somewhere in a paper form, they were not yet
available for review by the time I wrote this. But there are hints as to
something terrible occurring, although the official story about Sandra’s death
published on April 21 is vague and doesn’t mention Barry at all – even though
he died at the same time she did.
“Mrs. Gottheimer died April 16 in
her home,” this report said. “She was recently named Teacher of the Year (at
Belleville High.)
Her obituary published on April 19
said she was “the beloved wife of the late Bruce.”
Oddly, his obituary was not
published until April 27, also pointing out that he was the “husband of the
late Sandra.”
Sandra and Bruce had two separate
funerals. Hers took place on April 20 with a mass at St. Peter’s Church in
Belleville. She was buried at Glendale Cemetery.
Bruce had a graveside service heled
at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge on April 17.
Although several stories followed
over the next year about Sandra’s being honored at Teacher of the Year, none
mentioned Bruce in association with her, even though the stories noted that she
was being honored “posthumously.” For the most part, these stories merely said,
Sandra had died, but with one glaring exception.
A May 12, 1988 story noted that
Sandra’s mother represented her daughter at the awards ceremony “because
Gottheimer was killed last month.”
