There are few more iconic destinations in New York City than Katz’s Deli, with its hot pastrami sandwiches on Houston Street. My friend Howard (may his memory be for a blessing) taught me how to order there. You stand in line at the counter where the meat cutters are, WITH a $5 bill in your hand. Given how long its been since I’ve been there, I’m guessing you need a $10 bill now. THEN the guy will give you lean if you want it. A little bit of fat goes a long way for taste.
Howard Karlin and I met in Tallahassee in 1984. He had a degree from Indiana in Radio/TV/Film. He ran two easy listening FM stations. One day my wife Janis said I needed a hobby. Guess I was pretty stressed out. I had collected stamps as a kid. Years later, after college, I asked where my stamp collection was. Dad said it was stolen. I didn’t buy that, BUT he paid for it so if he got some of his money back, I’m ok with that.
There was an ad in the Tallahassee Democrat that some folks were starting a stamp club. I went. I left that night with a lot of free stamps to help get me started. The most generous person was Larry Benson. He was the registrar of Tallahassee Community College. His specialty was Tin Can Mail of the Tongan Islands. In time, Larry qualified as a judge of competitive exhibits at stamp shows. Howard was there. He took me under his wing, and I started going to stamp shows with him. He taught me how to negotiate for a collection I wanted. I started collecting the U.S., England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the British Commonwealth. It wasn’t long before I realized that was too many countries.
I had been to Canada three times: once as a child and twice (in 1973 and 1980) on hitch hiking trips. The 1973 visit was to the maritime provinces after renting my apartment for graduate school in Boston. A son of some friends at FSU, Gene and Mandy, had a farm on Prince Edward Island. Getting to it and being on time was quite an adventure.
Remember, I was a long haired, bearded hippie freak in those days. So there I am at the top of an entrance ramp to I-95 in Maine. The loudspeaker on a state trooper’s patrol car says,
“You can’t hitchhike here.”
I started back down the entrance ramp. NO!:
“Walk to the next exit!”
He followed me the five miles creeping along at 2-3 miles an hour. Lucky for me, Maine is NOT as hot as Tallahassee in the summer. Lovely; Maine hospitality!
Another memory: on the way to Maine through New Hampshire I vaguely recollect coming upon a hippie commune. The memory that stands out is harvesting crayfish from the stream for dinner. That comes to mind as I have considered buying a 27-acre parcel with wetland on it in Grand Ridge and will seed it with a crayfish population.
I finally get to the Canadian border (not on I-95, I switched to SR 6!). They wouldn’t let me in. They could call the farm in Canada that was my destination.
“We don’t do that.”
Their excuse was that, even with a checkbook and a credit card, I did not have $50 of cash on me. In 1973? With inflation, that’s $250 today. Hell, I was a poor graduate student who had put myself through school. Then, having walked back over the bridge crossing the small river at the border, the U.S. customs guards wouldn’t let me back in without tearing apart everything I had on me. I said,
“You guys saw me walk across the bridge and get turned away at the border, WHAT could I be bringing in?”
“You were trying to leave!”
I passed. No contraband. So there I am on a Sunday for god’s sake in a tiny rural town in Maine. Where was I going to get $50? No ATMs in those days. Nothing was open. Then I see an independent pharmacy open. There were many more of them 50 years ago. I walked in and told the owner/pharmacist my plight. He asked to see my ID and checkbook. He cashed a $50 check for me. There are human beings on the face of the earth. Back at the border, I am sure I pissed off the Canadians. They had not succeeded in keeping this hippie freak out of Canada. They thought they had given me an insurmountable barrier to overcome.
Mandy was the secretary at the Anthropology department. One day, she mentioned that her husband Gene was the manager of the Florida State University Reservation on Lake Bradford, on Flastacowo Road. FSU had been the “Florida State College for Women” (Flastacowo!) until 1947. The country was so desperate to take care of the returning GIs under the GI bill’s education benefits that many women’s colleges became coed.
She said he had lost his lifeguard and didn’t know what to do. I jokingly said I was an Eagle Scout and had earned the Lifesaving merit badge. Next thing I know, I’m out at the Reservation being interviewed and hired by Gene as his head lifeguard. A side benefit was being able to give many of my friends jobs out there.
During those two years I was only involved in one rescue. This guy is standing on the end of the pier yelling at someone. It turned out it was his idiot red Irish setter who had taken it upon itself to try to swim straight across the one-mile diameter of Lake Bradford. I asked if he knew how to paddle a canoe. “No.”
I said,
“Get in…You are going to have to have a quick lesson.”
By the time we caught up with the mutt, some water skiers had fished it out of the water into our canoe, where it promptly shook off the water, soaking us. Grrr! Don’t ever mention Irish setters to me!.
About that time the Miccosukee Land co-op was created in Tallahassee as an alternative to commercial residential real estate development. It has common areas. In my opinion, it is not very alternative, as everyone who lives there owns their own lot and home with a fee simple deed, as in good old capitalist fashion. Mandy and Gene were among the first members.
Their son had a farm on Prince Edward Island. As I hitched north through New Brunswick from the Maine border, I remember walking into a gas station to get some water. I had left Tallahassee with 90 degree plus temperatures and 90 percent plus humidity. I’m standing on the hill next to the station owner looking out over the pine forest in the valley below, with the bluish mist rising form the trees (which Ronald Reagan thought was pollution!), I commented what a beautiful day it was.
His response:
“Yep! 70 degrees. Warmest day all year!”
70 degrees? Warm? Try living in Florida.
I finally did make it to the farm. The back of this property was a hill rising to the fir forest. They covered it with blueberries. While I do not eat them (A long story… Thanks, Mom!) I enjoy picking. After the kids and I finished filling their buckets, I decided to explore a northern forest. In the South, pine trees lose their lower limbs, and you have a very long, clear sight line to navigate by. Northern conifers keep their lower limbs. It was not very long before I realized I had lost my bearings. For the first time in my life as an outdoorsman I was LOST in the woods. I was lucky I was on an island. No cell phones, remember? No GPS. Just woodlore. I knew if I could maintain a straight line by keeping the sun in the same position to me as I walked, I would eventually hit a road or a beach. I decided I would head left as the quickest way to hit a road. Then a left and a left would get me back to their farmhouse. I put the sun to my right and kept an eye on it to keep me straight. It was long before I hit a road. Saved.
And the no-see-ums! Had heard about them. Had no idea what I would be up against! Even though there are at least 47 species of biting insects in Florida, they are mostly beach and coastal. But on a small narrow island, they got you covered. Within a day, they had devoured my face under my thick beard. The itching was agonizing. I came THAT CLOSE to shaving off my beard. I did not. Whew!
When I left the island, I had already been fully equipped for camping out: pup tent, sleeping bag, cook kit, all literally left over since my scouting days. I may have been kicked out of Camp Sebring, but not the Scouts.
I knew I wanted to see the St. Lawrence River and Quebec City. So, I hitched Northwest through Bathurst and Campbellton in New Brunswick to the Gaspe Peninsula until I hit the River, then turned left until I could cross to Quebec City. My typical meals were bread, cheese, and apples easily bought at the small local stores in that very sparsely populated region. No need to find a campground. When I was tired of walking or hitching, I just walked off the road into the forest and made camp. I had made a trip like this the week I had graduated from high school. I went up to US 27 in the center of the state of Florida through swamps, forests, sugar cane fields, orange groves, and farms. 750 miles from Miami to Pensacola and back. It was by car, but 56-years ago Florida was much less populous. I could just pull the car over and pitch my tent by the side of the road.
I get to Quebec City. Incredible place. Dad spoke French so one naturally picked up a little from him. The Quebecois were a much stronger movement then, and Anglos were much less well tolerated. But it did not take long with very little French to explain to other young folks in bars what I was doing, and they gladly switched to English, having shown my respect for their culture first. I only spent a night and a day. It was hard to pitch a tent in Quebec City! I hitched Southwest along the river to Montreal, then south through Vermont and home to Tallahassee.
Where was I? Oh, yes, stamp collecting and Howard Karlin. Given my love of Canada, through a trip at 12 years old (a story for another post) and at 25 on the way to graduate school, it was not long before I was JUST collecting Canada and its provinces. Before Confederation in 1868, many provinces issued their own stamps: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, and Newfoundland.
A humorous aside: The Canadian Provinces formed the current Confederation in 1868. But Newfoundland remained a Crown Colony separate from Canada until 1947 when it joined the Confederation. Why so long? Well, if you remember Second City TV, in Toronto (Second City next to NYC), Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas created Bob + Doug, the Mackenzie Brothers. One skit was Newfie jokes, about Newfoundlanders. I came up with my OWN Newfie joke: Why 1947? Canada didn’t want them! Ouch.
Another bit of philatelic trivia: Newfoundland is the only stamp issuing authority in the world in which all stamps were one color, plus the un-inked white portion (see illustration).
One of our stamp club members was a part time stamp dealer. He had a display counter at a local coin store. He had the beginning of a Newfoundland stamp collection in a wonderful Lindner hingeless album. He wanted too much for it. He no longer wanted to deal stamps and if I bought it all out, I would get a decent price with the Newfoundland collection included. Lots went wrong with him selling his business to me. He we were, friends in a stamp club, and he sits down to write a complicated bill of sale with lots of “Do Nots” on my part, just like the Ten Commandments. Turns out several of his representation were untrue, and he ended up giving me back most of what I paid him to “settle” things between us. Sheesh! Once a year he did the stamp show in Panama City, Florida. This proved to be great fun and a good way to sell stamps to get funds to add to my collection. It eventually led to my being a serious stamp dealer joining the American Stamp Dealers’ Association and sharing a table at the MegaShow in NY twice a year with Howard. And THAT brings us back to Katz’s Deli!
Howard’s specialty was “US Unusual”. While I collected Canada, I sold worldwide, so we fit together well at the same table. We had a friend named Irv, who only collected the US C11, the airmail stamp which had a commemorative event Kitty Hawk in 1928 on the 25th anniversary of the famous first flight. The postal service invited Orville Wright as the guest of honor. I own an envelope mailed and autographed by him that day (illustrated). But it is not his autograph that is so cool. Look at the date and time of the postmark: ….. In those days the postal service was evaluating air mail and all envelope received a back cancellation showing the date and time received. 43 1/2 hours to go 517 miles from Kitty Hawk, NC to Atlanta! By Air! And we complain about mail delivery now???
Back to Katz’s Deli. So we go there for dinner. All middle-aged Jews have been taught to eat from childhood. Really? Most of you are too young to remember that after WW II we children, when we didn’t want to eat our dinner, were told:
“There are children starving in Europe!”
“So send it to them!”
Which earned you a zetz, the Yiddish word for an NCIS’s Leroy Gibb whack up against the head!
But THAT is not what taught us how to be champion eaters. In fact, when Janis and I got together, one of her first observations was:
“I’ve never known anyone who could put away such prodigious quantities of food!”
She was quite literate.
Who taught us how to eat were the bubbies (grandmothers and great-grandmothers), many of whom were Eastern European immigrants, who remembered the pogroms by the Cossacks, not knowing where your next meal was coming from as you ran for your lives.
If you didn’t want to eat, THEY stood over you and pointed at your food and said:
“Essen und Brechen, aber Esssen!”
Literally “Eat and throw up, but EAT!”
And we sat there until we DID!!
They trained an entire generation of bulemics.
So Howard, Irv and I sit down with these monstrously overloaded hot pastrami sandwiches on rye, thanks to our knowing to tip the countermen. THEY had NO trouble finishing theirs. Me? I managed half a sandwich. The other two quarters served for my breakfast and lunch the next day at the MegaShow.
Do not go to NYC without getting a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli!
