How Shelly met Ruthie , Part One

This is their daughter Marissa with her brand new baby and her 2 year old. At her wedding, she told everyone that I was the one responsible for her birth because I had introduced her parents. It's a good story and long- you know how I love to go on, but it's a pretty good one. Shelly won a contest once run on a radio show asking for stories about how couples met. They won a free cruise. This muchacos, is how it went down:
In 1967 I graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. That October, we moved to Rockaway Beach. FYI, (and because it pisses me off when someone says Far Rockaway) Rockaway is 7 miles long, the eastern end is "far" therefore the western end of the peninsula can't be "near", can it?
It was winter at the beach, there were no restaurants, no shopping, no movies, no nothing, a bus and a train to get into the city, all my friends in Brooklyn and it was winter damn it. I'll never forget the hours and hours I waited for that horrible bus in the freezing wind. In mini-skirts! I digress but I told you I would.
Soon my mother started shopping at the local Waldbaum's, a NY supermarket chain that catered to Jewish tastes and carried "appetizing' which included smoked fish, herring and lox, as well as regular deli items. In those olden days, the lox had to be sliced by hand. Big Shelly aka Tex, had such a hand.
In the fullness of time a relationship developed between Tex and Mom, based on love, cold cuts and extraordinairy flirting.
One fateful day Mom ordered sliced turkey.
Mom: my daughter only likes dark meat.
Shelly: I only like white meat.
Mom: you two should get together!
Shelly: give me the number!
Mom: here it is! (I wonder that she didn't have cards printed up)
I guess she felt if she couldn't have him, then I should; Also, and more importantly she was trying to insure that I would date "a nice Jewish boy", a species I had no interest in and had previously avoided. As a child I yearned to be a beatnik in the 50's, became an atheist at 12 and was seriously on a path to anarchy by 14. The middle class and burgeoning commercialism was unappealing to me. The counter-culture was. I was becoming a hippie
She set me up on a blind date, which was against our (my) agreement and, didn't tell me first. I was steamed! Mom: he looks like Burt Reynolds! He's tall, he's Jewish! Oi vavoi! I was considering how best to deal with this beast when he called. Tex has the best phone voice, deep and mellow, so I deigned to banter with him, despite wanting to not like him just to spite my Mom. He had just got out of the army, had grown up in my Brooklyn and was amusing, so I said I'd go out with him. He came to pick me up wearing a sports jacket. I actually wore a dress, but I was also high on speed. We hit it off immediately, drove into and through Brooklyn and talked and talked till we reached the Manhattan bridge. Trying to turn around, Tex realized he had messed his transmission and could not acheive "reverse". We couldn't park or go anywhere, just we drove around till we went to the beach parking lot, where Tex made his move. I was too wired and he was too acceptable for my parents, so the move was rebuffed. Also I used to have a very keen sense of smell and poor Shelly, no matter what he used on his hands, still smelled like lox. I couldn't take it.
We became close, and called each other all the time. Once I dialed the wrong number and got one of his neighbors on the phone:"you're looking for Shelly G?"
Yes, say I. Her: Is this his fiancee? What the fuck? I replied.

Tune in next time for the another exciting installment.
I'm having root canal #2 today, wish me luck!