EDWARD EMMANUEL KAUFMAN - "SWIFTY" - PART III

Sylvia died a few years after Ed’s recovery. The Swift territory that Ed was working included the area around the Salton Sea, and at some point down the road he became friends with a Mexican woman in Mexicali who worked in a bar. He arranged it so that he would end up on Friday down in that area and he would spend the weekend with her. Jerry cannot remember exactly how long this lasted but one evening he went there and she was not at work. When he asked after her he was told that she had died.

Ed never remarried. He had always suffered from stomach and intestinal problems. He loved to eat but doing so always caused him great distress. He would always keep one hand pressed on his stomach, as if trying to dull a pain. He would often let out a huge belch, after which he would say, “God Damn, that felt good.” He would take another few bites and belch again, always ending it with some epithet. It was very sad to see a person in such distress, but it also was very shocking to someone who didn't know him.

Now when Jerry and I married, Kerry and Bryn, my teenaged daughters, lived with us. I wanted to invite Ed to dinner at our house, but before I did, I had to sit down my girls and give them a lecture on appropriate behavior. I explained what Ed’s problem was, how he sounded when he belched and what he said afterwards. I told them somehow they were going to have to keep from laughing because it was not a laughing matter. I told them in no uncertain terms that they had better act like adults. I had to demonstrate to them just how bad Ed’s belches sounded, and I couldn’t even come close but at least I made a good try. I will have to say that during that meal or any others, none of us made eye contact with anyone when the belching and swearing occurred. I knew that if the girls looked at me or each other, they would break into hysterical laughter. The girls made it through the dinner like troopers and I was very pleased. It is hard to exaggerate how bad Ed sounded. And it is hard to exaggerate how much Ed liked the dinner. He came every time we issued an invitation and always said it was the best “chicken” - or whatever the entrée was - that he had ever eaten.

Several years after we were married, when his grandson had graduated from college and taken a job in New Orleans, Ed decided to move back to Baton Rouge. He piled all his belongings into his station wagon and set out to drive cross-country, sleeping in a bedroll in the back of his wagon. He arrived safely, and it was there that doctors performed stomach surgery on him. He always said they took half his stomach. He stayed there for a relatively short time – maybe a year or so – but ultimately he returned to Southern California. Too damn hot in the summer, he said! He moved between Pomona and Baton Rouge several times in his old age via the trusty station wagon but finally figured out he’d better stay put with us close by.

His final years were not good ones. His stomach and his intestines just did not function right and he kept losing weight. I found a whole drawerful of medical bills which should have been sent to Swift for insurance reimbursement but Ed was too confused to understand what he should be doing. I worked for days with the insurance company to make sure Ed received the insurance benefits he was owed. Finally we helped him get situated in an assisted living home in Fullerton that had a little kitchenette where he could do his own meal preparation if he wanted, and then as he got worse, he went into a nursing home about a mile from where we lived. Jerry had put him under the care of his own personal physician in Orange, where we were living at that time. Dr. Maizel took care of his medical needs for the last year of his life. One evening we got a phone call from the doctor saying that Ed was near death and asked if we wanted “heroic measures” taken. Ed had told everybody that he was ready to die, and in fact wished he would. Jerry told Dr. Maizel that Ed specified that he wanted to die quickly, so the decision was made according to his wishes and Ed passed away comfortably at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.

Grandpa Ed is buried next to Sylvia in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.




Ed "Swifty" Kaufman - 31 January 1897 - died 25 September 1984

EDWARD EMANUEL KAUFMAN - "SWIFTY" - PART II

Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931 and the gambling at that time was done in downtown Las Vegas, where the customers were mostly the men who were working on the Hoover Dam. There was no “Strip” as we know it today. In 1937 the East Coast mob sent Bugsy Seigel (a Jewish mobster) to Los Angeles to try to develop Syndicate gambling rackets. Seigel recruited Mickey Cohen, who incidentally was a childhood friend of Jerry’s mom. In his travels back and forth between L.A. and Chicago, Bugsy got the idea of building a casino and resort in an area outside of Las Vegas that he called “The Strip.” The Mob financed Bugsy’s venture, which was called “The Flamingo.” It was a costly and unsuccessful endeavor and ultimately was the cause of his death in a Los Angeles mobster shooting in 1947. Eventually “The Strip” developed exactly the way Bugsy envisioned it, under the control of the Chicago “Mob.” In the early days there was a fairly large group of Jewish mobsters, and early on, the entire Flamingo Casino would be shut down on the High Holidays and services held in the Ballroom.

Since gambling in California had been made illegal, many of Ed’s gambling contacts moved up to Las Vegas and became pit bosses, floor managers and the like. Whenever Ed or any of his family would go to Las Vegas, arrangements would be made by his friends to “comp” them. Jerry remembers once going with Carole to Vegas and finding themselves sitting in the front-row left at one of Frank Sinatra’s shows when he was at the height of his career.

One day Jerry and Carole were in Los Angeles in front of the Biltmore Hotel and they saw Ed walking toward them. He had just come from the horse races, and he handed Carol a crisp $100 bill and told them to have fun. That was in the time when $100 was BIG BUCKS, when a pack of cigarettes or a loaf of bread cost less than 25 cents and gasoline was less than 75 cents a gallon.

Ed was a real character. The family remembers him telling a story about in his youth being romantically involved with a married woman. He was at her house one time frolicking in bed when her husband unexpectedly came in the front door. Ed jumped out of bed, grabbed his pants and flew out the window, running as fast as he could, naked, down the street to avoid getting caught.

He also said he began smoking Chesterfield cigarettes – the old, unfiltered, really strong kind – when he was eight years old and he smoked every day of his life. He is proof that if you have the right genes and good luck, you will not get lung cancer from smoking. Nevertheless, he cautioned people not to get involved with tobacco in the first place.

He and Sylvia belonged to the Jewish Temple in Riverside but they were not religiously observant Jews. They had a large group that they socialized with, all members of the Temple. On weekend get-togethers, the women would all play bridge, while the men played gin rummy. Ed was an excellent gin player and occasionally Jerry would sit in as Ed’s partner.

Ed’s lung condition was greatly improved by the mellow California climate, though of course smoking wasn’t helping it any. Sometime around 1953 or 1954, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was put in the Riverside Community Hospital. He was there for a month or so before a bed became available at the City of Hope in Duarte. Ed spent a year there recovering. Since Sylvia didn’t drive, every Sunday morning she took a bus from Riverside to the Pomona bus station. Carole, who was then living in Pomona, would pick her up and they would drive in to the City of Hope to visit with Ed. Sylvia and Carole would come back to Pomona and have dinner, sometimes with Jerry’s mom and dad, and then Carole would put her back on the bus to Riverside. At the end of the year, Ed was released as recovered, and he went back to Riverside and to work.

TO BE CONTINUED.

EDWARD EMANUEL KAUFMAN - "SWIFTY" - PART I

Grandpa Ed, as he was called by the family when I married into it, had already retired. He lived alone because his wife Sylvia had died in 1956 and his only child Carole in 1974. His two grandchildren, Kathie and Garry, were living in San Diego so my husband Jerry was the closest family he had. He’d had several stomach surgeries in his old age and was not really in good health. In fact, he had just a small portion of his stomach left, and while he still enjoyed good cooking, he always paid a price for eating. He was always grateful for any attention lavished on him. Jerry and I kept a close eye on him.

Ed was born Jan 31, 1897 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the fourth of six children. His parents were Henry and Carrie Kaufman. According to his story, he joined the Marines at a young age, probably somewhere near 17, and by June of 1918 he was fighting against the Germans in a very famous WWI battle at Belleau Woods, 70 miles outside of Paris. The Germans used gas warfare (a poisonous mustard gas) and Ed was taken ill from the gas and was hospitalized. We have tried to get his military records, but the government says it does not have any. He was released from the service with severely impaired lungs. In 1920 he was back home with his family in Baton Rouge, but the doctors advised him that if he intended to continue living, he needed to get out of the humid climate of Louisiana and go to Arizona. He did, but he found way too much desert in Arizona so he decided to try California. He was able to find a job with Swift Meat Company in Los Angeles and settled in Glendale.

Eventually he married his Louisiana sweetheart, Sylvia Asher. Sylvia had been raised in Opelousas, but at the time she enrolled at LSU she boarded with the Kaufmans in Baton Rouge. She graduated with a teaching degree, and after a few tries at teaching in the South, she followed Ed to California where they were married in 1926. Sylvia was "starstruck," and living near Hollywood was right up her alley. Sylvia and Ed's only child, Carolyn, was born at a hospital in Hollywood, and the senior Kaufmans bought cemetery plots at the Hollywood cemetery, now called "Hollywood Forever."

However, after working a few years in Los Angeles, Ed was assigned the territory of East Riverside County. The family, which now included little Carolyn (whom Ed always called Caroline), moved for a short while to Banning and ultimately settled in the city of Riverside, where they lived the rest of their lives.

Ed was the consummate salesman. He made friends easily, could talk a good talk, and made money for the Company. He was known to his customers as “Swifty.” Those customers were buyers of large quantities of meat – restaurants, hotels, resorts – and a great deal of his business was done in Palm Springs, which in those days (1930s) was to Southern California what Las Vegas became later to Nevada. In the course of Ed’s sales trips, he became well acquainted with Louis B. Mayer, whom most of us recognize as the Mayer of MGM – Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Louis was not only involved with the movie industry but also he owned a large thoroughbred horse ranch in the Coachella Valley. There were always Mayer-bred horses running on one race track or another. And it was through this contact that Ed began betting on Mayer’s horses.

Jerry recalls Ed telling the story of getting a call in the middle of the night from one of Mayer’s associates asking him to go to a certain jail and post bail for one of Mayer’s sons. There was nothing more explained and Ed asked no questions. He posted bail and that was that. At some later point Ed was contacted and given a list of horses on which he should place bets the following day at Santa Anita. He was told that he should “let the money ride” for all six races. Ed did as he was told, and he claimed that he won over $10,000, which in those days was a huge sum, especially to a meat salesman.

One time he was asked by someone in the Mayer association to take the movie star, Jimmy Stewart, duck hunting at Salton Sea. Ed was happy to do this, and both he and Jimmy brought home ducks for dinner that night.

Being supplied with good meat was not one of the perks offered to its employees by Swift Company, but Ed had another buddy in the desert, a butcher, who provided high-quality steaks and other good meat to Ed for his family. This, of course, often ended up on the plates of Jerry and Carole. Ed would drop by the house, hand his daughter a package of meat and announce "Here's your dinner!" There was some kind of association between Ed and the butcher; no one asked what it was, but for Ed’s part the payoff was in fine-quality meat.

TO BE CONTINUED

PUFF PANCAKES WITH STRAWBERRIES

Many many years ago I had a small cookbook with the most scrumptious recipes in it. Somewhere in the 33+ years of marriage and living in 7 different places in 2 different parts of the world, that cookbook escaped. I cannot believe I got rid of it; I certainly wouldn't have given it away. Nevertheless it is gone.

Luckily I had put this recipe on the computer, so in the interest of sharing something tasty, visually appealing and easy to make, today, in the middle of strawberry season, I'm going to give you a chance to try something that you'll find yourself serving over and over.


PUFF PANCAKE WITH STRAWBERRIES
Makes 4 servings

2 eggs
½ cup milk
½ cup all-purpose flour (Dash Nutmeg)
½ cup butter
½ cup thickly sliced filberts (about 2 ounces)
Juice of half-a-lemon
2 T confectioners’ sugar
1 pint fresh strawberries, slices and sweetened
Sour cream or whipped cream (optional)

Beat eggs lightly in mixing bowl. Add milk, flour and nutmeg and beat until blended. Batter may be a little lumpy.

Melt butter in a 10-12” skillet with heat-proof handle over medium heat until butter begins to foam. Stir in filberts. Pour batter into hot skillet over filberts. Bake in 425 degree oven 15 to 20 minutes, or until pancake is puffed and golden brown. Sprinkle with lemon juice and return to oven for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove.

Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and serve at once. Cut into wedges and serve with strawberries topped with sour cream, if desired.

Eat and enjoy.

And when strawberries are gone, you can change the fruit to fresh peaches, or plums, or in the fall, apples. They all do well and are yummy.

IT'S NOT A WHISKY VOICE!

Aging is full of surprises. I haven't found any good surprises yet, but I'm optimistic that one or two will come along in the course of this necessary journey. I also am looking for serendipities. I know they happen from time to time and I sure don't want to miss one if it should pass by.

I say all this to lay the groundwork for my declaration that much of what I have experienced so far isn't all that good. The first that happened was with my larynx, my vocal cords.

I used to sing a lot. I sang in college choirs, church choirs and I directed children's choirs; I sang in large groups and small groups. I sang both sacred and secular music. But that ended in the early 70s when life changed direction on me and I became involved in other things, different but good too. Then a few years ago at a birthday party, I was merrily singing "Happy Birthday" along with the rest of the crowd when the notes accompanying the line "Happy Birthday dear....." fell apart in my throat and nothing but croaking came out. Luckily I wasn't doing a solo! To say the least, I was astonished, but at that time I just figured my problem was from disuse.

Later, after I retired I joined a ukulele club and learned very quickly that I could no longer sing along with my playing. I discovered I had a singing range of about 3 notes. This was mightily distressing, and the leader didn't believe me when I said I couldn't sing along with everyone else. I finally compensated by just mouthing the words while I played so she would stop nagging me. Ultimately I left the group and gave away my uke because it wasn't much fun without being able to sing along.

Two years later I began experiencing a raspy voice, not all the time, but often enough that I thought I'd better make sure I didn't have a polyp on my vocal cords. Dr. Bloom, an ENT, did a thorough inspection by wrapping some gauze around my tongue and stretching my tongue out of my mouth nearly down to my belly-button so he could see EVERYTHING! (Needless to say, this was a strange exam!).

The upshot of the matter is that he diagnosed thickening of the vocal cords due to aging. He said not everybody ages this way, but some do. (I thought of all those old ladies that had what I always called "whiskey voices" and wondered if I had rushed to judgment on them!). He said the condition couldn't be reversed but could be slowed down by cutting out all caffeine, cold drinks, alcohol, by keeping the body hydrated so that there is enough fluid available to make it to the vocal cords, and to learn to talk slowly, softly, smoothly and from the diaphragm. He sent me to a speech therapist, where I discovered that if I did what all she advised, I would be totally devoid of any personality! (It also is hard to totally hydrate yourself when you are also taking a diuretic!)

Anyway, I did what I could to make the necessary changes. It was hard to relearn speaking. I forgot sometimes, and other times just decided not to talk at all for a while. I tried to always keep in mind that in the scheme of things this was a very very minor problem, for which I was supremely grateful. Now, 9 years after that diagnosis, I find that the condition has pretty much stabilized, and since I don't interface with people all day at work like I did before retirement, it usually doesn't get to the point of being raspy except on occasion. When I give talks, I always must make sure to have a bottle of water nearby so that if my voice needs it, I can give it a shot of water now and then to get me through the talk.

My mother never talked to me about aging. But even if she had, she wouldn't have told me about this because it wasn't on her horizon. It is "just one of those things" - irritating but manageable. One thing the doc advised me and that has kept me in good stead is sucking on Hall's "Breezers," a non-metholated cough-drop which helps moisturize my throat. Breezers have been a life-saver on occasions and I always make sure I have a stash in the car, in my purse, and of course at home in the candy jar.

Who would ever think that vocal cords would get all stiff and out of shape? Certainly not me! Yes, I miss singing and I miss playing my ukulele, but this is just one of those little adjustments that aging requires. But please, if you hear my voice rasping away, know that it is NOT a whisky voice you are hearing. Rather, it is simply the sound of aging.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY STAYED HOME

The LA Times this morning has a wonderful article on pigs, California pigs to be exact. Seems that with the threat of the H1N1 flu intensifying, animal science people - those who teach veterinary and pre-veterinary science programs, swine facility managers at colleges and universities, and animal sanctuary founders and caretakers are putting out the word that sick people must stay away from "our swine." In fact, signs went up around Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on all the roadways leading to the pig barns that said, "In order to protect our animals from possible exposure to swine influenza, access is limited to only healthy students and personnel."

And Cal Poly Pomona was asked by a news team if they could come in and do a story while standing in the swine unit with the pigs all running around. The answer was a flat NO. The professor in the animal and veterinary sciences department added, 'It's too much of a risk. I don't know where they've been. I don't know where their equipment has been. Maybe if it had been any other time, I would have said yes." But not now.

These schools with such programs pride themselves on having healthy, clean animal stock which they use for teaching, research and public outreach. They say they don't have to "ramp up" their health-safety procedures because they already keep their pigs in a "near-cocoon of biosecurity."

Pierce College in Woodland Hills has a 150 pound Pot-bellied pig named Oscar, and he is used as a guinea pig for future vets and vet-techs to learn how to take animal temperature, pulse and respiration rates. Oscar is a special pig and Pierce professors don't want anyone around who is sick. People aren't allowed to smoke around Oscar either. These pig folk say the pigs are more at risk for picking up the flu from humans than the other way around.

And they are not crazy about calling it swine flu, either. They think this does a disservice to the pig, making the pig the bad guy. So they work hard to refer to the flu as H1N1, although I suspect calling it "swine flu" comes a little bit easier. (That is me talking, not the LA Times.)

So folks, stay away from pigs right now until this whole ordeal gets past. Give 'em a break. No use making the pigs sick. They've got a bad rap the way it is, and we don't want to aggravate them, right?

GETTING A CONSENSUS

Genealogy is not a real scientific endeavor for the average person, much as we would like it to be. If money and superior brains were no object, then this average person, whom we will now call "Me", might be able to come up with more definitive answers. But since they are an object for me, having neither money nor superior brain, I'm going to ask you to throw your two cents in on this little problem and tell me what you think.

Below are some photographs. I can identify 3 of them easily, because they are of my grandma Jessie. Now here she is, along with a few facts about her.


My mother, Virginia, is the little tyke in the chair. I'd guess this was taken on the farm in Caldwell, Kansas in the spring 1912, as my mother was born in June of 1911. Grandma, Jessie Davis Ryland, was married in 1905. Bob (really Nevalyn Eugene) was born in 1906 and Florence in 1909. Grandma would go on to have 4 other children, divorce her husband in 1929, move the family to California in 1931 and die in 1947.

The picture above is undated. The hat tells me it was during the "flapper" era. For purposes of this blog, only her face was necessary, but the full picture shows her in a very frothy but hangy dress. Without dating the picture more closely, I don't know if it was taken before or after her divorce, but my inclination is to think that this was her trying to be fetching once she became available again.

Family stories my mother told were that she had a boyfriend just before she came to California. He wanted her to move to Missouri, where he lived, and she packed up the kids and started the drive, but when she hit the Missouri sultry heat she turned around and drove instead to California where her oldest son was in Hollywood hoping to get his break in pictures. He told her that jobs were plentiful and she would have no problem finding work, which turned out not to be true at all because of the depression.

In California she married again. None of her children ever told any of us cousins that she had been married a second time. I learned this long after my mother died, and I asked my dad who "Mrs. Fred Abel" was, this person whose named appeared as a witness on their marriage certificate. He said it was Grandma Jessie, and that it was a short marriage. He thought Jessie probably figured Fred would provide some help in her getting set up in California. Whether this was the Missouri fellow or someone else will never be known.

Grandma Jessie worked hard to support her children; at various times she worked at an ice cream store, a roadside vegetable market, as a practical nurse and later in life as a companion to a very crabby and disagreeable old woman. However, in what spare time she had, she went dancing, and after all the children were raised she and her beau danced at all the ballrooms around Southern California. She had plans to be married, but at age 62, before the marriage could take place, she died of a sudden heart attack.

Now here is where I need your help. There exists a picture in our family that merely says on the back "Grandma" It is thought by my cousin who has the original that this is a picture of our grandmother when she was young -- that is, Grandma Jessie. I am not convinced that it is. Take a look at it. What do you think?

If it is our grandma Jessie, taken at a much earlier date, you need to know that Jessie was born in 1885. If the person in this picture is 15, are those the kinds of clothes that were worn in 1900? Are the features of this young girl consistent with the features of grandma Jessie in the three pictures above. I don't know, but I wonder.

Here's who I think it may be. Below is Louise Hall Ryland, who was my mother's grandma. She was born in November 1863 and married in November of 1879. She was very young when she married - not yet 16. The picture below is the only picture we have of Lousie Ryland, and it is on a memorial card made at the time of her death from cancer in 1919.

I am much more comfortable thinking the young girl is Louise Hall and I base my theory strictly on facial features. And so while this poll isn't scientific, and the results at any rate wouldn't solve anything, I want you to weigh in and tell me, do you think this young girl is Jessie or Louise? And if so, why? Thanks for your help.