A Jew Canoe

October 11, 2024 – 3:35 pm

In the 50s crackers from the South christened a Cadillac with New York plates passing through Dixie as the ‘Jew Canoe’. That decade and the 1960s marked the zenith of the glory for Detroit cars. Americans abandoned their boats during the 1973 Oil Embargo for more fuel-efficient foreign cars and the Mercedes-Benz sedans surfaced as the new ‘Jew Canoe’ along with offerings from BMW. Both companies had close business relationships with the Nazis. Cadillac never exploited this connection to guard their market share of the Jewish-American market.

Published August 14, 2014
BMW used slave labor. Mercedes-Benz exploited foreign workers and there are rumors that the company even built death gas trucks for the SS extermination squads. Even the groovy VW Beetle owed its manufacturing to ‘guest workers’, who learned the lesson of ‘arbeit macht frei’.

Both Richie Boy and Manny drive Mercedes-Benz.

“How can you buy a German car?” I have asked them on many occasions. “They killed 6 million of you.”

“It’s a comfortable ride.” Manny loved driving his Mercedes 600 SL to Florida. His annual migration south came in February. His total yearly mileage was less than 10,000 miles. He would have been better off flying to Miami, but car drivers loved the freedom suggested by their automobiles.

“So you’ve forgiven the Nazis?” I confronted Manny on his hypocrisy. Richie Boy couldn’t have given a shit. He traded in his Land Rover for the Benz SUV. His head was buried into the phone. Its microwaves were frying his brain to a crisp.

“We’ll never forget.” Manny’s brothers fought in the war. One of them came back not the same.

“Never again.” I had a VW Bug as a kid. I bought a BMW 2002 in Hamburg. My last car was a Toyota. I forgave the Japs for Pearl Harbor once Sony came out with the three-in-one electron gun Trinitron TV. Black and white was a thing of the past.

“That is right.” Manny had a long memory. His family came from Poland. He still spoke Yiddish to anyone French, Italian, or Russian. He spoke it pretty good too.

“You know I’ve been thinking about writing a song NEVER AGAIN centered on a Jewish family driving home for Yom Kippur in a Benz.”

“Never again in a Cadillac, you mean.” Manny had heard this dreck before. “Cadillac never made a car as good as my Benz.”

“No, I don’t think they did.” It was the truth.

“But I did love them in the 50s. They said style.” Manny swooned like the first time he had seen his wife. Hilda had been the best-looking woman in Brooklyn. She was no boat. “Wish I had one now. The old Jew Canoe.”

“You know what’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe?” Richie Boy got off the phone. “A canoe tips.”

It was a bad joke in so many ways that I had to laugh.

Es tut mir leid.

That’s sorry in German.

It’s not inscribed in any Mercedes-Benz or BMWs.

Big surprise, nicht war?

Then again, neither is Sieg Heil on a Mercedes Benz.

By Peter | Posted in Bet On Crazy, cars, semi-fiction | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Donald Tweet Columbus Day

October 11, 2024 – 11:16 am

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Christopher Columbus’s spirit of determination & adventure has provided inspiration to generations of Americans. On #ColumbusDay, we honor his remarkable accomplishments as a navigator, & celebrate his voyage into the unknown expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

In truth Columbus voyaged west with the knowledge of Portugese and Basque fishermen, who harvested Cod from the Georges Bank off Newfoundland. The Vikings had also reached the Western Continent along with Irish monks. The Admiral of the Seven Oceans amazingly lost no one despite the Santa Maria running aground on Chri

stmas Day 1492, although the thirty-nine sailors he left on Hispanola were massacred by the Caribs after tormenting the Arawaks surrounding their colony.

After that Columbus and the Spaniards treated the indigenous people as slaves without souls. He was no saint, then again neither is Donald Trump.

By Peter | Posted in history | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A Curse on the White Man

October 11, 2024 – 10:02 am

Young men in the 1960s were constantly warned about the dangers of drugs, rock n roll, and sex.

Sex not only led you to hell, but to Syphilis.

We had no idea what Syphilis was, how you got it, and what you did once you had it other than horrific tales of doctors shoving an umbrella needle up your penis. Fear was a credible prevention tool during those decades of ignorance, although not enough to keep us pure forever.

Before 1493 no one in Europe, Africa, or Asia had the Clap.

No one, until Columbus returned from his discovery of Haiti.

Of course the Native Americans claim that it was the Europeans who infected America not the other way around.

It’s a little like my first time getting a dose.

It was in Paris.

1984

I was faithful to my teenage girlfriend, Candia.

The jeune fille had an Italian lover. Their affair was supposedly over and I believed the 17 year-old. Men in their 30s can possess a soft heart for a young woman. She traveled to Italy for a photo shoot. We made love upon her return. A week later I went to the bathroom and experienced a burning sensation while passing water.

My trust had been rewarded with the clap.

“How could have I gotten this?”

“I don’t know.” Candia acted blameless. “Maybe it’s something else.”

We visited the the Palais Royal Red Cross clinic. They tested us for free. The results were positive for both of us. as we walked through the regal garden, I said, “You should tell your boyfriend.”

“He would not give me this. You must have gotten it off a toilet seat.”

“Toilet seat?” I hadn’t caught the clap from a toilet seat and broke up with Candida. We said nothing about her gift until she gave me the gift that keeps giving once again. I went to the Palais Royal and got another dose of medicine. Candia wanted to get back with me. I called her to say I was leaving for the States. I haven’t had the clap since, but I can state without any doubt that Columbus did not get Syphilis off a toilet seat.

I doubted either the Caribs used sitting shitters and the Spanish of that era of exploration were even less elegant with their sanitary habits.

The returning members of his first expedition got the clap from sex.

Thank you, Columbus.

Without you we would have never had condoms.

By Peter | Posted in 80s, medicine, PARIS | Tagged , | Comments (0)

G’MAR CHATIMA TOVA ET OI VEY by Peter Nolan Smith

October 11, 2024 – 4:17 am

Several years ago I rode my bike down Kent Street to Williamsburg. Scores of Hassidim were flocking out of the Brooklyn shtel. They congregated by the East River to atone for their sins and the Expulsion from Eden. Men and women were separated by a fence and I thought about taking a photo, but realized this was a private moment and continued my trip to the metal shop, where a check was waiting for me.

After all ‘nimmt geld’ was one of the most important tenets of 47th Street.

On the way back the gathering by the small inlet next to old Brooklyn Navy Yard had grown by the hundreds. Police were setting up barricades in expectation of a larger throng in the early evening.

Today I called up Manny to wish him ‘Gmar chatimah tovah’.

My old boss answered the phone and asked who was this.

“Your shabbas goy and not someone you owe money.”

“Thank the stars for that.”

“Are you open tomorrow?” I had some gold to sell as scrap.

“No, the religious people closed the exchange, but if it was up to me, I’d be open all day.” The ancient Brownsville native lived to work as many hours as there were left in his waking days.

“Aren’t you going to temple tomorrow?”

“Feh, I’m going to Hudson’s Bar.” It was his local.

“What about a fast?”

“Not a chance. At my age I don’t give up any meals, plus I have a medical condition. I need a drink to keep sane.” Business in the Diamond District was brutal these days.

“What about a mitveh?” A ritual bath was a purification rite for the Hassidim.

“I’ll take a shower and don’t even ask me to apologize to ‘God’. He ain’t done nothing for me this year other than give me more problems than Job. He should be saying sorry to me and everyone else in this economy.” Manny was a little bit of a commie. His son was the complete opposite. Richie Boy still believed in the trickle-down theory. “What do you care? You’re a goy. You do anything wrong last year?”

“A couple of things.”

As a boy I had been an altar boy.

We struck our chest saying ‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’.

None of us meant a word of it.

“Then you have nothing to say to God either. Forget all that Moses shit from the Old Testament. How Yom Kippur was the day he got the second set of the Ten Commandments. Moses was the same as all men. Only sorry if they got caught fucking around.” Manny was an expert at that.

“No, I guess I don’t have to offer any apologies to God.” I was a content atheist. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

“I should be so lucky.”

I hung up the phone and thought about the lack of religion in my life.

LA Dodger Sandy Koufax had refused to pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. His replacement Don Drysdale gave up seven runs in less than three innings and told his manager, “I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too.”

Not me, I was going to Mullane’s to have a beer and I don’t have to wish I was a goy to do that.

As for Yom Kippur.

Have a happy day of saying you’re sorry.

I believe you, but all my friends think you’re lying.

By Peter | Posted in Bet On Crazy, holiday, NEW YORK, semi-fiction | Tagged | Comments (0)

A Day Of No Atonement

October 11, 2024 – 3:46 am

Yom Kippur has long been the holiest holiday for Jews around the world. The period of fasting lasts twenty-five hours and eating and drinking, anointing the body with moisturizer or oil, bathing, sexual relations, and wearing leather shoes number the prime rules for atonement for the year’s sins, however Israeli will never atone for the theft of Palestine.

Threatened by the Nazis thousands of Jews fled Europe for the British Mandate.

In 1922 the Jewish inhabitants comprised of 11% of the population. Throughout the 1930s the British waged war against the Palestinians and the refugees from the Holocaust comprised 30.9% of the populations in 1944 setting the stage for the UN Mandate for the existence of a Jewish nation since the the Roman conquest of Judah in 40 AD and the 1948 War in which the Zionists seized most of the land sending millions of Palestinians into exile.

Not once has the Zionist state offered a sorry or a chance for return, adding another prohibition to Yom Kippur, because stealing land is not a sin in the eyes of Zion.

Never to say sorry.

Not once.

By Peter | Posted in religion, revolution | Tagged | Comments (0)