A Pleasure, and Not a Guilty One

In July 1985 I met a woman named Loretta (real name, too) at a New York dance place called Visage, way out on West 56th Street. "I'm a reporter -- I write on computer stuff," I shouted into her ear over the thumping beat, and that caught her attention.

We kept talking. Before long she yelled, "I've taken the EST training and I'm also in therapy." Knowing my interest in Russia, she told me about the great possibilities of EST moving into the USSR.

I think about Loretta and our screwdrivers- and disco-driven night at Visage when I cruise Fairfield County in my fabulous 2004 Hyundai Elantra, radio tuned in to my new fave station, The New Mix 102.7 (technically WNEW, but nobody calls it that) in New York. The concept is simple: disco and dance classics, with long blocks of ad-free music. Over the past two months or so, I have found myself returning again and again to the station as a listening pleasure. To my surprise, I recognize only about half the music, compared to the 100% recognition rate on classic rock stations. "Coming up another big block of the Stones, Billy Joel, Elton John, Bruce, the Eagles, Madonna, Chicago, Cher" zzzzzzzzz. (I dazzle my son, Schmoikel, with my ability to name almost any song on a classic rock station within 5 seconds.)

The music on 102.7 is so compulsively fun, fresh and emotionally connected that I don't mind hearing stuff I know well. For the same reason, I never get tired of listening to the soundtrack to the movie "Carlito's Way," which sure beats listening to the soundtrack of "Schindler's List" (just some of the primo swag I got as a reporter in the home video industry).

Besides reminding me of Loretta, the music takes me back to parties, events, and those intimate moments in life where Barry White or Marvin Gaye were just what the love doctor ordered. Call me a hopeless romantic, but when I hear Tavares singing . . .

Now winter's gonna turn to spring
And you haven't accomplished a thing
So baby can't you make me just a little time
Cause you never know what's on my mind

It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, to fall in love
It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, let's fall in love

. . . then I feel a nerve in my brain getting strummed like a guitar string. And I like that feeling. Not to overanalyze dance music, but it connects both musically and lyrically to intense parts of my life.

Even the numbers 102.7 are magic. Mix is the latest incarnation for a station that's struggled to find a workable format for years. Classic rock, talk, one flop after another. After I moved to NYC in 1980, I quickly came to favor 102.7 in its identity as WNEW-FM, "The Place Where Rock Lives." With a great line-up of DJs like Richard Near and Pete Fornatele, it marked the last time I listened to a rock station with any sense of real identification. I even had an 'NEW gym bag and attended a listener event at the Bottom Line. Then tastes changed, ratings tanked, and the search for a winning format began. The DJs adapted, then scattered. I gave up on the station as my own interests moved toward jazz, blues and Latin genres.

But now, the format wheel has spun again and Mix 102.7 is a winner, at least for me. It goes beyond nostalgia to deliver a likable and vibrant sound and message. Maybe Loretta's listening to it right now and remembering that kooky reporter with the Russia fixation. And all I have to do is turn the beat on to remind myself that, really, it only takes a minute.

Here's hoping the special minute has arrived for my new 'NEW friends at 102.7, the sound of the past and the future.

They're All Democrats in France

Question: How do you tell the difference between Democrats, Republicans and Southern Republicans?

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, an Islamic Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a Glock cal .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

Democrat’s Answer:

Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor! Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 9-1-1?
Why is this street so deserted?
Why isn’t he happy playing nighttime basketball?
We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day and make this happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.
This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for few days and try to come to a consensus.
Can I call Howard Dean or John Kerry and see what they think I should do?

Republican’s Answer:

BANG!

Southern Republican’s Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click…..(sounds of reloading).
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click
Daughter: “Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?”

John Fowles, Lord of Flip Value

In addition to Tom Sawyer and biographies of Davy Crockett, my most memorable adolescent reading experience involved The French Lieutenant's Woman, written by John Fowles, who died on Monday. This is remarkable especially because I did not read the entire book until I was in my 40s.

I did, however, read a page or two while a teenager, around 1974. Somehow I got my hands on the paperback edition and, with a hormonal teenage male's unerring instinct for "the good parts," my eye fell on page 313. (that's the hardback I found at the Westport library, end of chapter 40; go ahead and pull the paperback off the shelf and see what I mean; I'll wait for you.)

"She reached then and took his recalcitrant right hand and led it under her robe to . . . " You get the point -- certainly, the male protagonist did.

As you are now experiencing, my heart raced, my puka-bead necklace quivered, my imagination soared, and what seemed like scaldingly erotic prose permanently burned itself into my id. At that moment, Fowles scored at the top of the "flip value" scale. For those unfamiliar with this essential male concept, "flip value" refers to the number of enjoyable parts of a book or publication. So, um, Sports Illustrated has high flip value when you flip through the magazine and finds lots of stories involving teams you want to read about. High flip value equals lots of good sections with fine, insightful writing, or something like that.

I never treated this as secret knowledge. At the town library I once nudged my friend D and said, "Hey, man, take a look at page 313." He did, exclaiming, "Why, Mission2Moscow!"

Fowles' passage lingered in my mind for decades. I finally decided to read the book (I never saw the movie, since Meryl Streep movies by definition have little "flip value"). Reading the scalding passages in context, their meaning changed radically. The 16-year old M2M totally misinterpreted the book and the action. Soon after hands go into robe, the chapter ends, "He was racked by an intolerable spasm. Twisting sideways he began to vomit into the pillow beside her shocked, flungback head." Ewwwwww. That's on page 315.

Still, my mind drifts back to the pure jolt of Fowles' language, the elegance of possibility, a glide rather than a slam into intimacy. For that I'll always be grateful. Skimming The French Lieutenant's Woman yet again, I don't see flip value, but only value.

Dept. of Most Unfortunate Timing

Far be it from me to waste a few minutes of prime page-flipping time at the dentist's office. On Saturday before my semi-annual checkup I perused the November issue of Travel+Leisure. The cover article, titled, "Best of Paris," is in some places unintentionally amusing in light of the current youthful hijinks in France.

Writer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni starts with an overview of the political potential of prime minister Dominique de Villepin and interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, then writes, "They're just part of the general excitement and optimism of Paris these days." (Both men figure prominently in the excitement of Paris, although the optimism is suddenly subdued.)

Soon, Fraser-Cavassoni uncorks THE best line in the entire issue, "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Let me repeat, just to make sure you don't mis-read it: "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Elsewhere, the article discusses the Hôtel du Petit Moulin, with the wonderful note that the rooms are "a riot of color."

Oui, oui, les French know much these tempestuous days about "a riot of color." Or should be that "riots of color"?

As we used to say in Hidalgo County, oy gevalt.

The Secret Relationship of Jews and Cricket: Who Knew?

Leave the comfortable yet self-tormented shores of American Ashkenazic Jewry and wonders emerge from the fog. Jewish film festivals are a great way to vicariously meet our landsmen of different habits and hues, and actions. See enough films and startling patterns take shape. I had that experience during the Jewish Film Festival of Lower Fairfield County, which finished last night. Out of the three films I saw, two of them involved the deep love of Jews for . . . cricket.

I delighted to see people playing cricket, a game far removed from the mainstream American, and American Jewish, experience. Well, not totally removed; in 2000 I played cricket for the one time in my life, when a team from the Stamford office of Mongoose & Co. (my affectionate pet name for the World's Greatest Consulting Firm, which employed me at the time) squared off against a team from a New Jersey office. Mostly I recall how hard it was to hit the ball, and the little sandwiches we ate on the sidelines.

So the Jews-and-cricket themes resonated with me. First I saw Wondrous Oblivion, set in London in the early 1960s. David Wiseman, 11, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a cricket fanatic but not a very good player, as the cruel boys of Slitherin House (oops, wrong movie, right characteristics) remind him. Hope emerges when a cricket-enabled Jamaican family moves in next door. What follows combines elements of "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

Last night's closing film, Turn Left at the End of the World, is an exceptionally good Israeli/French film from last year. It deals with Indian and Moroccan immigrants to Israel in 1968. Tensions abound, but the Indians find solace and a way of contributing to their new desert community through cricket. Compared to the green fields of Wondrous Oblivion, Turn Lefts puts cricket in a desert, complete with camels and highly untraditional audience behavior. In another contrast, Turn Left throbs with images of hot and naughty Sephardic girls. This Hebrew-language site has stills from the movie that give a slight sense of the visually delightful cast (and that applies to the guys in the film, too).

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cricket. Sorry, I got distracted there by Sephardic girls. Other bloggers have thought more deeply about the intense relationship of Jews and cricket, and you can read their informed thinking at Normblog and Adloyada. So the next time you see cricketeers in a park, splendid in white and eating cucumber sandwiches, just remember -- they may include members of the tribe, sticky wicket division.

Bring Me the Aroma of Carlos Santana

Cosmopolitan magazine always amuses and informs me, far more than the lame pages of, say, GQ or Maxim. The October issue alerted me to the dangers of thongs and unhygienic bikini waxes (ouch!). The ads are great, too, for mysterious products I never need, in colors of subtleties I'll never grasp.

Without a doubt the most attention-grabbing ad in the October issue has the simple headling, "Introducing Carlos Santana(TM) fragrances for men and women." The tagline at the bottom purrs, "Arouse Your Senses." Red-themed native-looking artwork shows Santana with his ever-present hat against a background of densely drawn bongos, spirals, hands, eyes-in-hearts, and even a man looking like Carlos putting his hand on the head of a kneeling peon, an ambiguous scene suggesting either a blessing or a plea for oral sex.

Now, celebrity perfumes are common. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain have them. I can see the logical connection between fashionable, attractive women and fragrannces. But the connection is much more tenuous with men, as seen in the belly-flop of Donald Trump's fragrance.

Santana's stab at the smell test connects me to a lot of musical memories. Coming of age in the late 1960s in a heavily Hispanic part of the country, I liked his early music with its mix of Latin rhythms and Spanish lyrics and rock instrumentation. Abraxas from 1970 had very heavy (as we used to say then) liner notes. Early Santana had a sound that remains fresh 35 years later; the only other group I can say that about is ZZ Top. The music was so evocative of swirling colors, palm trees, the border experience, the possibilities of music beyond Anglo pop sounds.

I always wondered what Santana (the man, not the band) smelled like. After Woodstock, I figured he was sweaty. After he went off the spiritual deep end and called himself Devadip Carlos Santana, I figured he smelled like an Austin head shop full of black-light posters.

And now Santana is answering the question, at fine retail outlets everywhere. Or, cut out the middleman and buy directly from the Santana website. Santana is sending his message of peace and love to a suffering world with fragrances for both men and women. He must be doing something right in the technical sense, since perfume pros like the stuff.

Like a good marketer, Santana knows the difference between boys and girls. Not for him is a unisexual odor for everybody. Nope, sometimes he smells like a guy, and in those very special moments he wants to smell like a girl. So he made sure his products have just the right appeal for the moment. Note:

For men: "This smooth, woody musk fragrance was inspired by the music and passions of Carlos Santana. The aroma just after rainfall, in combination with the clean notes of Maja soap, is the essence of this timeless creation."

"Carlos Santana For Women blends exotic fruits with subtle florals and rounds out the scent with soft, sensuous musk to create a seductive, warm fragrance."

I have to wonder what smooth-talker got Santana to sign up for this misguided vanity project. (He may not even be that serious about it. The Santana Fragrances site is still under construction, a deadly marketing error.) He already sells hats, shirts, books, CDs, and other tchatchkas on his website, and his record sales over 40 years mean he's not hurting financially. The product just makes no sense; as a man I wouldn't wear the stuff, and if I gave the female fragrance to a Significant Other I'd probably get the bottle cracked over my head (note to self: need to write about the harrowing Mother's Day Tiffany's silver challah knife episode).

Sorry, Charlie: I'm not buying it, literally or figuratively. Now if there were a Santana home hair-weave kit . . .

Loathsome Marketing, First in a Series

As a demographic unit, I'm a tasty morsel for financial marketers. Born in the center of the baby boom (1957), white collar, single, urban, nicely cash-flowed, investment oriented, and educated, I'm a "good catch," as somebody recently said in another context.

So the American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, had people like me in mind for its new advertising campaign now being flogged on TV and Metro-North trains. These ads tout Ameriprise's financial planning for a generation as "unique" as mine. You may have seen the ads with a VW hippie van morphing into something more modern. Train ads show 15 or so iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s carefully balanced between the social categories we referred to at Mission High School in Texas as the "dopers" and the "ropers."

So, you'll see peace symbols and Cub Scouts, long-haired hippie freaks and cheerleaders, groovy types and squares, images that make me want to tune in to VH1 more than they inspire me to ponder my financial needs.

For this baby-boomer, alas, Ameriprise is establishing a negative brand image. I cringe to see the calculated cultural shorthand that supposedly speaks to my generation, whatever that is. The opening music on the Ameriprise website, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by Crazy Elephant, only compounds the problem by showing a total lack of creativity. What could be easier than to dust off 60s music to support a marketing message for baby boomers? I don't learn anything about Ameriprise (not that I'm curious, anyway) but I got a heavy load of 60s shtick. I can only hope Crazy Elephant makes a fortune off the licensing fee -- sticking it to the Man, if you will.

If Ameriprise wanted to grab my attention, its marketing must take risks. Let's start with life insurance. I've got SBLI term insurance with my son as the beneficiary for the day when I'm gathered unto my fathers (later rather than sooner, but living in NYC you never know). So, in all honesty, life insurance is all about dying. With that cheerful thought in mind, I suggest Ameriprise frame its insurance pitch with the song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult. That would cut through the clutter and get directly to the point of insurance. I would be mightily impressed. Better yet, have the members of the Blue Oyster Cult talk about their insurance choices.

The same thinking goes for retirement investments. Don't show me gauzy images of silver-haired men and women out boating or dancing at their country club. Talk about survival in a world very unlike the world of our parents, a stable world where my mother worked for 21 straight years at exactly the same job as a secretary at the insurance agency of Conway, Dooley & Martin. What could be more appropriate for retirement planning than Gloria Gaynor belting, "I will survive!" in all her disco majesty? My tagline suggestion for Ameriprise: "You survived Nehru jackets, puka beads, Jimmy Carter, punk rock, and Enron. Now, get ready to survive . . . retirement." Now that's what I call marketing.

I doubt Ameriprise will move in this direction. Probably the baby-boomer narcissism pitch will fizzle out into something even more pedestrian. Then again, perhaps Ameriprise will get desperate and won't fear the reaper.

Full disclosure: By this point you're thinking, "OK, Mr. Mission2Moscow, you think you're so smart, what's your approach to financial planning?" Good question, quick answers: The two biggest influences on my actions have been:

1. Columnist Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal, who strongly supports the use of index funds, which I use for the bulk of my retirement savings

2. Financial expert Andrew Tobias always makes sense to me, with his ruthlessly practical advice. He is a big fan of SBLI.

Don't Mourn; Organize (My Thoughts)

This blog has been sporadic for several months, a place to post links to articles in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and essays I was writing for Texas-based website "The Back Word." Over the summer the Back Word went down the drain, and I've spent several months mourning the loss of a forum for essays I loved writing.

Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.

How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade

I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.

I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:

* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing

* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)

*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze

The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.

Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).

Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.

Ranchito Morbido, Never to be on The Back Word

All good things must end, but must it be before my essays get published? The Back Word, the Texas website that brought several essays to the public, is no longer publishing new material. That's a shame, because I had more topics I wanted to explore. The shutdown came just before the site was going to publish this essay, a "lighter" version of an essay that should appear a Jewish paper in October.

I'll miss the Back Word, the thrill of waking up on the first of the month to check for a new essay being posted, the chance to email the URL to friends. I had fun and I got my creative cogs kickstarted, so I'll buckle down and try to market these essays and others still a-borning to other outlets (perhaps some that will even pay me). And now, the grand finale:

Ranchito Morbido: My Little Place in Texas

I grew up in a rented house on a dusty alley in Mission, Texas, about three blocks from the Missouri-Pacific tracks that divided the town into Hispanic and Anglo sections. My mother rented the house, which didn’t even have its own mailbox, for 21 years and never had any interest in buying real estate. She preferred to invest in the stock market. I still have shares of General Motors, Sunoco and TXU (formerly Texas Utilities) that I inherited when she died in 1984.

Yet, her legacy includes a little bit of Texas land that proudly bears the Wallach name. I haven’t seen our portion of the state since 1989, but I think about it often. I can picture it in my mind’s eye, shaded by the oak and mesquite trees in Gonzales, the historic town on the rolling road from San Antonio to Houston. In the distant future that draws closer every day, I’d like to return to Gonzales and the only property I’ll ever call my own in Texas.

I’m referring to the Jewish cemetery on Water Street in Gonzales. The place always fascinated me, as the final resting ground for my mother, two grandparents, two great-grandparents, and one great-great-grandmother (Charlotte Bath, died 1912), along with aunts, uncles and cousins. I want to be buried there, too. In doing so, I’ll be part of a family presence in Gonzales that goes back at least to the 1890s. The last living Gonzales cousins headed to the bright lights of Lockhart in the 1970s, but the deceased liked Gonzales just fine, and there they remain.

My mother died in Tyler, where she lived with her older sister Charlotte during the last three years of her cancer-shortened life. Afterward, Aunt Charlotte arranged for the headstone in the Jewish cemetery. It was as simple as Mom’s life. It says, “Shirley Lissner Wallach, March 11, 1920 – January 12, 1984.” It lies a few feet from her parents, Jared and Eva Lissner.

I first saw Mom’s gravestone on July 3, 1989, when I visited the cemetery with my then-fiancé. I hadn’t visited the place since 1966, when Mom brought my younger brother and me there to see the gravestones of her parents, both of whom died in 1959. On that 1989 visit I had to chuckle at the thought that Mom finally had some land to call her own under the Texas sky. I was starting to build a family life in the Northeast, so I saw the Gonzales cemetery as part of my past, nothing more. My fiancé and I followed the ancient Jewish tradition and put a rock on Mom’s grave, then left into our radiant future together.

Fast-forward 12 years, and the radiant future was flickering out in divorce. Fortunately, my ex and I hadn’t bought a joint burial plot, so I had the freedom to get buried wherever it so pleased me. The Northeast never held much appeal in that regard for me, since the place has never felt like “home” in a gut-level sense.
I quickly decided to be buried in Gonzales. As a final resting place, it has a lot going for it: all those family connections so I will be among my own landsmen, as the word goes in Yiddish; a temperate climate so my gravestone will last for centuries without the wear and tear caused by snow and cold in the Northeast; an inland, semi-rural location unthreatened by excessive housing development, global flooding, or any other unpleasantness coming down the pike to endanger Yankee cemeteries. As the real estate agents love to chant, “Location, location, location.”

OK, sounds great, I’m sold on the place! Where do I sign up to buy what I call my ranchito morbido?

And that’s the funny part. My efforts to find out who controls the Gonzales cemetery and buy a plot there have been utterly inconclusive. In Gonzales, as in other Jewish communities, cemetery records fade away, synagogues close, the old folks die and the young ones leave and forget about cemeteries with headstones written in the Hebrew language few can read, let alone understand. Even when a paying customer comes along, it can be impossible to find somebody in charge of Jewish cemeteries, somebody to take the check and give title to a few cubic feet of prime memorial space.
God knows I made a determined effort to find an administrator. During the divorce, I called my cousin David “Buddy” Michelson in Lockhart, formerly of Gonzales, one of the last members of my mother’s Depression-era generation. We talked about the cemetery, but he did not know who ran it. A Texas Jewish Historical Society member provided leads to information, but not what I needed.

A few years passed and I tried again. I learned that Buddy had died in 2004. The Gonzales city government directed me to Buddy’s family and I soon had a long talk with his widow, Abbi. She reminisced about the time, shortly after their marriage, when Buddy showed her his parents’ graves in Gonzales. She said Buddy cared deeply about the cemetery, establishing a trust fund to ensure its perpetual care. Ironically, Buddy wanted to be buried in San Antonio, near the graves of Abbi’s parents.

My cousin Linda, Aunt Charlotte’s daughter, recently sent me photos of the place, showing Mom’s grave and the Texas Historical marker at the cemetery. She wrote, “The cemetery is well maintained and appears to have room for more graves.” Abbi is now checking around Gonzales to find definitive information about the cemetery’s management.

In the mean time, life goes on. The divorce that led to this sequence of discovery recedes into the past, while my new life unfolds day by day. My ex and I recently wrapped up post-divorce financial matters that give me the resources to become a homeowner if I so desire. Given the run-up in real estate prices, I may delay before I take the plunge again into homeownership. I imagine I’ll buy my little plot of earth in Texas, my ranchito morbido, before I get something fancier up here.

Rebel Soul: Notes From a Texan Abroad

(originally published on The Back Word)

A picture taken when I met my father after eight years apart reeks with irony. He left Texas after my parents divorced, heading to Michigan and then New York City. He never returned until he paid us a weekend visit in the fall of 1970. My brother and I, aged 11 and 13, stand with him in a yard in Mission, Texas. Looking warily at the camera, standing far enough from my father to signal unease, I have my arms crossed over an orange University of Texas sweatshirt.

This is ironic because I learned, often and in rough terms, that my father hated Texas. Whether this dislike stemmed from the failed marriage, his dismay at Mission’s lack of urban sophistication, or most likely a combination of the two, he never missed a chance to knock the state. He was from St. Louis and suited to cities, my mother was from Del Rio and listened to the morning farm report on the radio. Beyond speaking English, they had nothing in common.

I saw my father a few more times, when my brother and I flew to New York to visit him and his wife. Despite escalating tension, I kept returning, lured by the bright lights and big city. He never accepted us for who we were, and instead tried to mold us into what he was and demanded we become. He started about 10 years too late, and squandered whatever goodwill we felt for him with constant attacks. The Texas we saw through our father’s eyes was a nasty place—conniving Southern Baptists intent on stealing our Jewish souls, crude mercantile behavior, no European-style culture, grubby people who couldn’t speak French. “That’s Texas thinking” was the second lowest insult possible, slightly higher than “you’re just like your mother.” He called us savages because we didn’t attend operas or symphonies! He warned, “Van, they’ll eat you alive at Princeton if you don’t know classical music.” (In fact, I discovered at Princeton that Monty Python mattered far more than Mozart.)

Texas became the symbol of the push-pull of my warring parents. The harder he tried to hammer me into being a prep-schooled, wine-sipping bon vivant in Brooks Brothers suits, the more passive-aggressively I attached to Texas. Other kids rebelled with long hair, drugs, and that damned hippie music, but I opted for a hard-edged appreciation of my Texas identity.

The mental process went like this: You don’t like Texas? That’s tough—check out my Sesquicentennial belt buckle, my beard, my taste for the twangiest mountain music and the border’s norteno sounds. To this day, a few months shy of my 48th birthday, I take intense pleasure when my father goes goggle-eyed at the Texas flag in my apartment and my faded Levi’s blue jeans. Confused youthful rebellion evolved and remained part of my adult identity. You don’t like the way I dress or act? I couldn’t say the following when I was 17, but I can easily say it at 47: That’s just too fucking bad.

Ultimately, I split the difference between Mom and Dad. In his own ham-handed way, my father profoundly influenced me. Those visits to New York opened me to post-high school options beyond my family’s traditional loyalty to the University of Texas. Like a character from a Larry McMurtry novel, I found a way out of the restless alienation I felt in small-town Texas. I did leave Texas for Princeton, moved to Brooklyn, got married, moved to Connecticut, got divorced, and never went back for more than a few days after 1977. At my 10th high school reunion, a friend reminded me, “Van, you said you were going to get the hell out of Texas.” And I did.

And I like aspects of the Northeast—the weather, New England, the career options, New York’s endless appeal to what I call my “action junkie” tendencies. But I’ve never viewed New York State or Connecticut as home. Buffalo? Syracuse? Waterbury? East Hartford? I have no childhood memories of the area, no rootedness beyond my young son and the walls of my apartment. That’s typical Wallach behavior. I’m just the latest in a paternal line of dream-chasing drifters; after all, my father, his father and I were born in three different countries, men blown like tumbleweeds across borders in pursuit of elusive fulfillment.

My late mother’s family, on the other hand, has modest dreams and happier lives. Her family has remained in Texas for seven generations, since my ancestors got the hell out of Germany in the 1860s. For proof, go to the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, on Water Street, where you’ll see gravestones of people born as far back as the 1840s. I’m related to almost all of them.

As I’ve gotten older, my Texas identification moved beyond rebellion to become an intense, if physically distant, sense of who I am. That sense always existed in me, and friends and relatives always tried to stoke the flame of affection. Bill Austin, the late owner of the Upper Valley Progress in Mission, where I had been a teenage reporter, regularly sent me packages of clips from the McAllen Monitor, usually detailing political corruption in the Valley and the many dangers of Mexico. My mother sent me charming gifts such as a heavy brass armadillo, a crocheted armadillo, and a t-shirt with armadillos saying, “Homesick for Texas, send chili soon!” (Come to think of it, my mother had an intense affection for all things armadillo). So in terms of remaining attached to my roots, I am very much my mother’s son, perhaps more than when she was alive.

As the decades passed, I made peace with my father. We’ve lived within 50 miles of each other for almost 30 years. We talk and get together with my son so he can know his grandfather. I’m more outspoken when my father crosses me. We don’t talk about the past.

Being from Texas is a point of pride, an outsider’s badge in an area where practically nobody comes from the South. To identify myself as a Texan means to say, “I look at the world a little different from you. I’m not exactly like you, and I’m glad of that.” People take note of Texans while folks from, say, Ohio and Virginia are politely acknowledged, if that. Everybody’s got a Texas story, friends who moved there, a comment on the President, and saying I’m from Texas makes me the lightning rod for whatever opinions they care to spout.

Not that I’m a mindless booster or Texas-right-or-wrong type. After all, I live up here, not down there, and I’m not looking to relocate. The closest I ever came to that was when I tried to find a job in Austin in the late 1980s after I got married and my bride and I wanted to escape New York. I doubt I could ever emulate Larry McMurtry, who returned with riches and fame to open a bookstore in Archer City. Go back to Mission? No way, Jose!

Instead, I’ll build a virtual Texas through contacts with relatives and occasional visits. I’ll write essays like this that mine a deep vein of memory and conflicted emotion. I’ll cruise the websites of the McAllen Monitor, major papers, and the Texas Observer to keep up with the state’s kookiness. Of course, if I ever become McMurtry-like rich and famous, I might consider a Victorian mansion in Gonzales, the kind that looked so huge and splendid when I was a kid growing up in Texas.