Teaching Music
December 1 ,2015
Be’er Orah
When you get to high school in Israel you start pre military training, it is called GAD’NA. Once a month a soldier would come to the school and teach us about guns and some theoretical tactics. But once or twice a year we went to a military camp somewhere in a remote location. We would stay in a big tent with about 20 low beds lined up in two rows along the tent.
“Attention!” Hezi Akerman the cadet on duty called.
We stood up next to our beds as the corporal walked in to check on us. He walked and looked at each of us from top to bottom. He checked to see what’s on our beds, next to it or under it.
“It looks like we have a lot to do in the next few hours,” he said. “For now, everyone out and line up in triplets.”
“Attention!” Yelled Hezi again. We all stood in triplets in sort of straight lines. Corporal Yona stood in front of us smiling a mean smile.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Corporal Yona said. “First, you need to learn what positions are called. The ‘attention’ command means; stand up straight, legs spread out hands behind your back stretched under your butt.”
“Like so?” asked Mean Shimon.
“No talking in the ranks!!!” Yelled Corporal Yona, “and yes like so. When I say at ease, it doesn’t mean you are dismissed, it means your hands are relaxed and not as tense under your butt, they can rest on top of it, on your lower back. At ease!” He yelled again. And we all relaxed our arms.
“Stand Still!” He yelled once more. “For that one you need to bring your heels together, hands to the side of your body and fist tight. Heads up, you there, the second row on the right!”
Anni jumped and stood up straight. She was whispering with Daniella next to her, Daniela jumped to the Stand Still position just as well.
“One more thing before we start moving, your lines. Shoulders Up! When I call this command all of you except for the first triplet look to the left, raise your left arm and bring it to the shoulder height of your friend on the left. Now you at the far end bring your left arm forward to the shoulder of the person in front of you. Everyone lineup accordingly, Hands Down! Left Turn! I will show you the correct way to do it tomorrow. Now Forward March! Left, Right, Left, Right, Left…”
After a few marches around camp, we were back at the tents. The camp was located at the south of Israel in the Negev Desert. It was hot during the day and cold at night there for we were supplied with thick blankets. We were taught how to do a military blanket fold. It had to never show the blanket’s edges. It has to be folded inwards and show one-fold on one side, two on the opposite side, and four on the two other sides. We received three blankets each. One of them was to be stretched on the bed. It must be so tight that when the corporal dropped a coin on our bed it would bounce back.
Running, is not one of my strong interests. To run in the desert isn’t fun. I was told to inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth. And so, I did. Except that my nose started to burn after the first 100 Meters. Next, I felt my chest hurting. I finished the kilometer run walking. Even the girls did a better job, well, most of them. Something about running simply didn’t agree with me. I could walk for ever or even dance for days, but the bouncing and the breathing didn’t work for me. Not short or long distance. Only on the beach, where the salty air was filling my lungs and the sand under my feet, was I ever able to run. What I was good at was “sit ups” I could do 80 sit ups in ninety second. Unfortunately for me, we had to run every morning and do some calisthenics but some days we had trips and other chores. The first one was to weed an onion field for the kibbutz Yotveta. I can tell you for sure, even if you didn’t cry ever in your life, you are going to cry if you were in that field, no matter what. We each had a pointy how in our hands and we had to carefully dig out the weeds around each onion. Carefully, not to hurt the onion. It wasn’t easy, the onions already smelled strongly and sometimes the weeds were a little too close to the onion and you bound to have an accident and hit the onion with your how. So, imagine, each one of us working close to each other and everyone keeps missing and hitting the onions. The only saving grace was the snacks we received. Kibbutz Yotveta is famous for two products: The dates and the milk. The cows of the kibbutz were grazing on very nutritious grass that grows only in that area of the prairie. Their milk was very thick and heavy. Adding chocolate to that milk made it the best “Choco” drink. The dates were also a product of that hot and semidry prairie. They were big, juicy and sweet. Every day for the 2 weeks we spent at camp Be’er Orah we received this wonderful snack; dates and Choco.
The next day we went on a hike. We went to the King Solomon copper mines and saw the archeological digs. The beauty of Israel appears in many places. In one day, you can go skiing in the morning and SCUBA diving in the afternoon. Israel has everything the USA has but in much smaller size. The beauty of the snow mountains in the north, the green valleys, and a few canyons in the Negev desert. We left early, right after the morning exercise to avoid the heat of the on our long walk to the Red Canyon. The name of the canyon fits its name. the water and wind shaped rocks to the side of the canyon were red. The shape of the rock was also very interesting. We got to see a huge stone mushroom and at one part of the canyon we found a few sand pits; each had a different color sand. Red sand from the iron, green sand from the copper, yellow from the sulfur and more. We collected a little of the sand in different bags and brought them back to camp. I found an empty glass bottle and started pouring the colored sand in layers. Using a long stick, I pushed the different color layers to create shapes in the bottle. It came out so nicely that I kept the sand with me to make more of these once we get back to school and I could get other bottles.
***
Mount Blank
Those canyons and dessert scenes brought back memories of me and Yossi Sha’abi climbing the cliffs over the beach in Netanya. We even fell down 30 feet once. A while before, we saw a movie about some mountain climbers climbing the Himalayas or was it the Alpines, I don’t remember. It influenced me and inspired me to start climb hills and cliffs. Yossi and I put on our sneakers and found some ropes and started exploring Netanya’s cliffs together.
Now that we got back to Shfeya from our GAD’NA trip, I collected the rope I used to scare Leah. As soon as school session was over, I dropped my books on my bed and walked to the fence around the village. I packed a water canteen and went to search for walls to climb.
A little east of our school there was a lime quarry. The whole eastern side of the hill was carved down, forming a tall white wall. “Mount Blank” I called it, a perfect wall for climbing. I had to leave the school grounds through tear in the fence to get closer. I found a strong tree right above the quarry. I tighten one end of the rope around the tree and dropped the other end over the edge. I had two hours before dinner, so I ran down the side of the hill to the bottom of the wall and looked for the rope. I found it hanging about twenty feet above me. I grabbed some dirt from under me scrubbed my hands with it and jumped toward the first bump on the wall. Being so skinny I was able to pull myself up easily. The wall had many bumps, but they were sharp so in no time I was full of scratches. It was a welcome relief to reach the rope. I managed to tie the rope around my stomach the way Dad taught me when he was training to be a medic. Now I didn’t have to be so close to the wall and I pulled myself up faster.
“Hey! Yes you, up there!” I heard an angry voice from below. “You are trespassing a private property!”
I didn’t even look back, I pulled myself up quickly, pulled the rope and ran back to my room. At the dining room, Magi the head counselor stood up and announced that tomorrow morning we will be skipping our regular duties and joining the orange grove crew for an emergency picking. Rain or shine, we all have to be at the center parking lot to board the truck.
“Before we start serving food,” he continued, “It came to my attention that some kids were trespassing to the quarry. I must stress, this is a dangerous place to be. No one should go there under no circumstances.” Of course, I didn’t say anything to anyone.
“Finally!” I said to myself, as we lined up to go on the truck. It is the second semester that I am not working on an agricultural task. After working in the kitchen, they moved me to housekeeping, not just housekeeping, I had to work for nasty Leah the house mother. We had to cramp in the truck, sitting one next to each other yet there were still kids on the parking lot. Our driver drove 6 feet forward and stopped abruptly. All of us slid forward squished onto each other. Suddenly we had room for the rest of the kids. As soon as we drove off it started raining. It was getting colder, and we were hoping it would stop by the time we get to the grove. There were no picking oranges in the rain.
“Here you have a clipper one for each one of you,” said the overseer. “Each one of you, pick a ladder and push it next to the tree. We have short ladders and tall ones depending on the size of the tree.”
“Can we eat the Oranges?” Asked Naftali.
“Oh, that, yes, you may eat as many oranges as you like, but you may not bring them back to your room”.
The rain has stopped but it was cold, very cold. I picked a middle size ladder and approached the first tree I saw. Besides the clipper and the ladder, we received a side bag to collect oranges. It had a fold on the bottom with a clip to open the bag and dump the oranges in the big container. The container was six by six by three-foot height. It took about 50 bags full of oranges. Once it was full, Mark’s older brother would come with a forklift and carry it to the edge of the grove and pile the containers until the big truck will come and take them to be packed and shipped all over the world. Big Jaffa oranges are very popular. They are sweet and juicy, trust me, I had a lot of them that day. By the time we finished (we couldn’t finish before each one of us filled his container) my fingers were numb, my toes were frozen, and my nose couldn’t stop dripping.
Winter came and left, and spring vacation was around the bend. My grades were getting better. Dad was about to buy me a guitar. I even had a teacher who liked me a lot, the biology teacher. She was called Yosefa, and she lived on the school’s campus. She had a little cute VW beetle. We did a lot of experiments in her class, but my favorite part was when we went on nature hikes. I learned about the different between the coins snake and the viper. They look very much the same even their head is the same except the shape of the cubes on the back of the snake. The viper has connected brown cubes forming a zigzag pattern on its back. The other snake has the cubes separated they look like brown coins – there for his name. The viper is a very poisonous snake – it had two fangs in his mouth that can kill you within 30 minutes. The coins snake looks the same, I guess to scare predators, but has no fangs and is totally harmless. We also learned about the trees around the school campus. I collected pieces of pine tree bark to carve them in my free time. I made little boats with a small sail to float in the bathtub for my little brother. Instead of getting in trouble with the quarry for trespassing I started to go on mature hikes on my own. Well, not exactly alone, a little black puppy decided to adopt me. He followed me everywhere I went. Together we found a little cave hidden under a bush where I built a little fireplace and a small bench. Whenever I wanted to hide from mean Shimon and his torments this was the place to be. In time I was able to bring scraps from the dining room to feed my little friend and he waited for me every day after school so we can go to our hiding place. On days right after the rain, at the bottom of the pine trees, small yellow spongy mushrooms popped out. “They are not poisonous,” I remember Yosefa telling us. “If you look underneath, you will see the mushroom doesn’t have the sections like most mushrooms. It has this sponge, when we pick them, we should cut the top and leave the stem on the ground. This way, the next time it rains it will grow a new top. My favorite meal became fried mushrooms with scrambled eggs which I cooked on the fireplace. From the kitchen I “borrowed” a small frying pan, Eggs I got from the chicken coop when no one was looking, and I managed to have some nice snack to supplement the food I didn’t like in our dining room.
One day, as I was carving a heart on a tree trunk, I heard a little yelp and saw my little friend jump in fear. I looked again and found a snake lifting his head as if to attack the dog. I quickly recognized it as the coin snake and using a stick I managed to catch him by his neck and put him in my school bag. In my room I hid the snake in a pillowcase and tied it up until the next day. The first thing I did when school was open was to go to the biology lab and showed the snake to Yosefa. She got very excited. We put it in an empty aquarium, and she promised to feed him and take care of him.
Unfortunately, when I returned from the Passover vacation my little friend was nowhere to be found and when I walked in the biology lab the aquarium was empty and I found my snake in a jar – like the shark in the Alexander river’s restaurant. I said nothing, I went to my room, picked up my new guitar and walked to my cave and started to learn some guitar cords. The first song I learned to play was Venus by the band Shocking Blue.
The next day, I looked up for Mark’s older brother and we planned my revenge, using the forklift he drives so expertly. Two days later, Yosefa walked out of her little house and couldn’t find her cute beetle. Well, not until she looked up and saw it sitting on her roof.
***
Summer Work
“I can’t wait for the Americans to arrive.” Said Mark from Morocco.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Every summer the school converts to a dormitory for American teenagers who come here as volunteers to work in the fields. Just in their honor they feed us better than ever. We have rolls instead of yesterday’s bread every morning. I think they even hire different chefs.”
“What about us?”
“Oh, we will be working 6 hours every day and we are free to spend time in the swimming pool or whatever we want.”
It was the last day of the school year. Half of the students were getting on the busses to drive them home. During the year we had busses taking us toward our homes every other month for a long weekend or holiday vacation. It would stop on a station of the town entrance and we would have to continue our way on our own. This time I was staying at the school for the first half of the summer vacation. Each one of the students had to put some time to help maintain our farms and fields. They made us vacate our rooms and move to another building with more beds in each room. No closet space, we had to keep our belonging in a suitcase under our bed. They needed the other buildings to host the American kids.
At last, I was assigned to work at the fields. Since it was summer, and we didn’t get an assigned task I didn’t know what job we would do every day. I quickly learned that it is important to wear long pants and high boots no matter how hot it was. My first task was at the corn field. We were about 5 Israeli kids and 20 Americans. Our task was to pack bundles of dry corn stalks on a big truck to be delivered to feed the cows. It was a very hot day and unfortunately, all of us wore sandals and shorts. Walking on a freshly cut corn field is no fun, the short and sharp stumps of the corn would slide through the sides of the sandals and cut our skin. The bales were heavy and sharp. They were held together with two thin ropes. We had to hold the ropes, one for each hand, pull it onto our knees and from there swing it up to the truck where some other kid will catch it and set it up on a pile. The sharp edges cut our legs and the thin rope eventually cut through our hands. By the end of the day, we were all covered with scratches and blisters. The American kids were the first to give up and the Israeli kids had to finish the work. The only comfort was the knowledge that we will have a great dinner that evening.
To my delight, the next day I was assigned to the apricot grove and the following day to the grapes. Needless to say, I enjoyed eating the fruit until my stomach hurt. But my favorite task was the melon field. I ate so many melons, by the end of the month I was able to tell a good melon from a bad one from a long distance. Every afternoon I got to relax at the pool and improve my swimming skills. And the best of all I finally learned to enjoy the English language. I started to make American friends. I was too shy to talk to the girls, but I made a friend from Pennsylvania, his name was Mike. Mike had many comic books. I loved comic books. A few years before, I was introduced to Hebrew comic books. I spent all my allowance on Hebrew comic books. Unfortunately, it looks like I was the only one buying those books because after less than a year they stopped printing them. As disappointed, I was at losing them, I was very happy to find the English comic books. Before I left for home Mike gave me all of his comic books.
“I can’t take them back with me to the USA,” he said. “I will not have room in my suitcase for all the stuff I bought in Israel.”
Now I had a good way to practice my English reading skills and vocabulary. Playing the guitar and singing English songs also helped and from that day on it only got better. Slowly but surely.
The second half of the summer was just as exciting. I got to spend more time with my friend Efri and for pocket money I found a job. Remember the blisters and cuts I received from the ropes of the corn bales? They came pretty handy. Now that my skin was rough and strong, I was able to do the task I was given. Next to our favorite sand slide hill, a new seven floor building was being built. A neighbor of mine was a tile layer. He was laying the tiles of that building and needed help. My job was to mix the mortar, fill 2 buckets and carry them all the way to the floor where my neighbor was kneeling and laying the tiles. Every day one more floor. I had to get up very early and get to work quickly so we will not have to work in the hottest part of the day. By 1:00PM I was already napping. At 4:00 I was having my biscuits and tea and took my walk to visit my friend Efri.
“Man, are you telling me you were working all morning?”
“Yup!”
“Let me see your hands again.”
“Forget about my hands, get your guitar, we need to work on those songs I learned.”
It was fun, I learned to play a few songs by then; “Venus” by shocking Blue, “Moon Rising” by Credence Clear Water, or “The House of the Rising Sun.” I am not sure how many times I have repeated playing those songs, but the tips of my fingers became the next victims. The calluses became stronger than the ones I had on my hands from the ropes and buckets I was carrying.
“Hey, how is Hana?”
“Oh, I forgot to write to you about it, we broke up a while ago. I am with Shulamit now,” Efri said with a smile.
“Shulamit, eh?”
“Yes, she is a lot friendlier, very smart girl, but she doesn’t put out.”
“Hmm, really? All the girls at our school put out. And don’t even ask about the American girls,” I said expertly, as if I was getting any.
“Are we going to the beach tomorrow?
“You bet!” I answered. “I have an inflated pillow with a bag. We can take some fruit and take them with us as we swim from Zevulun to Ein HaThelet.”
“You want to swim the whole way? That is more like two kilometers.”
“We can try, if we get tired, we’ll get back to the beach and walk.”
***
Murderer
The beginning of the years looked promising. I finally got a new position in the chicken coop. Mean Shimon was moved to another room and a new Moroccan immigrant also called Mark. I will refer to him as Tall Mark. He didn’t speak Hebrew yet, so I had to communicate with him in French. Tall Mark was a very talented artist. He collected bugs in little shadow boxes that he made. Tall Mark showed me how he injects them with alcohol and pins them to the board with a little note of how or where he caught them. On one of my walks in the woods I found a black scorpion and brought it to Tall Mark in a jar. He shot it with alcohol, we made a small frame for it and we painted the scorpion in red. Me hung the frame on the door of my closet. But my favorite works of his are his comic books. He drew so many new superheroes and they all looked realistic. On the first floor of our dorm, we were given a large room to function as a club room. Last year I helped an older kid to draw an old ship in a stormy sea on the far end of the wall. Tall Mark was asked to paint something else, less dramatic. He Painted 3 white horses coming out of a dusty cloud. Again, they were so realistic I would be staring at them for a long time.
Every morning, after breakfast, which became my favorite meal of the day. Making my usual cut up cucumber and tomato mixed up with a mushed hard-boiled egg, sprinkled with a little salt. I would walk the long walk to the chicken coops up on the north side hill of our campus, way pass the cows shed. My first task was to collect the eggs. I would walk along the hens’ cages with a bucket and collect the eggs. They would be waiting on a shelf under the cage. If a hen didn’t lay at least one egg we would take a note of it. If after a week that chicken still didn’t lay her quota, she would be moved out and sold as meat. After collecting the eggs, I had to feed the chickens, both the egg layers and the meat chickens. Each had a different diet and even different troughs. My favorite task was to feed the little chicks. I still remember the embarrassing incident I had with our chickens when I was a little kid. But feeding the baby chicks was fun. The job I liked the least was to shorten the beak of the egg layers. Chicken are not vegetarians, the sight of blood makes them very aggressive, they could kill each other if triggered. Many times, two chickens would be in one cage and sometimes when a chicken lays an egg she might bleed. Her cage mate might get aggressive and peck her friend to death. There for we had to cut the tip of each chicken’s beak. Cutting the top part shorter than the bottom. To do so we had a special tool with a very hot blade. We would hold the chicken with both hands and literally hold it against the hot blade and cut the beak. I don’t know if it hurts the chicken, the chicken didn’t bleed, but It surely wasn’t comfortable. Lucky for me, we didn’t have to do it every day. Only when we had a new batch of egg layers.
Please, let me warn you, this next paragraph has some graphic description I am not proud of. But it is an act of anger instinct I never knew I had. There was a talk around the farm that some animal was attacking the chickens. Every so often we would find a dead carcass somewhere around the coop. We were talking about having guards over night to watch over the chickens or set traps. Nothing really came out of it because the next morning after collecting the eggs and feeding the hens I walked into the coop where the baby chicks were. I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of chick’s feed. With a shovel on top of it. The tanker where we kept the feed was empty and we were waiting for a new shipment. As soon as I walked in, I almost fell to the ground in shock. The whole floor of the coop was splattered with dead chicks and blood was splattered everywhere. At the far side of the coop, I saw the oddest cat I have ever seen. It had a small body almost like a kitten and a huge head. He was chasing the chicks bighting them and throwing them up in the air. Without thinking I picked up the shovel and threw it toward the cat missing him by an inch. The cat froze in space. I don’t know why he didn’t move or whether I moved way too fast. I managed to catch him by the neck, I opened the hatch of the feeding tanker, shoved the cat in and closed the hatch before it had the chance to slide back out. I could hear it squealing and hissing trying to climb up the slippery tube to no avail. I was so angry I acted without thinking. I opened the hatch a crack and I saw his hind legs slide out. I pressed on the handle and like a guillotine it came down and crushed the legs. The cat screamed. I picked up the shovel and with the handle I pushed the cat back in and closed the hatch. I opened a crack once more, now the front legs came out and again I crushed them with force. Again, I pushed him back in and now when I opened the hatch his head came out and before he slid out, I pushed with my foot the hatch handle so hard it crushed his head. He screamed no more. I stood there shaking like a leaf, finally realizing what I just did. I just murdered a cat. It was not premeditated yet it was a murder. Yes, he killed about 300 cute baby chicks, but I killed him an a most horrifying way.
It was Friday and I had a lot to do before going back to the dining room which didn’t interest me at all that moment. I walked like a robot. My mind was somewhere else when I was in class and even when we went to the Israeli folk dance session after dinner, I sat on the bench around the basketball court and stared. Not that it was different from other weeks. For some reason when I came to Shfeya I suddenly became shy and was afraid to get up and dance. Later, at the club room, again, everyone was dancing to the beat of the beetles and Tall Mark was shaking of beat like he was possessed, I was still looking at the horses and still trembling from that morning fiasco.
The next semester I asked for a transfer. I was assigned to “Agromechanics”. That is what we called the people who worked on Tractors and agriculture machines. My teacher discovered that I was a good drafter, and I was able to take apart a motor and put it back together without having any screws left. It was something to think about. I might become a mechanic when I grow up.
***
