Teaching Music
December 1 ,2015
Nikitush
The woman who loved me the most, unconditionally, no matter what; Meme Milli came to visit. As always, she brought gifts.
“I can never understand how you do that.” Mom exclaimed, “You travel by bus, yet you always are able to bring gifts with you. What is in this box?”
“S’udat Yitro” she said and opened the box. “I know you don’t have this stuff.” She pulled the wrinkled newspaper from the box and showed us very small dishes. A little bigger than dolls toy dishes. They were made of fine porcelain decorated with fine flowery design.
“S’udat Yitro – the meal for the week of Jethro’s Torah Portion” said Meme Milli as she was helping Mom washing the new toy like dishes, “is a Tunisian special holiday for boys. Many years ago, there was a big pandemic in Tunisia that killed many little boys. All the rabbis got together and made a vow that they would make a holiday at the time the pandemic ends. So, one day, right after Tu BiShvat like a miracle, it ended. The Rabbis kept their promise and started a new tradition. To commemorate the feast Jethro through for Moses and Aaron they decided to make a yearly dinner with those small dishes to remember the miracle that saved the boys. We make small dishes, even small chickens or pigeons stuffed with nuts and other goodies like dry fruit and candy. Everything little boys would love. Now let’s go watch Sami and Susu.”
My Grandma spoke Hebrew very poorly, she couldn’t read or write in any language. Even numbers were difficult for her. I remember being a small child trying to teach her, but she just didn’t believe in herself. The language she spoke best was Arabic. Now that she finally bought a TV, she was watching mostly Arabic shows. Israel had only one TV Chanel and it didn’t play all day. In the morning hours we had the educational shows for schools and kids that are still staying home, on Friday afternoon we had a few Arabic shows like “Sami and Susu”; A kids’ show with Sami and his poppet Susu. At 6:00PM every Friday the Arabic movie would be shown. Meme was addicted to that one. The antennas if you had one were not strong enough to get many channels from the neighboring countries. In Be’er Sheva where Meme lived, she could get one Egyptian station where she could see some performances and other movies. But at our house she had a more stations available, like Lebanon where Mom loved watching Star Trek in black and white. Or Jordan and even in good weather Egypt. Meme Milli sat in front of the TV with a big metal bowl on her lap and a lump of dough made from just flower and water. She would pinch a very small piece with two fingers and make very small balls and drop them back in the bawl. “Nikitush” was the name of the collection of the pasta like balls. She would let them dry on the Couscous cullender and then would save them in a sealed jar. Nikitush was used every other Saturday as noodles in the Shabat soup. Mom didn’t have the patience to make them, so Meme was our source of our Nikitush supply. Mom got along with Meme Milli better than with her own mother. And I enjoyed sitting with her after work listening to her stories even if I heard them before.
***
Work
“I am going to get a white stake in a pita in Pundak HaYam,” said Moshe from Tel Or. “Does anyone want anything?”
“Sure, I’ll have one too,” said Baruch the other installer.
“Me too,” I added, “are you paying?”
“I will put it on my brother’s account,” declared Moshe. “You guys worked hard this week”
“In that case Please get me a bag of chips too and a coke.”
Pundak HaYam is the second restaurant in town (there were only two) where you can buy pork stake in Netanya. They had to get special license – I am not sure what is the deal. All restaurant in town were Kosher and closed on Shabat. You couldn’t say the same about Pundak HaYam. It was closed on Friday night and Saturday but open on Saturday night like everyone else, but they sold non-kosher meat. The only other restaurant like it where you can find white stake was outside of the downtown center, The Pilots Grill – Stekiyat HaTayasim. They were opened seven days a week. I think it was because they were out of the town center and didn’t need a special permission. The Rabbinical movement were very close to the government and managed to keep a kosher law preventing most businesses from selling pork in Israel or any non-kosher food. Except for town where the citizens were mixed religions like Haifa and Nazareth. You remember, Pundak HaYam is one of my favorite places. I loved their French fries the best.
As Moshe went to get our late lunch, a woman holding a rectangle box walked toward me.
“Your mom told me to find you here,” she said. “I have a project for you. I heard you make things; you built your record player and radio and amplifier. On top of it I hear you fix stuff. I would like you to convert this old record player to a stereo player. It belonged to my mom; may she rest in peace. Will you, do it?”
“I need to look at it, and I don’t know what to charge you, I need to check the prices for the parts and labor”
“I am not worried, this is important for me, and I will pay your price.”
I mut say, it felt great. No one ever put such trust in me or asked me for something so important to them. Of course, I agreed and took the project. The woman left the box with me, and I went back installing the last 8 track tape player of the day in a small red volts wagon.
It was really an old record player. It had no sound system, a model that was connected to a big radio externally. Lucky for us it was in good condition the motor was turning smoothly. The arm with the pickup were fine. It needed a new stereo pickup and of course, a sound system. I had to figure out how to install two speakers and an amplifier without messing up the box. This was not the “radio” I tried to build when I was five years old. It wasn’t the radio I built from scratch at the science club. This was the real stuff, and it was for a client. The first thing I did was to take the record player apart. I measured the inside of the box and marked the space I had to install the new parts. I had to make one wall for the speaker and to find 2 speakers small enough to fit; one inside the box and one on the cover of the box and make sure that when I close the box it had enough room to close. Netanya had two stores where you can buy parts. One of them was selling mostly big parts Like speakers, headphones, and smothering tools. It was called simply “Electronics”. They also sold small sound systems and did some TV Repairs. I was friendly with the owner, I bought from him since I was eleven. I told the owner what I was looking for. He was happy to supply me with two small, yet powerful speakers and he sent me to the other store for the parts of the amplifier. The other store was owned by Mr. Bernanka. He was more like an engineer than a salesman. He knew the inside and out of every radio, TV or any electrical instrument. He advised me what direction to go and what is the smallest and best for my project. I would visit him once or twice a week to ask questions and he was always ready for me.
“You work at Tel Or?”
“You know I do, I buy here parts when we have a simple repair.”
“Well,” Mr. Bernanka said, “I am looking for help, I can double your pay.”
“How do you know my pay?”
“I have my sources, I need someone who knows his stuff and could help me through the busy time.”
“You know I am about to enlist to the air force in October.”
“Yes, I know, I can use you even when you are in the military. I will tell you details later.”
Needless to say, the brothers didn’t like the idea of me leaving, but they couldn’t meet the offer I got from Mr. Bernanka, Anyway, I think they suspected I was making it up. But we parted as friends and I was able to come help them in times when they were stuck with a car stereo problem. At Bernanka’s, (that’s how the store was called,) I was learning how to repair TVs, and other appliances. The job he offered me included some work I could do at home after hours. Mr. Bernanka gave me an eight-track recorder and many empty tapes. My job was to record tapes from a special station, and he would sell them at his store. I could do it anytime I wanted. Even after joining the military, I could do it on my days off. Mr. Bernanka would pay me per tape. I was happy to do it, I loved music and I could do it when I was working on my project which was almost finished.
One Saturday morning, I took my little brother Claude swimming. It was the end of the summer and I was busy making 8-track copies, but I needed the break, so I packed Claude a lunch, took all his floating gear and toys and off we went. The sea was a little rough, we had waves of about 3 feet, so we decided to play in the sand first. We built castles and motes and let the waves smash them. It was getting hot, so I put the floating belt on Claude’s waist, an inflatable float on each arm and a big inflatable tube around his waist too. He loved the way the waves were pushing him all the way to the shore. I wanted him to feel safe in deep water, so I pushed him behind the waves and started to show him the breaststroke when we heard a man yelling next to us. It looked like he lost his footing and was dragged under the wave. I told Claude to hold on to my back when I swam toward the mad and pulled him toward the shore then a big wave came and pushed all of us to the shore. Claude was screeching with pleasure while the man was coughing water and thanked me for the help.
“See?” I told Claude, “you are such a hero, you helped me save the man from drowning.”
“Let’s do it again!”
We played some more and walked back home. I had planned to record a few more tapes for Bernanka before enlisting the military. The thing I liked about the 8-Track tapes was that you didn’t have to pull them out to switch sides and the sound was high quality. The only thing that bothered me was the big click and the skip of the note or two when the tape got to the end and switched to the next track. Unfortunately, I had to stop making the copies when I read in the paper an article about copy rights. I finished building the record player. The customer was more than happy. All the parts were hidden inside the box except for the second speaker which I installed on the cover. I was paid nicely and was ready for my next part of my life. I was ready to enlist.
***
