The Early Life and Times of Max Hanold

By Howard Leff

A saga from the heights of an Allied Nations' win to the lowly conspiratorial killing of John F Kennedy, Howard Leff has captured an era's essance. When you start reading, you'll want to read thru the night.

John D. Walker, " Its catching and arouses ones interest."

Kerry Bost, "This is very exciting to read."

Hermann Nohturfft, "Your great book brings back memories...I cannot wait to read more."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477264164

Howard Leff

Howard Leff, has lived half his life in and around New York City. In 1980, he and his family, moved to Houston, TX to begin another phase of his career in transportation. Leff has travelled to 133 countries and 47 states for business purposes. The sights, sounds, smells and a myriad of people have given him many ideas that still have to be written. An English major, college graduate, his plans to write were put on hold as he matured and needed money to excess. He was married for over five decades, until his wife, Barbara Ann, suddenly passed, five years ago. The father of a daughter and a son, now a grandfather to seven marvelous adults and children adored by their “Papa,” The age range is from 12 to 27. This is his first book of Poetry and Essays. His second novel in the “Max Trilogy, “ will be released in the summer of 2021 You can contact him at [e-mail].

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Contents

Chapter One

Brooklyn, New York - February 1962

Chapter Two

New York City -1943

Chapter Three

Brooklyn - January 1959

Chapter Four

Brooklyn -1945

Chapter Five

New York City - May 1959

Chapter Six

Havana - January 1960

Chapter Seven

New York City – 1949

Chapter Eight

January 1960 - Havana

Chapter Nine

New York City – 1951

Chapter Ten

Havana- January 1960

Chapter Eleven

Brooklyn – 1953

Chapter Twelve

Havana - January 1960

Chapter Thirteen

Brooklyn - 1954

Chapter Fourteen

New York – March 1960

Chapter Fifteen

Brooklyn - 1955

Chapter Sixteen

Brooklyn -1956

Chapter Seventeen

New York City - 1960

Chapter Eighteen

Brooklyn - January 1959

Chapter Nineteen

New York City - February 1961

Chapter Twenty

Washington, D.C. - March 1958

Chapter Twenty-One

April 1961

Playa Larga and Playa Girón, Cuba

Chapter Twenty-Two

Washington, D.C. – June 1961

Chapter Twenty-Three

South Fallsburg, New York - July 1961

Chapter Twenty-Four

Southern U.S.A. - 1961

Chapter Twenty-Five

South Fallsburg - July 1961

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Emerson Hotel - July 1961

Chapter Twenty-Seven

August 1961

Chapter Twenty-Eight

New York City - September1961

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Europe - Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty

New York City - Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-One

New York City - Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-Two

Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-Three

Queens - Tuesday Night

Chapter Thirty-Four

Havana - Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-Five

Washington, D.C. – Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-Six

Paris - Monday, October 30, 1961

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Minsk, Byelorussia, U.S.S.R. - Fall 1961

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Paris - 1961

Chapter Thirty-Nine

New York - Winter 1961

Chapter Forty

Paris – 1961

Chapter Forty-One

Washington, D.C. – Winter 1961

Chapter Forty-Two

New York - Winter 1961/1962

Chapter Forty-Three

Cuba - Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Four

Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Five

Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Six

Havana - Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Seven

New York – Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Eight

U.S.A. – Spring 1962

Chapter Forty-Nine

Detroit – Spring 1962

Chapter Fifty

New York City – Spring 1962

Chapter Fifty-One

Summer - 1962

Chapter Fifty-Two

Summer 1962

Chapter Fifty-Three

Summer/Fall 1962

Chapter Fifty-Four

Early Fall 1962

Chapter Fifty-Five

Fall 1962

Chapter Fifty-Six

Fall 1962

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Fall 1962

Chapter Fifty-Eight

November/December 1962

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Early 1963

Chapter Sixty

Early 1963

Chapter Sixty-One

Early Summer 1963

Chapter Sixty-Two

Summer 1963

Chapter Sixty-Three

Summer – 1963

Chapter Sixty-Four

Fall 1963

Chapter Sixty-Five

November 1963

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

George Sand wrote, There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.

For my very special Bobbi, whose love makes me incredibly happy every day, in every way.

This is an absolute work of fiction. Persons and events that are in the public domain have been used to lend realism to the narrative. Names, dates, character traits, business and organization names, places, events, conversations and all storylines are purely the product of my imagination and inventiveness.

In the few instances of a direct quote’s usage, I have inserted three asterisks *** to indicate same. Any resemblance to actual persons, alive or passed, news events outside of commonly known reporting is entirely coincidental and hopefully conjured up by your own images of the past, real or imagined, that I have written for you to enjoy while learning about what went before, or remembering it…

©Howard Leff

Spring, Texas

2011

Chapter One

Brooklyn, New York - February 1962

It was dark and yet, it was peculiarly bright. The moonless night cloaked a sleeping metropolis. Snow had been falling for hours and as it whitened all of New York City, in an alley on Sixty-Fifth Street in Brooklyn, a black cat with glistening fur from falling crystals, scurried atop a decaying wooden fence. It stood silently for a moment and then jumped onto the partially covered tin trash can below. With rapid movements of its front paws, the cat was able to tumble discarded chicken bones to the white below. After discovering its treasure, the cat quickly jolted to the frozen ground. Its pink tongue ravenously lapped at the swill, its body shivering amidst the frost and flakes. The hunger that diminished the nameless cat’s strength slowly subsided with every precious morsel that entered its belly. It ate the wastes and forgot all of the cold that enveloped it; all of the filth around it and all of its frantic searching that had temporarily come to an end.

High above the crafty kitty’s white and black head, a beam of light abruptly pierced through the dark alley to the garbage cans. Startled, the cat briefly peered upward at the glow before returning to the cache of food. The flakes continued to fall.

The glimmer of light was emanating from a third-floor apartment kitchen window. Inside, the sparse dwelling’s two occupants were oblivious to the twenty degree weather outside, the cat eating the remains of its sparse supper and even the falling snow. A man of twenty stood in the doorway of their bedroom inspecting the flat he had leased the previous month. The three kitchen bulbs just switched on, cast enough brightness to expose the light green paint on the walls. Max Hanold was not a painter by trade, but to save money he painted the two-and-a-half room apartment in the color his wife had found in a thrift shop. Centered above the double bed hung a portrait of an old bearded man with a wide brimmed fur hat saying his morning prayers. Although it only slightly appealed to her, Bobbi Hanold purchased the print because it was on sale for three dollars, a modest price they could afford. To the left of the bed stood a wooden orange crate that Max had painted brown to almost match the dated dresser, stumbled upon at a used furniture store. Bobbi had concealed their improvised night stand with a bed sheet skillfully placed to conceal a large hole in it. On the white sheet stood a clock, the ninety degree angle of its hands signaling fifteen minutes past mid-night. Max gazed at the clock, at the room he had painted and furnished and at the girl of nineteen who shared his bed and his life.

Deliberately, tip-toeing across the room hoping to not awaken his wife, Max looked out the window surprised by the sight of falling snow and mechanically started unbuttoning his worn white starched shirt. After folding it fastidiously so that he could wear it again, he placed it on the metal chair to the right of their crated-night-table. The coins in his pocket jingled softly as he slid his pants over his brown shoes. The pants were also folded with care and placed on the back of the chair. Slowly sitting down on the edge of the bed, he bent to unlace his shoes and noticed that the soles were once again detaching from the upper leather. Max placed the shoes in front of the chair and thought: one more thing to worry about. His brown cotton socks had been darned before and would undoubtedly have to be patched again. Walking most of the day, Max’s cotton hose lost the scuffle to the worn-out leather. He stared out the window at the winter’s cold wrath and began fidgeting, restless, thinking and worrying.

Awakened by her husband’s slight movements, Bobbi saw his upper frame silhouetted against the two windows on the opposite side of the room. Immediately, she knew by the slope of his shoulders that he was deeply troubled.

Maxie, she sighed, I’m sorry you didn’t have any luck today.

Nah, he said lightheartedly, Those dumb bastards don’t even know a good man when they see one. All they want is someone who will follow orders and has some experience, not a man who thinks. Please tell me… if I don’t get a job how can I have any experience?

I had a dream Max. I just know that tomorrow’s the day you’ll get your break.

Bobbi did not have a dream about a job for Max. She knew her husband. They had been dating for nearly five months when he popped the question. She didn’t have to think about the reply. They were married one month later in a simple civil ceremony at City Hall and now they had their own space, away from parents, relatives, questions and suggestions on how to live their young lives. She knew how to soothe the beast that swelled in Max every now and then. While motivated and attending College majoring in journalism and languages, he was hard working, hot-headed and overly ambitious. All that he needed was that elusive first chance.

She patted the mattress invitingly. Maxie, give me a kiss, huh? Please come on to bed. You can’t stay up all night. You’ll be too tired tomorrow.

Baby, you stick with me and I’ll give you a house and diamonds and furs. We’ll travel and see the world. We’ll have lots of kids and they’ll all be as beautiful as you are!

As he uttered the last syllable, Max turned to his wife with a loving heart. His hands brought her soft warm body close to him. Nudging her chin downward, he kissed her on the forehead. They looked at each other. They smiled and then began laughing. They laughed; they loved, for tomorrow would surely be the long awaited day.

In June 1961, Bobbi Frank graduated from Martin Van Buren High School, designated as number Q435 by the NYC Board of Education. After the summer she went to work for Upland Steel and Corrugate, Inc. in their NYC office as the receptionist and teletype operator. The job was mind-numbing; answering phones; creating one inch wide transmission tapes by hitting a standard alpha-numeric keyboard that spewed hole-punched yards of ribbon-like durable paper; and incessant filing. Six times a day the collections of tapes were used to transmit orders and messages to their plants and home office. The holey strips were rapidly interpreted by the teletype machine’s reader, the converse of raised Braille dots converted to letters and numbers. Despite Bobbi’s adept typing abilities, she was no challenger to a tape converting machine that kept connection and communication costs low by transmitting at a steady rate of ninety words per minute.

By the time she and Max married, her job paid as much as he was earning. When all of her benefits and cost of living index adjustment were included, she grossed more than him. They decided not to rely on any assistance from either family. It was a good theory with absolute negative practical aspects. Shortly thereafter, they concluded that maybe a little help wouldn’t be too bad.

It was a difficult adjustment for Bobbi to live in Brooklyn, a borough where she had no friends or family. Everything was strikingly different than her plush Queens’ surroundings. Two salient facts tempered her uneasiness: she and Max went to work together using public transportation or he occasionally drove her to work and then went to his own job; and most relevant, they lived near Brooklyn College to make it easier for Max to become the person whom he wanted to be in the profession of his choice.

For the spring semester Bobbi enrolled at Hunter College for two classes. The days were long for both. As the eleven o’clock news signed on, they snoozed off. However, there were nights that the newlyweds acted so. They were in love and it glowed.

Max desperately desired to be a writer of short stories, novels or a featured columnist for one of the six daily newspapers. Taking a week of vacation from his job allowed him the time to make the rounds of potential employers.

The snow was melting to slush and grimy muck by the time he walked up the subway stairs at Grand Central Station. The forecast was for clear skies with a balmy low forty degrees during the next two days with the possibility of snow returning for the weekend.

His routine was simply to take the elevator to the top floor of a building and walk the hallways searching for companies whose name implied a connection to the world of the printed word. The one page resume that Bobbi typed for him highlighted aspiration with zero extant experience or expertise in the field of journalism.

Entering through the opaque-glass door marked Hamburger & Sons, Max said, Good morning. My name is Max Hanold. I’m here to see whoever is in charge of hiring.

I’m sorry Max, but we’re not looking for anybody, he was told.

As he turned to leave, the middle-aged frumpy lady said, Why don’t you fill out an application and we’ll keep it on file? With that, she handed him a four page form.

An endless number of employment applications were completed; resumes left; staircases descended, all to no avail. Max returned home dejected, rejected, solemn and silent. Unfortunately, Bobbi was wrong in her premonition of success.

Chapter Two

New York City -1943

Max Levi was born on December 10, 1941, in the New York City borough of Manhattan; three days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, effectively declaring war on the U.S.A. His parents, Maleah and Leon Levi, lived on the Lower Eastside which was the gravitational melting pot for successive waves of immigrants since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They married hurriedly to make her pregnancy appear as the result of a happy union. In actuality, there was little love between the couple, their families, their friends and everyone knew it. Still they kept up appearances for almost three years and then came a separation and finally, a bitter contentious divorce.

There was one incident in particular that resonated in Max’s psyche since he was a toddler and barely walking. He was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with and banging on pots and pans as Sinatra crooned a mellow tune on the radio in the background. The simple cacophony of his thwacking sounds was shattered by his parents’ explosive yelling and screaming at each other.

Why the hell did I marry you? asked Leon. I would’ve been much better off without you and the kid.

Maleah answered, Go to hell. I’m sorry we ever met.

Not as sorry as I am!

You can go to hell! Maleah repeated.

Objects violently flew around the room and Max began to cry hysterically. His wailing shocked Maleah and Leon enough to declare a temporary sudden truce to the fighting and squabbling. However, it wasn’t a lasting ceasefire and Max still carried the emotional scars of those early unsettling days. He vowed that his life would be different, a life without acrimony and discord.

Life seemed to get better for Max once the divorce dust settled. He and his mom moved to Brooklyn to live with his maternal grand-parents and aunt. All five people lived in a three room apartment on the fourth floor of a five-story, city rent controlled walk up tenement building. During the day, the middle room served as living space that was converted at night to a bedroom for three by opening the convertible couch and rolling out a flimsy folding bed.

Mondays were very special days for Max; he accompanied his mother to her job. Maleah took a part-time position as a bookkeeper for a lumber yard just three blocks from their new home. He proudly walked holding his Mom’s hand and needed to take three steps to her two in order to hold on and keep up. The Babylon Lumber Company provided little Max with an opportunity to be amongst men. Aside from the brothers who owned the firm and were their salesmen, he was allowed to ride in the big delivery truck with Jesse.

Jesse was as big as a house to little Max; he had enormous strength to lift planks and boards of wood from the long truck and lay them where the buyer designated them to be placed. His shoulders were fully five of Max’s body width and yet he was the gentlest, most caring, mellowest male figure to his young companion. Max loved riding beside the delivery driver.

Little man, we’re going over the Williamsburg Bridge to drop this load to a building site. Hav’ya ever been on a bridge? asked Jesse.

Nope, the only time I get to ride in anything is with you.

I want ya to look at the East River with all the boats and tugs. They help make New York a great place to make money.

Where are you from Jess, asked Max.

My people are all from Georgia. I came north to find a better job and get my kids into schools to learn more than they teach in Augusta.

Jesse was Max’s best friend outside of his own family. He saw a great man who took care of him while his mother worked. Young Max recognized that his skin was much darker. So what, Jesse was his only true pal.

Max ate breakfast and lunch perched on a double-width windowsill while watching players on the red-sanded clay tennis courts below. The ledge also doubled as his dining table. Although he didn’t understand what the game was about, he did enjoy the fast paced volleying, running and white tennis garb. It was also a means to exercise in his mind instead of employing his body, since the borough’s streets were deemed unsafe for a four year old to run, jump and play on. His doting family’s vigilance was rewarded by his not being attacked, bludgeoned, beaten or kidnapped for a ransom that would have been un-payable beyond five bucks.

As a direct result of being sheltered and not allowed to have fun in the ominous street in front of the building, Max listened to the radio in his and his mom’s bedroom as often as was possible. He eagerly looked forward to Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club, The Great Gildersleeve, Gang Busters, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Superman, The Lone Ranger, and even several hours of 15-minute dramas; among them, One Man’s Family, Pepper Young, Guiding Light and others that would become the source of early television programming.

Watching tennis was his mealtime diversion, but radio made Max aware of the giant world, as his mind’s eye summoned hopeful thoughts and vivid images well beyond his juvenile years. Indeed, The Golden Age of Radio, was an apt moniker that drew many persons of all generations to a heightened awareness past their own limited surrounding’s exposure. As non-native English speakers arrived in droves, radio became the ideal learning medium for language, culture and a welcomed escape mechanism from the tedium of a long hard working day. Listening became synonymous with living, learning and lavish dreams of optimism for better days ahead.

Chapter Three

Brooklyn - January 1959

The legal age to obtain a New York State driving license in non-rural areas was eighteen. Max’s daily obsession while awake and more often in his dreams, was focused on female adolescents; how to attract them; how to keep them; how to entice them, to embrace and fondle them; and lastly when he was bored, how to get rid of them. His answer to catch their attention, aside from his high cheekbones, cleft-chin good looks, sky-blue eyes and boyish charm, was to have wheels of his own. No longer content with trains and busses, he wanted a car to venture beyond his own neighborhood. There were conquests to be surmounted in Queens, Long Island, New Jersey and elsewhere. Being young, impoverished, ambitious and the son of a family that barely eked out an okay living, left Max with only one possible answer: to get a job and forego daytime college in favor of evening classes as a fully matriculated student. A marvelously ill-conceived thought!

Having made the conscious decision to work and accumulate money to purchase a car, the choice of how to proceed was considered. An ad in The New York Post, placed by Watson Employment Agency, called out to him. On Monday, January 19th, Max shaved his light fuzz; put on ironed dress pants, shirt, tie and polished shoes; walked the three long city blocks to the elevated EL, train 55th Street station; and paid the ten cent fare for the noisy shaky ride to the Wall Street station. Three short blocks away he found 263 Broadway, an impressive tall building filled with a whole host of companies that had long and short names on the lobby tenant directory board. Towards the very bottom, the line listing ‘Watson’ being housed on the second floor in room 210 twinkled.

Max nervously filled out an application and waited patiently to be interviewed. After what seemed to be an eternity, twenty minutes later he was shown into an office that spewed bright sunlight thru windows facing Broadway to meet Grace Watson. She was a gentle tigress who asked questions rapidly:

How old are you? Why aren’t you going to college? What do you want to do?

Max responded honestly, Seventeen; I intend to go at night; I don’t know.

She looked at Max hard and long and then said, you listed stamp collecting as one of your hobbies?

Yes, he hesitatingly reply.

Would you say that you know countries of the world? she asked.

Again, an apprehensive affirmative response was voiced.

Mrs. Watson queried, Can you type?

An up and down head shake silently answered the question.

She studied him slowly with piercing green eyes, brows furrowed and then with some uncertainty, finally said, I have a job as a trainee in a freight forwarding company. It pays seventy dollars per week plus benefits. Would you like me to set up an interview?

While delighted with the anticipated salary, Max had no idea what a freight forwarder did. So, he asked the question, What do they do?

The straightforward reply, They ship various things all over the world.

He thought: what could be that bad? Yes, please make the call, was his cautious courteous response.

Grace Watson gave Max a white envelope containing an introductory card and a copy of his completed employment application. He walked the few long blocks to 187 Broad Street, the home-office of Campbell & Company, Inc. who leased half of the ninth floor. Sitting in an impressive waiting area, Max adjusted his tie several times, coughed to sooth his parched throat and then decided to chew Chowder’s violet breath freshener to relieve the dryness. A pretty, perky and vivacious older mid-twenties smiling girl led Max to the office of John J. McCloskey, affectionately called, Mac, the senior traffic manager of the company.

After a brief question and answer session, he was offered the starting position. The quick acceptance was, Yep, when do I start?

The following Monday the 26th was agreed upon.

Chapter Four

Brooklyn -1945

Eating healthy foods and simply ingestion was an ongoing problem for Max. His meager appetite had the family troubled desperately trying to find something nutritious that he might enjoy or would just take bites of while watching the tennis games below. His adoring grand-mother, Tiskhon, Bubbie, Cohn, would mash or chop all of his food using a gadget with four blades repeatedly palm-pounded to maul meat. She added ketchup so that frail Max would have some sustenance. Her short height did not impede her arm-strength for chopping, or her love of doing everything for her grandson.

Maxella, you have to eat something. What do you want? I’ll make for you. Just tell me, she would tenderly question.

Bubbie, I’m not hungry. This was his regular reply.

When that didn’t work well, he would pretend, I’m allergic. I’m not supposed to eat it. Mommy told me it’s okay not to.

He was sustained by mushed home baked or boiled chicken made red in color; boiled, red mashed potatoes and Wise potato chips eaten habitually for his scant lunches and dinners. Breakfast was simply an Oreo cookie or a Yankee Doodle cupcake consumed over the course of a half hour with three or four sips of milk while listening to Queen for a Day with host Jack Bailey. At four years old, Max weighed a scant thirty-four pounds.

Bubbie Tishkon was not only the family matriarch; she was the giver of lots of love; the absorbing sponge of family pain and sorrow; the emotions equalizer and the gentle dispenser of compassion and kindness. Arriving from Minsk, Byelorussia in 1917, she worked sixty hours weekly in a lady’s garment sweat-shop sewing clothes that others would wear. A year later in a pre-arranged agreement by a matchmaker, she was betrothed to Samuel Cohn. By May 1921, two daughters were born eighteen months apart. Sylvia and her younger sister Maleah were total opposites in all respects with the notable exception of a common ultra-strong love of family. Sylvia was tall, dark haired, medium complexion, smart, ambitious and not interested in boys. Maleah loved the schoolboys’ attention, did not care about school, was unmotivated, fair-skinned, light haired and short. Both girls were pretty in a plain homely way.

Sam Cohn collected useless items that he refurbished and sold or if un-repairable would wholesale for parts or scrap. His found junk filled a small store on Madison Street with discarded items that he carted by horse and wagon. The clippity-clop clatter of Lucky’s hooves over the cobble-stoned streets combined with his whinnying were magical sounds to young Max. He sat high-up on the bouncing buckboard seat next to his Grandpa, as the breeze ruffled his light brown hair and the sun tanned his fair skin.

Grandpa, where’re we going today? he would excitedly inquire.

Vell today, vee goes looking for plum-bing pipes. Brass is tventy cents by a pound. Ve can make gut money from da trow-avays.

His mother’s father was a no nonsense man who doled out gruff love to his wife, children and grandson. He arrived at Ellis Island from the ghettos of Vilnius in late 1917 just before the Conference of Ambassadors approved Poland’s retention of the territory won in its brief confrontation with the Soviets. It was a war that he did not have to soldier in. Persistently, Cohn struggled to improve his family’s circumstances. He had an obsessive work ethic that did not allow for any pleasures or free time. Work and resting on the Sabbath consumed his days. While not a particularly religious man, Sam did need to relax. Saturday served him well and God was presumed happy with his choice of days.

Germany – 1945

It was an excellent year for the free world: The Axis powers were defeated; U.S. men and the few brave women who served in the Armed Forces started returning home. Concentration camp victims who were barely alive began the painful process of repatriation or absorption by the Allied Nations and other realms. The horrors of war had ended but the wrenching memories would live in the minds of millions around the Earth for centuries, one painful day at a time.

One of the afflicted Polish/Galicia displaced persons was a late-thirties male who had lost his wife and three young children in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Benjamin Hanold physically survived the atrocities by joining forces with more than a dozen men who together made a daring escape over the barbed wire fences into the thick forests surrounding the extermination and labor camp. Two of the bands were shot in the back as they reached the anticipated safety of the tree line and died instantly. The bullet intended for Benjamin grazed his left forearm two inches above his numbered tattoo. 419904 proved to be a lucky integer. Mentally, Hanold was heinously damaged. He survived the waning days of the holocaust by constantly hiding, moving and staying one step ahead or behind the retreating German ground forces and the advancing Russian troops. Whether his eyes were opened or closed, during every day of flight, Bennie heard the piercing anguished wailing cries of his murdered family. The weeping sounds doggedly haunted him.

There were too few governmental organizations coordinating the readjustment and settlement of the camps surviving frail victims. Instead, the enormous curative task was left to fraternal and communal groups to take care of their own families and friends left homeless, heartless and apathetic by the Second Great War. One of those collective groups was the Lomza Brotherhood.

The small town or shetel named Lomza is in the Polish province of Lomza situated approximately eighty miles northeast of Warsaw. It was founded during the mid- tenth century. In 1494 there was the first written mention of at least one Jewish dweller. The Great Synagogue was completed nearly four hundred years later to allow fervent prayers to soar heavenward. At the beginning of the twentieth century, nearly 20,000 farmers, peasants, artisans and merchants lived in the town; a full fifty-five percent of the population followed the faith as taught by Moses. By September 1941, the year that Max was born, The Great Lomza Synagogue had been totally destroyed and the town and the province had zero recognized or acknowledging Jews.

Chapter Five

New York City - May 1959

Max enjoyed his work learning about the ocean transportation industry. He, along with three other young men, was the order out department. Eighteen Assistant Traffic Managers supervised the beginners in handling humdrum paper tasks for their major accounts; oil companies, heavy equipment manufacturers, foodstuffs or other conglomerates’ commodities. It amazed Max that he was a cog in the wheel of ocean shipping for so many products that he was familiar with. American made goods: shoe polish, Band-Aids, car engines, basic chemicals of all sorts and many other raw materials and finished goods were sought by peoples on every continent, with the notable exception of Antarctica. Several other ATM groups processed the requirements of more than one smaller client company.

The order out department would be given files with all pertinent information written on folder covers needed to type delivery orders and dock receipts to enable truckers, railroads and lighter age companies to bring cargoes to the assigned pier in time for loading aboard a vessel. Typing was done on pre-printed, master forms that had a hard purple carbonized backing that created a key’s image on the back of the white form when the typewriter struck it. By carefully putting the master form into the biting metal-jawed opening and aligning it correctly, Max used one of the six Gestetner spirit duplicating machines to run-off the two different forms, one in triplicate and the dock receipts in quintuplicate.

There was one universal phone in his department. No personal calls were allowed to be made; it was strictly for business use by the young men.

"Hello, this is Max Hanold with Campbell. You have a truck load of drummed corn syrup that I want delivered to the Hakara Maru at pier 17 North River by 11 A.M. this Friday."

What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can! Let me speak to Mr. McGee, he’ll get it done for us!

Jim, this is Max. I really need a favor…. Max became skilled at asking for and getting what he wanted. Bashfulness was turning to boldness.

Ditto master form corrections were cumbersome. It was nearly impossible not to get the purple carbon color on his hands, his clothes and most embarrassingly, his finger nails. A specially made pink liquid soap never quite removed all of the plum color of work. Taking the train back home with purple tinted nails made him hold his college study texts with fingers inward to be less conspicuous. In actuality, no one noticed nor cared, except for the self- conscious Max.

After six months on the job at Campbell, Max was offered a promotion and a salary increase of fifteen dollars per week. He was to be the assistant in the nascent air freight department which consisted of one man, Bart Drummond, a rotund graying man in his late forties. Bart was infamous for his liquid lunches that lasted well beyond the normal one hour allotted break. Max was moved to a desk along-side his new boss that had a telephone on it designated for his business use. He would cover as best as was possible for his tipsy supervisor, which gave him an excessive amount of self-taught on the job training because Bart was not available to guide him.

Hello, this is Max Hanold at Campbell Air Freight. I wanna make a booking for two cartons weighing 108 pounds total, for your flight 800 to Bombay.

Yeah, yeah, I’ll have them delivered by your cut-off time. Maybe even before five.

Can you please do me a favor? I’ll send out some gummed labels attached to my paperwork. Just please stick two on each package for me.

Thanks for your help. Have a great afternoon.

One early afternoon the corporate Vice-President, Bob Bowley, had his secretary summon Max to his office in the executive wing of the office. He was sure that he was going to be fired for something, although he didn’t know what it was. Or even worse, maybe they wanted to close the air freight department! Either way, he assumed he would lose his job.

Nervously he knocked on Mr. Bowley’s closed glass door. Although on the phone, the imposing thin angular faced executive signaled with hand and mouth gestures for Max to wait until he was finished talking. When the call ended and the hand-piece replaced in its cradle, Mr. Bowley motioned for Max to enter the inner sanctum.

Young man, please have a seat. We’ve been watching your progress. We’re very pleased with your work ethic and general demeanor. I know that Bart hasn’t been lucid in the afternoons to really help you. Yet, you’ve done a good job and have never once complained.

Thank you, sir, was the relieved reply.

Max, I have a very big job that I want you to do for me.

Yes, sir, anything that you need, I’m prepared to tackle!

I know that using air freight as a practical means of cargo transport has not made the inroads that we were hoping for, mostly because of the limited size openings of the luggage compartments in the aircraft’s lower decks, as well as the generally perceived high rates. I have convinced CTX, one of our largest ocean freight customers to consider using air freight to deliver Christmas presents to their worldwide customers.

That sounds exciting.

Now son, before they give us the go ahead, I need you to work up pricing and routings for 186 five pound packages to 186 destinations. They and I will study your suggestions and pricing. I want you to prove that Campbell can ensure a cheaper and faster delivery than the U.S. Postal Service that they normally use. Can you do that…say within the next two weeks?

Mr. Bowley, I know I can do it. It’ll be ready and meet your deadline.

Max was given the list of destinations before leaving the number two big boss’s office. He worked on the project enthusiastically. His geographical knowledge was truly put to the test as was his proficiency in reading airline schedules and rate charts. The chore was made easier with the advent of jet planes that flew faster and longer than propeller powered aircraft. The Boeing 707 and its rival the Douglas DC8 took half the time to reach a destination and thereby could get to twice the number of cities in the same amount of time on any given day.

Pan American World Airways inaugurated the first trans-Atlantic jet service from New York’s Idewild Airport to Orly outside Paris on October 26, 1958. By the time Max was preparing his report for the gifts, Pan Am was the major U.S. international carrier with service to 109 of his 186 global destinations. Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines was a far distant second in US overseas passenger carriage while using Lockheed four-engine prop-driven Constellations. While Max was doing the costing and routing study, TWA became the first major airline to employ a Negro as a stewardess.

Change was in the sky-winds and would be blowing into all forty-nine states.

Max went to the Campbell office over the intermittent weekend but choose not to put in for the overtime on his weekly time sheet. The hours of effort concluded that each gift should be on one air waybill at a minimum, minnie, cost of $29.00 to $45.00 plus a small documentation fee of $15.00. He was confident that using air freight would indeed be cheaper than the Postal Service and offer a faster verifiable delivery.

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