Catching the Incredible Candus

By Lawrence Birnbaum M.D.

A Real-Life Love Story That Rivals Any Romantic Legend

Beginning with pictographs on cave walls love has ever been recorded.

The minds of men and women have long been captivated by those who have gone to great lengths to ove

• Language: English
• Publisher: Woo Love Press
• Release date: Oct 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9798218150525

Lawrence Birnbaum M.D.

Dr. Lawrence Birnbaum began his practice after completing a one-year fellowship as a plastic surgeon with the East African Flying Doctor Service. Upon his return to the US, he quickly rose to fame when in 1974 he published a paper describing what is now recognized as the first realistic appearing post-mastectomy breast reconstruction, utilizing his invention of "tissue expanders." For two years, he taught the world´s only course on breast reconstruction to his fellow plastic surgeons and for many years a variety of breast reconstruction implants bore his name. He wrote a number of papers, contributed to books, and lectured around the world. He continued his acclaimed practice for 44 years until his retirement at the age of 80.

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Preface

As a first-time author, naturally, I am a novice at the writing of a preface. Those I perused in past readings appeared to have been constructed in a manner akin to an old-time carnival barker flinging enticing words at the milling crowds. I imagine that the better the attraction, the easier it was to persuade customers to part with the change their pockets contained. Successful, compelling autobiographies and biographies always seem to combine remarkable lives with unique storytelling. What follows are my tellings meant to be illustrative of just that.

This book is, at its core, a love story that is still ongoing. Ironically, at the moment, Candus and I are divorced from our brief marriage. That notwithstanding, we have remained not even a whit less inextricably tethered by the love and undying passion that have been constantly maintained. It has been nurtured via extraordinary endeavors that I trust you will find as creative as they are titillating, as told in what follows.

There are three essential elixirs that maintain this remarkable love story: loyalty, honesty, and romance. They brew in a cauldron requiring daily heated sustenance. This book displays the (until now) secret recipes that, of necessity, were gleaned through trial and error and paid for in the coinage of effort.

Money was never a significant part of the key. Energy, time, and a fertile imagination were infinitely more important. While for many, being romantic has become a lost art, to me it was the greatest ally in my unending quest to win the heart and soul of as desirable a woman as ever roamed this world. To me, romance comprises many things, including but not limited to consistent thoughtful gestures, love’s application in ordinary and outrageous places, and I even threw in poetry liberally to lubricate the friction that slows the mobility that existence has a tendency to aim toward. There was also an affirmation to fiercely protect the one you love against the vicissitudes that none of us ever find exception to. There were indeed times when I was a crutch that shored up a crumbling Candus and even accepted the necessity to catch her when no one else was there. The yield was mutually beneficent in every instance.

We all know that a loveless marriage can be worse than no marriage at all. At least when you are single, there is a hope that Cupid might be lurking somewhere in your extended environs. If you have the will to hover in love’s domain, you will perceive the way of capturing it. I have paid the price of admission to a world where romance reigns supreme, but pain was often one of the accepted currencies. Luckily, so was blissful happiness and cell-ravaging coitus.

Through it all, Catching the Incredible Candus chronicles my life’s single most important accomplishment, which is the capturing of Candus’ reciprocal undying commitment to me.

Broken Record

I want you, I need you, I love you

I want you, I need you, I love you

that mantra will be mine

until the end of time

I want you, I need you, I love you

LADIES FIRST

Foreword

BY CANDUS HOUCHIN

Larry and I might as well be alien beings from other worlds that have crashed into one another in the most serendipitous of pairings. The magnetic force pulling at our hearts was irresistible. Believe me, I tried to resist. At the start of the relationship, my more than fertile imagination did not encompass burning up in the name of passionate lovemaking. So much for my soothsaying abilities. Our tale is one that continues to be a tortuous discovery of how to keep our passion alive.

We had each suffered through acrimonious divorces before the marriage bonds were broken, allowing each of us the freedom to marry. My marriage was filled with both mental and physical abuse, which even included one episode that landed me in the hospital. The dysfunction does not end there; my parents continued their friendship with my first husband and never truly understood why I left my mansion and what seemed through their opaque eyes to be domestic paradise.

There are often complexities attendant to leaving an abusive marriage, and mine had a gamut of them before I was able to summon the courage to exit. If your marriage or relationship can be described in similar fashion, then consider fleeing to seek the opportunity and good fortune of finding that someone else who possesses the capacity to honor you, as happened to me in the grandest of fashions. My view dictates that to live alone is far superior to living with someone you cannot stand, even were there to be monetary and other benefits lost.

Larry’s and my laboratory consist of the usual combustibility of fire and oxygen. The key is to harness the positive power that comes from staring into your lover’s eyes and be able to then suck the reciprocated gaze into your soul. Being romantic requires commitment that is open, daring, thoughtful, and frequently time-consuming. If you want real romance, you need to work like hell to achieve it. As you will see, we did just that in the most extraordinary of fashions.

I have learned that it is important for me to look at Larry and take stock every day of the things about him I love. It is easy for Larry to catch my gaze, for he is a peacock, blatantly unafraid to spread his feathers for my amusement. I am the more cautious and quieter one who is ever alert for that which he sends my way. When I assess Larry, there are so many reasons to love him, but as in any relationship, there are also those things which anger the hell out of me. The aspects of his personality that I passionately love are the ones I consciously retain in my immediate inventory. The others, though there, slide to a somewhere that can be seen only in my peripheral vision.

Our lives are an admixture of joyous excursions but with sojourns to the depths of the opposite. We have soared with angels and cavorted with the tailed, red-pointy eared representative of evil. There is no doubt of the loyalty born from one to the other, even if there is a price to pay for it. We are similarly positive of the inherent honesty that always exists between us, even when it would be easier to fib. Finally, thanks to Larry’s unusually spectacular efforts, I know we must rank high in the history of Eros’s chronicling of romance.

If you think age is a barrier in some way to finding romance, I can vouch that no matter your age, you can still experience euphoric ecstasy of unrivaled proportions. Our romance had its beginnings when Larry was forty-nine and I was thirty-six and has sustained its passion right until now after thirty-seven years. You too can still be able to feel tears well up in your eyes because of something your lover has done for you, no matter how long ago your beginnings began. The giddy emotions of who you were then can still happen now and be meant with equal fervor.

Larry, before his recent retirement, was a great plastic surgeon. Not good--great. In the ‘80s, NBC did a special called Night of 100 Stars. At one point, forty-four of the stars were women participating in a televised fashion show on a runway, and eleven of them had been patients of Larry’s. I do not imply that 25% of the rich and famous were his patients, but his waiting rooms frequently boasted a complement of the world’s who’s who. However, before we begin recounting his life at the center of the Mecca of Plastic Surgery known as Beverly Hills, along with the first time we met, my life, our marriage, and our divorce, I want to say a few words about Larry’s time as a Flying Doctor in East Africa because it allows for a giant peek into the soul of the man I love.

Larry says his life as a true doctor began when he was in Africa. He had spent the previous five years as a general surgical and then plastic surgical resident at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. He emerged from his time there as a skilled young surgeon who was ready to specialize in the hottest of the then emerging fields of medicine: plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Once his training was done, the options in Larry’s horizons were endless. He had been educated by some of the best surgeons in the world. His peers mostly were diving into private practices, largely in posh communities across the country. Larry, however, took a last loving look around the creative counterculture of San Francisco, which he had come to cherish, and headed off to one of the most remote and impoverished regions of the world.

Instead of Beverly Hills or New York socialites, Larry would be operating on mostly desperately poor people living in thatched roof dirt huts. He would perform over 500 operations during his time there, would save lives, and correct maladies of every manner of severity. Apparently, some were so gruesome that they could easily burn the mind’s eye. Larry changed the lives of hundreds of people, and when one includes their families, thousands. Instead of diving into a practice, Larry dove into a passion that has persisted until his retirement.

I love the fact that Larry was able to follow his heart. In our relationship it is I that brings a brand of quieter nuance. To Larry, everything is black and white, allowing him to do outrageous things, simply because they sound great. This trait can lead to bold adventures as well as spectacular mishaps. It makes me proud that the man I love gave over a year of his life to those who needed him most. This is Larry’s story of how we came together with an explosion that reverberates to this very day. Unfortunately, great explosions inevitably can cause collateral damage and pain; they can also result in rebirth and glorious spasms of pure joy. I will leave the telling to Larry of the ways he kept our love alive. He is a chronicler of uncommon abilities, as you will soon see.

Candus Houchin - 2018

A POETIC PRELUDE

Panorama of Life

Fade in

This post-pubescent hormonal pimply teen

With orthodontic smile and pompadour preen

Affects his posture of coolest bravado

Though his dating phone voice is shyly vibrato

Even at that age deliciously tender

While seeking links with the opposite gender

The opening sally in his quest of life

To winnow the chaff for the consummate wife

Fade out

Fade in

Box pleats, rep ties, saddle shoes, this Joe College

In honing his skills toward bachelor knowledge

Experiences love of the probative kind

Position of a life mate remains unassigned

Searched for through all feminine variety

Where resides his goddess in society

Un-fearing, for a surfeit of time exists?

Success surely follows if one just persists

Fade out

Fade in

White jacket, stethoscope, and vintage Bentley

Womanizing while he searches intently

Occasional love interest is introduced

Soon, though, discarded ere a bond is produced

Perhaps it was fate that wasn’t conducive

Whatever the cause, a mate was elusive

Though he was now passing his thirtieth year

There was no need to fret, for youth was still near

Fade out

Fade in

Scalloped shirts, gold necklace, and Silver Cloud Three

Successful is he, as successful can be

An affair starts and five years following

Engagement, then ceremony, then betrothed

Bliss, then accommodation, finally loathed

Separation, divorce with acrimony

Lawyer, judge, staggering debt, alimony

Fade out

Fade in

Antique Rolex watches, custom suits, and shirts

Self-assessment leaves doubt. Introspection hurts

Modest home filled with son and stroked father

Fling here, romp there. At forty-nine, why bother

Mending, growing, vistas less empirical

Longed-for love appears. At last a miracle

Complications arise. She’s not yet de-spoused

Her troubling departure. His ardor’s fire doused

Fade out

Fade in

Cashmere sweaters, Polo labels, ostrich shoes

Slicked-back hair and a self-indulgent muse

Restyled, liberated. He’s high riding

An unrequited lover who’s time biding

Destiny predetermined that she return

Showing all skeptics what patience can earn

The characters are from God’s central casting

Thus, this story ends with love everlasting

Fade out

CHAPTER 1

Love’s Genesis

Through a dozen or so years, whenever Candus appeared at my offices, there were always obligatory welcoming hugs in accompaniment. Perfunctory would be their apt description until she arrived one day in late 1983 and altered that embrace qualitatively. It was prolonged and convoyed with the blending of our body parts with a pressure not before demonstrated, which then sent a sliver of awareness to traverse my core. It wasn’t quite overt enough to carry an assurance that something had indeed occurred, although a sense of mental reinforcement popped to the fore when she also mentioned that she was in the process of splitting from her husband and planning a move to Los Angeles.

I was then a 49-year-old man at the pinnacle of success. The costs of hiring my hand’s skills were not cheap, and they enabled the amassing of a small fortune, though I would lose it in unforeseen ways. I was already involved in a divorce from a wife who seemed to have grown only in negative ways, and my thought processes showed a definite leaning toward pessimism regarding my long-sought-after quest for a true soul mate. Still, I was reasonably attractive and possessed an athletic build, a vigorous life, a passable personality, and an enviable career. My seemingly bright future was measurably dimmed by the lack of an ever-elusive special someone with whom to share it.

Along with that aforementioned hug was a conscious revelation of the potential of a life-altering shift to my destiny’s axis. I was instantly more alive than I had consciously ever been before. All my senses were heightened and each craved more of what had just left my office. She departed, and immediately I walked to the front desk where my employees were seated peering up at me and I said, I am not positive, but something might just have happened between Candus and me. If it did, I’m going to jump all over that opportunity. I did not know it at the time, but one pair of employee ears was not in the least bit surprised by that utterance.

My long-time nurse Susan, had, unbeknownst to me, developed a close friendship with Candus over the previous few years. During that period, Candus had been seen by me only as a prized, but off limits, married patient who also happened to be as beautiful as any woman I had ever seen in person, on a magazine cover, or on film. Susan had become a willing informant to Candus and was easily plied by her inquiring brain cells. With her own marriage falling apart, Candus’ imagination managed to spawn a scenario that explored the possibility of there being an us, and that day’s planned greeting of a differently fashioned embrace might forever reconfigure our formerly platonic doctor/ patient relationship.

Two never-ending days later, I received a short note from Candus that lacked no clarity in declaring her interest in pursuit of that relationship. I do not know where I placed that small document that legitimatized my life’s longings. It must lie atop the pile residing in the diaspora containing all the lost meaningful objects of my life. Were it still in my possession, I would exact on it the same sort of preservative measures our government applies to the Declaration of Independence.

I recognized its potential instantly and began contemplating how best to translate the words her note encompassed into fingers on flesh. I began honing all the courting skills that I had garnered throughout my life and set myself to the task of ensuring that any interest she might send in my direction would not go unreciprocated.

Uncommon effort had always been an integral part of the way my life had been conducted and if she were to find fault in me, it would not be for lack of it. At that point, or for that matter, ever since, I regarded her interest in me as only an opportunity. One must recognize, as I did then, that love can appear from nowhere and instantaneously change everything: one’s goals, outlook, thoughts, and focus. From the moment I read that note, my life would be entirely devoted to the goal that any thoughts of love emanating from Candus would be directed solely at me.

To win and sustain her love would never be something I could take for granted, and I needed to make her cognizant of any uniqueness embodied in my being to help distinguish me from any and all competition that was guaranteed to be forthcoming. From then on, thirty-seven years and still counting, I have committed my life to one simple pursuit: catching the incredible Candus.

After that reading of the note and a pause for a moment of disbelief, I called Candus from my Beverly Hills hilltop home from which I was soon to be dispossessed due to the combined disastrous tax consequences of an earlier investment and my now ongoing divorce.

My home, though stunning in appearance, had been on the market for some time without selling. This was not for lack of potential buyers, but instead due to the unique massive structure that I had constructed on it. It was a separate building that extended entirely out over the hillside my property encompassed and was more than 6000 square feet in size.

I had used it to house my world-class collection of vintage coin-operated machines that included penny arcade games, music-playing, vending, and gambling machines; as well as a collection of glorious stained-glass Tiffany lamps and windows. Ultimately, it was purchased by a wealthy financial investor and what use, if any, he had for my unusual edifice, I never learned.

During that call, Candus and I made a date, or rendezvous if you will, for that coming Saturday afternoon at 1:00, at my home. She gave no indication of how long she would be staying and some associated wishing allowed me the assumption that it might include an overnight sojourn if all went optimally.

I know of no official definition that does justice to the word rendezvous with all of its permutations and combinations, but I knew that special preparation was a prerequisite for this particular one. At that point, aside from the stylish clothes she always wore, I knew little of her likes or dislikes. Therefore, my efforts must be broad enough to suit whatever her tastes turned out to be. I went to my wine cellar and selected the finest of my red and white wines as well as champagne, port, madera, sherry, and dessert wines. In case she did not care for alcohol, I purchased a number of assorted teas, coffees, and a variety of bottled waters, both effervescent and flat.

I went to see my friend Norbert at The Cheese Shop of Beverly Hills and bought a large selection of the world’s finest cheeses, foie gras, specialty breads and crackers and, of course, caviar. I then bought enough candles to easily illuminate the Vatican and placed them strategically all over the house in preparation for nightfall.

A visit to an antique shop yielded a darling sterling silver bud vase and I filled it with a perfect red rose. I de-mothballed my word processor, and on it I labored to create two printed copies of a play I then wrote for this particular occasion, which described a possible scenario to be played out during our rendezvous. It consisted of three acts, and of course, Candus and I were to be the stars as well as the audience. The speakers adorning each room were set to provide musical accompaniment to each of the acts from some of my favorite classical pieces and of course, should the final act be realized, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in D Minor would accompany it.

The play described, as the curtain lifted, a tentative kiss that would crescendo as each of the participants realized that their anticipations were far surpassed by reality. Next, I planned to present her with a copy of the play’s manuscript before serving the champagne and Beluga caviar that would be accompanied by baked new potatoes, sour cream, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. She, of course, could alter the script in any manner she might desire, including its finale: a sleepless night of passionate lovemaking.

Butterflies flew wild stunts in my stomach in the days and hours preceding her appearance. Upon her arrival, all my plans required an immediate setting aside and forced me to resort to winging what was then to take place. Her close friend Pam, with whom I was well acquainted because Candus had earlier referred her to me as a patient, had driven with Candus to my house. My ears had no trouble hearing Pam announce that she would be returning in two hours to pick her up. A chastity belt worn on the outside of Candus’ attire would have been no more effective than that announcement. Even if she did not notice the disappointment I actively tried to suppress, she would soon infer it when I presented her with a copy of the manuscript I had prepared.

I momentarily toyed with the idea of not showing it to her but nixed that option, as I had not anticipated any alternative scenario. Winging it was now indeed obligatory. Even though the play was not to take place, she might gain some small sense of my romantic nature by reading it. I could only hope that it would offer a hint of what a potential future might hold in store for us.

What our future did hold I will pick up on later in this book, after first revealing to you the relevant facts of my life as they unfolded prior to the seminal moments described above of in my initial attempts to sweep Candus off her feet. Learning about me will be presented in the chapters that follow, beginning with my childhood in Brooklyn and then proceeding through medical school and residency in San Francisco, my stint as a Flying Doctor in East Africa, and then my climb to the top of the Beverly Hills medical establishment until I truly was a plastic surgeon to the stars.

CHAPTER 2

Beginnings

The unceasing quest for my true love of necessity had its beginnings on December 31, 1935, 11:45 p.m. at the Madison Park hospital in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. The seven pounds and two ounces that comprised the newly arrived Lawrence Morton Birnbaum had three of his five senses awakened for the very first-time ex-utero. These included the lights of the operating room, the sounds of its personnel, and the discomfort of being slapped on the rump. I am now making the assumption that the smells and tastes associated with birth were significantly diminished by the constant exposure to the cigarette tars and nicotine that my three-packs-a-day mother had subjected me to during the entire preceding nine months.

I also presume that this absence of those two senses endured at least for the next year and three months during which time she smoked as I was attached to her breasts for any nourishment required. I was the first of three sons to Harold and Sally Birnbaum. My understanding is that there was extreme and overwhelming joy associated with my arrival. Part of this joy was for the timing of my birth, which, were it fifteen minutes later, would have disallowed the tax deduction my parents enjoyed that year. An additional significant portion can be attributed to the comeliness that I apparently presented. I have been given to understand that I was an extraordinarily beautiful newborn. The remaining majority of the elation was due to their gratitude that I had the good sense to be born exactly nine months and three weeks from the date of their marriage. Thus, my legitimacy was never a serious question, but I don’t believe I was planned for beyond the accompanying lust at the time of my conception.

As is required for all Jewish boys, the eighth day of my life was a sacrificial one. My penis’ foreskin was sliced off by Rabbi Jacob Schraeter. Now, true, or not, Jews usually have the reputation of being smart. My question has always been If they are so damned intelligent, how they can let a potentially fallible mortal rabbi anywhere proximal to that critical organ with a sharp instrument? Trust me in the name of the medical doctor I eventually became that it is not completely unheard of for serious errors to have been made in the performance of that act. Rabbi Schraeter’s hand was steady that day, thank God!

Before I delve any further, it will be advantageous to you to understand me better by describing the background from which I emerged. The people and relationships that surround and encompass us in our formative years inevitably have great effects on who we turn out to be. In my life, as in most, they were rather complicated.

My father was born to Samuel and Mary Birnbaum in 1914. It is open to dispute, but I believe that both of them emigrated from Austria. Grandpa Sam came in 1888 and Grandma Mary in 1896, which obviously made them first-generation Americans, at least once they became citizens. Although I am sure others may exist, I have never met another Jewish woman named Mary. It is decidedly a non-Jewish name except, I guess, for the original Jewish Mary. Maybe my grandparents were trying to make some connection when they named their firstborn Joseph but, if so, no religiosity was ever conferred on me by either of them.

Grandpa Sam died when I was three or four years old, and the odd picture I have seen of him revealed a slender, medium tall, rather attractive, dark-haired man who was always smiling. Photos of people smiling, taken during that period, are not overly common. I’ve always thought that the reason for those serious expressions seen in most of those old daguerreotypes is that the holding of those stiff- looking facial features made it easier to capture them when using the slow film speed prevalent in that era. But what do I know?

Apparently for the majority of their lives, including my father’s preadolescence, my grandparents could have been regarded as quite well off. They had owned a fleet of fishing boats based in Florida, which were run by my Uncle Joe. During Prohibition, fishing became their sideline business secondary to the smuggling of bootleg liquor. This entire operation was lost when Uncle Joe was literally gunned down by other competing interests.

Grandpa Sam soon headed north in pursuit of gentler waters. I guess he must have garnered enough knowledge of fish from the owning of all those fishing boats to open a fish store in Brooklyn. My father, when he came of age, eventually joined him, learned the business, and then took it over as his life’s work. Grandma Mary died when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. I perceived her to be the quintessential grandmother: from my earliest remembrance, she was gray haired, fair skinned, with a slightly plump figure adorned with large breasts. The latter, I recall, were frequently and gloriously a pillow for my embedded head while she bestowed the welcome, sagacious advice she was always bent on lavishing in my direction.

My father’s parents begat nine children, of whom he was the youngest. Including my father, I believe only six of them were still alive when I made my entrance to the world. I know nothing at all about two of them. Another two, whom I never met, were Joe, the aforementioned bootlegger, and another brother who on October 29, 1929, the day the stock market descended, also descended—from the top of a high building near Wall Street. The other siblings all had one thing in common: in one way or another, any thoughts emanating from them usually exited in some cockeyed fashion.

Elaine, my favorite, was married to Mike Monessen. Grandma Mary lived with them in the small, mostly summer-resort town of Lakewood, New Jersey located a couple of hours from our home in Brooklyn. In the earlier times, we would travel to that destination by train. The frequency of that trip allowed me to have each of the train’s stops so well etched in my brain that my self-ordained position of mini-conductor entitled me to shout out the next stop’s impending arrival at the top of my lungs just prior to the actual conductor doing exactly the same.

Group 01.jpg Caption: Larry’s paternal grandmother Mary Larry’s paternal grandmother Mary

Those trips now reside in the smiley part of my brain. Eventually, as some degree of greater affluence arrived to my parents, we made those frequent trips by car. They both smoked heavily, and in the colder months, when the windows were rolled tightly up, the trips were close to chokingly unbearable. I would arrive at the New Jersey end reeking of smoke, which caused me to make a hurried beeline to one of their showers and jump into a change of clothes in order to regain the normal aroma of humans.

Uncle Mike’s business was to supply the many hotels of the town with pickled and smoked products, the vast majority of which he had prepared himself. I enjoyed following him around, especially to the pickling barn where the aromas of aging dill and garlic pickles and tomatoes were intoxicating. He was the most powerful individual I have been exposed to in my lifetime. Anyone who thinks Popeye’s forearms were colossal never met Uncle Mike. Supposedly he had developed those massive forearms while a young man during his employment as a youth as a barrel cooper, also known as a hooper. He explained to me that, with a quick motion of his wrists and forearms, he had to slap the steel metal hoops around the wooden slats of the barrel to hold them together. Though I never had the opportunity to actually see him hoop a barrel, I remember mimicking his actions for years. My forearms, to my dismay, remained normal in appearance and size. However, I suspect that this effort did not go unrewarded: I did go on to become one of the stronger boys in my class, especially in regard to my arms.

Another of my father’s sisters was Irene, who for lack of a clinical diagnosis, was some manner of cleanliness freak. I particularly remember her penchant for sticking Q-tips in my ears each time I saw her. She married and divorced three times and was widowed by her fourth husband. Each union supposedly earned her some significant financial gain, which purportedly enabled her to become very wealthy. Family lore had it that Elaine and Uncle Mike’s only offspring, Ron, attempted to cozy up to her as she was nearing the end of her days to become her heir. No one knew if he was successful when she died. Her estate lawyers were only able to find one bank account. The monies found therein, though substantial, never rose to the level of real wealth, especially when divided amongst her remaining heirs. My father was one of them, but by then he was deceased, allowing my two brothers and me to have some additional pocket money.

My father’s brother Isadore, whom I met on only one occasion, appeared to my youthful eyes quite normal, although he eventually died in a prison for the criminally insane.

My father felt a great degree of unexplained obligation to another of his brothers, Lenny, and thus he spent more time with him than with his other siblings. Lenny earned his living cleaning and filleting fish at various fish stores, including my dad’s. He was also a part-time musician but only as a contributing member of a small unrenowned band. He was a pleasant but an always nervous chap, who was much shorter than my dad’s 5’9" frame and bore a certain flightiness about him that endeared him to me.

This brings me to the man I have always admired and loved: my father. It can be assumed that some of the genes I inherited from my father’s side of the family might have some connection to a portion of my own out-of-kilter gray matter. However, my father, Harold, was a definite exception among his siblings, being always a paragon of mental clarity, with the possible singular exception of the care of his hair. The beautiful black hair on his well-shaped head started on its progressive road to scarcity in his early thirties. His hallmark comb-over developed simultaneously. As ridiculous as it looked, I could never dissuade him from his assiduous attempts to camouflage his ever-increasing forehead.

When he was a young man, his dark twinkly eyes adorned an agreeably proportioned face and, though not an exact replica of Clark Gable, he was equally handsome. In my eyes he remained so to the end. I have never known a harder-working man than he, at least until he embarked on a relatively early retirement. Though he worked only a five-day week, he began each day by waking up at 3 a.m. He would then shave and dress and walk several blocks, through whatever whims the weather held in store for him, to his open-backed wooden-slatted fish-smelling transport truck that was