When I Asked Jesus into My Heart

By Howie Rubin

If I could encourage one person to have the faith to ask Jesus into their heart and watch the miracles that unfold before them and see how their life will be transformed, and to have them share their stories and encourage others to do the same, it will not take long before this world will be filled with love as Jesus spoke about.

This is why I wrote this book. Pass on his words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685703806

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When I Asked Jesus Into My Heart

Howie Rubin

ISBN 978-1-68570-379-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68570-380-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Howie Rubin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Howie the Brooklyn Jew

Chapter 2

My Adventures in Camp Tioga

Chapter 3

My Obsession with Fish

Chapter 4

Life's Twists and Turns

Chapter 5

The Magic of Ireland

Chapter 6

When I Asked Jesus into My Heart

A Little Footnote

About the Author

To my family and friends who have always inspired me to live my life to the fullest and to follow my dreams with passions.

To all my readers, who I hope to inspire to do the same.

Preface

Some say there is no coincidence in life what do you think?

—Howie

Chapter 1

Howie the Brooklyn Jew

Don't be shy about your life. Make every day count.

—Howie

On Mother's Day four years ago, I visited a family friend I had known since I was fourteen years old. I had met the DeFalco family on a snowy day in Brooklyn, New York, on the corner of Ditmas Avenue and East Sixteenth Street. My family lived on East Sixteenth Street between Ditmas and Newkirk; the DeFalco family lived between Ditmas and Dorchester Road in an area called Ditmas Park, which is in Flatbush, the heart of Brooklyn. Our block was designated, along with others, as national historic landmark homes to be preserved and unchanged. Built between 1901 and 1909, our house was known as a cottage-style or Cape Cod-style home. On this snowy day, schools were closed. It took more than a foot of snow for schools to be closed, and we had a long weekend. I took a walk to the corner of Ditmas and East Sixteenth Street with my sled and went sledding down the hill on Ditmas Avenue. The hill was created by the overpass on top of the train. It consisted of four tracks, two local and two express tracks. My stop was an express stop track called Newkirk Avenue. This stop was where the trains came from belowground and would begin to become an elevated railway above the city streets heading to Coney Island and Stillwell Avenue. This is where we had an amusement park called Coney Island, which had my favorite roller coaster, the Cyclone, the Thunderbolt, and the Tornado. By the way, the horse that transformed my life, his name is My Thunder Bolt.

MY Thunder Bolt

Coney Island also had Nathan's famous grilled hot dogs, frog legs, barbecue pork sandwiches, chow mein burgers, great French fries' crinkle cut, corn on the cob, burgers and more. You get the picture. On this snowy day, I met Joe DeFalco with a few of his daughters, Dawn, Dolores, and Dianne. Dawn rode on my back, and that was the beginning of our friendship. My family and the DeFalcos were friends prior, and as history will tell, our families remain intertwined to this day. Joe was an orphan, and my father was Joe's high school teacher and one of the men who had a lifelong positive impact on Joe as a role model of manhood and a positive portrayal of fatherhood.

Chapter 2

My Adventures in Camp Tioga

Around my teenage years

Later in life as I got older, around my teenage years, I became interested in car mechanics. Throughout high school, I worked on my car. The first car that I bought was a Pontiac Catalina, which we got from Seymour Weinstein, who owned a few funeral homes and a coffin factory in Brooklyn off of Atlantic Avenue. My dad would take me to get scrap wood from the wooden coffins, and we used the wood to burn as firewood. I also used this wood to make wooden cars, wood carvings, and cutting boards. I actually would sell some of my cutting boards. My dad had a complete shop in our basement, complete with a wood lathe, jigsaw, drill press, electric saws, table saws, wood files, and wood planes. My father was a shop teacher; he also taught arts and crafts in summer camp. My dad was a teacher and worked at Brooklyn Tech. My dad worked at Camp Tioga in the summer, and that's how we got to go to summer camp.

My mom was the boy's camp mother at a camp called Camp Tioga in the Catskill Mountains outside of Lake Como, Pennsylvania, and Hancock, New York, off of Highway 17. This is where Les Moonves, former CEO of CBS television fame, Larry David of Seinfeld fame, and Tony Kornheiser from ESPN Pardon the Interruption fame and Monday Night Football all went to summer camp. Tony married my cousin Carol. I remember Tony was not too impressed with me. Carol was a couple of years older than me, and I would hang around Carol and Tony while he was trying to make time with her. He obviously survived my being a pain and eventually married my cousin.

Camp Tioga was a special camp with a lot of powerful folks, a Jewish camp not as religious as Camp Ramah. We had Friday night services and said a prayer before each meal. However, we weren't like Camp Ramah. They had a lot more religious ceremony. I mentioned my dad was the boys' arts and crafts instructor. My dad didn't have much patience for me, so my interests were in other things like nature. My dad wouldn't allow me to spend time in his shop, and he wasn't about to allow me to go to Brooklyn Technical High School either. My father said he didn't want me to go to Brooklyn Tech because he didn't want to hear from all the other teachers about how much trouble I would get into. I got into a lot of trouble. I was trouble, and I was in trouble. I got into a lot of trouble.

At Camp Tioga, I wasn't the best athlete. My athletic ability came on as I got into my teens. I guess you might say I had attention deficit disorder, ADD, that probably went undiagnosed. I used to do my best not to be included with whatever activities the group was involved in at summer camp. You would go for eight weeks, pretty much the whole summer. We were lucky enough to get out of the city for the months of July and August. My dad would load up our trailer. He had a system for loading the trailer with our trunks and his arts and crafts supplies. Watching him load this trailer is probably why I have a unique art of maximizing space like playing the game of Tetris long before that became a game. By the way, I was never into video games and too bad with the explosion of X sports, but that could have been a whole other story.

We would go up to camp a few days early—my dad, mom, younger sister Cheryl, me, my oldest sister Marcia, and my older brother Alan. I don't remember exactly when my older brother and sister stopped going. We were twelve and ten and a half years younger than my oldest brother and sister. As I said, I wasn't into sports and would slip away. For instance, if we had gone to softball for an activity, I would slowly slip down to the end of the bench and avoid having to hit or participate in playing the field and slip off into the woods. I would wander around in the woods, and one place I particularly liked to go was the cesspool or holding ponds for our raw sewage. As it turned out, those holding ponds had the biggest bullfrogs. It is a wonder I never drowned in one of those ponds. However, I caught the largest bullfrogs, some of which made it to the nature shack run by Don Grote. His wife, Grace, worked in drama, set painting, and boys' costumes. The Grotes sat with my parents at the staff table and remained very good friends until Don passed away.

Don was a genius. He would make up the fireworks for the Fourth of July celebration, one of the first big activities we did when the camp