Family myths, mostly surrounding a Russian Jewish immigrant, who became something of a Horatio Alger to my family of origin

When I was growing up, my Dad didn’t have a clue about females. So knowing this, I found his rules and myths impossible to even take seriously. Hence, they had less impact than Mom’s, whose global views were largely influenced by fear of disappointing her parents, particularly her father Max. Some of her myths seemed to me to include: Always tell the truth. Protect your siblings and parents from the truth. Don’t be selfish. Don’t be angry. Watch your mouth."
But above all else was, "Don’t disappoint Max," who boasted, "My children are my assets and grandchildren are my dividends." To disappoint Max was to fail God. While Mom always claimed I had inherited that adventuresome spirit from Max, she also confused me: my wildness was never exactly celebrated.


It was Mom who first taught me to interview and record parental history — an excellent way to insure that one’s parents can continue to confuse them after they wear out their welcome in this world.
She interviewed Max when he was 96, who boasted of how from age six his mother regularly made him walk seven miles each way through the woods, in order to have a chicken slaughtered.



Max’s father, a produce store and inn owner, had died when Max was five. He had to run through the woods of the Ukrainian village of Radmissl, returning sometimes at night, past shadows looming huge upon the trees, holding on so tightly to a squawking chicken he could have saved himself the trip altogether, were it not un-Kosher to strangle it.

Mom taught me to go for the jugular, while sounding innocent. "What did it feel like being so young and running alone through those dark woods at night? Weren’t you afraid they were haunted? Weren’t you terri…" Just then Max broke in on her inquisition into his vulnerabilities, roaring (like Mel Brooks’ two-thousand-year-old-man), "Feelings, shmeelings! You did what you had to do!"

Unlike her father, Mom was complexly cerebral and disconnected from nature. Max was a farmer turned businessman and never forgave his wife Sonia, for "making him" give up gardening to go into business.



Max was a simple man who praised his cabbages and said not to pick all the weeds because you never knew which ones would turn into something beautiful. Max espoused many proud ideals, including, "Work hard and be responsible for what you do. Women must be modest, helpful and cheerful. Men must be strong and not take any shit. Never complain. Be loyal to family above all others. Be loyal to your country above all else. Never talk about anything personal. Persevere. Moderation in all things. Pretend there is no sex. Eat good food."



Max said, "Take what you want but eat what you take,"
"A man without a family is like an island: water all around but not a drop to drink"
and, my favorite was "the truth is the best lie", which i adopted.

But my brand of honesty, along with my later obsession with sex, never washed well with Mom, who, as an adolescent fantasized getting pregnant before she was married, and committing suicide.



"Be Proud of Who You Are" was inscribed on Max’s fiercely proud face, chest puffed forward, shoulders back. I recall that from a photo taken in the mid-eighties, only a few years before he died at age 96.

Max ran away from his home at age 11, to avoid apprenticing with a tin roofer. He left behind a brother and a sister.
At age 14, he tried working for his uncle who lived near Kiev (not in it, since Jews were forbidden to reside within the city). He’d said to the peasants, who were regularly robbing his uncle’s wagon of the grain, "When you steal from us, please steal from the bin marked, ‘received.’" That way, at least his uncle Could get reimbursed.



Later he joined the army. A day came when Max was denied permission to attend the classes in reading and writing because he was a Jew. That night he threw on an overcoat to hide his layered his civilian clothes, and walked to Germany from wherever they were stationed, knowing fully that if he were caught he would be shot by a firing squad or sent to Siberia.



Max never could bring himself to blame the Czar, to whom he always held and irrational Patriotic allegiance. He MUST HAVE said, "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil," WHEN HE set his sights on America. He traveled third class with the steerage cattle. In steerage, it was common policy to throw overboard passengers who became seasick. He arrived in New York in 1910. With a few dollars from his brother, who was to join him later, and with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization with an office in Ellis Island that helped Jews with immigration, Max relocated to Hartford.



There he re-connected with his OMIT:older sister, Tanta Malka, engaged to someone and getting ready to move with him to California. Max immediately started working in a factory. After one week he said, "Not for me!" And went down to a bar on Front Street where despairing immigrants discussed their options. A man suggested they rob a train together. Max answered that he had to be crazy.
A man owed Max some money and had none, so he gave Max his milk-delivery business instead. Max had to hoist her before he could get her to work.
Max bought the horse and wagon for ten dollars and began making milk deliveries. Delivering a staple excused Max from having to serve in World War I.
Max adored animals as much as his cabbages and tomatoes. He probably observed, unknowingly, the Jewish practice law requiring us to feed our animals before ourselves.
After a couple of years, Max sold his business for twice his investment and began peddling fruits and vegetables. Within a year he had enough money to send for his brother, Morris.


A few years later, as business progressed to fruit stands and wagon deliveries, he sent for his cousin, Sonia who he then married.
My grandmother, Sonia, had neglected to mention most of her family to my Mother, who only recalled stories about a peasant girl who worked for them, who slept above the stove in the kitchen. Sonia did once mention a brother, who, during a fire in their house, had run back in to save his books, nothing else. Mom deduced that he was an intellectual, like herself and regretted having never met her uncle. All she knew of her grandfather was that Max had once remarked that when there was trouble, he would take to his bed.



Max dreamed of farming. Sonia discouraged him from farming but he married her and resented her for it for the duration of her life. She died much younger than he from a weak heart.

By the ’30s, Max developed a relatively booming business, United Fruit and Produce.
"Money will come, money will go," he insisted, and when he was convinced to sell his property on Front Street for thousands, he sold it because it sounded like a lot of money. When he learned it was worth millions, he didn’t miss a beat. But when his son and he disagreed, he was too anxious to sleep. Max, who hated excuses and cons, used to say, "You don’t get something for nothing."


When a man came to his warehouse, asking for a job, Max said "okay", he would give him a job. But when the man replied, "You know Mr. Karp, you’d have to hire me anyway, because I’m a Jew, and Jews have to hire Jews," he bellowed, "What! You’re a Jew! I don’t hire Jews. You’re fired!"

Max was with immigrant Italians most of the time, and often enjoyed speaking like a genuine Italian when in their company. In the mid-’40s, he was negotiating with a man to rent his cottage at a beach for the summer, when just before the deal was to be signed, the man said, "And you know, Mr. Karp, the best thing about this place is there are no Jews!" Max exclaimed, "Why you goddamn Guinea; what the Hell do you think I am?"



"God has been good to me," he’d announce before we ate from the head of his son’s long dining room table in Manchester. Family gatherings were jovial with Max boasting and telling stories, giving away or hiding dollar bills to us grandchildren, offering us sips of his frosty Budweiser, and a seat on his sturdy knee, neutralizing and potential mystery and cravings towards alcohol.



He believed in Moderation in All Things and imparted feelings of trust and entitlement to his children and to his children’s children, forever reminding us of all the good things that blessed his family, and his part in providing that we should be happy.



He only exacted from us one cost, and it was meant especially for our parents. That was to "Remember who helped you," which included to "Always kiss an adult who hands you money."



There were no alcoholics or addicts in this lucky family. It is a waste that he and I never hardly spoke, that he was rather a tempermental, but benign king and I one of many lovely children that graced his castle, but to whom he didn’t relate directly.
At least that was the best I could make of what might otherwise have been a cranky old man. For all his charisma, Max was hard to get close to and did not like uppity women. And for that reason I secretly rejected him: How could such a great man find so little of interest in me?
Of course, by the ’60s, I was anathema to my grandfather, who balked at my generation’s indulgences. My twin and I were fashionably out of control and when we joined a commune in Massachusetts, he was appalled. It was not the American Way. Mom humored him, saying, "they will outgrow it soon." Max somberly shook his head as if he knew the power of masses under the influence of other charismatic leaders, as if he’d been usurped by an evil and alien enemy. He sighed heavily and if he could have cried he would have, and replied, "I don’t know."



He couldn’t articulate his outrage and disappointment that this place was not a place from which we could graduate or move on. It was another planet, and leaving all ties to the past behind because they were ties to materialism and emotion, was to him a denial and betrayal of all he valued most: honor and loyalty to parents and family members.



To us it was a heroic effort to save the world. It was to be a blueprint for a new world, which would eventually provide a better life for all. But to him it didn't mirror a man who’d gone out and made it on his own, with, as he would say, "God-given gifts," his brains and his brawn. A man who had taught himself to read and to write once he came to America; had made sure to invest in college tuition for us.
Now I was betraying, not just his ideals but my own vision, for I’d formerly been eagerly awaiting my enrollment in Goddard College. Max had hated fanaticism. I wish I had hated it also, but who knew. If I was trying to match Max’s life of adventure, I should have included his strong sense of self-preservation.



The preservation however, didn't seem to stop. Mom, finding Max overbearing, had looked elsewhere for help teaching her daughters how to survive. She gave up and absorbed herself in less confusing topics like Einstein’s theories of relativity, Jewish History, and Zen Buddhism. Sometimes she even tried asking Dad for help!

"Max wasn’t angry, was he?" She’d typically ask Dad when Max snapped at her. She seemed to believe that if someone didn’t want to talk, they would just talk about not wanting to talk.
"How the hell would I know what he felt?" would put an end to both discussion and the possibility of a non-verbal friendly encounter. Which would have been just what Max would have done.



Max influenced us all with an impatient bluntness that could both charm and shut up as he saw fit; a useful survival skill for a person who refuses to be a stranger to the wide world of human nature, wherever he travels. In this day of confusion between what is politically correct and what is honset, Max was the savviest of us all.