Rant #2,518: Go West

Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated by sister's 60th birthday. She was barely born in 1959, with a birthday of December 26, which she shares with the celebrations of Boxing Day and Kwanzaa.

But anyway, in our household, in particular when my sister and I were young, December 26 meant my sister's birthday, and being that she just celebrated her 60th, well, I just had to do something to highlight the occasion.

We went over to her home, and I did a presentation where I went through her life from the moment she came home from the hospital pretty much to age 12, the 12 years or so when I shared a bedroom with her.

When we were growing up in Kew Gardens Hills and later Rochdale Village, Queens, the two of us shared a room, which was really no big deal if you are the same gender, but becomes and increasingly big deal if you are of different genders as you grow up.

And that was the case in our bedroom, which had a line of demarcation in the dead center of the room, a set of blinds that were always closed to divide the room in halves.

I guess you can say that it acted as our own "Berlin Wall," and yes, often the factions that were divided were not too happy with each other and needed such a division, but most times, that division just signified that my sister had one side of the room and I had the other.

My side was festooned with posters of my sports heroes, everyone from Babe Ruth to Walt Frazier. When you stepped over to her side of the room, her walls were literally plastered with one picture of David Cassidy after another.

Yes, our bedroom was something of a Twilight Zone of living together in perfect harmony, I guess.

But occasionally, we would get together to do something in either her side or my side of the room. I cannot tell you how many times I played the game "Mystery Date" with her, but I used to rig the game so I would always get the bum, and she never knew it. I just wanted the game to end quickly, I guess.

But sometimes my sister would come over to my side of the room, and we would listen to records together, mainly the 45s either my mother or I, or later my sister, would buy from the local Mays department store, or perhaps the Kress store in the local mall.

But this one particular record that we used to listen to, well, we got it from our local supermarket.

In 1965 I think it was, Manischewitz Wine--one of the biggest kosher wine and food producers in the United States--put our a promotional record for Passover called "Manischewitz Presents The Jewish Cowboy, Harold Stern from Centerville, Texas." It was a one-sided promotional record that you received when you purchased your Manischewitz matzohs for Passover.

Being a good mother, our mom got her Manischewitz matzohs, and the record became part of our collection, and a record we regularly listen to when we got together to listen to our singles.

Talk about "Twilight Zone" ... this record was it! It featured Harold Stern, a young Jewish Texan, talking about his life as a Jew in Texas. There is plenty of music on the disk, but not produced by Stern, who only introduces his friend, Avram, to us.

Stern does this in his heavy Texas drawl, and Avram goes on to sing not just Jewish songs, but Italian ones too.

It is a laugh a minute riot, between the drawl and the music, and my sister and I used to listen to this record all the time, and laugh and laugh and laugh some more. It became our own personal classic, amid all the other 45s we played by acts like Bobby Sherman, the Partridge Family, the Beatles and the Monkees.

Anyway, we must have literally played that record to death, as when we moved to Long Island in 1971, it was lost, and it pretty much faded from our memory Heck, on Long Island, we had our own separate bedrooms, and growing up now pretty quickly, Harold Stern and Avram simply did not fit in.

Well, I always had the record in the dark recesses of my mind, and when it came time for me to think up a 60th birthday celebration for my sister, I just had to include it in the group of items I bought her.

I scoured eBay for months looking for this record, but when I found it, sellers were charging upwards of $150 for it, and there was no way that Harold Stern and Avram were that valuable to me.

But the more I looked over several months, the more people were posting this record, and the prices they were charging were much, much less.

I finally found the record for a fraction of that $150, and I bought it and presented it to my sister when we did her celebration. I also recorded it for her, put it and a lot of other music of our youth on a thumb drive, and she can listen to Harold Stern and Avram while she is driving her car.

That would be the end of the story, but I have such a personal connection to this record that for fun, I began looking myself for the record on eBay. I had gotten an eBay gift card for Hanukkah, so I figured that if I found it for the right price, I would have my own copy of this record.

Well, I found it for a great price, ordered it, and after a long wait--the seller told me that his mother had passed away and that he had not had time to send it to me, and I just had to wait for it--the record finally came late last week.

So right now, more than 50 years after the fact, not only does my sister have this record, but I do too!

Memories are really made of this, and "Manischewitz Presents The Jewish Cowboy, Harold Stern from Centerville, Texas," is one of those things that do not leave you once you have heard it. It stays with your forever.

If you want to hear this record in its "Twilight Zone" mentality, it is on YouTube at https://youtu.be/cWNSOCrrtvg.

"Heck, there's nothing that unusual about being a Jewish cowboy," Harold Stern says on the record, and you know what?

With more than 50 years of hindsight to back him up, he's right.