Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 51, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 12, 1997 Page: 2 of 24
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Features
2
TEXAS JEWISH POST, THURSDAY, June 12, 1997 - IN OUR 51 ST YEAR!
By Jimmy Wisch
Kditor and Publisher, Texas Jewish Post
©1997 by Jimmy Wisch
The Big Apple
inda was heartbroken. She kept ask-
ing over and over, “Where’s Tippy?
Where’s my puppy?’’
I couldn’t answer the question.
We searched the house and the back-
yard. He was nowhere.
I told the neighbors that Tippy was missing. They
empathized with me. One day as I was getting ready
to rush to an early morning class. I saw Cassandra
sweeping her front porch. Her moo moo man was
not in sight. In fact I hadn’t heard any cow cries in
several days and nearly forgot about them.
Willowy Cassandra brought me back to reality.
“Ah heard your dog is gone,” she said.
“Yes. Linda is heartbroken. I guess we’ll have to
get her another if Tippy doesn’t come back.”
“Oh, dogs are always a lot of trouble. They're
always messing up mah garden. They smell the
blood meal and dig, dig. Ah don’t favor them no
how.”
I forgot about the incident but wondered how
Cassandra knew Tippy was missing. I didn't tell her.
I asked Rene if she told her about Tippy being gone.
“No,” she answered, “Why?”
“I don’t know. Just have a funny feeling."
“You’re always so suspicious,” she said.
She was right about that. Reporters are a breed
apart. They have all the foibles and fallacies of other
humans and make mistakes like each one of us. But
one thing reporters have in common — if they're
true to their trade — is that they are suspicious.
That’s the way they dig for stories and keep at it.
Questioning. Checking and verifying their suspi-
cions with several sources until the story takes a
form of itself and develops.
This proved the case in Tippy’s mysterious depar-
ture. About a week after he was gone I was walking
around the backyard and smelled something pecu-
liar. Rotten. I pulled apart some high bushes and
there was what was left of Tippy. He had what
appeared to be white powder around his mouth with
traces going up his snoot,
I put Tippy’s remains in a corrugated box and took
them to the vet. He took one look and said. “Strych-
nine. This dog’s been poisoned.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “But you can never he sure unless
you do an autopsy and check it thoroughly.”
“How much will that cost?”
.“About fifty dollars.”
“Do it. When will you have the results?”
“In a couple of days. But you’re wasting your
money. I can tell you for sure it’s strychnine.”
“Let’s be absolutely sure. Please do it.”
The chemical verdict proved to be accurate. Tippy
had enough strychnine to kill a horse.
A few weeks later Mrs. Wrangler, who lived
across the street from us and had a son Linda’s age,
rushed up to our front porch and started banging on
our door.
She was agitated and nearly in tears.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “Our dog’s been poisoned.
Since your's has, too, we wondered if you might
know how it happened ’”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “In fact I’m trying to find out
who poisoned Tippy.”
She rushed off our porch giving me a nasty look as
if I was responsible for the demise of her dog.
We never did find out who the culprit was but I had
deep suspicions that it was Cassandra. One day she
let her frustrations out of the bag. “Ah just adore
cats,” she said. “But those dogs are always digging
up mah flower beds. Ah hate them.”
Still I had no proof. The best thing to do was to get
Linda a new dog. That’s how Tippy was replaced by
Flippy.
But before was could accomplish that we were
planning a trip to Brooklyn to show my great tribe of
cousins our beautiful daughter, Linda.
As luck would have it while walking downtown
one day Fred Brandenberg.of the American Council
of Judaism clique, said hello to me as I passed his
downtown headquarters store. He even smiled. “I
heard you had some extra chairs you'd like to get rid
of,” he said.
"Yes. I do have chairs. But these are in good
condition and I’m not trying to get rid of them but
have some for sale.”
He was referring to the surplus chairs that I bought
from the U.S. Army Surplus Sales. The chairs were
stocked at the U.S. Quartermaster in Fort Worth.
The Disposition Officer gave me the privilege of
buying the entire lot at an agreed price and allowing
me to pick them up whenever I needed them. All I
had to do was pay for what I picked up.
I’ll never forget that hot June day. Fort Worth was
having one of its successive heat waves — days on
end with over 100 degree temperature — with no
rain in sight.
%
I asked Brandenberg how many chairs he could
use. “About a gross,” he answered.
“You realize,” I began. "These are surplus army
chairs. They come from different army posts. Some
have been used. Many have not. They come strapped
12 chairs to a lot. You have to take them as they are
in the strapping. I cannot return them once I buy
them. Chairs are in short supply. At S l .00 per chair,
you’ll be saving at least $3.00 per chair at wholesale
prices.”
“I understand.” Brandenberg said.
“When do you need them?”
“This afternoon. Otherwise it’s no deal.”
I looked at my watch. It was about 2:00 p.m. The
hottest part of the day.
“Ok.” I’ll be back within the hour.”
I got into the 1936 Plymouth, raced down Throck-
morton Street to Hemphill and rushed to the huge
Quartermaster Depot on the far south side.
I loaded the gross of chairs in the back seat and
floor to the ceiling. The trunk held additional strap-
ping and I piled about three in the floor and seat
space in besides the driver’s seat.
I was back at Brandenberg’s several storied build-
ing a few minutes before three p.m. I went into to see
him but his secretary said he was busy. I waited
another half hour. It was hot and I was perspiring
from head to foot. Finally Fred Brandenberg came
over and asked where the chairs were. “In my car,”
I answered.
“Well, get them out,” he said like a Gestapo
commander.
I lugged them out.
“Now, he said sternly. Carry them up to the fifth
floor.” he pointed to an elevator.
I loaded the chairs on the elevator. Each one
seemed to weigh a ton as I picked up the steel
strappings. Sweat was pouring from every pore in
my body.
Finally a black man came over and ran the elevator
up to the sixth floor. “He’s a mean man,” he said.
“He told me not to touch any of the chairs. You got
to do it all yourself.”
After the chairs were unloaded on the fifth floor,
Brandenberg came up. He had a wire cutter pliers in
his hand. He lunged into the stacks of chairs and
started to cut the strapping. As each taught strap was
cut, the chairs tumbled across the floor. Branden-
berg went through the piles of scattered chairs and
picked out all he could that didn’t have a scratch on
them and looked absolutely new. There were about
eighty in this batch. He looked at them and pointed:
“These are the chairs I’ll pay for at $l .00 each. The
rest you can take back ”
I had to control myself. I saw the specter of
carrying the sixty-four chairs back to the car and
loading them. Brandenberg read my mind. “If that’s
not OK,” he said. “You can take them all back.”
I learned in Brooklyn that you always have to
know when to take your hand out of your pockets
and when to keep them in. The same holds true for
the mouth.
“OK,” I said. I knew it was not the agreement we
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 51, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 12, 1997, newspaper, June 12, 1997; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth755247/m1/2/: accessed July 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .