The Promoter

First Serial Rights
© 1987 Albert Bindman

I was watching my wife as she stood at the ironing board the other day, and I thought of Art. That really wasn’t unusual - it doesn’t take much to make me think of him these days: a news article involving the Pope, and I think of Art; chickens - anything having to do with chickens - even chicken soup, and I think of Art. Today I was passed on the road by a truck carrying the slogan: “Let’s Clean Up Ohio - Litterally,” and Art Radwin’s face, goofy grin and all, again flashed through my mind.

Perhaps if Art hadn’t died so young - or maybe if he hadn’t died at all - his presence in our lives wouldn’t be so intrusive. But that’s hard to say. Even when he was alive, he was - all 5’6” of him - a dynamo, a miniature whirlwind, and most definitely (as my grandmother would have called him in Yiddish) a kuchleffel, a “cooking spoon” who was always “stirring the pot.” But now that he’s dead, it takes only one of those pieces that goes into creating the mosaic of a life to bring Art to mind.

Take the thing about the truck today. My wife, Judi, wasn’t with me at the time, but I know that if she had been, when that truck passed she would have turned to me and said something about Art - anything about Art. Maybe, “It would be nice to go out to the symphony more, the way we did when Art was alive.” Or, “I wonder how Debbie is getting along these days.” (Debbie is Art’s daughter.) And I would have been thinking about Art too, or Debbie, or Jo Ann, his wife - at the same moment. And all because of a stupid little sign that said, “Let’s Clean Up Ohio - Litterally.” But, you see, that was Art’s sign. That was his ad campaign. And now, all these years after his death, it’s still around to jolt us out of our complacency and into more serious musings about our own middle-aged mortality.

As I said, it doesn’t take much. Let’s say you’d asked Art a simple question, one that had a simple “yes” answer, like, “Art, do you really think the Dolphins can win the Super Bowl?” Most people would just say “Of course,” and drop it there. But not Art. With Art, a question like that triggered a fixed stare and then The Litany: “Is the Pope Catholic? Does a chicken have lips? Does a bear shit in the woods?” Sometimes, he’d shorthand it: “Is the Pope. . .?” or “Does a chicken. . .?” And we’d all nod our heads and intone the rest ourselves.

Maybe it’s because he was short - that “short people’s syndrome” - that made him overcompensate and constantly reach for the Grand Gesture. Whatever it was, when Art wanted to make a statement, he’d find a way to deliver it with impact. After all, there are the ways of most of us, and then there is the Art Radwin way.

Even when we were kids growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, Art always had to be first: the first to go on a date, the first to drive (I sort of beat him at that one; he drove first, but I was the first to have my own car), the first to “go steady” (for a little guy who looked kind of like Hitler without a mustache, he sure had lots of girls), and, especially, the first to lose his virginity.

Art Radwin (FRHS, 1954)

But that posed a problem: our 1950s, middle-class Jewish moral values sat like a harpy pest on our shoulders and nagged in our ears and never let us forget that you married the girl you slept with (or at the very least slept with the girl you were going to marry).

At any rate, his letters from college (he had also been the first of our bunch to go away to college - to Bowling Green in Ohio) tended to linger on his libido. And when he came back home in June of ’55, I was waiting. I called his house around 10 in the morning. “Hi. What time d’ja get in?” “About 1 o’clock.” “Are you dressed? Should I come over?” “Oh, yeah. . . . Of course. . . . But don’t dress like a slob.” “Art, I never look like a slob.”

That last exchange should have tipped me off. Art never before had cared how I looked; now he was telling me not to look like a slob! But I was still half asleep (10 A.M. was the middle of the night for me; only for Art would I get up before noon on a Saturday) and didn’t feel like opening my mouth to protest more than I had. I dragged myself across the street to pick up Al Schiffrin, and the two of us drove across town.

We went in through the front door. Art’s house was a typical “Depression” house, built in the early ’30s. We walked up the five front steps into the sun porch, where Art met us. Quick hello’s. “Come into the kitchen - I have something to show you.” There was certainly nothing strange about being invited into Art’s kitchen; when we were in Art’s house, if we weren’t in his bedroom we were in his kitchen. With Art walking behind, Schiffrin and I walked straight ahead into the living room, and then headed through the dining room toward the kitchen at the back of the house.