As Moishe Keeperman the oldest, at age 6, you helped your
widowed mother, Lillian, who spoke only Yiddish, raise her four kids up-and-out of the
Great Depression.
As Moishe Keeperman you played the violin until the night
your mother broke it over your head for missing a three-cent lesson from Rabbi
Schimmelstein, and then tied you up naked in the bathtub and called all the
neighbors from the tenements into your railroad flat to witness your punishment.
As Morris Keeperman you were an all-NYC track-star (see here, in this hallowed tin can, all this weighty, jingling brass, can you even lift it?) the pride of the new DeWitt Clinton High School’s first graduating class.
As Morris Keeperman you were an all-NYC track-star (see here, in this hallowed tin can, all this weighty, jingling brass, can you even lift it?) the pride of the new DeWitt Clinton High School’s first graduating class.
As Monte King you became the night manager, if only they
knew you were a Jew—oi—you think you know from tsuris, don’t ask—gevalt—if they would have caught you—of the prestigious downtown New York Athletic Club.
Someday you promised, “I will tell you about the stock tips they used to give
me, but maybe it’s not such a good idea to tell you. We'll see.”
As Monte King you bootlegged whisky--what else?--for Dutch
Schultz, ran a floating crap-game on Harlem rooftops, ran numbers for bookies, and hustled shopping bags
downtown with your dutiful, worshipful brothers, for pennies apiece.
As Kewpie Keeperman you lived for 6 years off the ponies,
yourself running up and down the East Coast from Narragansett to Hialeah, wiring money
home to us weekly.
As Monte Keeperman when Ma resigned from the OSS and applied for a gig at The Treasury Department how you had to go straight, so you bought a newsstand
on a busy corner of the Bronx and raked in a fortune reading the Morning
Telegraph and getting paid for sure things from an endless stream of winners and
losers: 10% of the winnings, 0% of the losings. Piecework, horse sense,
whatever.
As Monte Keeperman
you closed the newsstand after 12 years and became the financial officer of a
corporation from which you retired at age 62, and bought a house down the
street from Monticello Raceway for which you paid at a Sullivan County bank 32,000 silver
dollars that you had collected during your years selling newspapers and had tossed quietly into a
bucket.
As Monte Keeperman you saw your wife retire and get a nice
plaque from Dick Nixon for her nearly 40 years of service to her
country, so you bought a condo in Palm Beach for yourselves.
As Monte Keeperman you went bowling for nearly 20 years in
air-conditioned Florida bowling alleys three times a week, averaging an ABC-sanctioned 200+
until one day seventeen years ago tomorrow you left Don Carter Lanes, lit a
Camel regular in your 100+ degree spanking-brand-new white Mercury Sable and choked on
the smoke until your heart stopped. When I got the phone call I was at the
Low-Tor Bowling Alley 1,200 miles away getting ready to pick up a spare for my
team, "The Mixed Nuts".
As Ronald Keeperman what I know that is not a lie is that you
were getting ready to drive that car home with the one-arm you did not lose in
1942, four months before I was born. Given all that I’ve actually seen you do, I
have no reason to believe that your proud son would not have picked up that spare—had he stayed another minute at the lanes. We miss you every day, Pop.
