Family Lore

My dad’s dad, Zayde Jake, broke his nose long before we ever met. To refer to his nose as “broken” is frankly an understatement. It looked as if it had been flattened, macerated, and then molded into a vaguely biomorphic shape and left to harden. According to family lore, he broke it – or, more exactly, had it splattered across his face – in a street brawl with communist stooges determined to take over the union he had helped organize. Whatever the facts of the case, the truth is he was one tough guy and about as far from a doting grandpa as you could get. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes (Camels) that stained his fingertips yellow. He gambled at cards. He gunned a shot of slivovitz every evening before dinner. Most days he went around unshaved. My mom, who had a bourgeois abhorrence of rough behavior, disliked him immensely. I still remember the bristle-brush feel of his stubble when I kissed him on the cheek.