Transcript of interview with Maurice "Maury" Halfon Behar by Barbara Tabach, March 14, 2016

AN INTERVIEW WITH MAURICE HALFON BEHAR An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE In 1938, Maurice ?Maury? Halfon Behar was born in Biarritz, France and spent his early childhood in Bayonne, France. On January 12, 1944, the Nazis took his parents from their home, but Behar was left behind due to a bout with measles. He was then cared for by his neighbor, Marie Cazous, passing as her son, until he was adopted by relatives from the United States and moved to New York City in 1947. Behar spent the next decade in New York City, spending his adolescent years in the South Bronx, and then studying business and prelaw at New York University. After graduation, Behar served in the United States Army, and soon after, took his first job as a welfare investigator for the City of New York. Ten months later, he started his sales career entering a trainee program at Playtex, and continued with various sales positions, eventually ending up in Los Angeles. Behar later received his real estate broker?s license and started his own company, Northridge Equity, with a partner. After closing a large real estate sale in Las Vegas, Behar moved with his son, Brett, to the city in 1990, as did his business partner. After struggling with ventures alongside his partner, Behar finally started a new career in hotel security, first with a position at the Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. He later moved to a position at the New York New York Hotel and Casino soon after it opened in 1997. In this interview, Behar reflects upon his childhood in France, and later adjusting to life in New York. He talks of his admiration for those that have cared for him in his youth, including Marie Cazous and his parents, Marco and Flora Behar. He details his career path, and how he ended up in Las Vegas. In addition, Behar describes a recent family trip to France, visiting his place of birth for the first time since leaving as a child. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Maurice Halfon Behar on March 14, 2016 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv Shares his memories of Nazis taking away his family; the fate of his mother and father. Talks about living with neighbor Marie Cazous. Describes early childhood in Bayonne; passing as her son. Mentions family history from Istanbul, Turkey. Reflects on immigrating to United States on merchant marine ship, adopted by relatives living in New York City?????????1-8 Talks about adjusting to life in the South Bronx; learning to speak English; getting a street education; becoming a strong baseball player. Describes his father and his businesses, as antique store owner and concession stand owner. Reflects upon becoming U.S. citizen; getting drafted into U.S. army, while also getting drafted by French Army?????????????..9-17 Describes relationship with religion, Judaism throughout childhood and into adulthood; getting bar mitzvahed. Mentions caring for son as single parent. Talks about college experience; first job as welfare investigator for City of New York; next job as salesperson with Playtex Bras and Girdles, eventually getting transferred to Los Angeles. Takes new sales job with Jantzen Swimsuits, ending up in Memphis, Tennessee, where son was born??????.???..18-26 Talks about being forced to move territories, then quitting; returning to L.A. with wife and son, and landing job at Wrangler Jeans. Finds great success in developing business relationship with Miller?s Outpost. Mentions divorcing first wife and raising son as single parent; meeting second wife; short sales position with Van Heusen Shirt Company. Talks about son?s high school baseball career; transitioning out of sales and into real estate brokering????????.27-34 Remembers first impressions of Las Vegas in 1951 with parents; later visits in mid-sixties and early seventies when living in L.A.; staying at Stardust Hotel and Casino; perks of being valued gaming industry customer. Talks about his big real estate deal before moving to city; relocating to Las Vegas; owning bar with partner?and then losing it. Shares about third wife and her career managing political campaigns. Describes getting into hotel security career??...????35-44 Shares about wife?s battle with cancer; encouraging him to visit France. Talks at length about his trip to back to France with family; spending time in Paris and Bayonne; honoring Marie Cazous and process of titling her as ?righteous? person. Discusses relationship with son; his son?s career, which eventually brought him to California. Reflects on relationship with Judaism; dealing with anti-Semitism; dealing with experience as Holocaust survivor??????...45-60 Index........................................................................................................................................61-62 vi 1 This is Barbara Tabach. I'm sitting with Maury. Maury, I'm going to ask you to spell your name. It's March 14, 2016, and we're sitting in my office at UNLV. We're going to talk about your extraordinary life story. Spell your name for me. First name is Maurice. Middle name, or real name, is Halfon. I was adopted by the Behar family. Maury is spelled how? M-A-U-R-Y. I want to make sure we do this correctly. I had a very uneventful, spoiled life until the age of four. I was an only child at that point even though my mother was pregnant when she died. The only reason I'm alive today is because when they came for my parents, I was sick with the measles. I remember the knock on the door, like two in the morning. My father opened the door and there was a whole bunch of gendarmes with a Nazi officer in the background. They asked my father if he was Isaac Halfon and my father said, "Yes." He says, "Ali vie;" come with us. My father said to him?I was in his arms, "My son is sick with the measles. Can I leave him behind?" The gendarme looked at the German officer and he shook his head yes and that's the only reason I'm alive today. All the neighbors had gathered around. My father saw Marie Cazous and he said to her, "You mind taking care of my son until I come back?" She said, "Of course not." He gave her a whole bunch of money and she took me back to her apartment, which was a floor above us. Of course, my parents never came back and I spent the rest of the war years, until 1947, passing off as her son. She was a spinster. What year was it they knocked on your parents' door? January 12, 1944. I found out later on that my mother and all the females, as soon as they got off the train, were sent to the right, which meant the gas chambers. My father and David Bally, my uncle, were sent to the left, which meant work detail. They survived the rest of the war somehow. 2 Two weeks before the end of the war, they were sent on a train back to Germany as slave laborers and the allies bombed the tracks. So the train had to stop and the Germans told everybody to get off. My uncle, David Bally, got off the train and told my father, "Come on." My father said, "I'll be right with you." My uncle got off the train and my father never showed up. My uncle went back on the train and he found my father dead in his seat. He probably died of exhaustion or whatever. The Germans, the wonderful people they are, took his body and threw it in a ditch. So his body was never found. My parents' bodies were never found. When I went back to the Holocaust Museum with my sister when it first opened in the early '90s, I looked for them and there was no trace of them. I asked the people there and they said, "We have no record of them." So I entered them into the registry and now they're part of the victims. So you were very, very young. What's your first memory of growing up in France? You were in Bayonne? Yes. It was happy, carefree. As you can see from the pictures, I was spoiled. I was the apple of their eye. I probably would have lived in France the rest of my life being a businessman. Did Marie Cazous have children of her own? She never got married. She was a spinster. She devoted her whole life to me. Unfortunately, my uncle came back. It must have been 1947 or 1948. Apparently he was in negotiations with the rest of the family in the United States, in Turkey and in Mexico City, because they all dispersed. I even had relatives in Budapest, Hungary, but that was not a consideration because of the Communists. It was set up that I go to United States where I would have the better shot. My adopted father, Marco, had no male heirs, so he wanted somebody to carry on his name. He only had my sister, his daughter. He came one night and told Marie to pack me up, the next day he was 3 going to take me to Bordeaux, and I was going to go on a boat to the United States. Her whole world was shattered when I left because I was her whole world. We did everything together except when she worked and I was sent on the streets, not to talk to anybody. Nobody knew who I was. All the neighbors knew who I was, but nobody said anything. Did she work? She was a seamstress, worked out of the house. I assume she was around thirty-five at that point, a real tall lady, as you can see from the picture. Her brother disappeared. Her father died. So she was all by herself in Bayonne. I heard just this past trip from the three brothers, the San Juan brothers, that she was lost without me. They lived in my apartment house, and came from Bilbao, Spain to see me. The three brothers moved to Caracas, Venezuela in 1950, and she went with them. She was Spanish Basque, so she spoke fluent Spanish. She was very unhappy in Caracas, Venezuela so she came back to Bayonne in 1950 and somehow she died at a real early age. I got a hunch she committed suicide. I got a hunch because nobody would tell me how she died even though they all know. They weren't even going to tell me where she was buried. All they said was she was buried in another town. Nobody wanted to talk about her, unfortunately, and I wanted to talk about her. Was she Catholic? Very, very strong Catholic. She used to take me to church every Sunday. Never tried to convert me. Christine, the interpreter my son hired, besides looking up everybody, also went to the school that I went to for third grade. She convinced them to let me in and look at my classroom. So we went up there. Bayonne is a town full of historic markers of the Second World War. 4 There's a big historical marker right in the front of the school in the plaza. There's all kinds of plazas down there. Every place we went there was a commemorative insignia on something, on a building. Every park has a statue of something. My son and his family, we spent six days in Bayonne and went to every place that I remembered. One of the things I loved doing was walking by the river, which wasn't too far from the house. Bayonne is a town on a hill basically. Everything is downwards going towards the river. That's the old Bayonne. The new Bayonne on the other side is a little more straight streets. Every street is cobblestone. It still is today. So anyway, every time [Marie] told me I had to leave the house because she had somebody coming for a fitting?and she used to tell me, "Don't talk to anybody; just be quiet"?I used to go down by the river. Across from the river there was a whole bunch of little cafes where people used to sit, and they still do. There were two stories. One story was nice. There was a German soldier there, a regular army soldier, and he was an old farmer. I used to call him Daddy Long Rifle because he had the biggest bayonet I ever saw at the end of his rifle. He used to talk to me all the time. Didn't ask me any questions. He used to talk about himself and his family, and give me chocolates all the time. One day he disappeared, so I guess he got sent to the front. Then the other story was really not very nice. I was on the riverside of the street and I was walking. There were three Nazi officers, in their black outfits and red Nazi insignias, laughing and joking in the back of this little cafe. This little French man was walking on their side, just minding his own business. He must have been about seventy. He was just shuffling along, minding his own business. One of the German officers?they were drunk?waited until the little French man got to him and he said, "Get down on your knees and lick my boots." The little French guy looked at him and got down on his knees and licked his boots. This bastard took out his Luger and shot 5 him right in the head right in front of me. To this day...That's why you don't kiss ass. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen no matter what. When I came to the United States, I used to get my ass beat every day in the South Bronx because there goes the little funny guy in his little shorts with a little accent. The Bronx was a different animal in those days; every three blocks we had a different culture. In those days, you had the Jewish section; you had the Italian section; you had the Irish section; you had the black section; and you had the Puerto Rican section. If you went three blocks out of your way, and I had to go to the park, I was out of my territory. All these people always ganged up on you in threes, always threes, never by themselves. One day I had enough of this nonsense and I got waylaid by three Puerto Rican guys. I was always a short guy for my age. I said, "I'll tell you what; I'll take on the biggest guy. I'll take you on one on one." They started laughing. He said, "Okay, you're on." He beat the living crap out of me. I almost got put in the hospital. But after that they left me alone, which is what I was trying to accomplish. I was going to take their whipping. But you can see I stood up to you guys, now leave me alone. And I became one of the guys. Wow. Yes. I learn real fast. The French man was just a regular citizen; he wasn't Jewish? He wasn't identified as something else? No. All the Jews had been taken already. How many Jews were taken from Bayonne? I don't know about Bayonne. But seventy-six thousand Jews in the whole of France lost their lives and twelve thousand were kids. I don't know how many in Bayonne, but I assume it was quite a 6 bit. They rounded up anywhere from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand Jews that were left from Bordeaux down. Bordeaux is about a hundred and fifty miles north of Bayonne. In those first years with Marie, were you aware that you were Jewish, or you were just a kid? I was just a kid. If we went to synagogue, I don't remember it. I don't think my father was very religious. So, no, I wasn't aware of it. I just knew that I was different; that I couldn't talk to anybody, any stranger. I spent most of the time by myself. I think you told me your ancestry was from? Istanbul, Turkey. From what I was told my mother?s father, was the grand rabbi of Turkey. He died before I could remember him. My grandmother immigrated to the United States and lived with us for a while. In the Bronx, they had two sisters and two brothers of my mother living there, which is probably another reason why they sent me there. The only (uncle) that was good to me was my father, Marco, and he was not a blood relative. He took me to shul and tried to explain to me. I kind of rebelled; I'm not very religious at all now. Then you've got to realize that I only spoke French. They spoke English, Ladino, which is a Sephardic type of slang, and a little bit of Turkish and Spanish, and I only spoke French in those days. On top of that, they sent me to Hebrew school and I rebelled. I got thrown out of Hebrew school because the teacher hit me with a ruler and I threw an eraser at him and hit him right in the head. I got expelled, which was fine. I didn't care. In high school, I failed French. They had a German woman, Mrs. Krakow, teaching French. One day she came up to me and said, "(Lay bosh), didn't kill enough of you little pigs.? I was fourteen at that point. I laid her out cold. I knocked her out cold. The principal came up to me and said, "You can't hit a woman. I understand why you did it." He says, "I tell you what. I've got to suspend you for two weeks. You come to my office every day for two weeks and it won't go 7 on your record." So he understood. But this woman didn't understand it. She was just a German nationalist, I guess. I failed French that year, so I had to go to summer school. That's interesting. You were telling me a little bit about your journey from France to the United States. You were eight and a half years old or so. You travelled by yourself? Right. The name of the ship was S.S. Muriel. It was a Merchant Marine ship. I don't remember what they were carrying. I shared a cabin with three old ladies. The crew kind of made me their mascot and I roamed every place with them. It took a whole month to cross the Atlantic. To this day I don't know why I landed in Mobile, Alabama; I guess that's where they were going. You got the records there. It cost sixty-seven dollars, I think, for the trip. For some reason, my uncle put me on a ship, probably because it was the cheapest thing to do. The trip was very nice. We had a few storms and stuff like that. It was just another adventure in my life. I kind of knew I was different, but I didn't know why. I really wasn't thinking too deep on why was I saved and all that kind of stuff. It didn't even enter my mind. I was a just a happy-go-lucky little boy. What does a kid do on a ship for a month with old people around him? I assume there were no other passengers, it sounds like? No, just the four of us and a crew. The crew was great. We ate with them. They took me and showed me what they were doing. I reminded a lot of them of their kids. It was nice. No incident sticks out in my mind. They were just lonely people, merchant seamen. It's a terrible life to my way of thinking. I never get seasick, probably because of that. I don't even remember the family I stayed with in Mobile, Alabama, but I'm sure there was a reason that it took a month for me to get to New York City. Then you said you learned to play poker on the ship. 8 Yes, I learned how to play Seven Card Stud on the ship. I still play poker to this day. I'm pretty good at it. When I went to New York, I was kept out of school until May. So you're in Mobile, Alabama, for just a short period of time? For about a month. And then somebody from your family came and met you? No. They put me on a plane by myself. It took eight hours to get from Mobile, Alabama to LaGuardia. It was a prop job. The stewardesses were very nice to me. They made me feel comfortable. I landed in LaGuardia in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. They had one of those late spring snowstorms in New York, which they're famous for. When I landed the stewardess took me over to these four people and they all started hugging me. I said, "Who the hell are these people? What the hell do they want?" I was pretty independent. I've always been independent all my life because of my experiences. They told me they were my aunt and uncle and there were their best friends and I was going to go live with them. They're speaking French to you. No. They spoke a little French, but the stewardess translated for me. She spoke French. They spoke mainly English and a little bit of Pig Latin. They took me to the Bronx into their home. Then it took about two months for the school district to find somebody who spoke French. I left school in the third grade in Bayonne and they put me in the fifth grade here. This teacher?s name was Mrs. Kissel, a very pretty blond lady, who spoke French. She conveyed everything that was happening. As a kid you learn how to pick up languages real fast. By the end of the summer, I spoke passable English. The next year I was supposed to be back in her class, but somehow she sustained a bad eye injury and never came back 9 as a teacher. I got put into different classes. I did okay. I was on the streets all day. My adopted parents were not equipped for a kid like me. I was very independent. Their daughter was in college already. I think my father was like fifty-two and my mother was like forty-nine at that point. They weren't ready for another eight-year-old or nine-year-old kid. Basically, I ran wild on the streets all by myself. I left the house at eight in the morning and didn't come back until nine at night. But it was safe in those days. The Bronx is not what it is today. I used to go in the park and play and play and play. I learned how to shoot craps on the sidewalks when I was ten. Little things like that. We played ball mainly in the alleys. The Bronx was full of alleys in those days. What kind of ball did you play? We played something called punch ball, where you take a rubber ball and you punch it and then you play like baseball. We played stick ball. We went to the courtyard at the high school and played basketball. I was good at anything with a ball. I was always the fastest runner in the whole group. We played a little game called Land with a pocketknife. You take a pocketknife and a square piece of land, throw the knife and let it stick in there, and that's your territory until somebody takes it from you by throwing the knife into it. We were not bad kids. We just kept ourselves busy. We used to play a game called Wall, which means that you took the Spalding ball, little pink ball. The buildings were close together. You threw it against the wall and bounce back and forth. If you caught it, it was an out. If it bounced one time, it was a single. If it bounced twice, it was a double. A triple, a home run. We kept ourselves busy. We used to challenge each other doing that. I remember there was a corner candy store where you could buy candy for a penny or two. In the back, the guy was a bookie. He took bets in the back of the store, which we never got 10 involved with. We had a little bowling alley that went down the stairs just like in the movies that they show you from the old part of New York. I used to set lines there for ten cents a game because in those days they didn't have the automatic pin shufflers. Everything to make a few bucks. Then I got involved in playing baseball with the neighborhood kids. We were very good. We won the City Championship when I was fourteen in American Legion ball. I played second base. One of our prizes was to go play the convicts at Sing Sing. You're kidding me. No. I was there. We played the convicts at Sing Sing. We played the convicts at Rikers Island. We beat the convicts at Rikers Island three to two. In those days, you just walked free among them. We had lunch with them, right in the main hall. But in Sing Sing, a little different; we couldn't mingle with them because those are hardcore criminals. We had lunch with the guards, then we went down and played them; they beat us thirteen two one. What a day that was. I lead off and got a single. I'm talking to the first base man, a big Puerto Rican guy, about six three, six four. I'm trying to make small talk with him. I said, "What are you in for?" He said, "I'm in for murder." I said, "Oh, okay." Then he said, "See the third base man, that big black kid?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "He's really stupid." I said, "Why is that?" He said, "He killed his wife, really stupid. I killed a bank guard." Like it made a big difference. They had distinctions. They beat us thirteen to one. They killed us. They had a guy playing center field that was better than Willie Mays in those days and the team stayed together for twenty years. [Laughing] So baseball kept me going. I played baseball in high school. I played a little bit in college. I played American Legion ball. That really saved me from getting into trouble. That's good. Did you say you worked or did you have jobs growing up? 11 When I went to college, yes. I had jobs. My father had two jobs; he owned two different companies, to show you what kind of Damon Runyon character he was? First, tell me your adoptive parents' names and let's talk about them. Marco and Flora Behar. Flora was my mother's oldest sister. Marco was the gentleman that she married. It was almost kind of an arranged marriage from what I gathered. They both came from Istanbul. Marco was in the Turkish Army and he lost most of his brothers in the First World War. He came to the United States with, I guess, my mother's brothers, Harry and Jack Salti. That was my mother?s maiden name, Salti. I guess it was kind of arranged that Flora came later and they got together. My father, as you can see in the pictures, is a very good-looking man. He was part owner of an antique store in Greenwich Village where I used to go see him all the time. At night he owned a concession stand at a place called Westchester County Center, which is like the Thomas and Mack. He worked in the mornings and afternoons in the antique store, and for about two hundred nights a year, he worked in the concession stand. He had my Uncle Harry, who is my mother's brother, working for him. It was a pretty big deal. We had people like the Globetrotters up there. They had the New York Knicks up there a couple of times. They had the Home Show and the Travel Show. I used to go to work with him to make money. My uncle ran the place, but I had the whole upstairs where I was the boss when I was like fourteen and fifteen. We had about six or seven employees upstairs. We had the bigger bar downstairs. My father was quite a character. When they had the opera, they were not allowed to sell food while the opera was going on. So at the intermission they set up a big stand outside. My father used to sell orange juice for fifty cents on one side and my uncle sold it for twenty-five cents 12 on the other side. Never got a complaint. That's funny. Yes, it was. My uncle used to leave the cash register?they didn't have such thing as a tape and mechanized registers in those days. It was just left open. My uncle used to leave the register wide open to go find a two-cent deposit of a Coke bottle all the way on the other side where you couldn't see the register. I used to tell him, "Uncle, this is stupid. Somebody could rob you just to get a two-cent..." My uncle and I never got along, which is one reason why I didn't take the business over after I graduated college because he had it up until... [My father] used to get the concession. You had to bid on it every year. To show you what kind of smart man he was even though he only had a fourth grade education, every Christmas Day we used to load up the car with goods from the antique shop and go to every commissioner that was on the voting committee and give them presents. We knocked on your door Christmas Day. We did that for years. He gave them presents. So he got the bid every year. The antique business was a fascinating business. I remember we used to go to estate sales in Connecticut and he used to buy a lot of the antiques. I'm going back to the mid-fifties. Once he found a Napoleonic clock and he brought it back. My father had a great photogenic memory. We had like three thousand items in the antique shop and the antique shop was a block long. It was really big, on Eighth and Green Street, which is right down the street from where I went to school at NYU. Didn't have a price on any item. What he did is he sized you up as you came in and then he figured how much he could get out of you and that's what the price was. He's the one that taught me whenever you go into a store, you never ask for what you want right away. You always hint so the guy doesn?t know exactly what you want so he won't jack up the price on you when there's no price on it. And it works. It works because if somebody knows that you want this item 13 if there's no price on it, the price goes up. That's just a little trick I learned from him. Anyway, he found this Napoleonic clock in Connecticut and he advertised it. He sent a telegram to some Texan he knew that he wanted ten thousand for it. He paid about two hundred for it. He said, "I got this great Napoleonic clock. It's beautiful." He sent him a picture, ten thousand. He didn't hear from him for three weeks. So the guy walked in and offered him three thousand for it, so he took it. Wouldn't you know it? Two days later he gets a telegram back from the guy, "I'll take it for ten thousand." So he tried to buy it back from the guy, but the guy wouldn't sell it back. So he lost out. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. Right. He says, "You throw enough things up in the air, some things will stick; some things won't." He was a brilliant guy, but a real Damon Runyon character. What does that mean when you say a Damon Runyon character? Damon Runyon was a newspaper person in New York for years and years. His beat was Times Square. He used to meet all the characters. He used to meet all the people that were?not shysters, but they were pretty close to shysters. They always tried to pull fast ones on people. My father was always borderline. He had his ethics. But if he could see an advantage, he'd take it. Damon Runyon used to write about all these people. That's what I mean by that. The name was familiar, but I couldn't make the connection there. He got all the wise guys in all the squares together in Times Square. There was a restaurant down there called Jack Dempsey's Restaurant right around 42nd Street and that's where they all used to meet. My father used to take me there once in a while. I used to meet some fascinating people. One of my father's friend was Frank Costello, the mobster who got killed at the Waldorf Astoria barbershop. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if he lent him money once in a while for a 14 little usury. We lived very well. I had no complaints. My father always had the best cars. He could afford a Cadillac, but he said, "If I go up to Westchester County Center in a Cadillac, it won't look too good." So he bought a Roadmaster instead, which was the top of the line of the Buicks in those days. One of my pet peeves?that's why I don't do it to this day?is he used to make me wash the car every Sunday even though it was in a garage. To this day I won't wash my car. I'll take it to the car wash because that. Right. So your high school experience was pretty good. You played ball, you said. Yes. Were you still the tough guy or did you settle into studying? I really wasn't a tough guy. I just wanted to be left alone. I never joined any gangs. I never smoked in my life. I was always the type of kid that if twenty of the guys wanted to do something and I didn't want to do it, I just went and did something by myself because that's what I was used to, being by myself. It never bothered me. I'm by myself now and it doesn't bother me. My wife passed away almost four years ago and I haven't gone out on a date. Women still play games at my age. I refuse to play the game. "Well, call me back later; do this." I said, "Forget it. You have one shot. Forget it. That's it. Goodbye." I just won't play the game. Again, baseball was my salvation. I started second base for my high school team. I was always the underdog naturally because I was alw