Vagabonds

In 1964, after leaving the army for the second time, I was licensed as a real broker in Florida and my first employment was with several land development companies, Rocket City near Orlando as a driver and closer and hospitality room sales for Gulf Americna Land and Golden Gate Estates.

I then started Villanova Development Corporation and the real estate firm: Roth Realty & Management, with my father. I developed land in South Florida and Glenview Acres in Western North Carolina. Glenview Acres was a project I syndicated in the mountains at Graham County, NC, where I also built homes and sold mostly land and commercial properties and with my dad I managed a real estate office in Davie and later on my own in Hollywood, Florida.

In the 60s Jane converted to Judaism. It was a surprise and not anything I expected or asked of her. She just did it. She studied on her own and she really believed in it. It helped that we knew the rabbi and canter real well also. They were regular guests in our home. So was Gil Rappaport and his friend Stanley. Gil bought the home I grew up in in Miami Beach years earlier so our family knew him but I became very friendly with both of them when I started going to ZOA meetings. Stanley wasn't Jewish but he was a Zionist and no one objected that they were gay. They were great guys. I like both of them but Gil died young. He had something wrong with his stomach. Maybe he had AIDS? I don't know but it was a loss when Gil left this world.

In 1970, Jane and I went to Israel and stayed for a time at Kibbutz Sassa near the Golan Heights, where we were considering moving there (Aliyah) permanently to live on a kibbutz, when during early morning hours, we were suddenly attacked by Palestinian Fedayim. There was shelling and machine gun fire targeted at the kibbutz and we were under attack for several hours. The children were in the shelter but we were above ground in a friend's house at the kibbutz. By day break all the terrorists had been captured or killed. I remember during the night when we first started to hear the bombing and small arms fire. Jane rousted me from my sleep and said, "I think someone is shooting at us." I opened one eye and said, "It isn't anything, they're just having target practice." And, with that I rolled over and went back to sleep until the bullets got closer and louder :-)

In 1970 I qualified for and was granted a professional designation as a National Fee Appriser, after completed certain education requirments and a practicum. Appraising became an important service of my real estate business.

From 1974 to 1979, Jane and I also owned and operated an off-campus university bookstore, called O'Henry's Bookstore. Stock consisted of general books, textbooks, college oriented clothing, T-shirts, etc. It was located in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I also continued to work at real estate.

Ten years after leaving the military in 1973 I went back to Israel again. It was during the Yom Kipper War, I went back to Israel with State Department approval. My trainer, also a friend, when I was in an army security school had called and he asked if I wanted to go. I didn't hesitate. I was anxious to go and get into the middle of it all.

When I arrived in New York an Israeli tank commander was bumped from the flight so they could get me on. When we reached the Mediterranian, Israeli military jets came up on our wings and escorted us into Lod Airport near Tel Aviv. It was evening and the city was blacked out. There were emergency vehicles everywhere. I tried calling a friend but he was at the front. From there I went to the Negiv. I was there when the Israel Defense Forces surrounded the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai. I was in Tel Aviv when a missile almost hit the city. And, I saw too many corpses and a lot of death. It was an experience which made me even more anti-war.

I was a Zionist. I supported the State of Israel not because of any promise from a god I didn't believe in, but because of the Holocaust and my own experiences with antisemitism.

After I got back from the Yom Kipper War, we bought a motor home, a Winnebego, and we became vagabonds for almost four months traveling all over this country. We visited Indian Revervations everywhere. Afterall, that is my wife's heritage and we felt a close bond with the plight of American-Indians. We were appalled at the degree of poverty we encountered and the open prejudice against Indians. Their land was being exploited for its uranium and other resources and except for tourism and selling native crafts there was massive unemployment on the reservations. We came back convinced that America has largely forgotten them, and worse, it choses to ignore their condition.

We also came back from that trip changed. I felt stagnate in South Florida. I didn't want to live there. I wanted to drop out of that world and find purpose. I wanted to stop and smell the flowers and I couldn't do that selling real estate.

When I had my skiiing accident I developed plebitis and blood clots went through my heart into my lungs. They said I had a myocardial infarction, my first one. I lost some of my lung capacity from the clots but was determined to do something about it so I started to run, and I ran, and ran, and ran --- and I kept on running for the next 14-15 years. At first it was only a few miles, then 6 miles a day and on weekends I would run a marathon distance. My health improved and I got myself back in shape. I have never had a recurrence of that problem, but it taught me just how fragile and vulnerable we really are. I decided then and there that there really was nothing so bad that it was worth worrying about - that life is just too short - and we better make the best of it.

Sure, I get pissed and upset with some people, but I'm not about to let anyone or anything really bother me. I learned how to control my temper. I also pick my friends carefully and I try to live well. I do what I can to keep my family happy and I never hurt anyone intentionally, unless they're assholes. (g)

In 1979 we decided to leave and we were having a bit of a recession. I had the book store by then and was ordering books for the university but the professors kept changing their text books after I ordered them and I was stuck with books I couldn't return. It seems like you can never really depend on anyone to do the right thing. I suppose I wanted the business bad enough to order them, but it was killing our business. It really was time to go.

I was also still doing real estate brokerage and specializing in large land deals, only that last year everything was falling apart or in litigation. I couldn't get paid unless I took my contracts into court. All my wealthy buyers were trying to steal more wealth and they were cutting out the middle man, me. On one deal I had to fly to Ohio for a deposition. The seller, who I represented, sold the property direct to the my buyer. We won our arguments but it turned out my lawyer used the wrong pleadings and the judge threw the case out. It also turned out the lawyer, who was a personal friend of mine, was related to the buyer and never disclosed that vital information to me. And in another very lucrative transaction the buyer got his funding from the Teamsters Union, who bought the land and he developed it. He was and still is one of the largest land moving companies in South Florida. I didn't take that one into court because I did not have a signed agency with the seller and never showed the property to the union, he did.. I was screwed. The property was a section of land, which is 640 acres. It was a million dollar deal. Obviously they saved a lot of money by elminating me from the deal. I remember walking all over that snake infested property. Today it is fully developed.

Dad and I still worked together from separate offices now and we sometimes made money together but one deal was particularly lucrative for me because I threw my commission back into the deal and took part of the action. It was the St Rd 84 property which we sold to some doctors and they invited me in. Dad took his commission out and consequently only made about a tenth of what I made. And strangely he resented it. He said so a few times and he was serious enough about it. It never made much sense to me not to maximize my profit like that and we had done the same thing before together but he couldn't stand to see someone else profit - or was it just me?

And all that happened there with my parents was also part of the motivation when I did finally leave South Florida in 1979. I didn't feel anything holding me there. So we moved to Massachusetts.

It was time to go for a lot of reasons. Times were turbulent. There was the "cold war" and always the fear of nuclear war. We were doing sensitivity training, T-groups - transcendental meditation and we decided to drop out of the rat race and became survivalists on 42 acres we bought back in the Berkshires of New England where we lived self-sufficiently. We lived in a 150 year old house in the woods adjacent to the Women's Federated Forest and the Quabbin in Western Massachusetts. We grew all our own food, baked goods for barter, cut wood for all of our heat and essentially loved off the land while getting back in touch with nature. It was one of the most self- satisfying experiences of our lives. I also read all of Thoreau's journals, learned to meditate, and literally found my own Walden. The days of big income were gone but the life was much better. In New England we discovered a real sense of community.We left only because my mother was dying of cancer and felt obligated to be closer to her. It was a great life and I sometimes wish we never left - but we did.

From 1980 to 1985, we owned and managed Orange Valley Groves, an orange grove and fruit packing business in Central Florida, and raised cattle. A severe freeze in 1984/85 forced me to sell the property and business.

From 1985 to 1987, I owned and managed Bookmania, a 3,000 sq. ft. book and music business in Central Florida (no longer in business).

We also moved to Raleigh, NC, and loved our sojourn there. We liked Massachusetts, but my mother was sick with cancer again, it came back, and I though it would be better to be closer to her. We tried that. We sold our property in Massachussetts and went down there to look around. Mom didn't seem that anxious to see us and she asked why we were there. She didn't give any indication she wanted us closer and I didn't feel any warmth in our relationship, so we went to Raleigh, N.C., which was just a place we liked. And we stayed there.

From January to October 26th, 1990, I worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce on the 1990 census, first as a data entry operator in their computer department (I type 70-80 wpm), then as an Examiner and for five months as a Field Operations Supervisor, in charge of all Census field operations for the City of Raleigh and Wake County, during which time I have directly supervised more than one hundred people. I was then promoted to the position of Asst. Manager for Field Operations for all of Eastern North Carolina (56 Counties). I was directly responsible for Post Census Review and supervised directly 10-15 supervisory employees and indirectly managed approximately 500 field employees. I served as the principal technical advisor for all field operations, analyzed progress and productivity of field work, implemented quality control procedures, conducted individual and group training sessions, served as liaison between data collections and processing offices, resolved complaints concerning alleged under- enumeration and applied Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) principles in hiring practices, training, employee development, and utilization of employees skills. My job ended because the work was sucessfully completed.

In 1992 I was selected by the American Social Health Association in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to attend their extensive training program for sexually transmitted diseases and to be employed as an Information Specialist. I became an expert on sexually transmitted diseases. (The effects of some of these diseases was enough to deter anyone, including me, from ever having indiscriminate sex.) ASHA wass under contract with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) in Atlanta to educate the public vis-a-vis STDs and AIDS. I left their employment voluntarily when my home was sold in Raleigh and relocated to Maitland, Florida, near Orlando.

From April to December 1991, I worked part time (16-20 hours) for a security company as a dispatcher/communications expert at their office in Raleigh while devoting the balance of my time as a writer, composing articles, stories, plays and poetry.

When we were living in Raleigh. And, I was also a delegate for Jessie Jackson at the National Rainbow Convention, in spite of his "Hymie" remarks. He said it was a mistake and he didn't mean it the way it sounded and I believed him. Others were not as forgiving. I still believe he was a great orator and was a champion of the downtrodden and his Rainbow Coalition was a good idea at the time.

While living in Raleigh, I wrote a few plays (one of which was performed by the Raleigh Ensemble Players), and I invested in a gift and bookstore, Crickets, (for my handicapped son), which was closed in December of 1990 due to a declining economy.

I was the AMO, the area manager for all field operations for the Census Bureau in eastern North Carolina in charge of 56 counties and I had over 1,500 people working for me. Jane worked as a manager for several clothing stores, most of them located in the mall.