VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 10, GEOMETRY OF A MENSCH, let me tell you two a story from the steps: Today would’ve been my dad’s, your Great-granddad’s, 92nd birthday, it’s my 11th time without him & while he’s no longer present, he’s always here with proven theorems like, “if you’re 10 minutes early, you’re 5 minutes late”, or “on Sunday morning, you’re better off on the last pew than the first tee”. Recently, Papa’s been pleased to become reacquainted with one of my happy places. The place? A small gym, just me, the thump of a dribbled basketball, the thump’s distinct ringing echo as the ball returned to my hand, the clank of the rim of an ill placed shot, & the net’s sweet swish on a perfect shot. I stood on the foul line in sports perfect right triangle, 15 feet from the line to bottom of the net is the base, the leg rising 10 feet from the floor to rim, the hypotenuse from rim back to the foul line & shot taker. Whether the shot taken clanks or swishes, no attorney in the world can argue to overturn the result. Alone with my thoughts, I went back to a different small gym, there were no row or seat numbers but if there were, it would be Section 2, Row D, Seat 1. The seat occupied by Papa’s dad for every home game. EVERY. GAME. In his life, however, he was never a spectator, he was in the game. As I get older, that seat, it’s plane & the point where my dad sat, means more. Your Great-granddad was something as he navigated the acute & obtuse angles life drew for him. For himself, he slung a baseball from behind the plate & 2nd base well enough for the Philadelphia A’s to seek his signature. Uncle Sam got him first & he, Dadoo as your dad & uncle called him, slung a machine gun. He slung plaster, paint, & airline tickets for his family, & slung the gospel for his God. The gospel slinging of Jesus’ words wasn’t just an 11 AM Sunday morning thing, it was slung the week’s other 167 hours, the hours when the audience wasn’t captive, when that “loving your neighbor” dictum was either lived or lied, & oh how he lived it. He loved people too, like his next door neighbor Pete. On one of their last adventures of constantly bringing to life one of Papa’s favorite writers, Dan Jenkins’ fictional ruffians Billy Clyde Puckett & Shake Tiller, it was 75 year olds getting henna tattoos, parasailing, & the rest remained undocumented. That relationship sealed, whether it was in our carport, on Pete’s deck, churning ice cream, planning their next exploit, or navigating life’s minefield, as each other’s shotgun rider. Today, it has fancy names like “accountability partners”, “doing life together”, or a motivational speaker hosts a weekend seminar to give answers you had all along at $300 a head, but from August 1968 until September 10, 2013, those two just called it friendship. There’s another part of loving your neighbor, when the foul line is less comfortable to toe, when your neighbor has a different leg or base or hypotenuse or totally different shape in God’s geometry. Our family was friends with a number of Jewish families, among them, the Feinstein’s across the street. Their sons bracketed Papa by a year. Daniel, the oldest, was obedient to his parents religious path & did all a young Jewish man could to be observant of his faith. Micah, the youngest, had no such inclination & his greatly distressed father occupied a lawn chair in our carport, explaining to Dadoo his dilemma, his desire that his son needed & would benefit by a belief in a higher power & if the son didn’t believe in his father’s God, because of the way your Great-granddad lived, he would like for Papa’s dad to talk to him about his God. A hoped for spiritual swish from the 3 point line. I was busy shooting basketball in the driveway as this conversation took place, ignorant of the ramifications until Mr. Feinstein called me over & explained. As he finished, in his New Jersey side of Philly accent, he said “…your father, we have a word for his kind, he’s a ‘mensch’. Do you know what that means?” I shook my head from side to side in the negative. “It means he’s got integrity & honor, it means he’s a man.” The man that was your Great-granddad was born an original, like all of us, from God’s grand blueprint. He, unlike most, lived as the original, not some copy of someone else’s mensch. He lived his existence in the geometry. One leg of his compass, straight & firm, point planted in his faith. The other leg, adjusting to the curves, the lines intersecting & parallel, & I’m sure a rhombus or two, with integrity & honor, & that’s a nice legacy for him to gift you on his 92nd birthday…