Jerry's story
scottish
pride
Orna Coussin
Papa is telling a joke: “Fiona and Morag are sitting in a pub and talking- Fiona says “Morag. Are you listening? I went to the cinema alone and it was terrible. I had to change places 10 times at least.”
Morag asks with concern. “But Why? Were you harassed?” And Fiona replies, ‘Yes, finally.” Papa laughs. We laugh.
In Scots-accented English the dumbest joke sounds terrific. Papa is the father of Brian who is my father. Brian calls him Jody. The grandchildren call him Papa. Or Jerry. For me Papa is stories and jokes- In my childhood we met about once a year, when Papa and Grandma Raina would come to Ramat Gan from Glasgow, armed with stories and jokes.
For example, the story about the years when Jerry worked for the Jewish textile firm Lazara as a salesman and was responsible the region of the islands of Skye, Mull and Islay off the west coast of Scotland. It was a long and arduous journey to the clients by slow train and then by boat.
The first time Jerry arrived, at the outset of his sales career, at the isolated home of a textile merchant the Isle of Skye, the man opened the door to him listened to him for a moment, gave him a good hard stare and then slammed the door shut. Jerry went home disappointed and with a sense of failure.
Of course, it makes no difference whether the story is true. Papa is his stories and inventions.
Ah, and the trips on the slow train remind Papa of a joke: “Elizabeth is going by train from England to Inverness in the north of Scotland. She is in an advanced state of pregnancy. The tension is terrible. The train is crawling and Elizabeth is uptight When the ticket taker goes through her car she asks, ‘When are we going to get there already? I’m about to give birth!’ And the ticket taker says, ‘But why did you get on the train if you are in such an advanced state of pregnancy?’ And Elizabeth replies. ‘I wasn’t pregnant When I got on.’” Well. I guess it’s Jerry’s special way of telling jokes that makes them funny.
Jerry grew up in the slum quarter Gallowgate in Glasgow’s Parkhead neighbourhood, a of neighbourhood of Irish Catholics who fled Ireland during the great potato famine. His parents had a vegetable shop there. My grandfather’s parents fled Latvia at the end of the 19th century aboard a ship bound for America. They were removed from the ship in Hull. England. and told ‘This is it. America.’ It was some time before they discovered the wretched truth and settled in Glasgow, with the Catholics.
The greengrocer parents worked. Jerry had seven older siblings, most of them already married and busy. He was raised by Agnes, an Irish Catholic nanny from the neighbourhood. “Agnes had tour great loves,” Jerry relates: “Agnes had four great loves,” Jerry relates: “Me, the Church, the Glasgow Celtics football team, and the bottle.” Jerry says that as a small boy he was dragged by Agnes to the daily prayer service, to booze in the pub, to football games on Saturday, in an endless cycle.
When he grew up, he became a successful traveling salesman for Youngers, an advertising agency. He bought advertising in cinemas across Britain. He would get home only weekends and make breakfast for everyone – toast. an egg, and jam that he made himself. When the boy Brian started to play football, as the goalkeeper of the school side (he was later the goalkeeper Of the British team in the 5th and 6th Maccabiah Games in Israel), he was shot sighted but was forbidden to wear glasses in the game. So Jerry stood behind the goal and became his eyes: “The ball is coming from the right. Jump left and up!”
For me. Jerry is the stories and the jokes and the love of football. He was one of the founders of the Glasgow- Maccabi club. He wrote reports about the victories of his son’s team in the local Jewish paper (“And the goalkeeper Brian Coussin saved the day with a tremendous leap.”).
For me Jerry is also the jovial travelling salesman, funny captivating. Never shy. One morning, during a family holiday at the guest house at Kibbutz Ginossar Jerry saw Yigal Allon having breakfast at the next table. He got up and without hesitation sat down next him, introduced himself and got in to cordial conversation with Allon. He did the same with Cary Grant and James Stewart and Danny Kaye, who were guests in the pub he managed at a conference of filmmakers in Scotland. For me Jerry is the photograph in which and Danny Kaye are embracing like long-lost friends. It’s the same embrace he gave me in every yearly meeting. And the bemused pride: “You have to write about me in the paper because there is no one like me!”
He died about four months ago, aged 96. in Manchester, England. If he had lived another four years, he would have received a cable from the Queen That would have made a pretty good story.