Dudy Ravkind
Dudy Ravkind was born in New York on Christopher Avenue in 1917 to Sarah and Max Ravkind. The family came to Dallas because of an uncle, Louis, who had settled there, but they were unhappy at first and returned to New York before coming back a second time. Dudy was one of five children, with brothers Abe and Lou and sisters Ann and Lil. In an unusual family story, his brother Lou Ravkind and sister Lil each married a sibling from the Wild family. Originally named Dave or David, he became known as Dudy after his sister tried to nickname him Douglas.
In Dallas the family lived first on Crockett Street in North Dallas, then moved to South Dallas, living on Gould, Browder, Pennsylvania, and Forest Avenue. Dudy attended Mirabeau B. Lamar, Colonial, and City Park schools and graduated from Forest Avenue High School in January 1935. He recalled being one of very few Jewish children in the neighborhood and described a rough environment, with local gangs and a hard economy after the cotton mill closed. His father worked as a presser at Dreyfus and later ran a cleaning shop on Colonial Avenue. Basketball was central to Dudy's life; he played for JCC teams coached by his brother Lou and later semi-pro ball, and he turned down a scholarship to play at Oklahoma University.
In 1940 Dudy married Shirley Blasser, whose family was in the concession business running coat and hat check operations at hotels and clubs. He enlisted in the Navy during World War II. Over the years he worked in the cleaning business with his father, in vending machines, in real estate and home building, and in the coat check and photography concession business. He and Shirley later built a large catering and delicatessen operation, catering the first seders at Shearith Israel and Temple Emanu-El, the opening of Golden Acres, and countless commercial events, and packaging specialty foods under names such as Crest Farm. He also ran gambling junkets to Las Vegas and elsewhere for about seven years. Active in Jewish community life, he helped found the AOTA social club and served as president of both AOTA and FHH. He and Shirley raised three children, Randy, Alan, and Stuart, and continued welcoming friends and newcomers into their home.
Full Transcript
This is Tuesday, January the 10th, 1995. This is Rose Biederman of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, and I'm speaking with Duddy Rafkin. I'm speaking with Duddy Rafkin. Is that the right way to pronounce it? Duddy, that's right. The family says Duddy, but you can call me Duddy or Duddy. Okay. Let me just start at the beginning. Were you born in Dallas? No, in New York. You were born in New York? Christopher Avenue, 1917. Can you tell me the names of your mother and father? My mother's name was Sarah, and my daddy's papa's name was Max. Simca, they called her. I think they called him Muttle.
Okay. What brought the family to Dallas? We had an Uncle Louis that had come here. He was more or less, as I remember, a traveling man. ended up marrying Fred Florences from the Republic Bank, marrying his sister. And he brought the family here. And then we weren't too happy with it, and we only stayed here a year or two and went back, and then came back to Dallas. So we made two trips. How many brothers and sisters do you have? Well, there were three brothers and two sisters. There's two survivors now, Abe at 88 and myself. And could you give me their names? Well, the oldest was Ann.
She married Nathan Levine. Lil, another sister, married Max Wild. And Lou Ratkin married Nellie Wild. Brother and sister married brother and sister. And I think my original name was Dave or David. and I couldn say I had to play My sister tried to name me Douglas so I got Duddy out of that and that how they call me Duddy Uh I think that takes all the brothers and sisters in five of us When you moved back to Dallas, where did you live? Crockett Street. And where is that? Well, everybody lived in North Dallas that time, up and down Pearl Street and Harry Hines. and we were on Crockett Street.
Okay. From there we moved to, I think our next move was to South Dallas. At first we lived on Gould Street before we moved to Browder Street. So where did you really grow up? South Dallas, by the way. South Dallas. And what school did you, what grade school did you grow up? I went to Marabou B. Lamar. That was on Browder Street in Corinth. And then I went to everybody. They stopped it after the fifth grade. So we all went to Colonial. I didn't like Colonial. Don't ask me why. I don't remember too much about it. And I went to City Park. I was only Hebrew at that time, graduated from City Park.
Later on we had the Kobolds came in over there. They left in the neighborhood. and there were a few others, Jewish kids. Growing up over there and being the only Hebrew, you had to do a lot of tricky things to get into school. What do you mean? Well, they didn't like having Hebrews around. Well, we had this when I went to Lamar. I used to have to go to the Wilds, lived on the same land that school was on. And I used to go over there around 6.30 or 7 o'clock. You mean the Wilds family? wild family and i lived a block away and they lived on karen they lived on the karen that's right 1421 karen and i would go over there and then run into the building or else the principal would come over and get me and escort me at that time there were about a few jewish kids going yeah and then we finally went our way over through the athletics you know well what would What would happen if you weren't escorted?
Well, you get beat up by about six or seven kids. And at lunchtime when you went out to play soccer like a lot of us did they weren kicking the soccer ball they were kicking you And then we went and went through the same thing again over Trinity Park which then became Pretz Park That was on Lamar, car rent. So it took a lot of years. See, the cotton mill used to be the big industry there, and it closed down. And when it did, people couldn't get jobs so much, so there was a lot of petty thievery going along. There was one family that I grew up with, the Farris family, that I wound up Farris and I can name you a bunch of others.
Five of them were on death row at one time and two of them were women. I mean, that's what it was out there. Sounds pretty rough. It was survival. My papa used to get off the streetcar at Ended at Corrent Street. He worked at Dreyfus. and when he'd get off many nights by the time he'd come home he'd have to fight his way home sure what did he do at greyfus he was in alterations and he was a presser mostly was a presser but he made everybody think he could alter clothes and he did one time i'll tell you a story about him he was sewing a man's pants and he was it was a blue pair of pants and was using red thread.
And I said, why are you using red thread? These are blue pants. He said, let him wear it at night. He won't see it. That's the kind of guy he was. So you're saying that it was a pretty rough neighborhood. And we moved from Browder Street to Pennsylvania. About what year was that when you moved? That's a good question. Let's figure it out. We can do it this way. I was about 14 years old. And 14 from 77 is what? 63. And this is 94. So it was about 1930s, wasn't it? Yeah, about 1930s. And my papa had a cleaning shop, 3025 Colonial Avenue. And there was only one other Jewish cleaner at the time, was on the forest and Oakland.
It was called Vanity Cleaners. A fellow named Fred Love and Simon Smith was handling the deliveries and all And the reason I know that because when I wanted to marry my wife Shirley her daddy said how was I going to support her and I said well I got a cleaning business just like Fred Love and Simon have and they got kids so I sure we be able to make it and we have Did you go to Forest Avenue High School? Forest Avenue High School. Went there, graduated in, what year? Early 30, 35, wasn't it? Yeah, January 35. Okay. Did you participate in sports in the high school?
My main sport was always basketball. And they used to always say that I went out for football to stay in shape for basketball, but that wasn't any way to stay in shape. So my main sport was basketball. Yeah, I made every honor that you could make playing basketball. Well, tell me about your playing for me. You said you played for the JCC team. Well, in those days, the community center, the federation, wherever the funds came, there was no big money to lay out. Right. My brother at the time was the athletic director. I worked in the locker room. I remember Bernard Shannon, who must have been president at that time, wrote my first check that I'd ever got, working in the locker room.
So you say you and your brother worked for the JCC? Yeah. Okay. But he was the main one having to do with the athletics, and we used to have classes there. We used to come over there even when it was closed on Saturday on the holidays, and we'd break in to go play basketball. And in the other day there was a fellow named Joe Sewell, I think was his name, had something to do with it. We'd even find him over there sometimes. He'd come around there with us too. Now you're talking about the JCC when it was on Pocahontas. Pocahontas Street. And then Lou got some teams together.
He was an exceptionally good coach, and we didn't play any church league or anything. We played major league ball. What do you mean? Under, well, Major League, your best teams were like Dr. Pepper, Dallas Railway. Teams were sponsored by big companies that would give these college graduates jobs. And all the players that we had, none of us, I think we were still, I was still going to high school, in fact. And the other teams were just full of college players who had already graduated, made all Southwest Conference. So, you know, it's the old story. You play against better teams, you become better. Yeah. And we did.
And then we went ahead and we played, I think I told you the story. We went, we were kicked out of amateur ball for a silly reason. We played, Lou and I played semi-pro ball. And in 1938, playing for Sammy's restaurant who sponsored us, we won the national championship in Atlanta, Georgia. We toured for about two weeks. Carlos Messina and his brother Benny Messina paid our way. And when we got back, the people that had sponsored the tournament had taken all the money. So Carlos Messina gave me $500. That's the most I'd ever seen in my life. And I bought a red panel truck and went in partners with my daddy, and that's when I was able to get married.
That's how it all happened. Well, actually what happened is I had a scholarship to Oklahoma University. From high school? Yeah, that I could go to OU. In fact, I got a letter that I could show you where they were going to pay me twenty or twenty-five dollars a week. I had room, food, and board, and then I'd have an income for some coke machines that would be out on the campus, but I wouldn't have to do them if somebody else was doing it. So even in those days they were paying people some kind of way to come and play. Now they do it in a real big way, but hey, twenty, twenty-five dollars a week.
talking big bucks but i never did go there i came home and surely had me i had to do the same thing my brother did he went to o u and when he came home for the christmas holidays he never went back oh my which brother was that that one brother lou and the big reason for that was that here in dallas in the aau at the amateur athletic union we played better ball than any of the colleges So I couldn't see it as a step up. It wasn't a big thing then to think about, well, you got a free education, you could get a degree and all like that.
All we knew was sports. We played softball. We used to play twilight, nighttime, Saturdays and Sundays. Cone Candy Company used to sponsor a baseball team. We played Sunday afternoons. I mean, that's all we knew. Sports, that was everything. And when we went to the Jewish Community Center, nobody had cars, we all walked there. And you don walk home from the Jewish Community Center to walk South Dallas and go out towards Colonial Ten or fifteen of us would have to walk together There was only safety in numbers Because the Cotton Mill Gang from Pretz Park and the City Park Gang would be looking for one or two.
So that's, yeah, we had a lot of that too, just walking home. You'll have to explain to me why these gangs would look for you. Were they going to rob you or was it just... you up. Just for the sport of it? Everybody carried brass knucks and a, I want to say, a billy club, but, uh, what'd you call that thing, uh, oh, another, you know, the, Shirley. What did I always tell you I used to carry that? Some kind of a club. Well, it was a, anyway. Some kind of a club. But when I ended up playing at Fretz Park, Trinity Park, I eventually became like one of their gangs.
You know, not that we did anything particularly malicious, but we were like a gang to defend ourselves against somebody else. They used to have the picture shows in City Park during the week. And it had more reels that weren't continuous. They'd have to stop midway, and they had a snow cone machine and a coke machine and a little stand. Uh-huh. And this particular night, we were going to, at the time that they would break for intermission, we were going to fight the City Park Gang. I was on the Frech Park Gang. Was this when you were in high school or younger? Uh, that's a good question.
I was still going to grammar school. I was still going to City Park. I was fighting the gang. So what I did is I went into one of the restrooms and I sort of hit myself all over and scratched myself all up to make them think I was out there fighting somebody. So that's about as big a fighting gang I ever saw. But between themselves, yes, they did a lot of things. They would steal parts off the cars. In those days, you could get the hood up. you could steal a battery. You'd steal the-you didn't just steal tires, you took the rims and the tires and all.
You'd walk down the street, you could see a car just standing up on some logs. They'd taken everything off of it, and they used to do a lot of that. And this was in the 30s Yeah A lot of that went on Tough time for Jewish kids growing up No one else has mentioned that aspect of Dallas. Maybe what we have here is maybe the Ravkins were the fighters at that time also. My brother Abe used to have so many fights just going to dance and tagging in on the little sixes or something. and have a fight, you could blow on his nose and his nose would bleed.
See, the hangout in those days was Kid Spring. That's in O'Quinn. They had a dime of dance there, and that's where we all used to go to dance. Crazy about dancing. Tell me, what do you mean, dime of dance? What was that? It was a dance hall, nice kept place. They had a swimming pool there. And in the evening, they didn't have pumped-in music. They had a band. Yeah. And nobody particularly went as dates. Okay. So we may go in a group of six to ten, but if we want to dance and go over and tax somebody to dance, we had to pay a dime to dance on the floor.
Okay. See? Or if you saw somebody that you were attracted to and you'd want to go over there, it wasn't what we referred to as a pick-up joint, because when you left, you left with who you came with. Uh-huh. We didn't know about those kind of things then. Was that pretty popular? Well, Kitt Springs was very popular. We all went there on Sundays, Saturdays and Sundays, and then it seems like we heard about Lake Cliff Park, and it was kind of a step up being a little nicer and everything we were going there. There used to be a swimming place at Fair Park, but they never did keep that too good or anything, so we didn't go there too much.
It was not kept up good by the way. What was the social life when you were growing up? Social life was we had dances. At the JCC? Yeah, mostly at the JCC and all our dances were at the Dolphins Hotel we would have. We used to have a New Year's Eve party every year. Who is we? Always. Well, AOTA would sponsor it mostly, but everybody was invited. Was that later? What time period? Well, that was in the 40s. That was in the 40s. Yeah, that was what I'm talking all about in the 40s. But when you were going to high school, what was, what? High school, I'm out for athletics.
Okay You understand so you not participating too much But the last year when I didn go out for football I come to find out they did have a lot of socials going out They would have the afternoon dances after school you know after three o We had to stay on the gymnasium, and the teachers would be the sponsors. Yeah. There was, I don't remember anything except if it was, we'd have a queen elected, we'd have a dance in the evening. But most of the time, all the festivities and activities were daytime. Okay. Yeah. That's the way I remember that part. When you were going to high school, you were a teenager, was there also at the JCC dances and socials?
I remember weddings being at the center more than I do any socials of any kind. Everything had to do with social, with the athletics. But yes, we would have, like if we have an all-state tournament, we would have the headquarters at the JCC. Now, when that happened, I was already, that was already going up into the 50s. You know, we were still, I think the community center was still there, too. They'd come in from San Antonio and Houston, Fort Worth and Waco, and we would have statewide tournaments. We knew all the kids in every one of those cities. And then we would go there and play.
You had the AZA, you had the DSD, I think it was, and you had another group here, I can't remember their name. And everybody was active. The club was a big thing. Belonging to the AZA was a big thing. You think most of the Jewish boys belonged to the AZA? I would say we'd get a hold of them, they would. And then, let me tell you, Iota came about. Yeah. When we got to the age where we couldn't be in AZA anymore, because I think it was 21 or whatever it was, 18 or something, it was automatic that you would go to the B'nai B'rith.
When we went to the B'nai B'rith meeting, We couldn't see anything there going. So there was about four or five of us got together, and we had a meeting with Easter Weil and Joe Bach and Dave Leventhal and myself. We had a meeting, and it was suggested we'd start our own fraternity, and we'd call it AOTA, Alumni of Dallas AZA. And that's how Aota was formed. I got a scrapbook of Chokahar, so everything went on with Aota. So about when was that formed? Aota? Uh-huh. I would say in the 40s, lower 40s, 40s, 40s. And how long did Aota last? Well, I'll sadly tell you about the story about that.
Maybe it was because I pushed myself to always be the leader or the guy that did all the hard work or the dirty work or whatever, But at one time, I was the president of the AO to have an FHH at the same time. And that's not good either to, you know, which function which I was going to be in. Maybe they were looking forward to me doing everything. And like I say, the family growing up and everybody getting tired of maybe the meetings and the crap games. It would always go on after the meetings. And it'll last a long, long time. I'd say, what now, we've been sort of null and void for what, 12 years, my son, maybe?
A little longer than that. Yeah, about 15 years now. In fact, I've got the names and addresses and everything, trying to find the time that I'm going to have a reunion. And what I'm going to hope to have is, if everybody agrees with me, is have it like a club reunion. So it won't be just FHH, it won't be just AOTA. Oh, I see. some of the other clubs too and let's get all of us get together and have something like that because let's face it after you're 40 or 50 or whatever age we've got a lot in common now we're all older in those days where you're 15 or 18 or so the 25 year old guys didn't want anything to do with you didn't fit in what was fhh well they had a lot of names that they called that was that A social group?
A social group that was called like 14 hungry Hebrews or 40 horny Hebrews. I have the charter of the AOTA and the FHH. Really? They're chartered. I have both their charters. I never realized FHH even had a charter, but I found it and I've got it. So you're saying... Well, with AZA, we stuck to the rules pretty good about all meetings and everything. We narrowed the decorum of it all. FHH wasn that at all We just had a hell of a meeting going on a lot of fun With AZA we had the old business and new business and the Sunshine Committee reports and all that Well FHH then was like just a social group Oh, strictly social.
A great group. Yeah. And they all stuck together a lot through the years. They nearly had a bond for a lot of times about like it was going to be a singles group. They went along and these guys didn't marry young. Oh really? That's right. Well, when did you get married? What year did you get married? Uh, why'd you ask the hard question? Nineteen... Shirley! I'm waiting for you to... February, well, we're going to celebrate fifty-six years. Fifty-five. Fifty-five? And this is ninety-six, it'll be how many? I'm not distracted. Ninety-five. Forty-five. Fifty-five. When did we get married? Nineteen fifty-five. no no got married in 1940 40 yeah 40 1940 that was a good year 1940 thank you and your wife's name she was shirty blasser they were originally from uh sioux city iowa but she spent a lot of her time in new orleans her folks were in the concession business oh uh-huh they came from new orleans to dallas and they outgraded the Baker and Dolphins Hotel to concessions.
Now what do you mean by concessions? They had hat checks. Oh, okay. In those days women wore hats. Yeah. Men wore coats, top coats. Women all wore top coats and fur coats. We could check anywhere from 200 to 600 items sometimes. Oh. Plus I eventually went in with them. Photography was my background, so we found out we could go in there, going there and there was no hanky-panky going on with mixed couples. A man would actually go to a nightclub with his wife or his best girl and we had a picture business. We were in seventeen places at one time here in Dallas. You know, Checking Hats, Happy Strobeland, Hapes Colony Club.
And the different hotels. Oh, all the hotels, the shrines, you know, They call it anything went on at the automobile building. We would check Glen Lakes Country Club. Yeah Yeah They actually operated I didn but they did operated the check rooms in Cuba That how they brought over some of their families They'd bring them Mr. Blasser. Max and Sam Blasser would bring their family over from Europe to Cuba, put them in business there, checking hats and everything until enough money would be put together to bring them into the United States. Solly Wall's family all came from that way into the country. Yeah. Very interesting. Right.
A lot of good things. So you told me you went in with your father. Yeah. You went in business with your father. Cleaning business. In the cleaning business. What happened is we used to have, nobody did their own cleaning. There was wholesale cleaners that would do it. You mean the little cleaning shop? The little cleaning shop had no equipment. We had a wholesale cleaner, Norton's Cleaner, Joan, Peek and Brian, did 80% of wholesale cleaning. If there was another one, I never even knew it was. And I was very close with Mr. Norton, and he became sick. I remember going to see him on Preston Road.
He lived near Lover's Lane. And he asked me, he said, nobody in his family wanted the cleaning business. Would I take it over? I says, yeah, I'll take it over, but I can't pay anything for it. He said, no, I want to give it to you. And he gave me this cleaning business on Peek and Brian. We eventually were... When was there? Were you already married? We'd gotten married, right, Cheryl? Yeah, we were married. So that was in what, 50, in the 60s I suppose, 1960s. Uh-huh. And we had seven substations, and we did cleaning for all of the pawn shops up and down, and all the other little cleaners.
Yeah. The best way I can remember it, I always tell the story when I was about 23 years old, so you figure it out that way. That's when we were doing all that. My brother Abe had already retired to California and he had to come back to help Louie. My brother Louis with Texas Found Light to come to work and come in business with me. We all worked together. Our family wasn't anything like if you wanted to go in part in anything like you got to buy in or anything. You want to come in Come in That it A lot of cases we may owe more than our liabilities may maybe more than the assets you know what I saying But we did real good in the cleaning business Then the war came, so that means we were doing it in the 40s.
When was the war? 19... December 1941. 41, wasn't it? Yeah, so we were in the business then. Well, I was doing the cleaning business then, and I also... I was in the vending business. that vending machine. And what was that? Marble tables. Okay. Nickelodeon. Yeah. I remember that Sunday being on Hall Street, emptying a Nickelodeon at a cafe, Washington Street Cafe. Oh, really? You know, everybody can always remember where they were on certain days. Yeah. And then the equipment was very hard to replace during the- Oh, during the war, sure. We were there getting all this naphthol over us, hot. You couldn't have air conditioning in the cleaning shop.
Maybe they do now, but the condensation wouldn't let you have it. And boy, we were getting just so red from the naphthol and everything. My brother Abe says, we looked like a bunch of schmowhawks. He says, what the hell are we doing here? Let's close up this business and go have some fun. I don't think I sold out. I think he just closed up the business. Had some trucks, sold them. Is that right? The machinery wasn't any particularly good. And about when was that? During the war? That was about during the war, yeah. Is that right? Did any of you go into service? Well, my brother Abe went into the Army.
In 1944, I think it was, Max Single, who was a very good friend of mine, was always-he It was always, he and I worked in a war plant over here. I think it was Murray Company had a place where they made a 16 millimeter shell or something. Oh really? And it all worked with chemicals that just used to knock our eyes out. And Max said, we can't do that. Listen, we've got to go and enlist because what are our kids going to say to us when the war is over? Well, we enlisted and the war is over. My kids never have asked me what I did before.
Max went in the Army as we were in the line to enlist. And I got up there and they said, you're going in the Army. They said, no, I'm not. I'm going to wait until I'm going to the Navy. But we didn't go in together. I enlisted in the Navy. Oh yeah, a lot of stories. My brother Lou, he had about two kids at that time, I don't know, and he was older than I. But when I went in, I was already pretty old too, I suppose. Yeah, a lot of things happened during that war, didn't they? Well, then you served until the end of the war.
Yeah. Uh-huh. I used to always tell everybody, look how quick I got in the road with, because I got in late so it didn't last too long. All my buddies would come in, I'd have to go give blood with them. They'd nearly kill me, just give them blood. I assume that after you got married you continued to live in South Dallas, did all your family live in South Dallas? We lived at 2838 Forest Avenue which is now the Black Chamber of Commerce. Oh my. And that's where we lived with our folks. Oh uh huh. And that's where Hebrews were all over South Dallas. Yeah. That's where they were.
My brother Lou had gone now into the real estate business. I was in the real estate business. I don't think I was building at that time. I hadn't started building yet. I did that later. That's our house. And Lou did what they say helped break South Dallas, I'll go into what you'd call it. The Jewish people and the white people were moving out north. The black people were moving in, but they couldn't get financing. So you either had... that would make loans and that helped a lot of the black people coming in and also. And we bought up some houses out there that eventually sold to some black people.
So were all of you then into real estate? No, Abe was never into real estate. We always kept trying to find something for him to get in, but his wife would never let him, she afraid he gonna be too successful He did build houses with me Yeah And he was my main cog at the deli Whenever we get real busy over there Abe would show up and he was the waiter and busboy and did everything Well, when did you get into the deli business? Checkroom business was getting very slow. They were getting ready to put in Crescent Center. My father-in-law owned some property on Lovers Lane.
One of his best tenants was a fellow that had office supply business. So he wanted to put me in the office supply business. Louie Hexter and somebody else was building Preston Center. So Marty Madness, who was a good friend of mine, told me that his uncle, Irvin Arkin, to that Arkansas contestant, Lover's Lane, wanted to sell it. So I said, that's great, I'd love to be in the food business. So I went over there to buy it, but we didn't make a deal, so at that time I made up my mind, I don't want to do the other, I want to open up a restaurant and a deli.
So we'd have to put a finger to get that to what year that is. Are we up to the 70s yet or not? I was going to try to figure out everything by the year, but that's how that happened. We opened up the deli. Shirley and I went to Chicago and made some good arrangements for to get some deli, some corn beef. It was pickled in the barrel. We never did use any corn beef. It wasn't packed in anything. And you do that for a lot of reasons. One is when it's packed and the water comes out of it and they've shipped it to you, you're paying a lot of money for water.
Plus the seasoning is, that's why if you're eating cornbread nowadays and you say, well, it's not like it used to be, that's the big reason it is like it used to be. And then from that, when I sold Phil, then we went into catering business after I sold Phil. And that was funny how that came about. Our phone company I advertised in the yellow pages When I went out of business I figured well I don owe them now But they figured I did owe them and they were one to collect So we were starting to do some little catering. And they ended up having a party for 10,000 people at the automobile building.
The phone company? The phone company. And we catered that, and then I got enough money off that where I paid them off, and I was done with them. But see, I say I. Our catering service, Shirley and I and her mother, we opened up, and I say opened up, when the Sheriff Israel was built. They had the... That's in the late 50s. Yeah. The dinner, you know. Yeah. We did that. First dinner. We catered all of the seders. Rabbi Silverman was here. Oh, uh-huh. And I think that would be the first seder. Then we'd go to Temple Manual and cater the second Seder. And then I think when...
I think it's the other way around. Yeah, I think you're about right through there. I think Temple only had the first one. Temple had the first, and then we did that the second. Yeah. And then Golden Acres opened up. We catered their opening. And we got to where... This was all in the 50s. Yeah, and we built up a real good following of commercial accounts in our catering business. Well, wasn't that a hard business? We all owe the worst, sure. A hard one? I haven't been in a business yet, but that's awesome. Then we opened, and we went to 1712 North Central Expressway with Ross Avenue, and that's where we moved our catering.
Then we got into the food business. We used to have packaged 75 foods. A lot of them under the name of Crest Farm Food Company, which was ours. And then we used to private pack for Neiman and Marcus, Simon David, and in Houston there was one like Simon David called European Imports. Well, what kind of food? Well, we would pack private label. What kind of food was- Well, for instance, we made a candy that was in a jar and was chocolate-covered individual sticks and we'd get this special chocolate in and you could only do it on certain days with the humidity a certain way that the chocolate wouldn run It was a beautiful pack and it was different flavors We brought in pickles from a place where they did all their vats and everything in the water It was Fleischman Pickle Company, if I don't remember right.
We would bring them in and we would repack them. Then we made Cheryl's Cheesecake, which we shipped about everywhere you could think. We made all kind of dressings. Now you made these yourself. We made all these ourselves, except there was one dressing I found out that was out, it was called Pizza Burger Dressing or something like that. And we got that in in gallons, and I repacked it in our jars. And the reason I remember that so well is I sold it to Simon David, and after they had it about two or three days, they called me up to come see them, when I went out there, all of them had exploded.
From the gassous content was all up on the ceiling. Oh my. The biggest, hottest item we had was a mustard, was called jalapeno mustard. I ended up selling that to a friend of mine, Joe Winklewitz. Oh. And the big mistake that I made is I didn't keep, you know, what I figured I was going to do. I wish I'd have kept that jalapeno mustard recipe, because I think that, you know, everyone do. We always talk about we're going to do it again. It's really hard to do it, so you can't operate our homes anymore, because the city wants, you know, the stainless steel and all that.
But you didn't operate out of the home, did you? Originally, when I had catering, I was living on that street, Aberdeen. And you operated out of my home until my next-door neighbor, whose son was a councilman, put the I-vis on me and I had to move out. What I did then, there was a fellow, Tati, I want to say him. When? Messina. What was his first date? His folks had the best spaghetti house there ever was. Perino. Yeah. Tati Perino. I remember Perino. And he ended up, they were on Forest Avenue when they made theirs, but he opened up a place on lemon avenue and he would let me say that i was doing my food preparation there although i was still doing it home and uh That was what we were, oh yeah, when I had the deli business, I would see Gump and Gagner would come in, and all these other buildings.
I'd say to sure, I'd say, I can't believe these guys can build a house. They don't even look like they can, they don't even know nothing about a cornbread sandwich. So I went and started building a home. Yeah. Well, how did you know what to do? I got lucky. There was a guy named Hal Anderson. Yeah, I remember. Built some of the finest homes out in North. Yeah, yeah. And then he decided he was going to build, I think, the Athena or something. One of the big buildings there. That's true. So I didn't, I went and got a hold of his foreman. And I got him.
Okay. Yeah. And then the fellow named- So where did you build? You know Mitchell Rosansky? Yeah. I built homes, went and partnered with his daddy. Oh. Superman. Super, super. We built homes. I built like on Hillcrest and Azagia, one of the corner homes over there. I built some of those. On Idlewood Lane, I built on the Walnut Hill Lane. A fellow who I hardly knew one time gave me a lot out on Record Crossing Road up in it was over where uh parkland hospital is back in over there and i built a home over there then raymond asher came to town and opened up um lake island and abe and i built out there we said one day i sold three homes in one day the next day we went out of business I've just been too successful.
I don't think that's successful. So what did you do after that? Where was I now? After you got out of the real estate business. Well, I knew. You know, I told you about going to Houston a lot. You know, a very good friend of mine, Jojo Moore. He was in, what did Jojo do? Jump business, I think, you know, and high, you know, that kind of stuff. and he called me up and he said, say, my brother-in-law has got a furniture business on Oak Lawn and he's got to close it up, go bankrupt. Maybe you know somebody could help him. So I went over there and looked at it and my son Stuart wasn particularly doing anything then I didn tell you I also ended up doing business with Ark and he owned the Ark and Delicatest on Commerce Street And I bought that.
And then when I decided to build one main place, I moved around in the Whitmore Coffee Shop and operated the coffee shop. I also operated a barbecue place on Knox Street, catty corner from the Highland Park cafeteria. You've really been in a lot of businesses. Yeah, the food business, I got my stuff went in. Well, Shirley was just so terrific at this. We used to be on television with David Wade. Oh, really? And Julie Bunnell from the Morning News. We used to make a lot of stuff for her. See, now you've got hundreds of people that are catering. Everybody, and they're great. Because now they've got the chefs that have come over from Europe.
In those days, we didn't have that. That's true. When, um... Were you the only Jewish caterer? Yeah, I was the first one, I remember. Then the Walls came in. They ended up with the deli on gas, and they came in. When I got out, I gave her a lot of my accounts, and then her son, Ronnie Walls, ended up with them. Going back to delis years ago, Rosie Book had a delicatessen. Cleapax had a delicatessen, as I remember. Those were downtown. Those were downtown on Irby Street around there, yeah. Were there any- Then we operated a drive-in on Hall Street. That was- Let me ask you, were any of the early delicatesses kosher, or was it kosher style?
That's-I think all-now, if anybody was kosher, the Kleepacks could have been. But I don't remember that all of us were kosher style. now when i catered at sheriff israel once i brought something in i could never take anything out i'd have to have double servings and everything my shaping dishes and everything yeah yeah oh yeah a lot of things went on in that business and i got to meet uh more when i write my book who is study i'll be talking about all of these people that I did business one. Like James J. Ling, who Ling Tempsico bought. I catered for him when he opened up Ling Electric He hadn even paid me He gave me 2 shares Oh really And my brother Ape says get rid of those shares He never make it He playing golf all the time Those shares would have sold for a million four hundred thousand if I have kept them Oh you mean you did get rid of them?
Oh yes, well, my brother Abe did it. Yeah, one thing to another. Well I didn't tell you about the furniture. So I went to see Sam Melnick, that was his name, he had a place called Barstools Unlimited. And I took over his lease, and Stuart went in and ran the furniture store, and we catered in back of the store. I moved my catering there, on Oklahoma at that time. And then when he got him a job to travel and then I took over the barstool business, we moved out on LBJ and Midway Road and we changed the name to Dianetson Barstool. And we operated over there.
My son Allen came in with me at that time. How many children do you have? I got three, what do I have? I got three kids, two boys and a girl, Randy and Alan and Stuart. Okay. And also went in and Sammy came back into town. He and I opened up a shop on Center Express where it called Rattan Rattan. We just handled Rattan furniture. And eventually when I decided to get out of the business, I sold Barstool business back to Sammy. Melanie. Yeah, see, so I've always stayed in pretty good with everybody you know that I did business with. Have you ever retired? Never have even thought about it.
I did one time, they decided I had a heart problem. And Shirley and I had the greatest time of our life just walking and doing and going. And in between there, what you've got to know, I was running, I worked seven years for Howard Hughes, running junkets to Las Vegas. What do you mean? You never knew that? No. I had an office. How did you come to know Howard Hughes? I never did get to Norma to see him. But some friends of mine in Dallas that were going to Vegas a lot and knew I was throwing all these parties, knew a lot of people, said I would be a natural to do that kind of work and they set up an appointment for me to go to MGM who was just building their place which later became Bally And I went out there for the appointment.
We all stayed at the Union Plaza at that time and I went out for my appointment. and when I walked in and I saw this casino was so big and I said to someone how big is this casino and they said it's a little into a football field and I said to myself I'll never get to be personal with my customers it's too big my knees how am I going to walk this place so I went upstairs to meet with the people that I was supposed to meet with and told them I didn't think I would be interested. So happened that I had met a fella named Blackie Dardine at the Desert Inn.
And I went over there to see him to see if he could put me in touch with the person over there in charge of junkets. And as I'm talking to Blackie, here comes this fella getting ready to go play golf. And Blackie calls him over and says, here, I want you to meet somebody from dallas it'd be great to run junkets and the guy says i just hired a friend of mine he's a stockbroker in fort worth to run and i and black he says well what's the stockbrokers going to know about uh that he's this man here i said sure i said i got a thousand gamblers on a mailing list so he hired me back there and i went to work for him and eventually in the beginning i was like on a head count then they employed me and they opened up an office there in dallas on the lbj and midway road and then i did business with ruba for the kings and then another big one that opened up out there i went how did you get your people found out about me i had the best group did you advertise i advertised pretty good yeah we had 12 000 gammers when you get through doing this i'll I'll show you a mating list.
We not only had their names, we had them all zip-soaked. We knew every birthday and every anniversary. They were hip-hop. Shuck had Macy's. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I better call Shackman, Ellen. You need him very fast. Shuck said he wasn't going to play in the second week, but he had something to do in this So I was telling you about that. So then I get a call. I got to go to Panama. They're going to open up gambling there. When I get there I find out that Trujillo's brother is the one that's running into gambling for Trujillo. They have 12 casinos and they want me to bring in people.
But then when we met in privacy, they wanted me to also wash their money for them and open an account for them in Miami. They would give me the money, see. We made a deal to where I was going to make pretty good off of it, but I would be buying the airfare. So I said to him, I said, well, what's going to happen if I got to start buying the airfare and the airfare goes up? Well that'll come out of your pocket. So I never did run junkies. I went to Monaco. Had occasion to be there. We did, what do we call that ball?
Yellow Rosa, Texas. Yellow Rosa, Texas ball. Princess Grace was there. Really? And the Prince was there. Got pictures of them. Oh my goodness. that was my $2,000 trip in those days I had a bad hip I couldn't bend over Shirley couldn't go with me on the trip she had to stay behind for some reason I took Elton Shackman I needed somebody to be able to tie my shoes put my socks on cost me $2,000 to take and now I know if I'd have brought some loafers slip-ons I wouldn't have needed them see how quick I blew $2,000 Oh yeah, I worked at one time for four casinos in Vegas.
I worked for Frontier, Marina, you know what it was called, Marina, and the Tropicana. And I worked them all. Desert Inn. And the Desert Inn, I was Dave Raskin, W Raskin. At the other places, I was different names. Oh really? Because, see, you couldn't get licenses that way. Stewart told somebody in Oklahoma his name was Green. So I was Green in Oklahoma. I was Harry Beckel what was his name That was another guy Then I was a woman too I was Bill Taylor wife I got her to do junkies And you may say, well, why would you need all this? Well, they all have different kind of cameras each place wants.
See, Desert Inn would want the high rollers, the $10,000, $25,000 credit. The other place would be happy to get an up and back, let's say. where they put up a thousand dollars and I'd take them there and bring them back the same day, that night. Oh. You know, I would do that at Frontier. Oh. And another one would take them for a $2,500 credit line, you know. So every one was a different kind of thing. Oh, I see. Yeah, I was real, felt real interesting in that. My daughter worked. She worked for the Summa Corporation. I had all the parties. When Howard Hughes was there, he only stayed there very little, and he looked out the window one day and saw some people playing golf out there.
The golf course was there, and that just shook him up. What were those people doing on his yard? And they had the best golf tournament that you could have, the champion tournament. he cut it all out, wouldn't let him have it. When he died, anytime I came there I always stayed up in the suite. Of course then I catered, we had all the parties there. And his cousin who took over was in the tennis. So we had celebrity tennis tournaments. And that's how I got to have people like Moses, what was his name? Charlton Heston. And all these people come to the tournament see and that's how i got to see and talk and meet all these people the big thing in those days people like to be named drop call them what you're buying we all had that luxury but then they charged they started changing things you could if you had a five thousand dollar credit you could play the five thousand and they were comping your wife and all like then they changed it to where it had to be four hours a day And they were keeping track of everything just so close they couldn't believe it.
And I had a good thing going for myself and for my peace They knew what I expected of them they gave it and we had some good When they started to where they were going to be policemen towards it I couldn stand it And I had a very bad trip in Aruba Wasn't it Aruba? Yeah, I had 78 people out there and they got knocked out of the computer. I'm in Aruba foreign country and I don't have planes to bring my people by. She and I finally worked it. Don't ask me how it happened. I stayed at the airport all night, she stayed at the hotel.
We got them all back to Florida, we got them back to Florida and everybody going a different way. When I got back I was ready for a restaurant. I said, I don't need this anymore. She and I was still in the furniture. It wasn't like that with mommy. Something always going. Well, you've really been involved in many, many things. Tell me, I know you can look back over all these experiences. What would you like to talk about as far as Jewish life in Dallas as you knew it? Was it different than today when you were growing up, when you were a young man? Well, from my perspective, the way I look at it, we have Jewish people in Dallas.
Don't misunderstand me. We've got the synagogue, we've got the community center, we have certain activities and everything. But the people themselves are involved with others. If they're a member of the temple, hey, they go to the temple and all that's fine. But where's all the camaraderie we used to have that used to be our tournaments, our dances, the other cities coming in, all of us, the bowling. We had big bowling here on Sundays. We had places to go to hang out. You know what I mean? And that's what I see. And everybody says, well, television calls a lot of it. Now, granted, it maybe did, but it's different like day and night.
children nowadays growing up hey the drug scene hasn't been good right I've got three children my daughter Randy was on drugs she now heads up the what would you call her She the director regional director of Narcotics Anonymous right now She been there how many years Six, seven years. Six, seven years. You cannot believe the work that she has done for people. When she lived here with us, she used to work the hotline during the week, midnight call. Sometime when she wasn't here, Jorg and I would go out. These people were going to commit suicide and you just couldn't let them hang out there. So there wasn't anything like that when you were growing up?
Oh, no, nothing like that. We all met at the colonial drugstore. You know what I mean? Yeah, and so what was the hardest thing you would drink there? I was a champion of drinking those, what do we call them? Frozen malt. Frozen malt. That's right. They put me up in the window one time to see how many frozen malts I could drink. Because that was a drug pharmacy, but it had a counter. Yeah, it had a counter. It was a meeting place. We'd all meet outside. Well, what about Friedman's drug? Wasn't that a hangout? Well, Friedman's drug mostly was delivery service. They didn't have in-house trade like colonial pharmacy.
I thought they did. The pharmacy on Oakland and Forest Avenue, Robinson's drug store, never had that. Friedman's never had the camaraderie of strong drugs, never. Oh, really? They were known for their ice cream sodas? Oh, yeah, they had that. And they delivered so many things you couldn't believe it, too. believe it too. But it wasn't a hanger-on place, not at all. No way. We used to have a pig stand right up the street there. We'd all afterwards, for the late crowd, you know, staying up eleven or twelve o'clock, we would meet up there. And we all looked after one They all stayed together. Well, do you think it was maybe due to the fact that the majority of the Jewish people lived in South Dallas?
They sort of lived in the same area? Well, right here where I'm living right now, I would say we've got more Jewish people in the radius right here than I ever had on Browder Street. Really? I know anybody else. Don't ask me why. I go around and police them and tell them to turn their lights on and everything. And the fella across the street is a very nice man. His kid in fact was a sweetheart of one of the Jewish chapters. He was the president of AZA. But nobody gets outside. There's nobody meeting anybody outside. I went to a neighborhood watch, you know, Crime Watch, and the Meta fellow over there living next door to Sonny Friedman.
I've been here 10 years. I've seen Sonny Friedman twice. He lives across the street from me. Don't ask me why. It could be 95% my fault. I don't know. No. But what I try to do is I try to reach out to everybody we see during the week. We let them know it every Sunday morning. We start at 9.30 and they can come any time after that. We have matzo and eggs and all the trimming. And we built up a kind of a crowd that comes in and drops in. Doctor, I went today. He's going to bring his wife. They're coming over and different ones like that.
Uh-huh. In those days when we had the Jewish holidays and the servicemen would come in if they didn have a place to go her mother would open up the whole house to all of them And the other people would do that. You know what I mean? But now when anybody comes into town, they could be here two weeks and we're going to run into them. Well, how did they know about the street, your mother and her? They would go to the community center at that time with the hubbub. That would call. Yeah, the community center would call. Okay. Yeah. Well. My mother had eight or ten of them, sometimes, and, you know, ran out of justice for them.
I saw that the community center was doing something with professional people, with doctors and all like that, and they're just starting that up. There's the beginning of something good. See? but i'm not seeing too much of it for the kid that's in school they're the ones that are needing it yeah they're already in their own little they're not wearing any uh uniforms or shirts anything like that but within themselves the three to six guys they got their own groups too don't think they don't have Well, Duddy, I certainly do thank you. This has been a very, very, I understand, a most interesting take. Thank you so much.