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Lis's grandfather's obituary
Jul. 21st, 2009 02:49 pmAs I assume many of you who've been reporters know, newspapers have both "death notices" and "obituaries." A "death notice" is a special form of classified ad; it's paid for by the family. An "obituary" is a news story; it's written by a reporter, and is for notable people. "Notable" is defined differently by different papers, but, basically, it means "someone that the paper thinks its general readership would want to read about, even if they didn't know the person." In Boston, both the Globe and the Herald have a policy of running obituaries for schoolteachers, for instance -- even if they weren't FAMOUS schoolteachers, they all touched enough lives to make them count as notable.
The Saint Pete Times goes one step further: they pull out a single obituary every day to be a "featured obit" -- the most interesting obituary gets prominent placement. And that's what they did for Lis's grandfather.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/article1020111.ece
But, of course, that barely scratches the surface of his life.
Let me tell you a story that didn't make it in there.
Whitehall, Wisconsin was a town of about a thousand, fifteen hundred people (it's now got sixteen hundred or so.) Of whom five were Jews -- Lis's grandfather and grandmother, father and aunt, and Danny, Zayde's business partner. There were two big employers in town -- Whitehall Meat Packing, and Land o' Lakes. The big town celebration every year (which they still have) was "Beef and Dairy Days" -- the town carnival with Miss Whitehall pageant, rides and games, and that sort of thing. The centerpiece was the beef and dairy -- Whitehall Meat Packing roasted a steer on a spit; Land o' Lakes provided hundreds of gallons of ice cream.
Zayde usually bought the steer in question from the local kids -- whoever won the local 4 H Club Market Steer contest, Zayde would buy it (at above market rates -- he wanted to encourage the kids to grow up to continue to provide good cattle), and have it slaughtered, roasted, and served.
And everyone knew this, so normally, at the cattle auction, people didn't bid against him for it -- it was going back to the town, and he was paying over market value anyway.
This one year, however, some city slicker banker that nobody knew was at the auction, too. And he started bidding on the prizewinning steer, too. So Zayde went over to him, started schmoozing. He hadn't seen him around the cattle circuit before, what was he planning on doing with the steer?
The city slicker said that he was planning on getting into the cattle business. He was going to breed it and raise his own herd.
Zayde thought about that, wished the man good luck, and bought a different steer for the roast.
The Saint Pete Times goes one step further: they pull out a single obituary every day to be a "featured obit" -- the most interesting obituary gets prominent placement. And that's what they did for Lis's grandfather.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/article1020111.ece
But, of course, that barely scratches the surface of his life.
Let me tell you a story that didn't make it in there.
Whitehall, Wisconsin was a town of about a thousand, fifteen hundred people (it's now got sixteen hundred or so.) Of whom five were Jews -- Lis's grandfather and grandmother, father and aunt, and Danny, Zayde's business partner. There were two big employers in town -- Whitehall Meat Packing, and Land o' Lakes. The big town celebration every year (which they still have) was "Beef and Dairy Days" -- the town carnival with Miss Whitehall pageant, rides and games, and that sort of thing. The centerpiece was the beef and dairy -- Whitehall Meat Packing roasted a steer on a spit; Land o' Lakes provided hundreds of gallons of ice cream.
Zayde usually bought the steer in question from the local kids -- whoever won the local 4 H Club Market Steer contest, Zayde would buy it (at above market rates -- he wanted to encourage the kids to grow up to continue to provide good cattle), and have it slaughtered, roasted, and served.
And everyone knew this, so normally, at the cattle auction, people didn't bid against him for it -- it was going back to the town, and he was paying over market value anyway.
This one year, however, some city slicker banker that nobody knew was at the auction, too. And he started bidding on the prizewinning steer, too. So Zayde went over to him, started schmoozing. He hadn't seen him around the cattle circuit before, what was he planning on doing with the steer?
The city slicker said that he was planning on getting into the cattle business. He was going to breed it and raise his own herd.
Zayde thought about that, wished the man good luck, and bought a different steer for the roast.