I had no desire to go to college. I figured the world would be my classroom. Freshman year was the U.S. Air Force. I enlisted in the spring before high-school graduation. At seventeen, I was not old enough to sign the form, so I had to ask my parents for permission. My mother was distressed, but my father knew there was no holding me. “Sign it,” he told her. “Just sign it.”
Why the Air Force?
Because I did not think I could survive the Marine training, because I did not want to be an Army grunt, because I hated the Navy uniforms.
My basic training started at Sampson Air Force Base, in upstate New York, then continued at Kessler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, where signs on the lawns near town said: “No niggers, no kikes, no dogs.” What you learn in such a place is not just what they are teaching. I mean, yes, they taught me to work a radio, talk in code, sit in a bunker with earphones on my head, tracking jets across the sky, but what I learned was America, the South, people from other parts of the country, how to stand up and take care of myself.
I had a good old boy, son of a bitch sergeant named Harley. He used to mangle my name at mail call, really Jew it up: WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! I got lots of letters from my high-school sweetheart—she became my first wife. She used to send cookies and candy. Harley would rip open the packages and throw the cookies all over the floor, yelling, WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! So one day, we’re in chow line, just him and me, and I go up and whisper, so he has to lean close to hear me, “I am going to kill you.”
He shouts, “What did you say?”
I speak even softer the second time: “You heard me, Harley. One day, I am going to find you in town, when you’re alone, and I am going to kill you.”
He goes nuts. “Who the hell do you think you are, Jew boy? You can’t talk to me like that.” He hits me across the mouth. I wipe away the blood and look up smiling. “Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch. You’re screwed.” I went to the colonel and filed a complaint. Harley was gone. There are all kinds of ways to deal with an adversary: fists, words, taunts, compromise, submission, complaint, and courts-martial.
On one occasion, a service buddy, knowing I was far from home, invited me to his house for the weekend. We got in late Friday and went right to sleep. When we came down to the kitchen Saturday morning, there, sitting at the table, eating his breakfast, was my friend’s father dressed in a white robe with a Klan hood next to him in a chair. I kid you not, this actually happened. I sit down, nervous, smiling. He shakes my hand, asks my name, then says, “Weintraub? What kind of name is Weintraub?”
“It’s a Jewish name, sir.”
“You a Jew?” he says. “No, you no Jew. If you a Jew, where’s your horns?”
“Oh, they’re there,” I tell him. “Just had to file ’em down to fit under the helmet.”
I got one of the bleakest postings in the Air Force—Fairbanks, Alaska. It was the wild frontier: dirt streets, trading posts, a saloon with the sort of long wood bar you see in old westerns. Soldiers and contractors stopped in town on their way to the Aleutian Islands, where we had radar stations and listening posts. It was as close as you could get to the Soviet Union without leaving American soil. These men were stationed on the islands for long stretches, did not see a woman for months, did not see the sun for just as long. When they returned to Fairbanks, they picked up their pay in a lump sum, then went on a spree. Aside from soldiers, the town was just bartenders and hookers, both in pursuit of the same mission: separate the doughboys from their cash. I learned a lot in Alaska. In the control tower, I learned how to read coordinates and communicate in code, which, even now, as I’m trying to sleep, comes back in maddening bursts of dots and dashes. In the barracks, where I ran a floating craps game—it appeared and disappeared like the blips on the radar screen—I learned the tricks of procurement. In town, I learned how to move product.
One day, I spotted a beautiful coat in the window of the Sachs Men’s Shop in Fairbanks. (Note the spelling: S-A-C-H-S.) It was called a Cricketer. (I always had a weakness for clothes.) It was different from the James Dean jacket. It was a sports coat, tweedy and sharp. I went in, stood in the showroom at top of the world, tried on the coat, looked in the mirror. The owner came over, gave me the pitch.
“Yes, I know, I know, but how much?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Sorry, out of my league. I’m an enlisted man.”
“Well, how much have you got?”
“Three dollars.”
“Okay, how about you give me your three dollars and we do the rest on modified consignment. Give me two dollars a week. That way, you can enjoy the jacket as you’re paying for it.”
“All right.”
As he’s writing up the ticket, he asks, “What’s you’re name?”
“Jerry Weintraub.”
He looks up, surprised. “Jewish?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“Hey, me, too!”
He thinks, then says: “Why don’t you come here and help out when you’re not on duty?”
That’s how I ended up working full-time at the Sachs Men’s Shop while serving full-time in the Air Force. Between the military pay, the dice game, and the new gig, I was starting to make real money. Selling clothes was okay, of course, but I was ambitious. I wanted to get something bigger going. It was just as it had been with my delivery business: Once I saw the money, I could not stop seeing the money.
Now, as I said, every few days, another crew of guys shipped in from the Aleutian Islands, picked up their checks, and went on a spree. So when these guys, chilled to the bone, holding their cash, came into the street, what’s the first thing they saw? The Sachs Men’s Shop. I decided to tell a story, to package a fantasy right in the big front window. I made a beach scene there, with a guy in a bathing suit sitting beside a gorgeous girl, drinking rum under an umbrella as waves break. The men stood there, mesmerized. Then they came in and talked to me. I took some of their money and in return set them up with a whole package, the plane tickets, the Florida hotel, the clothes, the beach stuff—everything but the girl. It was the Star of Ardaban all over again.
By the time of my discharge, I was running the show. I was not sure I would ever again have such a firm handle on things. Mr. Sachs asked me to stay on as a civilian, but this made me laugh. I was anxious to get back. This much I knew: As soon as you feel comfortable, that’s when it’s time to start over.