Irv Leavitt

My oldest and brainiest relative, Yonkel Yossel, was back in town, and Iggy, perhaps my dumbest friend, took the opportunity to squeeze some advice from the Sage of Suwalki.

Yonkel said Iggy’s story might be instructive to other, smarter people, so I’m helping spread the word. You be the judge.

Yonkel’s own story begins almost 5,000 miles east of Illinois, in the ancestral home of my distant cousins Gwyneth Paltrow and Gabby Giffords, and me. He is likely to be the best thinker among all we Levitanskys from Suwalki, and, according to the ladies who frequent several Chicago taverns, the cutest.

They compete for the privilege of buying him libations, and hang on every word that tumbles from his tongue, which is less than four feet above his ankles.

The gentlemen are not much different. As soon as Cecilia the Accountant boosted Yonkel onto a barstool next to hers, Iggy squeezed in on the other side and began to relate his tale of woe.

“Reb Yonkel, my store was doing nothing, and my wife Miriam don’t help me, because she’s saving her paycheck for food and medicine and suchlike, she says,” Iggy moaned. “House payments, we’re behind.

“So I started drinking more,” he said. “You can understand that, right?”

Yonkel peered at him from under bushy eyebrows. “I would have the very good empathy if I was drinking, too,” he said. “Maybe a little Jameson’s, beer back?”

Iggy cagily feigned temporary deafness while Cecilia signaled the bartender.

“The repossession guys was after the car,” Iggy went on. “One night, I drink late and drive the car home, thinking maybe for the last time, but on the way I wrap it around a mailbox in front of Gulliver’s.”

He paused to stare at the ceiling. “They pry me outta the car, and they find out I have broken most of the more well-known bones.

“But I am not awake for this news. I continue to be sleeping for the several weeks. I do not know for sure exactly how many weeks, because of the not being awake.”

Iggy took another look at the ceiling. “I finally wake up, and Miriam has watched over the store. It hasn’t lost much more money, but the old lost money is still lost. The house bills are still backed up, and also the bills on the car, though no one will tell me where it is.

“What should I do now?” he asks.

“You gots assets? Maybe stocks or insurance policy?”

Iggy says he just has two policies on his own life, which Miriam makes sure are paid, by paying them herself.

“Good. Don’t let them default. Have you got a lot of debt?”

Iggy said he owes more money than he ever made.

“How long have you owned the store?”

Three years, Iggy said.

“How long has the store lost money?”

Three years, Iggy said.

“You gots no choice. Get a lawyer and make a bankruptcy. Be sure the lawyer protects the insurance policies. Then figure out what you’re good at, and get a job doing it.

“Your wife gots credit?”

Iggy answered in the affirmative.

“Ask her to borrow some money so you don’t lose the house. Put the deed in her name.”

But for guys like Iggy, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

“So, insurance policies are assets?” he muses, examining the ceiling again. “Maybe I’ll cash them in and invest in the stock market. Earn enough to save the store.”

Yonkel smiled. “What if you lose, boychik? Then you got no money, and when you drop dead, Miriam will have no money. And you’ll still owe everybody.”

The problem, Iggy said, is that he likes the store.

“Maybe you don’t really like the store,” Yonkel said. “Maybe you just like being the boss. That’s OK. Maybe at your new job you can learn a new business that will work out better.”

Cecilia has been listening the whole time. “The idiot’s got that faraway look in his eyes,” she said. “Poor Miriam.”

Yonkel gives her a little grin. “Poor Cecilia, too. You gots the same tsoris,” he tells her.

“Tsoris? Troubles? What tsoris do I have?”

The old man shrugs. “Not just you. The whole country.

“The United States is like Iggy’s ferkockter store. So much tsoris. Wages too low, life expectancy too low, no innovation, immigration is a mess, the climate turning to drek. But instead of fixing, everybody got drunk and voted for a momzer. And the whole government lapsed into a coma.”

What’s a momzer?

“A man of uncertain birth. He cashes in the insurance policies — gives tax breaks to the big shots — and everybody acts like it’s New Year’s Eve. But it doesn’t solve any of the problems, and sets the stage for new ones.”

Cecilia smiles and tries to give him a playful elbow in the ribs, but she nails the little guy in the head. “You OK?” she asks. “Good. Not to worry, Reb Yonkel. If he doesn’t get impeached and tossed, he’ll be evicted in 2020.”

Maybe so, the sage said. “But the problems were big, and they’ll have had four years to get worse.”

We’ll have to get to work quickly, Cecilia said.

“You won’t be able to. Those tax breaks, and all the other new advantages the big shots piled up? You’ll have to attack those first, before you try to stop global warming or reduce the maternal mortality rate or clean up the oceans.

“You ever give a dog a bone, then try to take it away from him so he doesn’t choke on it? That’s easy compared to wrenching a tax break or mining rights or deregulation away from a big corporation.”

Cecilia was silent for several minutes as she mulled that over.

“I’m sorry,” Yonkel finally said. “You didn’t ask for that. The next one’s on me, all right?”

Cecilia looked at him with moist eyes.

“Keep ’em coming, big guy,” she said. “Don’t stop ’til I’m in a coma.”