Uncle Merb and the Missing Sock

“Tell that Meshuggeneh Seinfeld he still owes me for the socks bit.”

My Uncle Merb told me that every time I went out on a job.

Uncle Merb was under the impression that everyone, at least everyone in New York, who worked in some kind of film, television or theater production knew everyone else.

I was a member of IATSE Local 1, the stagehands union. I worked as a set dresser. Basically a glorified furniture mover. Without the glory. 

I came by the job naturally. My father and uncle ran a moving company founded by my great-grandfather in Brooklyn prior to World War 2. It started local, moving a family from a four-story walk up in Crown Heights to a brownstone in Williamsburg. But by the time my uncle and father owned it, it was national.

It was impetus enough for me to get my union card instead. I was happier coming home each night instead of driving all over the eastern half of the United States.

The farthest west the company went was St. Louis. That’s where Uncle Merb became Uncle Merb. Before that he was Uncle Salvatore.

It was supposed to be a one week job. He didn’t come home for four months.

My father thought he’d found a girl. My mother thought he’d found a racket. My Uncle Merb, nee Sal, found religion.

“I found Jewish,” he said on his return.

“You what?” my father asked, incredulous, eyeing the yarmulke on his brother’s head.

“I found Jewish.” Merb repeated.

What he was trying to say was he converted to Judaism. Like when people becoming Christian say they found Jesus, Uncle Merb, in his words, “found Jewish”. He never ever found political correctness but he did find Judaism.

Merb was moving a household of belongings from a recently deceased grandparent to the surviving family in St. Louis. Merb and Carlo Vecchio, the oldest employee in the company. He was of almost no help but had been with the company for bordering on sixty years, and enjoyed the road trips.

The truck broke down outside a synagogue just as services were dismissing for the day.

“Lucky for me it wasn’t orthodox or no one could have helped me,” he said, an explanation that went over all our heads at the time. The members of the congregation arranged a mechanic, put Uncle Merb and Carlo up in their homes, even more importantly fed them, and even arranged for the load to be delivered to its proper address.

Uncle Merb was hooked. Carlo just stuck around the whole time for an extended break from his wife. 

“I never felt more welcome,” he said. As Uncle Sal, he was a lapsed Catholic who did a once yearly visit to the confession booth out of obligation to atone for a year’s worth of misdeeds, the majority of which he omitted out of fear of giving the priest a heart attack. As a converted Jew, Uncle Merb was the most devout committed Jew you ever saw.

He started going to temple. Studied Hebrew, of course learning the swear words first. He even insisted on a bris. 

The mohel, the rabbi who performs the ceremony, even though Uncle Merb was already circumcised, still was required to make a cut on Uncle Merb’s genitals because, according to Uncle Merb’s new rabbi in Brooklyn, the secular circumcision in the hospital “didn’t count.”

“What do you mean it don’t count?” my father asked, unconsciously crossing his legs.

“Well, it obviously counts, physiologically,” the rabbi said, forcing back a laugh. He’d had this conversation before. “But from a religious point of view…”

“From a religious point of view, you gotta cut my brother’s schwanz again,” my father shouted, gesturing obliquely towards his nether regions.

“The correct pronunciation in Yiddish is actually schvantz,” the rabbi began trying to make a joke but seeing my father was finding no humor in it quickly assumed a more sober expression. “Yes, yes. For religious purposes.”

We were all invited/required to attend along with the members of Merb’s new synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim.

“The things we do for family,” my father grumbled under his breath.

The room was half Jews, half Italian Catholics. It was like the set up to one of Uncle Merb’s always inappropriate jokes. When the rabbi snipped Uncle Merb, fifty percent of the room shouted the customary “Mazel tov”. The other fifty percent shouted “Jesus Christ”.

"Well, there's something you don't hear at a bris everyday," the Mohel joked.

In the Jewish tradition, this was when the male baby’s Hebrew name was usually revealed. In this case, this was when Uncle Merb let everyone know he was no longer Salvatore LaRuffa. He was now Merb LaRuffa.

The entire room had a similar reaction this time.

“Merb?” almost everyone said at once.

As it turned out, during his time in St. Louis, knowing he was going to convert to Judaism, then Uncle Sal decided to adopt a new name for his new life. It was on a drive through the city on a dark rainy day that he happened across a small shop with a seventy-five year old neon sign glowing in the gloom. Merb’s Candies.

“It was the most Jewish sounding name I ever heard,” he said, even though it turned out it was a Danish last name and no one in the room, Jewish or Italian had ever heard of it before.

“Then it’s a perfect stage name, too,” Merb said, beaming. “I’ll be the only one.”

Outside of becoming Jewish, the thing Uncle Merb wanted to be most was a comedian. He had his funny moments, scattered between the uncomfortable majority. He was situationally funny. He could make a roomful of relatives ache with laughing over Thanksgiving dinner, usually after everyone had had plenty to drink. He just wasn’t stand up funny. The couple times he went to an open mic night, he bombed. Not that Uncle Merb noticed. He was too busy on stage laughing at his own material.

Which is how the whole Seinfeld thing happened.

Ever since we were kids, Uncle Merb’s biggest and constant gripe was how he kept losing socks in the wash. It both confused and infuriated him. Over time he developed a whole conspiracy theory about someone being a sock thief, and it usually skewed towards one of us kids stealing them to masturbate with. 

So when Merb saw the premiere of Seinfeld, who up to that point he loved because he wanted to be supportive of a fellow Jew, a statement that elicited eye rolls from everybody in the family, Merb hit the roof.

“Maniak,” Merb shouted, pointing at the TV, which I found out later roughly translated to cocksucker. “Lech timtzotz elef za’een!” which is essentially the undertaking of a committed Maniak.

“This schlemiel stole my routine!” 

“You tell him when you see him,” he’d say to me every time I left for a gig. “You promise.”

“I promise, Uncle Merb,” I said because the odds of me ever crossing paths with Jerry Seinfeld were about as likely as getting struck by lightning.

“Because I’ll know if you lie to me about it.”

It was true. I was a terrible liar. My mother said it was because I was “a good boy,” a description she continued to use even though I was 27.

Eleven years later, lightning struck.

I wound up on a gig at the Beacon Theater. A Jerry Seinfeld concert. I was alone way up in the rigging above the stage a few hours before the show, and down below me out he walked and out it came out.

“Hey Seinfeld, my Uncle Merb says you still owe him for the socks bit,” I shouted down, unseen.

He didn’t react. No one did. I was relieved. I'd done what I promised. I figured that was it.

I was wrong.

Ten minutes later I got fired off the job. And banned from all jobs at the Beacon.

As I was being ushered out, I fired one parting shot.

“Lech timtzotz elef za’een, Seinfeld!”

My Uncle Merb hugged me for the first time in my life when I got home. 

“I’m so proud of you, I could plotz,” he said, slapping my cheek.

The things we do for family.