the play
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A second-generation Russian-Jewish (sometimes) redhead
goes off in search of the mysterious great-grandfather, about whom nobody would ever speak. |
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On the surface, Looking for Louie is the story of a Russian immigrant family with a terrible secret, long-standing feuds, and a dash of charming dysfunction. But along comes a woman who will do anything—absolutely anything—to uncover her family's secret. To know who she is, she needs to know where she comes from.
She discovers that her family's secret is, yes, a heart-breaking story. And it's a common story—not a 19th-century story, not a Jewish story, but a universal immigrant story of abandonment and betrayal. She asks, What do we do now? Is there a way to heal the rage and shame that reverberate in so many families from generation to generation? |
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FROM LOOKING FOR LOUIE
Grandpa Irving was a tool and die maker, a machinist. He was apprenticed at age twelve. He made a fortune through the Depression inventing the tools with which they made gold watchcases “They never saw a Jew,” he’d say, “with hands like these.”
I once watched him repair one of those fancy wooden Father’s Day shoehorns with a brass lion on one end and the shoe horn thing on the other. You or I would have just stuck some glue in the thing. But Grandpa Irving used this micrometer to measure drill bits, so he could make holes the perfect size for the long skinny brass screws. Then he measured the threads on the screws to make sure they matched the threads on the tiny brass nuts he used at either end of the screw, which he cut to fit, which put the brass lion back where it belonged.
And I say to him: “Grandpa, do you think it would maybe be okay if, like — once you no longer need these tools — if maybe I could have them?”
And Grandpa looks at me: “What in God’s name do you want from them, these tools?”
“They’re beautiful. They’re a treasure. You could teach me to use them. They’re you.”
A month later, Grandpa sold his tools. To a collector in Newark, New Jersey. For $250.
So I call the guy who bought the tools, I arrange to visit him in Newark, New Jersey. And I buy them back. Two thousand, seven hundred thirty-seven dollars. Cash. That’s a pretty penny.
Grandpa Irving was a tool and die maker, a machinist. He was apprenticed at age twelve. He made a fortune through the Depression inventing the tools with which they made gold watchcases “They never saw a Jew,” he’d say, “with hands like these.”
I once watched him repair one of those fancy wooden Father’s Day shoehorns with a brass lion on one end and the shoe horn thing on the other. You or I would have just stuck some glue in the thing. But Grandpa Irving used this micrometer to measure drill bits, so he could make holes the perfect size for the long skinny brass screws. Then he measured the threads on the screws to make sure they matched the threads on the tiny brass nuts he used at either end of the screw, which he cut to fit, which put the brass lion back where it belonged.
And I say to him: “Grandpa, do you think it would maybe be okay if, like — once you no longer need these tools — if maybe I could have them?”
And Grandpa looks at me: “What in God’s name do you want from them, these tools?”
“They’re beautiful. They’re a treasure. You could teach me to use them. They’re you.”
A month later, Grandpa sold his tools. To a collector in Newark, New Jersey. For $250.
So I call the guy who bought the tools, I arrange to visit him in Newark, New Jersey. And I buy them back. Two thousand, seven hundred thirty-seven dollars. Cash. That’s a pretty penny.
