Saturday, as I was on my way to run some errands, I saw a couple of estate-sale signs at an old place on Main Street in East Hampton Village. As it was before  the permitted 10 a.m. start time for such things, and the signs definitely did not meet code, I figured this was a renegade operation and that the police were going to show up soon.

    I pulled my truck to the curb, got out, and speed-walked to the house. You know what I mean, right? That certain shuffle that takes over when you are gripped by the feeling that if you don’t get in there fast someone else is going to get the good stuff?

    If I had to rank this sale among all those I have been to over the years in terms of the sheer fascination of the collection of items, it would be in the top five. Number-one still has to be the one near Hook Mill in a house that had belonged to a jeweler and watch-repairer. But this one rated high, too.

    The house had belonged to a theatrical set designer, and some things from that line of work were for sale. But what really left the score of people browsing through the place that day were the books, thousands of them, neatly sorted on shelves along nearly every wall. The only rooms I recall that had not been turned into library stacks were the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. Even a shed out back had been converted into orderly storage for a couple thousand magazines. An upstairs closet was the coup de grace, a hand-lettered card catalog in dozens of boxes.

    There were other things as well, furniture, old records, an upright piano that a certain local newspaper publisher (who arrived later at my suggestion) could not resist. I sent some text messages to friends that this was one not to miss. The old, classic East Hampton house itself was a fascination if you could see past the crowd of people and all the stuff. It would restore beautifully in the right hands.

    While various organizations offer holiday house tours, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Perhaps the best way to see others’ dwellings is to go to yard sales on a weekend. Mind you, I did not say least-expensive; such sales can be dangerous to your wallet and end up costing more than even the special previews — with cocktails — that often precede the organized tours. Yet there is much more to be learned, or at least speculated about, at a sale than a carefully scripted fund-raiser.

    These days, with my own house filled to the windowsills with children’s things, pets, and who-knows-what-all, I tend to resist buying much of anything at sales. We already have too much stuff, and just sorting it out to give away would take weeks. Nonetheless, I, like the bumper-stickers proclaim, stop at yard sales — especially if the house looks interesting.

    I had left the estate sale with a couple of books and three bent-back kitchen chairs by the time the cops got  there.

    Did you know that to beg a question is not to beg it, at least in our sense of the word? I learned that the other day from a 2010 “Common Errors in English Usage” calendar that has lain open to the May 15 entry on Baylis Greene’s desk for 19 months now, begging to be perused.

    The speaker who begged a question formerly was apparently taking what he assumed as fact, without offering any proof, as in “anyone can tell the painting is trash because it is obviously worthless.” Trusting in his own invincible surmise then, the speaker was of a settled opinion, not open to debate or further inquiry. I beg leave to say that it sounds to me like a columnist’s solemn creed!

    But seriously, the thing about proper usage is that we journalists would never write anything were our feet held to the fire so. One must march on (stealing a march on our fellows, come to think of it, often has us walking on air!) mixing metaphors as we go — as in, “You town board members have jumped to conclusions and are burying your heads in the sand!” Somebody actually said that once, or very close to it, at a town board meeting here. I forget, of course, which question it was that went begging.

    A little metaphoric license, rather than prosaic sobriety, is often the better way to go. Must every problem be solved? Americans seem to think so, though I am mindful that the great poet Pablo Neruda said, at the end of his great poem “Peace”: “I don’t want to solve anything / I came here to sing and so that you would sing with me.”

    Jumping to conclusions has often led to heavy-handed efforts at solutions that have let 100 other problems bloom. It makes you want to bury your head in the sand — to want at times not to bury your head in The Times!

    Away with all arbiters then, the myopic deciders who would let questions go begging (whether in the old or new sense), and up with the fraternally minded — the truly farsighted — who, whether invited to or not, follow up. I beg of you.

—

    The defacing with swastikas — universal symbols of genocidal hatred and mass murder — of a photo of our high school’s county championship boys soccer team last month can hardly be viewed as a mere prank. That the soccer players were largely Latino further exacerbated the situation.

    In retrospect, the administration would have been wiser to have turned the matter over for investigation to the police right away rather than to have closely questioned the players on the boys volleyball team, which also had used the locker room the day the photo was defaced.

    One can sympathize with the angry parents, who learned of their sons’ questioning sometime later, and who viewed it as a witch hunt (a charge buoyed by the fact that the police investigation was to exonerate the volleyball players, who went on to win the county volleyball coaches’ sportsmanship award), while keeping in mind at the same time that the offense necessitated a timely response and the general airing by counselors that it reportedly received.

    Not only the vandals (my wife suggested they be made to read “The Book Thief”) but their fellow students, however unoffending, should be made to understand why what the three did, however blithely, was wrong.

I wrote the letter, sealed it with red wax and a kiss and sent it off to the North Pole. It goes like this:

Dear Santa,

    All I want for Christmas is a new knee. I’ve seen three specialists, my general practitioner, and have gotten five diagnoses: arthritis, a possible fracture, bursitis, edema, and a bruised tibia. Not one of them has offered me a fix, and I’ve been broken for over a year.

    I’ve had three M.R.I.’s, countless X-rays and, as a result, now glow in the dark, so it will be real easy to find me out here at the tip of Montauk. I used to be very active and was once compared to a hummingbird, always buzzing around. But now, I’m more like a slug. C’mon Santa, enough is enough! I need some otherworldly help.

    After I recently braved the hill leading up to the Montauk Lighthouse with my grandson to visit with you and take holiday pictures, my knee swelled up to the size of a coconut. Which means it’s partly your fault. But I’m not blaming you, Santa, I’m just asking for help or a doctor who can fix me. I don’t want to be shipped off to the Island of Misfit Toys where Rudolph went because of his red nose.

I’m not having any fun this holiday season, Santa, as I cannot handle the hustle and bustle of shopping. Ten minutes in, and the stabbing pain starts to throb.

    When I initially had pain I underwent surgery in April 2010 for a displaced kneecap, or patella, as the professionals call it, a torn meniscus, and worn cartilage. In recovery a new pain developed, one worse than any other pain I experienced in the knee. I was told I had bursitis, probably from trying too hard to recover, one doctor said.

    After reading my M.R.I.’s, each of the three knee doctors asked if I had been in an accident or suffered a blunt force trauma. Except for the initial surgery, I had not. I think I would remember if someone whacked me in the knee or I were in an accident. In treatment I had several knee injections, did physical therapy, acupuncture, and finally fired my main knee doctor, who might still be hearing from my medical malpractice lawyer when I hire one.

    Next I went to a noted orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, and another highly regarded orthopedic surgeon at a Manhattan office. He said I had a severely bruised tibia, and only rest would heal it.

    I took two weeks off to rest, which was kind of a joke, because in my life, there is no rest. It meant I couldn’t watch my beloved little grandson and missed him terribly. So, c’mon Santa, you can’t say I haven’t tried to fix it. I now walk with a limp and have gained some weight. I won’t say how much but let’s say I now weigh a hundred and plenty!

    One medication really messed up my stomach and I haven’t been able to eat normally since. You would think that would make me lose weight but when I stopped eating healthy I started drinking sugary colas for some very odd reason. The only food that I crave is covered with dark chocolate or is peanut butter flavored, so you can forget giving me any oranges in my stocking, which I never really cared for anyway.

    I want to get better, Santa, so I can resume my daily hikes through the woods in Montauk. I want to get better, Santa, so I can spend more time with my little guy, Sullivan Peter Matthews. I want to walk on the beach with my dog, Brodie. I want to ride a bike and watch with glee as my hair frizzes to twice its size. I want to be a fun person again, Santa, like I used to be. And no offense, but I don’t need my belly to look like a bowl full of jelly!

    I’ve been a very good girl and deserve to climb stairs or stroll in the sand without pain. I want to start eating normal foods again without my stomach roiling. I want to be able to enjoy a juicy burger or a good batch of shrimp scampi, heavy on the garlic. So what do you say, Santa, is it a deal?

    Love from your friend,

    Janis (the blonde with the greenish    tinge).

    And what will I be giving to all of you reading this today? A promise — never to write about my arthritic, fractured, fluid-filled, bruised, bursitised knee again, whether Santa delivers or not.

—

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The East Hampton Star.

    Every year I ask my husband to get the Christmas decorations. He usually rubs his chin, sighs, and asks, “Now?” After an entire year of moving things in and out of the garage, the Christmas boxes have been shuffled and stacked and are usually in the farthest, most difficult areas to reach.

    Putting the lights on the Christmas tree is a rite of passage. Growing up, my older brother, Daniel, had the honors. Each year we’d drag out the boxes, one containing the bristly fake Christmas tree and a second box with lights, homemade and store-bought ornaments, thinning aluminum foil garland, and a few leftover cans of spray-on snow. Daniel would put the tree up and then begin the lighting procedures. First test the lights — nothing quite as annoying as discovering the lights on the tree don’t work. We would sit on the living room floor tightening and replacing individual bulbs until the strand finally lit up. I would grow tired of waiting for the lights to be done and whine, “Can we put the ornaments on now?” The answer was always no. Everyone knows you put the lights on first.

    Each year saw a new plan of action. One year Daniel did a zigzag pattern from the top of the tree down. Some years we blinked, some years we didn’t. We debated the merits of going all the way around the tree or just doing its face. Each year I sat with my chin in my hand waiting for Daniel to finish. No matter how I hung the ornaments, the garland, or tinsel, the comments were always the same: “The lights are so pretty.”

    Once Daniel moved out of the house, the torch passed to me. Each year I scolded my younger brothers, “We need to check them. No, everyone knows that you put the lights on first.” Since that time I have maintained my status as lighting director, even in my own home. My husband seems content with his role as star-topper and box-schlepper.

    As I open the boxes, my children anxiously ask if they can decorate. I remind them the lights go first. Thankfully lights are not as delicate these days so the testing is a fairly quick step. But the kids get bored waiting for me to put the lights on, as I stop every so often to stand back and make sure I’ve covered each inch of the tree in a uniform manner. They leave the living room to go on to other things.

    This year we have a tremendous number of lights on our tree. I prefer small, nonblinking white lights. I decided to buy new ones for the tree and blanketed it in white. When I stood back to admire my work, my eldest son, Luc, whimpered, “But I like rainbow colors. . . .” I feel strongly that when it comes to decorating I know what I’m doing — but I couldn’t stand to see him looking so disappointed. First Santa, now this. So I threw a few more sets of lights, rainbow-colored, on top of the white ones.

    As I approached the end of my last strand of lights the other night, my 3-year-old daughter, Annabelle, came up and leaned on my legs. She looked up at me and then silently pointed at the tree in a melancholy way. I bent down on one knee and asked, “What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer. I asked, “Do you want to help me finish the lights?” She smiled and nodded enthusiastically. I handed her the last bit of the last strand. She pulled it very gently across the bottom of the tree, making sure that it fell on each branch perfectly. When she finished she jumped up and down with a smile that made even her nose crinkle. I said, “You did a beautiful job,” and she leaned in, pushing her soft cheek gently into mine.

    When I announced that the lights were done the boys ran into the room and tore into the ornament boxes like they were gifts. They smiled and asked me about the dated ones, the ones with their pictures in it, and remarked upon how much they’ve all changed in their short little lives. I resisted the urge to make sure that the tree was ornamentally balanced and let them land where they may. After all, it’s not the ornaments that make a tree — everyone knows it’s all about the lights.

___

    Claudine M. Jalajas is a technical writer who lives in Rocky Point. She earned an M.F.A. in writing at Southampton College and has had her work published in Proteus and The Southampton Review.

    When an expert restorer of pianos and harpsichords said there was no point in saving the baby grand that had more or less decorated the living room in the family house in Amagansett for 30, maybe 40, years, the last thing I imagined was that in a week’s time I would buy another piano.

    I had gotten a call on Saturday morning to alert me to an estate sale in a long-vacant house on East Hampton’s Main Street. It was lined with books and worth a visit, if only to feed curiosity. Unlike most members of my family, I am not a fiendish yard sale fan, mainly because I’m convinced that we are the ones who need to sell things rather than accumulate more.

    (Unfortunately, the sale was shut down a few hours after it got going because someone had neglected to get a village permit. Book lovers will probably have another chance at the sale, though, since only a small dent had been made in them. At some point in its past, the house had surely been occupied by an intellectual with broad, erudite interests.)

    I arrived in time. When I walked into the house, I turned directly into the living room. At the far end was a nice-looking upright piano. I was captivated when I saw it was a Steinway — and noted the modest price tag. So I played a few notes, from the top of the keys to the bottom, and made the decision. It didn’t sound terribly out of tune. Would it be a great bargain?

    I own a good piano, which was restored a few years ago, so the Steinway wouldn’t be for me. Would my son and daughter-in-law want to replace the decrepit one in Amagansett? Or would my husband’s son and daughter-in-law, who live in Massachusetts, want to replace their more ordinary upright with a Steinway? How would we transport it? Would it turn out that I had wasted my money?

    A few days later, I took Jorge Lago, master piano technician, to look at it. Arriving at the house, he warned me that impulsive piano purchases usually were a mistake. “Why did you buy a piano without having someone look at it for you?” he asked in a rather fatherly manner. When he lifted the top and looked inside without gasping, however, I knew it was okay.

    The piano needed thorough cleaning and some of the hammers definitely had to be adjusted. But, given the condition of the house, the word he used to describe the piano’s overall condition — no cracks in the sounding board, and pins still tight — was “miraculous.”

    It certainly had been a long time since someone played the piano, but judging from the sheet music in the room, it had been played lovingly. It would cost a certain amount of money to move and minimally repair, but my yard-sale find would, at the least, be worth what we put into it.

    So the Steinway is to find a good home in Amagansett. One of the grandchildren who lives there is taking piano lessons, and, if all goes as I hope, we will hear her play something on it before long.

    In the meantime, I’m hoping I haven’t been bitten too badly by the yard-sale bug.

    Having inherited from my wife a laptop, the first I’ve ever owned, I realized in thumbing through some old columns that had not yet made their way to my archivist in Carlsbad, that for me the computer age began 23 years ago, in the summer of 1988. . . .

    “Recently, I was carried kicking and screaming into the technological age, which is to say that the manual typewriter whose carriage I had flung back and forth until it cried uncle, and whose ribbons I had pounded into shreds and tatters, was replaced by a computer. Now, instead of carrying on a lover’s quarrel with a cantankerous Royal, I stare, fascinated, as green words march silently by on a screen.”

    The relationship is decidedly different. The former was far more physical, more noisy, more confrontational. With the Royal, I knew where I stood — usually at a disadvantage, because there was always something wrong. The ribbon wouldn’t rewind, the spacer would slip, the capital T would become unhinged, o’s and e’s would become obscured by caked ink, elfin screws would pop from parts unknown. I used to say, not with any bitterness, really, that even when all the typewriters in the office were fixed, they were broken. You had to take them warts and all.

    The computers are, by contrast, cosmetically perfect, cooler, and more mysterious, inasmuch as, unless you periodically summon up word counts, you never know quite where you are with them. Rather than noisy arguments, silent dialogues are conducted, and since pages don’t roll out from the machine, the interplay can become mesmerizing. The first column I wrote on a computer was twice as long as normal, and was greatly improved by radical surgery that removed a large, unwieldy digression.

    “Soon,” I said following a euphoric week at the keyboard, “all I’ll have to do is press ‘Point of View’ and the computer will do my column for me!”

    You do get the feeling with a comuter that you’re not the active agent you once were. Perhaps that is because everything is so silent now. Thoughts arrive and are borne away with equal ease, it seems, by the cursor. Sometimes, perversely, whole chunks of text vanish, which is why I’ve learned the hard way to periodically implore the machine to “save.” I never would have groveled that way with my typewriter.

    Perhaps computers do deserve some obeisance, as they can make one’s job easier. Second thoughts become first thoughts without having to wad up and toss away a sheet of copy paper, or smudging a line with xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

    And I find satisfying the rat-a-tat of the printer as it transposes what had been somewhat ethereal into down-to-earth black-and-white, proof positive that I have, indeed, been working.

    Tonight is the third night of Hanukkah, a holiday —  in the month of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar — which lasts for eight days and often coincides with Christmas, but not always.

    Hanukkah wasn’t particularly festive in my family when I was a girl, or young adult, either. My grandfather would “surprise” my brother and me with new silver dollars — Hanukkah “gelt” — and that was it. I learned that the holiday celebrated the biblical story of the Maccabees’ recapturing the temple in Jerusalem when enough oil for only one day miraculously lasted for eight. But if the synagogue we belonged to had special observances, they weren’t for kids. And my mother didn’t make latkes.  

    For me, Christmas is synonymous with East Hampton. I never celebrated it until, nestled as a guest in an upstairs bedroom in my mother-in-law- to-be’s house, I tried my hand at creative gift-wrapping. It seems funny that I don’t remember the gifts, but recall cutting and rolling strips of Christmas paper into letters to indicate who the present was for.

    The man who was to be my husband had, unlike me, always enjoyed the gifting tradition of Christmas. We brought up our three children  with Santa Claus and stockings and lots of presents under the tree, eschewing the religious significance. Friends, whom we met when the children were infants, provided a magnificent Christmas Eve over the years, with smoked salmon and frozen lemon mousse, and twinkling candles, and elaborately iced gingerbread cookies, and party clothes.  

    I wanted the kids to know about my heritage, however, at least a little. I persuaded my mother to give me her traditional brass Hanukkah menorah, bearing two lions of Judah, in exchange for a modern one she had sent me, and, one year, I showed the kids how to spin a dreidel. Realizing that Hanukkah had evolved to be more like Christmas, as far as gifts were concerned, I made sure they got a small toy each night for a couple of years. (Usually, at least one present under the Christmas tree, for each one, was wrapped in blue-and-white Hanukkah paper, too.)    

    That five of my grandchildren now celebrate both holidays came almost as a surprise. My sons’ children have maternal grandparents who celebrate Hanukkah. I don’t think they have had a present for each of the eight days of the holiday, but it is Happy Hanukkah at my in-laws’ houses and Merry Christmas at mine.    

    My daughter’s children, on the other hand, are too young to know anything about my Jewish heritage, and I doubt that the rural Nova Scotia community in which they live takes much note of Hanukkah. Besides, she and my son-in-law intend, first, to explain, and — on a modest scale — celebrate, the traditions of Ethiopia, where both children were born. Chris and I are excited about going to Nova Scotia for Christmas this year and anticipating a jolly time.    

    When I am there, I plan to ask my daughter if she would like me to pass along that menorah I got from my mother. In their culturally mixed household, this might make a certain, unexpected, poetic sense.

    Ethiopia, you might not know, has been a Christian nation since the first century, long before that religion reached Europe. But before the first century, Ethiopia was a Jewish civilization: Indeed, the imperial family of Haile Selassie traced their lineage back to a rendezvous between the Queen of Sheba (Makeda, in Amharic) and King Solomon.    

    Christmas, according to the Ethiopian calendar, doesn’t happen until January. My own children always bragged to friends that they were lucky to have two winter holidays. Looks like my Nova Scotia grandkids might be getting three.

At some point at the end of this week, I’ll start my Christmas shopping. Being used to operating on a deadline, I am familiar with this sort of pressure. Moreover, buying gifts late reduces the chance that our children are going to discover them before they are wrapped.

    Well, that’s my positive spin on the procrastination, anyway. Being a confirmed localist, my plan is to walk into town, as we still call it for some reason. I’ll stroll past the vacant stores, marvel at the high-end clothes shops with no one save a bored and lonely salesperson in them, and dip in at the bookstore.    

    Next, I’ll have a look around the hardware store, and that fancy home place over by Waldbaum’s whose name I can never call to mind. On the way back to the office, I’ll take a pass through the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s Bargain Books to look for odd titles. Beyond that, there are a few places in Montauk I may go to, and Sag Harbor is a good bet for stocking-stuffers.

    My wife has done the heroic work this holiday, staying the week at her parents’ place in New York City while shepherding the kids around to shows, a birthday party, and a trip to Hoboken to stand on line for two hours in the cold of a wind-swept street at a bakery made famous on one of those reality-TV programs people seem to like these days. Before she left for the city, she spent hours ordering toys online. The boxes stack my office, which  will become Santa’s workshop on Christmas Eve.

    We celebrated Hanukkah with a party on Saturday in New York, where the kids got a few gifts. Ellis, who will be 2 in February, received a Play-Dough set and some small race cars that roll down a plastic ramp. The girls, 7 and 10, got electronic devices they had been coveting thanks to the pooled resources of several aunts and family friends. I drove home on Sunday, stopping in Riverhead at Home Depot to buy a light bulb. (That’s a column for another day.)

    The house has been quiet this week, just me and the dogs and the rumbling every now and then of the furnace. I’ll be glad when the family returns and the holiday really gets going.

There was a morning low tide on the last day of 2011. After tending to my household chores, feeding the dogs and chickens, and before the rest of the family was awake, I slipped out in the truck to go clamming. With little traffic on the roads before 8 a.m., I rolled easily up to East Hampton Village to buy $40 worth of gasoline and grab a clam rake from the barn.

    Saturday’s balmy 50-degree air seems an impossible memory as I write this a few days later with the night’s forecast for the teens. And the water temperature seemed about the same as the air. I clammed barehanded. There was little or no wind.

    I scratched lazily, wandering off the edge of my accustomed sand flat, surprising myself by stumbling onto a productive group of clams. There were a few gulls and ducks to keep me company. After a while, Paul Lester, accompanied by a dog, launched a boat and headed out to go scalloping. When I was done, my heavy and half-filled mesh bag dragged along the path back to the truck.

    Ellis, our 2-year-old, helped me wash the clams in the sink and put them into bags. I explained to him that there were “fish” inside and opened one so he could see. For the next few days, he would open the refrigerator, take out a clam, and declare, “Fis!” demanding that I open another for him to examine.

    Monday was chowder night in our house. Evvy, our middle child, helped with the potatoes, leaving peels all over the kitchen floor. Ellis happily cleaned them up.

    There was no recipe to follow. I sautéed onion and shallots in good olive oil, then threw in a handful of chopped-up smoked bluefish instead of the traditional salt pork. Next went in some white, then broth and water in approximately equal proportions, then a bay leaf and some thyme and diced potatoes.When the potatoes were soft, in went the now-chopped clams.

    Each family member (other than Ellis) added something to cream up their bowls according to their taste. Ellis didn’t care much for it anyway. Adelia had two servings. Evvy had a serving then asked for a second of just the broth. There were no leftovers.

My parents died at 94 and 96, so I never expected my brother, Martin Men­del Seldon, to go at a younger age. He was 83 when he died on Dec. 28, after an unexpected, massive heart attack.

    I was in Nova Scotia on a wonderful Christmas holiday with my daughter and her family when the news came. Assuming that his funeral service would be held very quickly, I skipped coming home, as we’d planned, and headed out the next day to Sunnyvale, Calif., where he had lived for years.

    Marty was a wonderful man, whom I just didn’t see often enough. Nothing could have brought home the long absences between us more dramatically than his death. Six years older than me, and my only sibling, he didn’t get back East frequently after he and his young family moved to California in the mid-1950s. Cross-country trips were not commonplace for either of us.

    More than 160 people attended his memorial service on Monday. In addition to kind words and prayers by the rabbi and cantor of Temple Emanuel in San Jose, and talks by members of the family, Marty was eulogized by friends and colleagues from diverse walks of life. All agreed that he was a person of substance who never stopped advocating for the things he believed in, who mentored others, and who remained modest despite his accomplishments.

    It had been some years since he retired from a long career in a Silicon Valley electronics firm, but co-workers were at the service in force. Present and former Sunnyvale neighbors were well represented, as were the members of the temple and of a senior citizens social club. Perhaps most notable, however, were those members of the fly-fishing community among whom he was revered. That his peers expressed their grief and spoke of him with love was the finest testimony.

    Marty was known internationally as a fly fisherman, in part because he created voluminous databases on fly-fishing resources, on the artists who tie flies and, separately, on everything imaginable about trout. He was an environmentalist who never stopped fighting to protect marine habitats. And, while he was at it, he also kept up-to-date records on his and his wife’s families.

    When it came my turn to speak, something that should have been obvious hit me in a flash: I knew Marty longer than anyone else in the room. I concentrated on memories of him as a boy — playing in a brook and carrying a calf on our grandparents’ farm in the Catskills — and as a young man, fiddling around with radio tubes in the attic of our house. I told the story of the night during a Passover Seder in 1947 when Marty was in basic training at Fort Dix, N.J. He had been unable to get leave, but when it came time to open the door for Elijah, there was Marty, with a big, foolish grin.

    I described how exciting it had been to be his little sister when he got out of the service and lived at home while attending Columbia University. He and his buddies hung out at our house, playing Ping-Pong and listening to jazz. I told the story of how he saved me from ever smoking by offering to teach me how with a two-month-old, long-open pack of Lucky Strikes.

    I knew Marty as a dear, caring man, but I hadn’t known how many lives he touched and how appreciated and beloved he was.

    He inherited the best characteristics of his forebears, and I trust his children and grandchildren will follow in his stead.