Chapter 76, Driving License

    “Who is your driving instructor?” I asked Efri. “I want to start taking lessons too.”

 “Tamir, I am learning to drive a truck.” Efri answered with excitement. “He is very good, I just hope I won’t get Berman for a tester, he is the worst. Only 20% of the people pass his exam.”

 “I hear there is a new tester who is even harder. I think his name is Bercow or something like that. I hope we get Perez he’s the best. Most of the people who tested with him pass the driving license.”

 

    I ended up taking lessons with Tamir. He was very nice and took his time making sure I was comfortable handling a big truck. Dad wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t want me to become a truck driver. Dad was sure the military would make me a driver. I guess he forgot that I signed up for two extra years because of the trait I was trained for. Most truck drivers in the military were not educated and according to Dad they were “low life”. He couldn’t see me being a low life. Yet, I wanted to learn to drive trucks. It is a good job to fall on when time is bad. I wanted to be a good driver, I asked Tamir not to let me go for the test until I am a 100% ready. 

 “He is milking you,” Dad would say. “He is taking advantage of you! You spent too much money already on this stupid driving license.”

 I didn’t say anything. I knew what I was doing. If I fell the test, I would have to take 10 more lessons before being tested again and that means more time and more money. Efri already fail twice. The poor guy had been tested by Berman and Bercow. He has another chance in 3 weeks. I hoped for him he would get Perez for his next test. 

 

    “Falafel on me,” I told Tamir, “If I pass on the first shot.”

 “You will pass. I’ll make sure I don’t eat before.” Tamir slapped my soldier, “get a good rest tonight. No alcohol!”

 

   The next morning, I was up early, ate a nice breakfast of an omelet and salad and a cup of coffee. Tamir and Bercow were waiting for me at the driving school office. We set up to drive with Tamir sitting in the back and Bercow sat next to me where the extra clutch and breaks are. If anything, the last thing you want is the tester stomping on the breaks while you are driving. It means he doesn’t feel safe, and you failed. We Took off smoothly and drove directly to the beach highway. I drove straight and kept under the speed limit. From there we drove back to town. I did a perfect parallel parking maneuver, which is not an easy task for a big truck. The stop up the hill and the down shift, all perfectly.

 “Nice Job!” Said Bercow, “let’s drive back to the office.”

As we approached the office I slowed down, seeing an old lady standing next to a crossroad. She was not sure whether to cross or not. I pressed on the breaks to come to a total stop when she finally decided to cross. As I came to a stop. Bercow jumped and hit the brakes. I looked at him with a questioning look. 

“I stopped before you did.” I said as he was walking out. I sat there hating all the old ladies in the world. I don’t know how long I was sitting there holding the steering wheel when I heard the knocking on the window.

 “I like a lot of hot pepper in my falafel!”

 

    I had to tell someone, no, I had to tell everyone. The best way to do it was to call my Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel worked at the Electric company. She was a telephone operator. She has a way to contact everyone. We didn’t have a telephone yet; it took about 10 years of waiting to get a phone. You needed to be connected, and I don’t mean connected to the line, you needed “protectzia”. In other words, you needed to be Ashkenazi first, to know someone at the post office. And then you had to wait until they run the telephone lines in your neighborhood. We registered a few years ago when we lived at Borochov St. but once we moved, we had to wait again. The only way to call someone was to use a public telephone. They operated using special tokens – a coin with a slit and a hole in the center. We had one public phone in our neighborhood. There was always a que of one two people waiting. This time the que was much longer. 

 “What’s happening?” I thought to myself, “did everyone pass the driving license today?” 

 “The phone is broken”, said the person in front of me. “Someone tied a thread to the token, and it got stuck. Now we can talk with unlimited time until the post company will catch up to it.”

After about two hours of waiting, I finally reached my Aunt and told her about my new driving license.

 “This is very exciting!” Said Aunt Rachel, “I hope you drive safely.”

 “I will not get my license yet, not until my 18^th birthday.” 

 “Not too long of a wait. Meanwhile, are you excited about our family trip this coming weekend? Us and Uncle David will be joining you to a trip to the Kineret.”

 “Yes, very excited. I am curious about the Bungalows; it could be very hot there.” 

 

    It was going to be a nice week of vacation. Uncle David with his Citroen 2CV filled with his wife Rina and three kids: Momi, Rani and baby Galit. Uncle Rone and Aunt Rachel were in a small Simca – also a small French car. In the back were Batyah and her younger brother Ofer. Mom sat with Claude on her lap next to dad in our Citroen 2CV with Avi and me in the back seat. The Car had a new Clutch now and we had no problems the whole way, except that we didn’t drive fast. Yet, Uncle Rone’s Simca was over heating and a few times we had to stop to let it cool and refill the water in the radiator. We were on our last descent toward the lake of the galilee when Uncle Rone pulled to the side of the road. Except for a few highways most roads in Israel were very narrow but they had enough space for cars to pull over the side. Everyone got out of the little Simca and were looking over how Uncle Rone was opening the hood of the car. I was walking toward them to ask if he needed more water when Batyah decided to cross the street. I am not sure why, maybe she saw something on the other side. But she didn’t even look to see if any cars are coming. I heard the screech of the big truck trying to stop when I jumped and pulled her back to our side. Aunt Rachel grabbed her by her arm and smacked her little behind and shoved her back to the car.

 

    Batyah was still crying when we arrived at the bungalow resort. All of us kids ran to the shore while our parents were at the reception desk. The Kineret is a calm freshwater lake. In the morning the sun rises in the east, and the wind would blow from the eastern side. In the evening the wind blows from the west. This repeats almost daily while sometimes the western wind would be very strong and could drag floating device far to the other side of the lake which was about 4 miles wide.

 

    We received 3 bungalows next to each other close to the water. The popular Israeli music was blasting over the speaker, and we could see some of our neighbors dancing to the beat. Dad and my uncles were gathering their fishing gear while the women were setting up the bungalows and the grilling boxes called “Mangals”. Avi and I were walking toward the beach again, when we saw an Arab kid coming out of the water and holding a big tin can in one hand and a basket full of fish on the other.

 “What is that?” I asked in Arabic.

 “A fishing box trap,” said the boy with a smile. “Want it? 10 Lira.” 

 “I will give you five, but you have to tell me how it works.” 

 “It has all these holes for the water to drain and here at the top this flap I made folds in. the fish get in and don’t get out. I put bread in it for bait.”

 “Where do you get the bread?”

 “In the back of that restaurant, they throw out every night.”

We exchanged the money for the 4-gallon oil tin can and I walked toward the pear where my dad and uncles were standing, casting their fish lines. I dropped the box with the leftover bread in the water and walked away. Five minutes later I walked back and picked up the can. It was full of fish. To other attempts and we had so many fish we had to give some to the bungalow next to us. Dad and my uncles came back from their fishing experience with a small fish and one even smaller.  

 

    As we were about to sit around the picnic table when two blond girls approached.

 “Hi, my name is Jenny, and this is my sister Anna. We came here to thank you for the fish you gave us.”

 “There are more where they came from,” I said. “We are planning to catch some more tomorrow.”

 “That was not fishing,” Dad interrupted. “That was cheating.”

 “What do you mean cheating?” I said disappointed. “It isn’t our fault you didn’t catch any.”

 

    The next morning, we weren’t as lucky. A few times we picked up the “can-trap” a little too early. Only one or two fish were in the trap. We had to find a better solution.

 “We need to see when the fish get in,” said Avi.

 “Easy,” I said, “I’ll go get the diving mask, and I’ll look to see when the fish get in and we’ll pick the tin can when it’s full.”

 

    It worked great; we picked up a few baskets full of fish before 10:00AM. As I was diving around the trap, I saw that the fish – tilapia - were living in small holes in the ground. They would go and hide in their holes two or three together. I dove deeper, reached inside the hole and tried grabbing the fish. One managed to escape but I caught the other.

 “Look Dad!” I yelled, “You can’t call that cheating!” I was waving the fish in front of him. My hands were scratched from the fish back fins but it didn’t stop me from going again and again catching more fish. When I was satisfied that we had enough fish and even enough to give our cute neighbors. I walked to their bungalow and invited the girls to play with us in the water.

 

***

“Falafel”

  The original “Falafel”, as I found out from many sources, was made with Fava beans (Fool). Israel, a country with people from all over the world, had to change the ingredients to accommodate the people from central Asia, like Iraq, who are deadly allergic to beans. in most restaurant or the kiosks, you will find that the Falafel is made from Chickpeas (Garbanzo Beans). I love Fava beans and therefore my recipe includes them too. Feel free to change it to the same amount of chickpeas if you like.

Ingredients:
1 Cup Chickpeas
½ Cup Fava Beans
(Let them sit in deep bowl of water with a teaspoon of salt overnight. make sure they are covered completely with about 2” of water on top)
½ Cup freshly diced Onion
¼ Cup chopped Celery
¼ Cup chopped Cilantro
¼ Cup chopped Parsley
1 chopped Clove of Garlic
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Cumin
½ tsp Turmeric
½ tsp Ginger
1 TBSP Olive Oil

Preparation:
   Crush the peas and bean in a food processor. Mix all the ingredient until you get an even, light brown, mixture. let it sit for about 2 hours in the fridge.
Pour vegetable oil in a deep frying pan (at least 2″ deep) and add one tsp of kosher salt to the oil and bring it to 370f (you can tell it’s ready when you see the oil is actually moving around) I like to defuse the flavor of the deep frying oil by adding about a TBSP of olive oil to the frying pen.
  Press small, 1″ size, balls (I like to use 2 spoons technique) and drop the balls one at a time into the hot oil (if the oil is deep enough they will flip once they are fried on one side) the falafel balls will turn golden brown. make sure that they are even color on all sides and scoop them out onto paper towel to dry. Taste one to make sure they are not too fluffy (empty in the center) or if they fall apart in the frying oil. If so, add a TBSP of flower or an egg. Experiment, cooking, in my opinion, isn’t an exact science (like my spelling).

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