A DEAL IS A DEAL

At his 90th birthday party, Mort Gross talked about real estate. (Yiddishe Cup played Mort’s party.) Mort sounded like my dad, except Mort was a lot richer, lived a lot longer than my dad, and was more outgoing and more philanthropic than my dad. Mort developed properties; my dad never did that. Mort had a yacht in Florida and a Rolls Royce. My dad never got beyond Buick.

Mort had three favorite expressions: 1) A deal is a deal  2) Wait a minute [to kill a deal], and  3) Don’t do paperwork twice.  I learned this at the party.

I didn’t understand item #3, and I forgot to ask the person who did the roast for an explanation of item #3 — “Don’t do paperwork twice.”  I said to  one of Mort’s son, “Those were very good toasts, and I’ve heard hundreds.”

Maybe the toasts were sappy, and I was just thinking about my dad a lot. A second son toasted, “Our parents instilled in all of us a love of Judaism, and we all married Jewish girls. In fact I did it twice.”

I’m telling you, they were good toasts.

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I had a piece in the New York Times 3/12/16. “I’m not Evil.  I’m a Landlord.”  Check out the comments in the post below, “For NYT Readers.”  The comments are good!

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