If you have any kind of tribal affiliation, you probably have the experience of spotting signs of others who might have the same affiliation. Deadheads will spot a dancing bear decal on a VW bus and car enthusiasts, no different, will note a track decal on a coworker’s bumper. That’s how I found out about Jerry Gordon’s car kippah.
A kippah, also known as a yarmulke or a skull cap, is the small head covering religious Jewish men wear to showtheir respect for God’s omnipresence. While it’s not a biblical commandment and as far as I can determine it has no basis in scripture, a man covering his head is one of a number of Jewish traditions that was embraced so long ago that it epitomizes the rabbinic idiom, minhag Yisrael k’dat hu, a tradition of Israel is like religious law. Tevye wasn’t kidding about Jews and tradition. We take that stuff seriously. I may fight with God on a regular basis, another old Jewish tradition, but I’ve worn some kind of head covering, a Kangol style cap, a baseball cap or a fedora since I was a teen.
I suppose “men who wear hats” is another one of those tribes. As someone who owns two Stetson Sovereign Temples in black (my opinion is that Stetsons are every bit as good as the twice as expensive Borsalinos) and a recently acquired grey Selentino made in the Czech Republic that’s just a little more casual than my black hats, I’ll compliment someone on their haberdashery.
I’ll get back to hats in a second but let me digress. Have you ever known, or even done business with a professional career car salesman? Sure, they’re rare, but the ones who are good are really good. Joe Girard was a legend around Detroit and ended up in the Guinness Book of records after selling 13,001 cars in just 15 years. A guy or gal has to know what they’re doing to do that. Ask our reader Buickman. I get the impression that the best car salesman stay at the same store for years.s. The two times that I bought brand new cars were both from older, experienced car salesmen. No bullshit guys who knew that getting you the best deal was the route to making them the most money.
Jerry Gordon was one of those pros. A lifelong salesman who eventually gravitated to car, he ended up retiring from the Grossinger group of car dealers in the Chicago area. Maybe I liked him because he reminded me of my father. People who knew my dad would tell me, after he died, how much they loved him. I recently asked Jerry’s widow, Arlene, if she ever gets tired of hearing how people loved her husband, and she said, “Never!” I know exactly how she feels.
Speaking of never, I never bought a car from Jerry. I don’t live in Chicago and never have, but my cousin Gary went to podiatry school there, met and married Jerry’s daughter Cheryl there, and they settled down in Skokie. I use a lot of words but I can’t say enough about what wonderful people Gary and Cheryl are. Most of the times I’ve worked the Chicago Auto Show, I’ve stayed with them, not in a hotel. Sweet and generous people who go out of their way to be nice. Jerry was like that too. He died much too young.
Gary and Cheryl’s youngest child, Scott, is getting married this weekend to a girl from New Jersey and the wedding is in Teaneck. It’s an orthodox Jewish wedding and since it’s being held on Sunday, with lots of out of town guests from both Chicago and Detroit, logistics meant that many of the folks from the groom’s side came in on Thursday or Friday and then spent the Sabbath in a hotel in Fort Lee.. With that many observant Jews, it made sense to hold religious services in one of the hotel halls.
Showing up on time has never been one of my strong suits and as I found a seat in the back row after Friday evening services had already begun, I noticed that the slightly grey haired gentleman sitting in front of me was wearing a black leather kippah that had been embellished with colorful cars hand painted around the border, along with the word Zaida, one of the Yiddish variants for grandfather. Remember what I said about indicators of tribal affiliation? I know what it means when a guy has a dancing bear on his kippah and the same is true of cars. I thought to myself, “Cool, a car guy. We have something in common.”
Isn’t it amazing how the human mind works? I’m sitting in a makeshift synagogue in a room filled with Jews like myself, people that know many of the same people that I know, attending the same wedding, many of whom are related either by blood or by marriage and I’m thinking that the fact that the guy has cars on his hat gives us something in common? Go figure.
During the short break between the afternoon and evening liturgies, I tapped him on the shoulder and asked about the kippah. It turns out that it was Cheryl’s brother Lee and that we had something else in common. He’s a writer and editor in the sports department of the Chicago Tribune, responsible for all their published stats.
Lee told me that the kippah was originally his father’s, a gift from Arlene 36 years ago after the birth of their first grandchild. Cars weren’t just Jerry’s way to make a living, he was a genuine car guy. I remember talking cars with him at family celebrations. Lee told me that his mom gave him his dad’s yarmulke, but only after he himself had become a grandfather. Call me sentimental but I think that’s charming.
The car hobby has its clones and replicas of significant automobiles. Lee told me that the kippah he was wearing was actually a ‘clone’ car kippah, a reproduction that he had had made after he thought he’d lost the original. I can understand just a little how he must have felt. One year when working the NAIAS, I thought, for about 20 minutes, that I’d lost the famous autographed bag. It turned out that my son had left it in the car but I was already going through the stages of grief by the time he told me. The same was true with Lee and his dad’s beanie, though, obviously, a family artifact is more important then Carroll Shelby and Richard Petty’s autographs. Lee Gordon already had commissioned the reproduction when, a week after losing it, he found it between some couch cushions. Appropriately it had fallen there when he’d been playing with his grandkids. The image at the top of this post is of the original.
To preserve that original, he usually wears the reproduction, saving Jerry’s actual car kippah for special events, like his nephew’s wedding. Lee was wearing another piece of family art during the weekend, a necktie dye sublimated with photographs of his grandchildren. I told him that some day one of his descendants will be wearing both his tie and his father’s kippah and he smiled. Cue Tevye.
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
So, it’s kosher to have little cars on your beanie? What if you’re an “airplane guy”, propellers anyone?
Oh, God, I’d have killed to wear a propeller beanie in church. For one thing, we could have blown that raunchy, stanky incense the hell away from us with a tiny motor in the beanie and wires down our vestments to a pocket battery pack.
But for Catholics, only cardinals and the pope get to wear them. Judaism appears more democratic, beanie-wise.
Propeller beanies are the little known official headgear of high level S.M.O.F. members.
Sailor Moon Online Fanclub?
Tsukini kawatte, oshioki yo!
I never saw Bruce Pelz wear one.
[grin]Shhh! [/grin]
Ronnie, Nice story.
Actually, I think that all priests from the eminence of Monsignor up, and so that means all Bishops too, are permitted to wear a zucchetto (Italian for “little pumpkin”). In theory, an ordinary priest (but not a Deacon or Religious) could wear a black zucchetto, but as far as I know that is not the modern practice. In theory Franciscan priests could wear a brown zucchetto. Ditto. Catholic skullcaps are not worn on a full-time basis as are Jewish yarmulkes. Zucchettos are only worn when the dignitary is at least in a cassock, and usually in vestments. Not with suits.
As far as I was taught, the Catholic skullcap dates back to the early years of the Church when all clergy and not just monastics were required to shave their heads in a tonsure, with the remaining ring of hair being a reminder of Christ’s Crown of Thorns. In warmer climes, some protection from overhead sun was needed, while in colder climes some protection from frost was needed.
When I was a tyke, I would stay at my mother’s aunts’ summer cottage. They were maiden schoolteachers, and they had sisters and/or cousins who were nuns who would visit. At one point a visiting Monsignor had forgotten his magenta satin zucchetto, or had left it as a memento. I was fascinated by it, but they would not let me try it on.
So, Catholic and Jewish, the impulse to show humility before the Almighty is the same, but the backstories are different.
ATB,
John Marks
“some protection from overhead sun was needed”
But wouldn’t burning, blistering and suppurating have increased their suffering cred and brought them closer to Christ?
I mean, these *were* the guys who wore hairshirts, flagellated their own backs raw and otherwise believed in mortifying the flesh. As if life in the Dark Ages wouldn’t do that quickly enough anyway.
John, thanks. I thought it might be too parochial but it was such a sweet story I had to share it.
So I see Ronnie that you and my son have a love for headgear as well as music. (He has a collection of fedoras he wears everywhere; not out of religious obligation but because he loves wearing them.)
The manager of the computer store I worked at in college referred to us techs as propeller heads; though I like to say after working my way through mainframe programming, HTML, and advanced VBA/MS Access programming as well as computer setup and repari that I am now a turbo-propeller head. :)
BMW logo would be perfect.
With a standard leather kippah made from four gores (the triangle shaped parts, that’s also the word, btw, for the white lines that separate a merging lane from traffic), yes the BMW roundel would work perfectly, at least in terms of graphic design. I’m not sure, however, that some Quandt family members would be thrilled by it, and I know plenty of people that would think it wasn’t appropriate in light of BMW and the family’s history during the 3rd and 4th decades of the 20th century.
FWIW, any round logo would work, like Mercedes-Benz’s three pointed star.
Hats make your scalp stink. Then the hat stinks. Then you have to spray their ins1des with Lysol or something just like they did bowling shoes in the olden days.
Hats stink.
No hat hair for Sir Pete.
At his age, probably no hair
I have a full head of hair and it’s a damn nuisance.
Since grumpy old racist barbers have mostly died off, you have to now endure some chatty chick surrounded by either Mommy Track or Dudester decor.
And my hair grows fast. A good high & tight is RUINT in a week and a half.
I just “roll my own” with rechargeable clippers head down from back to front buzz cut
I used to do that… just mowed my head at the lowest setting. But how do you clean up the back of your neck?
SURELY you must use a razor to square-off the hair just above collar level. And that’s effing hard to do without multiple swing-out mirrors.
When I regular shave I just go right around back of my neck. I manage with just the shower mirror
“But how do you clean up the back of your neck?”
Get a wife. Or train a cat?
Just get a cat.
Cheaper than said wife.
Especially an ex-wife. AMIRITE?!?!?!
Amirite.
Hmmmm…. sounds like an element.
And by the way… indeed!
Hmmm, car color you never see anymore
How would someone that doesn’t wear hats know that they stink? A hat shouldn’t smell any worse than the jacket of a man’s suit.
Men’s hat stores typically provide cleaning and blocking (returning the hat to its original shape) services. Henry the Hatter stores in and near Detroit charge $25. If needed, they’ll replace the lining for you too. I just had one of my Stetsons cleaned, blocked and relined. I wear it to car shoes in the summer and there were sweat stains on the hatband so it needed cleaning but it didn’t stink.
Like well made, welt sewn shoes, a good men’s hat can be renewed a number of times.
My son has various designs on his, cars, baseball, aleph, etc.
Machine embroidery is my day job. I’ve put more than a few designs on kippot. Grateful Dead Productions even gave me permission to do the “skull & roses” on one, as long as the embroidery was a gift. Of course, just because the embroidery was a gift didn’t mean that the kippah itself was free {: -{)> -smiley with a hat, mustache and beard.
Off topic?
Nah, not really..
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/eight_cylinders_of_economic_justice/
Neat story. If I were Jewish, I’d have a kippah with various car logos like Peugeot, Citroen, MG etc. on it.
I’d want each pie section to look like the label for a different flavor of Laughing Cow Cheese.