Story of the Day 2/ 23/ 2010

I have apparently cornered the market on margarine.
I didn’t’ mean to. And I didn’t’ want to.
It has to do with Passover.

Last year, there was no margarine- none that was kosher for Passover.
I am 50 years old. For 49 of my years there has been Mother’s kosher for Passover margarine.
There has also been Breakstone Kosher for Passover butter, but that is a different story.

Every year, just before Passover, my family and then I would buy some to use during Passover.
But last year, there wasn’t’ any. There wasn’t any at Marsh or at Kroger’s.
With great desperation, I asked my neighbor to pick some up for me when she was in Chicago. Even if it was a different brand.
I know this was sacrilege, but I was feeling desperate.
She came home from Chicago with a van full of grape juice, and cheese, and meat, but no margarine.
She had been told that no kosher for Passover margarine had been made. At All.

So, this year, when the on-line Kosher for Passover co-op order list became available, I put down that I wanted a case of margarine- Mother’s, of course, to split.
What I mean is that I entered it on the “to be split” page, and people were supposed to contact me about splitting it.
This is the order that comes in from Kansas City and is dropped off in the parking lot of one of the synagogues on a prearranged date at a prearranged time, and then all of these Jewish ladies, and a few guys show up and put the cases of contraband surreptitiously into the trunks of our cars and drive away.
This happens about 6 times a year and on at least one of those occasions the stuff actually shows up when it is supposed to.
And once, in the years I have been ordering from them, my entire order has come. Usually I get half of it. Once I got none of it. So it is always interesting.
But if you pretend it has something to do with playing the slot machines, you will feel very lucky when you get what you have ordered, even if the date or time has changed.
So I put the case of margarine on the “to split” page.

A week went by.

Finally, one women emailed me that she wanted a lb or 2.
I was feeling a little stressed. The order deadline was coming up, and I really didn’t’ want 28 or 29 lbs of kosher for Passover margarine.
That is what I would have left from the 30 lb. case, after splitting it.

If you haven’t guessed, this is why I do not order many things from the co-op.
Yes, they have a great selection of things that you can’t get at the grocery store here in greater Indianapolis, and the prices are good, but I usually do not need 20 lbs of one kind of cheese,
Or 24 bags of chocolate chips, or ….30 lbs of margarine.
And when I do order something, I am not even sure I will get it.
So, in a mass emailing and at synagogue on Shabbat, I desperately mentioned that I wanted to split a case.
And…I waited.
And, after numerous emails back and forth and the desperate help of a few devoted friends, I found that I would only need to keep 16 lbs of margarine, if I ordered the case.

And the deadline to place the order is in 19 minutes. At midnight.

So, with some trepidation, I did a very brave thing.

I removed it from my cart.

And, I will hope that , this year, there really is margarine in the stores here in Indiana, or in Chicago- or we will just use Breakstone butter.
I consider this a true act of faith.

Now, there is actually a second part to this story.
You see, if I had ordered that case of margarine., I really would have been cornering the market- at least in terms of Indianapolis….and probably the rest of Indiana.
Just think of the power!

Many years ago, during the summer- this was in the early 1970’s, I was at home and I picked up the telephone. It was for my father. What ensued was along and very confusing phone call for my father.

My father had this friend named Mort .
Mort and he used to do a lot of things together. They used to double date. Well, not in the 1970;s, by then Mort was happily married to his wife of many years, but they had. They had also gone bowling together, and , in the 1970’s, they had started investing together.
Most people buy shares in a mutual fund. I have no idea if there were such things in the 1970’s, but even if there had been, that is not what those two would have done.
Mort and my father liked to think that they were pretty smart. So, they would study up on things and read up on things, and then Mort would tell my dad, who was a bit confused, what they should buy.
This was good. As a general rule, my dad did a lot better when he followed Mort’s lead than when he invested on his own.
Anyhow, there was this investment vehicle called “futures”. You would sell something, but then, you would have to buy it- that is because you sold it before you owned any of it. Please, do not ask me to explain. It has something to do with farmers wanting some insurance that they will get an okay price come harvest time, but it really sounds a lot like what sunk the economy, recently.
Actually, in comparison, I should probably invest in a case f that Passover margarine, but back to the 1970's.

For some reason, Mort had decided that they should invest in futures of orange juice.
I have no idea why he picked orange juice, but week after week the two of them were buying futures- or, put differently, selling more and ,more of something that they didn’t’ yet own.

Now, neither my dad nor Mort was poor- they were both comfortably middle class. The sort of middle class where you can belong to a swimming pool in the summer and have a maid come in and clean once a week, and get a new car every few years. Not a Cadillac, but something respectable.
Well, somehow, the two of them had managed to corner the market on orange juice. You see, the call was from sort of federal agricultural office asking what they were forecasting, since they were now the third largest dealers in orange juice in the country.
Unfortunately, they called my dad, who listened to the guy very carefully, and then told him that he needed to call his “partner”, Mort, for his sage advice. Personally, I think that was a good save.

And for the next few weeks, the two of them went around feeling like they had joined the ranks of the truly rich- since they had cornered a large part of the Orange juice market.

Hopefully, my dad and Mort would not be ashamed to find out that I decided not to order that case of margarine…….and am just going to take my luck on what Marsh may or may not have, this year.