LOTE - Lady of The Evening
LOTE, is the true story of the woman that raised me. For now, she'll go nameless.
Right now I'm just kinda thinking aloud, no clue where it's going but it's a Molly's Game type story - If you saw the movie - which I thought was absolutely fantastic (very smart women trigger the sapiosexual in me).
She was born in what was then, the Kingdom of Hungary - in 1928, in a town called Baranya, near the border with the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At that time Miklos Horthy was regent of Hungary. She was a polyglot, speaking 5 languages fluently - however, at the time of her arrival in America the English language wasn't one of them.
She made her way to America, first 'walking' across Tito's Yugoslavia into Italy, from there she went to Malta, then to Spain,onto Portugal - then into Canada,and across the Canadian border into America into the city of Detroit. From there she caught a bus headed for NYC, but ended up on a stopover in Philadelphia. She got off the bus at the old bus station on 16th & Market Street to use the restroom - walked outside afterwards and liked what she saw and decided to stay for a few days before heading on to NYC. She knew no one in America - not one soul - totally on her own, again, speaking less than 20 words of English.
The year was 1958 - I was 1 years old.
She was fleeing Hungary which at the time was governed by a monster, Matyas Rakosi, he was communist party boss at the time she fled Hungary - he was a world class monster - A Khrushchev protege type - Rakosi had backed Nikita Khrushchev for leadership over Georgy Malenkov after Joseb Stalin died in 1953 with no heir apparent to lead the USSR.
I met her at the age of 14 hustling faux men & women's Longines and Omega watches on Market Street in Philadelphia. I brought them on Jewelers Row in Philadelphia from two Jewish guys named Saul Kalter & Al Ziegler. I bought them for $8 bucks and sold them (as stolen goods) for $30, sometimes more, $40,$50 to tourists and military recruits headed to Fort Dix military base in New Jersey (they had faux price tags that said they sold for $150).
That was how I made my living when I left the abusive woman who birthed me (never do I call her my mother - she was more of a motherfucker than a mother).
And a living I made of it, making $300,$400 a week - every week, in 1971-72. I wasn't some homeless helpless kid, anything but, I had my own lil room in Maple Shade, New Jersey for $16 a night (easy peasy) - and was well liked in the Market Street area by most of the merchants.
But, there was this one house negro cop that hated my guts, he was my only obstacle out there at the time - ducking that fuckin' dickhead (once he made me for hustling) was an every day chore. I met her on May 4, 1972 outside of what was [then] John Wanamaker's department store on 13th & Market Street - across from City Hall.
She was beautifully dressed (as always), she walked like royalty, so, just for shingles & giggles I flashed the watch - a woman's watch, along with my normal spiel," I got a Longines watch, I'll sell it to ya so cheap, you'll think you stole it yourself?" To which she asked me laughingly,"so,young man, where did you get it - to which I said - "it fell off a truck" (a term in that era which was commonly known to mean that it was stolen)... I didn't know that at the time that she knew it wasn't stolen, she was just entertaining herself with me - well, we were entertaining each other.
We traded banter for a few more minutes,I initially asked her for $50 being that she looked like money, she offered $20, we settled on $25 - sold - $17 bucks profit.
It was weeks later that I was walking west on Market Street on the north side of the block headed in the direction of the doughnut shop that was a hangout for the Market Street hustlers just near the corner, I turned the corner at 13th & Market headed north towards the bus station on 13th & Arch Street and a two tone Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce pulls along side of me and beeps the horn - I turn and look and I see a woman at the wheel, I thought she was blowing her horn at someone else, so I just kept walking, she blows again and I looked harder and realized it that woman that I sold the watch to wanting her money back. Now, I'm in, 'oh-shit mode' - this could get ugly - quick, she's a wealthy woman in a Rolls Royce a half block from City Hall blowing her horn and me - I'm trying to figure out my exit, she rolls down the window, laughing," hey young man, you got anymore hot watches ya wanna sell me"?
At this point I'm kinda cornered so I walk over to the car to play it out since I'm cornered, so I walk over and say, 'yeah, only this time I got a different one to sell ya, it matches your outfit' . She hits the locks and says,"get in"...and the rest is history. I lived with her from the next day until I was nearly 19 years old. She insisted I go to school every day (Overbrook High School) and I had a 4 year old black Cadillac she gave me to get to school that I parked a few blocks away (no driver license).
She told me all about her life - and now I'm going to tell all of you about the most amazing, beautiful soul of a human being - that ever walked on earth. She was my rock, my fortress of solitude - she taught so much about life. She was the personification of what a "mom" was supposed to be. She showed me what a mother's love was, how it felt to be loved - something of which I had no clue about in a mother that is. Oh, I had my dad's love, but I played it 'stern mcgurn' with him to show I could handle myself. He didn't 't know I'd left and moved in with her for 4 years. I'd fake like I was still living with the monster when we'd meet up - which was twice weekly at one of 3 places - the Philadelphia Library, the Philadelphia Art Museum or the Franklin Institute - all of them are on the Ben Franklin Parkway basically.
I'm really not sure how much of this I want to tell - it's a mood thing, like now thinking about her as I do (very oft) and how much I learned from her, I get in the mood to just go down memory lane.
She was a 'top of her class Lady of Leisure.' She started out working as a hostess in Chinatown in Philadelphia, but that gig didn't pay much, along with her English being poor, so she moved on to sex work - taking $20. She'd light a cigarette take 3 very strong drags on it, put it in the ashtray next to the bed and tell them when it burned down to the filter their time was up.
She told me once, "Allen, beauty, like money, doesn't come with an instruction manual [on] how best to use it - like money, it, too gets squandered by the owners of it.
She did that grind while learning English, and when she was as proficient in English as she was in all the other languages she spoke she was a multi millionaire. A very well known, very influential Philadelphian (a banker) bought her the 1968 Rolls-Royce brand new that she was driving from Keenan Motors on North Broad Street.
I'll leap forward to the time I took my dad to meet her telling him all this at once that I'd been living there for years in this beautiful 4 bedroom house in New Jersey - he was totally confused but he steadied himself - we got out of his car walking up to the side of the house - I could see she was sneak smoking out near the garage - trying to hide it. On the way I'd told him a few things about her and how I'd been there for years.
He walked up, they looked each other over like the prelude to a quick-draw gunfight - I said to her, "this is my dad, Merion Rheinhart" (I'd told her about him for years - and that he was committed Marxist thinker which added to her trepidation finally meeting him) - he nervously extended his hand to shake hers, she moved slow towards him dropping her cigarette first and stepping on it, no smile at all - she said hello to him, too. There was this longggg pause that lasted for what felt like forever. he said to her, "I want to thank you very much for what you're doing for my son" - she looked at him expressionless and said, "you mean for what I'm doing for 'our son'.
He smiled with his head down and said, "oh, ok" in a very low voice.
I'd told him in advance she was tough as nails.
So, I left them to get better acquainted and they talked politics mostly for about 5 hours.
He understood her, she came away with a clearer understanding of his position on socialism, too.
He told me he told her that her world merely fell into the wrong hands in Joseb Stalin, that socialism, if put into place by committed socialists like the early founders of the USSR - most of whom had been killed by Stalin after Lenin's death, it would have been an entirely different outcome.
She respected his position for certain, she wasn't saying it to make me feel better because they had to get along.
She took great pride in what she did, she studied all the previous Ladies of The Evening who came before - to know what to do and what not to do.
I'll stop here for now...more to come.
The History of the World's Most Infamous Ladies of The Evening