Thirteen Years Later: Crocodile Schwartz Answers the Question

Crocodile Schwartz was a man of science, an engineer, a product of Stanford University. But he said something weird once that I’ve never forgotten.

It’s been at least 13 years since my friend Crocodile (nee Lenny) Schwartz went off to teach math in Australia. He was an American success story, a poor boy from the Bronx who through the miracle of dynamite SAT scores came to be a professor Down Under.

Shortly before he faded into the Outback, Lenny and I had a conversation about the New York phone system, and he said something very strange. He was talking about what a mess that phone system is. “It’s totally out of control,” he said. “Bizarre things happen that you wouldn’t believe.”

“What kind of bizarre things?” I asked.

“Oh, like phone calls from the dead.”

Phone calls from the dead! To this day, I’ve regretted not pressing him to explain what he meant. Every time I had a strange encounter with the telephone I thought: Maybe that’s what Lenny meant.

There are those routine phone calls from the dead like the machines that call to sell me something. And there are weird messages left on my phone machine like the 12 calls for a Mrs. DeGrazzio, warning her that if she does not pay up, her newspaper delivery person will cut her off. Phone calls threatening death.

One morning I picked up the phone and heard, “Hello, Alice Kahn? This is Lois Drale from the IRS. Your name came up this morning. . . .”

As my heart jumped out of my chest, I thought: Maybe Lenny meant to say phone calls that can knock you dead. Then Drale continued, “We were wondering if you could speak at our annual meeting--maybe introduce a little humor to our workers. . . .”

I told her--in as polite a way as possible--to drop dead.

Lately I’ve been aware of a strange tendency people have to make phone calls and hope nobody is there. “Oh, it’s you--live,” one says, trying to conceal disappointment. “I was hoping to reach your machine.” Phone calls to the dead.

But Lenny left the States before phone machines became as common as Camembert cheese. I had to know! Just what are phone calls from the dead?

I got the number of a Len Schwartz in Adelaide, Australia, but when he answered, the accent was decidedly not Bronx.

“You want the Lenny Schwartz who grew up in New York and went to school in California?” he said. “I’m a tennis pro. I’ve been to California. . . .”

G’day, mate.

Then I called the University of Adelaide switchboard. “Schwartz . . . Schwartz,” the operator said. “That is an unusual name.”

“Not in the Bronx,” I told her.

I was finally informed that Lenny had left years ago and was now teaching at the University of Delaware in Newark, a suburb of Philadelphia. Crocodile Schwartz was actually Rocky Schwartz! Soon I had him, alive and well and on the phone. “Yes, Alice, they pronounce it New Ark,” Lenny was saying with that unmistakable Bronx accent. “This, after all, is the home of Shickhouse Franks, whose motto is: ‘The most carefully pronounced hot dogs in America.’ ”

We talked about what had happened in the years since we’d last spoken. Two weeks before my daughter Hannah came into this world, he had twins--Joshua and Jonathan, Rocky II and Rocky III. After the obligatory Big Chill conversation about which old friends from our peace-march days were now running Exxon and who had made a killing in real estate, I got to my question. Just exactly what had he meant by “phone calls from the dead”?

“Oh, I suppose I was a little loose when I said it. I was just being theatrical. You know how people say the post office is so inefficient that by the time a letter arrives the sender is dead. Obviously, an inefficient phone system. . . .”

I was feeling cheated. “Are you trying to tell me that after 13 years of wondering what you meant, that nobody is, in fact, getting phone calls from the dead?”

“Well, Alice,” he said, “this call is pretty damn close.”