Strawberry Fields For Ezra

My grandson learns to dig the Beatles

I had a very close relationship with my maternal grandfather, Harry Levine. He emigrated to the United States more than 100 years ago, escaping the endless pogroms of Belarus.

He married my nana Betty, another Belarussian Jew, his bookkeeper when he started his business, Steinway Electrical Supply Company: I have the announcement welcoming him to the Queens, NY, Chamber of Commerce, in 1921. My father married Harry and Betty’s oldest daughter Phyllis, circa 1948, and I was born a year later. My father joined the family business, so I spent much of my young life at Steinway Electric, and we would come for dinner in Astoria a few times a week, and sleepover on Saturday nights.

At dinner I used to love to sit next to Papa, especially once I entered my troubled early adolescence. He would always give me a draw of his cigarette, a puff of his pipe, a sip of his beer or his highball. Sometimes there would be Champale, a hybrid of malt liquor and sparkling wine that was popular in the 1950s an…