It was a rainy night in Los Angeles. I was driving my ’53 Dodge convertible west towards the city with the top down because out in San Berdoo, it’d been dry as a bone. As soon as I saw the clouds ahead, I pulled over to put up the top. Before I could get back on my way, the familiar sound of a cop rapping on the window alerted me to the fact that you’re not supposed to pull over on the freeway.
“Excuse me, officer”, I said with my best Humphrey Bogart grin as I pointed to the cloth top with one hand and held out my Genealogy Detective license with the other, “But I had to get the…”
“Save it for the judge, Shamus.” he clichéd, as he tore a ticket out of this book and threw it on my lap. “You real drive carefully now and have yourself a good evening.”
I was on my way back from seeing a guy about a guy who said he had some info on a place called Vishki. These two eccentric genealogists that looked like Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet after they’d been in the sun too long told me that I should check out an old Jewish cemetery in a place called Vishki. “You can remember Vishki”, Sidney said as he snorted eerily, “it rhymes with wishky.” Peter and Sidney both laughed uproariously at Sidney’s little joke.
You can remember Vishki, I repeated it to myself. Well, I guess I won’t forget it now.
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