By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.— I hope I'm not the last guy in the world to read 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal, because I feel like doing a good deed today, and recommending this book to someone who hasn't already read it, fills the requirement.  The book makes you laugh and sometimes cry.  It makes you  feel proud, and when you've completed reading it, you feel like you've been privileged to share the life of someone who is a very nice fellow.  Particularly now, as my semi-conscious father-in-law Sam Zeiden recuperates from his heart surgery in a hospital bed, I'm a sucker for people who love their parents.

I'm not sure how Crystal came up with the title of the book. Sundays were a special day around the Crystal house, a day that he shared with his father, Jack.  Unless my computer's calculator is on the fritz, there are a 13.46158 years within 700 Sundays, about two fewer years than young Billy was privileged to spend before his father died in a bowling alley of a heart attack.

Maybe in addition to encouraging Billy to study his chemistry, Jack Crystal should also have stressed math—or maybe the comedian didn't like the lack of alliteration in "800 Sundays."  Forgive him, forgive him. His book is really wonderful to read.  Comedians with that kind of talent don't need math—as long as they've got honest managers to handle their paychecks.

In books that I own, I like to mark passages with a highlighter, and sometimes scribble notes in the margin—although I know this is unusual for us "People of the Book."  A siddur drops in synagogue and we pick it up and then kiss it.  Marking a book, even a secular one, seems like an act of desecration.  Anyway, this wasn't my book; I checked it out from the San Carlos branch of the San Diego Public Library.  So, I got a piece of scratch paper, and tore little slivers from it, and every time I found a passage I particularly wanted to share with you, I ripped another sliver for a bookmark.  I'd have saved myself time if I had purchased a bag of confetti.  There were too many passages to share, really; so I culled just a few.  

Crystal wrote that his  family  in Long Beach, N.Y., on Sunday nights would "always go out for Italian food, or Chinese food, because on Sunday nights, Jews are not allowed to eat their own food.  That's in the Talmud.  'On the seventh day, God rested and then went to Twin Dragons for dinner, because He loved the ribs.'  If you go to any Italian restaurant on a Sunday, there are only Jewish families.  If you go to a Chinese restaurant, there are only Jewish families.  Have you ever seen a Chinese family at a deli on a Sunday having a big plate of pickled herring, and chopped liver?  It doesn't happen."

On occasion, with Jewish friends, they would look at their respective family photo albums, which seem to be inhabited by the same characters who "jump from album to album."  Women liked to pose in mink coats, "like the old joke—two minks in the slaughterhouse. One turns to the other and says, 'Well, see you in shul.'"

Crystal's Uncle Milt owned the Commodore Music Store, which specialized in jazz albums. Eventually, he and Jack Crystal expanded into making jazz records on the Commodore label and promoting jazz concerts.  Many jazz  musicians got started with the help of the Crystal brothers. One of the most important singers to work with them was Billie Holiday, whose "most important song was one called 'Strange Fruit,' which was very controversial because it was about lynching black people down South," Crystal remembered.

"Nobody wanted to hear this song....Even her great producer at Columbia Records, John Hammond, wouldn't touch it. She was frustrated, so she turned to her friend, my Uncle Milt.....'Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees...'  He told me, 'Billy, I cried like a baby.  And I said to her, 'Lady Day, listen, I don't care if we sell one record.  People must hear this song...'   I'm so proud to say it's on the family label, the Commodore."

As a wide-eyed child, Crystal decided he wanted to be a comedian after attending a performance by a stand-up comedian at Kutscher's nightclub in the Catskills—a comedian who surprisingly Crystal does not name.  But Crystal recalls the first "rim shot" patter he heard in the Borsht Belt: "Good evening, ladies and Jews.  What a night. Oh, I had a rough night. I came home and found my wife in bed with my best friend.  So I said, 'Lenny, I have to, but you?'"

Later in his boyhood, there was that unforgettable scene of Nikita Krushchev making a speech at the United Nations.  Crystal blames a trouble-making translator for the ruckus.  He recalled that the Soviet leader "took off his shoe and banged it on the table and screamed at us, 'We will bury you!' At least, that's what they told us he said, what he really said, was 'These are not my shoes! Who stole my shoes?'"

Amidst the tears of describing his father's death, Crystal cracked a joke.  "...The Jews bury very quickly. Very quickly, I had an uncle who was a narcoleptic, and he'd nod off and you'd hear digging.  One summer they buried him five times."

When Crystal's mother, Helen, died, her death hit him as hard as his father's. He writes: "I don't know why I thought it would be easier this time.  I was fifteen the first time. Fifty-three the second time.  The tears taste the same.  The boulder (on his chest) is just as big, just as heavy, the otherness just as enshrouding."

Is there anyone who has lost a parent, or another member of the immediate family, who does not know how Crystal feels?