Son: And you have to know the culture, the language.

Father: That helps. There was a guy in Israel named Karmon, who told his people never to speak Hebrew in front of me. I couldn’t speak enough Hebrew to get out of a paper bag, but he thought I was faking it. We went to a dinner party one night and I was sitting across from him, and there were two Israeli ladies sitting at our little card table, because that was kind of dinner party it was. Halfway through this meal one of the ladies said to Karmon in Hebrew, “Pour this guy a lot of wine, maybe he’ll tell you some secrets.” Of course they all knew who I was. And I picked up the only word I distinguished in all of that, yayin, the word for wine. For some reason I had learned a phrase from my two guys, my cartoon interpreters, which was “Nichnas yayin, yatzeh sod.” Which meant, ‘in goes the wine, out pops the secret.’ And Karmon turned white, because of course he thought I’d understood everything they’d said, and of course I hadn’t understood a thing. [laughs]

Mother: He was a good friend. He stopped to see us here.

Father: He was, he was a wonderful man. It would be people like that I would talk to. He was in a position where he didn’t have to worry what he said to me. They left it up to him as to what he would tell me. It was up to me to listen.

Son: And would you feed stuff back to him, to make it worthwhile for him?

Father: I would try. Intelligence is a kind of currency and you have to spend it. There’s no point in keeping it locked up in a safe. You lead a little bit and you take a little bit, you win some and you lose some.