The Legend of Rinkey Blumen

He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Russian immigrant parents in late 1912. His name was Abraham. His mother, who never learned a word of English, called him in Russian, "Avrum."

When she called him in from playing in the neighborhood, she used his nickname: "Avrumkey!" The kids in the neighborhood didn't know what she was saying. To them, it sounded like "Rinkey!" She kept on calling him "Avrumkey." But Rinkey stuck.

When he was nine years old, he sold newspapers on a corner in downtown Birmingham. What he had to do to secure that corner is not known, but he brought money back to his family every night.

When they all moved to Nashville, he got another corner and kept on selling papers. Once, during this time, he fell off the back of a paper truck and injured his back. He didn't go to a doctor. His idea of medical treatment was to spend the night in the local steambath. So he developed chronic arthritis in his back, which caused him to bend over slightly when he walked. Nevertheless, he grew up, went to high school in Nashville, played on the basketball team and kept on selling newspapers. Rinkey Blumen stayed in the newspaper circulation business his entire life.

In the thirties, he became a route manager. He had paperboys working for him. I don't know exactly when, or how long, he did this, but somehow he became beloved by a whole generation of Nashville kids who grew up during the depression. Years later, when grown men would find out that I was Rinkey Blumen's son, they all had to tell me about how they carried a paper route for my daddy, back in the old days. One time, Richard Fulton, the Tennessee Congressman, told me that he used to carry a paper route for Rinkey Blumen. I guess he thought I would be impressed.

In the thirties, times were hard. A lot of people didn't have the price of a newspaper. During these lean times, Rinkey Blumen took advantage of other skills that he had learned on the street: he could count cards and he could calculate odds. So he got jobs in Nashville roadhouses, on the outskirts of town, dealing blackjack. He never gambled himself, because he knew that the odds favored the house. He worked for the house.

I know very little about the things he was doing, during this period, but he probably ran numbers, for a while. By that time, he was married with a family to support. I remember once, when we were living in a duplex on Granny White Pike, he came home after dark, pulled down the shades, and threw four thousand dollars, in small bills, out on the kitchen table for counting. Mamma didn't like that and she made him quit. Later on, he was glad he did, because several of his buddies got arrested and went to Federal prison for being in the numbers racket.

He never talked about his life much, but in later years he retained a keen interest in the football teams of colleges he never went to. I saw him, more than once, looking wistfully at football cards on saturday afternoons in the fall.

And he played solitaire all the time. In between games, he would shuffle the deck in a way that I have never seen anyone else do: he would start out, holding the deck in front of him with both hands, thumbs in front and fingers in back. With his left thumb, he would cut the deck precisely in two, separating it into two halves, grasping the top half in his left hand and the bottom half in his right. Then he would position each half-deck so that their corners were almost touching. His thumbs were in just the right position: he riffled both sets of cards simultaneously in a way that produced a very slight fluttering sound and the cards in the two half-decks interleaved in precise sequence at the corners. Finally, he would move the two halves together, with his hands, in one smooth motion, so that he ended with the cards united again into one deck, held in both his hands, exactly as he had started out. This allowed him to do several quick shuffles in succession. It was the most elegant set of moves I have ever seen.

Only once, did I get a glimpse of him in real action. I was twelve and he took me to the pool hall that is still halfway between the defunct Melrose theater, that is on one end of that stretch, and the Melrose Bowling Alley on the other end. I sat on a tall stool and watched him run a few balls by himself, just for fun. Then a couple of young slicks came in and watched him for a while. After a few minutes, one of them asked him if he would like to play a little game for money. My father said that he was just having a little fun by himself, but they encouraged him, saying that he was a better player than they were and he'd probably win. Finally, my old man took a five dollar bill from his pocket and put it on the table. The slick did the same and made a big deal out of letting the "older" man go first. My father broke, a ball went in and he took another shot, but missed. The slick then stepped up, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and ran a couple of balls off the table, before he missed. My father chalked his cue and then - holding the stick at its back end with just one hand, and resting the the tip end on the cushion of the table - he ran all the remaining balls in, while the slick looked on, with the cigarette still hanging out of his mouth. My father swept up the money, stepped quickly over to me, and said, "Let's go, son."

We went down to the bowling alley and had a couple of cokes from the fountain. He told me there that the best pool player he had ever seen was Willie Mosconi.

After he quit his evil ways, the newspaper business became my father's sole occupation. At that time, the top guy at the Newspaper Printing Corporation was a man named Joe Connor, the City Circulation Director, who held up his pants with galluses and always had a cigar in his mouth. He measured progress by how many people started taking the paper and how many stopped. Back then, Tennessee was solidly democratic, so the circulation of the Tennessean was always up, but that of the Banner was always down. Around that time, I wrote a short story called "The Devil and Joe Connor", about a man who would go to Hell for a Banner start. It tickled my father and he showed it to Joe Connor. I never heard what he thought about it.

Rinkey Blumen's ambition was to become the City Circulation Director, himself, some day. When Joe Connor died, he thought he had a chance, but the job was given to Cleo Barbee, instead. The top executive at the paper who made the decision was Walter Seigenthaler, who for years published the "Hambone" feature on the Tennessean's first page, under the name of "Seig". My father idolized the man, calling him "Mr. Seig". Seigenthaler explained that it was Cleo Barbee's turn for the job and that my father would have his time eventually. And, in time, it came to pass.

In his later years, Rinkey Blumen joined the Elks Club that was located next to the Andrew Jackson hotel on the square opposite the State Capitol. There he spent his spare time, playing hearts and gin rummy with his pals, where more than once, in the plush rooms on the second floor, he was heard to say with a flourish, "I have ginned on you, Averbush!"