There could still be a late arrival but it looks like this is going to be the first Christmas in quite some time when no one sent me alcohol. All my friends know I don't drink that stuff…not even beer or wine. Somehow, each year, one or more friends forget and I wind up with a bottle or three that has to be given away. Once in a while, the recipients of this regifting are very impressed with the rarity and price of some wine or liqueur and very glad that I don't appreciate or want it.
In the eighties, the rerouting of such gifts was easier. My mother worked each holiday season at Jurgensen's, a gourmet-type grocery and liquor store in Beverly Hills. Until they promoted her to a job that anyone else could have done, she was the head gift-wrapper…and let me brag: My mother in her prime was the best gift-wrapper you ever saw. They were exquisite. If you were fortunate enough to get a gift wrapped by my mother, you might well not open it because what was inside could not possibly be as beautiful as the exterior. I sent out some expensive gifts back then and it only dawned on me later that I could have gotten away with giving bags of garbage if I'd had my mother wrap them. No one would ever have found out.
Anyway, when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter, my mother and I invented the Instant Gift Redirect. Our Executive Producer Jimmie Komack used Jurgensen's that year to send wine to everyone he knew. My mother spotted my address on a list and called me up and said, "I have a bottle of Chateau Lafite Something [I forget the name] here for you from Jimmie Komack. What do you want me to do with it?"
"Send it to my agent," I told her and I gave her the address and told her what to write on the card. The next day, she called up to say, "I have a bottle of wine here for you from your agent. What do you want me to do with it?" I told her to send it to Jimmie Komack.
We did this for years…as long as she worked for Jurgensen's. Sometimes, it wasn't as neatly symmetrical as that but it spared me having a lot of bottles around I didn't want. Often of course, I received wine that didn't come from Jurgensen's but we had a solution for that, too. I'd take those bottles over to my parents' house when I visited and my mother would sneak them into Jurgensen's and send them out for me via Jurgensen's delivery methods. After we did this for a while, she felt guilty so she told the manager and offered to have the costs deducted from her paycheck. The manager laughed, decided it was a great idea and he began bringing in unwanted bottles that had been delivered to his home and having them sent out to others.
My favorite moment in all this came when I was working for a producer named…well, I'd better not give his real name because he might still hire me again. I'll call him Howard Producer and tell you that he was a very important Hollywood-type person and he was also a wine snob. The one time he allowed me into his home, I was subjected to a ritual that was apparently required of all visitors — a tour of his wine cellar. It was huge and temperature-controlled and filled with bottles that he fingered like rare Ming Dynasty artifacts. Though I tried to explain to him that I did not know one wine from another, he would cradle one and say, as if it was the most impressive thing one could possibly say, "This is a 1947 Bordeaux from the hinterlands of greenbriar country and it was bottled on a Thursday by the infamous Maria." Then he'd wait for me to adopt a jealous expression and indicate that I realized what an awesome thing that was to own. I learned to just go "Wowww" a lot. I also learned that he took his wine seriously. Didn't even snicker when I asked, "Hey, you got any Manischewitz around this dump?" and followed it up by inquiring, "What's a good year for Ripple?"
So, getting back to Jurgensen's: That same year, my mother called and said, "I have a bottle here for you from Howard Producer. Where do you want me to send it?" I thought for a second and told her, "Send it to Howard Producer." I thought it would make a nice Christmas present…give Howard back his own wine.
It saved me shopping for something. It saved me getting it delivered and paying for it and it also saved me having to figure out to do with that bottle of wine. But the best moment came when we went back to work after the holidays. Howard came by my desk to thank me for the wine. Then he leaned in carefully and said, "Listen, next time you send out wine to people as a gift, check with me and I'll suggest a few. It's important to make a good impression in this town and you don't want people to think you're the kind of guy who'd give out that kind of wine."