They call themselves "Shep" and "Stumble," "The Czar" and "The Eel," and when they get together with the other guys at "Rip's" house in Livingston, they combine smoked fish and diet soda with hours of storytelling and lots of laughter.

What makes the group so remarkable is that its members have been meeting once a month for nearly a half-century, since they were fellow students and fraternity brothers at the Rutgers campus in Newark.

Their usual host is Marvin "Rip" Goldman, who is still playing the role of the social chairman, just as he did as an undergraduate at the Tau Delta Phi house.

"Why the name ‘Rip'?" he asked rhetorically. "Because when I joined the fraternity I couldn't stand pledging. So I tried to be innocuous, like I was asleep all the time. So this guy comes up to me and says, ‘You're asleep all the time, so I'm gonna call you ‘Rip,' like Rip van Winkle. And the name stuck. People see me today that haven't seen me for 20 years and say, ‘Hey, Rip. How ya doin'?'"

And, said a heckler, "You say, ‘I don't know. I just woke up.'"

They met one another as teenagers in 1956, and Jules "Eel" Schneider — so named because his skinny arms could retrieve coins through sewer grates — said he "found a bond that was so strong compared to where we came from that we just loved being together all the time." So where did he come from?

"I came from Irvington. It was not a very Jewish area."

"It was a nice neighborhood," someone interjected.

"For you it was a nice neighborhood," Eel insisted. "You had a park nearby. I had nothing but concrete and goyim."

"So what's wrong with concrete?" someone shouted.

And so the evening began on a balmy July night on the back deck at Rip's house.

It would be a night during which boisterous laughter and reminiscences about "the good old
days" would be interrupted fairly frequently by good-natured argument.

"Everything was better in the ‘50s, with more opportunities for us."

"No. There were not too many Jewish partners in all the big accounting firms."

"Attitudes have gotten better since then. People are more tolerant."

"But the world is definitely a more dangerous place."

"That's not true. You remember how we all thought Russia was going to drop the bomb? We were certainly affected by it."

Herb "Tito" Fischman, who acquired his moniker from outfielder and first baseman Tito Francona of the Baltimore Orioles, remembered how the Cold War had a chilling effect on his social life.

He and Sheldon "Shep" Bross — "My Jewish name is Shepsel, and my parents called me ‘Shep' growing up" — remember driving past refineries en route to a double date in Hudson County.

"All of a sudden there was a mushroom cloud. We pulled the car over and we looked at our watches. We looked at each other and said, ‘You think we can get to Bayonne in time for our dates?' What it was was an oil tank blew up, but we thought it was a bomb."

They laugh. Why? How many times has Tito told that story? And why does everyone call Charlie Bernhaut "Char-LEE," accenting the second syllable?

"Charlie lived a block away, and we used to drive to school, and Charlie would do all kind of crazy things driving, and we'd all yell together, ‘Char-LEE.'"

"There was a reason. He never wanted to stop for a traffic light. To get from the Weequahic section to downtown Newark there would be 47 turns. Or he'd run out of gas every time."

Among the many rituals that has bound the men together since their college days is one that takes place at the poker table.
Back when they were undergraduates, the game began every Friday night and ran until dawn.

These days, it takes place occasionally and breaks up around midnight.

It is also the reason that Alan Zavodnick is called "Swivel," even if he doesn't want to admit it.

"Why ‘Swivel'? Nobody knows," he said.

"Whattya mean ‘Nobody knows'?" came a shout from across the picnic table. "It's the way you deal."

"OK, OK," he admitted. "I flip the deck around when I deal my cards."

After all these years, it still hasn't helped his luck. But Swivel still loves to play poker.

"It's not because I'm making a lot of money. I'm losing a lot of money. It's the cards. The cards got all my money."

"The money's in good hands. Don't worry," said Eel.

"I've been paying for 45 years," Swivel replied. "It's a part of me. And I want that money back, too."

Like Swivel, Morty Dear got his nickname at the poker table.

"They called me the Czar because everybody used to come to the Friday night card game to beat me, and I was at the head of the table with my big cigar. That's how they nicknamed me the Czar. Jules [the Eel] was my silent partner. I played and he walked around, and we split the winnings at the end of the night."

"It was more than just cards, "said Larry Schulman, the guy they call "Ace" (from his love of the game acey-deucy).

"It wasn't just cards. It was food. You could eat. Charlie worked at Tabatchnik's on Chancellor Ave. There was always food at Charlie's house."

Bites of nostalgia

In this circle, the name Tabatchnik's has an almost holy ring to it. It evokes memories of the sounds and smells of an appetizing store that was a landmark in Newark's Jewish community until it moved elsewhere in the mid-1960s.

Bernhaut, who commutes to Rip's home from his Manhattan apartment, can now only replicate Tabatchnik's bill of fare. So he shleps delicacies to Jersey from an Upper West Side gourmet shop. Maybe it's not Tabatchnik's, but each bite tastes of nostalgia.

"The herring and cream sauce you could die for," said one guy.

"You want some of the smoked lox?" asked another.

"Is there a fork?"

"Oh, man, you want everything, The rest of us use our fingers."

The combination of food and poker has been a constant theme through the years. And since Czar was a frequent winner, he felt an obligation to share the wealth.

"It was my responsibility to take everybody to the Weequahic Diner at three in the morning. Stanley the waiter, he used to love us because we made his place hop. Every once in a while somebody would go across the street to the White Castle . . ."

"You'd get five hamburgers for a quarter . . ."

"But they weren't kosher."

"So what? I used to bring sausage sandwiches over to his house and eat them in the living room — just as long as I didn't eat in the kitchen."

"No. Everybody was kosher at home. No Chinese food in the house."

"No. When you brought Chinese food home you'd eat it on paper plates. You could not use the regular plates; you had to use paper plates."

"We used to go to downtown to the Chinese restaurant on Mulberry Street," said Shep. "I used to explain to my mother, ‘Mom, the same thing they cook the chicken chow mein in they also cook the pork chow mein in."

"His mother he could say anything to," Ace remembered. "His father was a different story.

"His father would call him an idiot. Let me tell you what an idiot was. ‘Idiot' was the second-best thing he could call you. That was a very high compliment. The best thing you could be was ‘fine.' The second was an idiot."

It was Jerry Rubin's father who hung his son's nickname on him.

"I'm the Angel. Why? My mother tells me that when we grew up in Newark I was such a wonderful child that when my father called me when I was six or seven years old to come home for dinner, he would yell out ‘Angel, come.' And the neighbors would laugh because they knew what an angel I was. It was a sarcastic name. It was a nickname that stuck with me to this day."

And the Angel has stuck by his buddies, even though he doesn't share all of their common history.

"I'm not a member of their fraternity. I didn't even go to Rutgers. I am here only at their sufferance."

"Every poker game needs a fish," said Ace. "He's it."

"They are very classy people," Angel replied. He met them when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I used to come home on weekends and hang out with them. We became long and lasting friends."

"It just happened that we all were Jewish," said Swivel. "Most of the guys in the fraternity were Jewish. It just happened that way."

"You don't have to be Jewish," someone remarked. "You just have to be circumcised."

"We went to each other's weddings, and the kids' bar and bat mitzvas. We watched our parents die, and no matter when we get together, it's like yesterday. It's still the same warmth. We enjoy each other's company. Nobody has any respect for anybody else. We kibitz the hell out of each other with lots of jokes. We used to talk about the women we were dating. Now we talk about the operations and what our PSA levels are," said Tito, referring to the blood test used to diagnose prostate cancer.

"We all have children who went all over the country to various colleges," said Bernhaut. "We feel sorry in a way for them because they may see only one or two of the people they went to school with. They will miss out on this. We're lucky. This experience is such a positive important thing for us. It's almost like a religious experience."

Robert Wiener can be reached at .