Max Itzkowitz

 The following article appeared in the February 2013 issue of Southern Jewish Life magazine and is reprinted with the permission of publisher Larry Brook.

Going Out of Business, Again

When “Maxie” Itzkowitz died in November of 1989, the colorful 77- year-old pawn shop owner had become a Little Rock legend, known for five decades of “going out of business” sales and slogans. True, his shop and merchandise shuffled between a few locations over those 50 years, but Maxie always reappeared, ready for his next pawn transaction, prepared to accept some merchandise that was beyond description, and looking forward to his newest slogan or catchy business card.  “Sock it to me –hock it to me,” “Put it in hock in Little Rock,” or “If you’ve  got the girl, I’ve got the diamond,” described his willingness to engage customers, while at the same time, he coined fifty years in variations of store liquidation themes. “I’ll be through in ‘72” was eventually replaced with “I don’t mean maybe; Maxie will be through in 1980!”

Max Galinsky was born in Poland in 1912 and came to  the United when he was nine months old. His father died when he was very young. His mother was living in Fort Smith, Arkansas when she sent three-year-old Max to the Jewish Children’s Home, where he lived for the next two years. He left the Home and returned to Arkansas in 1917 ,  after his mother married Joseph Itzkowitz. Max grew up lean, but tough. He earned the nickname “Slapsie Maxie” as a Golden Gloves Boxing champion, and later enlisted in military service during WWII.

In 1988, one year before Maxie died, the City of Little Rock purchased the property where Maxie’s last pawnshop stood, and Maxie announced a final “going out of business auction.” A local television news crew covered the event and the store quickly filled with a circus atmosphere and various bargain hunters, many of them perplexed at the true purpose and identity of the numerous business machines and unusual objects that Maxie had taken in pawn over the years. At the conclusion of the auction, someone blurted out that Maxie had  previously moved his best merchandise across town to his brother’s pawnshop and would be back in business the next day.  The November 10, 1989 edition of USA TODAY listed 50 deaths, one from each state. Included was a Connecticut Academy Awards nominee, an Idaho state senator, and an Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice. California listed trumpeter Lu Watters, who helped revive New Orleans jazz in the 1940s.  Arkansas listed “Maxie Itzkowitz, pawn shop owner, tempted  customers for decades with going-out-of-business sales.” His surviving nephew, Marvin Itzkowitz, mused to the Arkansas Gazette “He’d probably (slogan- it) ‘End of  the Line in ’89!’ ”