But everyone was in competition. My father was supposedly the richest. That was the only way he could be there. Even among that motley band, he had to be the wealthiest. But it wasn’t true. He only thought he was the richest, I’m quite sure. Anyway, Ethel called my father the human fly, because he used to walk on the beams, above the stalls near the ceiling where he kept things. He’d balance himself from board to board, a little trapeze act for the crew.
Ethel had a son who was supposedly a CPA, only he wasn’t a CPA, he was a PA, he blew the C. He wasn’t certified; in other words, he was a failed accountant. She used to call him “my boy.” He was forty-seven, not married, and she’d say, “Danny, my boy, I wish he’d meet a nice girl.” This went on for twenty years.
In the next stand was Gene. Now, thus far, I’ve been talking about Jews, till we get to Gene. Gene was Italian; Gino was actually his name. Gene was married to this woman, Helen, and my father named her Helen Throw Bean for some reason. I don’t know why. And Helen Throw Boob. Helen was this big bimbo. But Gene and Helen were fifty, and she’d lost all her looks, but apparently they were gorgeous as young people. She was a sweet woman through all that big lipstick and the crazy eyes dressed up with mascara, crazy lipstick, and the weird dresses and the high heels—she was a sweet woman. They lived in a teeny little flat.
They always had dogs that they loved. When one dog died, they closed the market, they were so sick for weeks. And she told me once, when I was about fifteen, she said, “That’s my Gino back there.” She said, “You don’t know about Gino. Gino is my golden boy. When he was young he had long golden hair. He was such a handsome man; he was very beautiful.” She said, “Gino was very rich when I met him.” It was always like that, you know, rich and beautiful. Gino supposedly owned a couple of automobile agencies, Chrysler agencies, which he lost during the Great Depression.
Many of these men in fact were refugees both of the old country and of the Depression. They were double refugees. And the market in essence was to them a gold mine, because they would make a living without working for someone; they were still independent, which was the most important thing to them. They were all first generation. My father was born in Russia as was Monk—they were all immigrants. See, they all came from another market together. At first, they just sold rags and junk off pushcarts, that’s how they met. I think my old man also began with a pushcart after his dry goods business failed, during the Depression. So, for them to have a fixed store was really something. This was their market; they were merchants. A Ship of Merchants. But remember what a merchant was to a man with a pushcart—it was the Promised Land. I used to hear stories about the old market. And the division of loyalty that I grew up on was between those from the old market who came into the new one (they were the nucleus) and the newcomers who didn’t count for a nail. They were the ridiculed ones. Ethel was a new one. Johnny was a new one. The original band was Benny, Sol, Murray, Charlie, and Monk. And that was about it. The rest were newcomers and therefore not even worth the time of day. They all knew each other only thirty years in the new market, but that didn’t matter. Those not from the original crew were considered worthless.
Then we had, coming up on the right—what the hell was his name?—the eighty-five-year-old guy built like a sixteen-year-old kid. The Iron Man. Leo. Leo sold mainly jewelry and had gray hair, and was renowned as a philanderer. His wife would work so that he could get dressed up as a dandy with white gloves, hat, cane, and walk up and down Second Avenue. He was just a dandy, that’s all. I saw him in his later years. But he was always interested in girls. At my Bar Mitzvah, I remember him coming up to me, and saying, “Oh, Michael, who’s that? Who’s that woman? What’s her name?” It was some giant bimbo. She was married to a gambler and she had no fingers, but Leo didn’t see that she had no fingers. Actually, she had stump fingers, she was born that way. It was weird. I remember she had all stumps. I was thirteen years old, and I’m seeing this guy getting crazy about this giant woman with big breasts, but he didn’t know she had no fingers. I wanted to say, “Hey, Leo, uh, that’s uh, so and so, but she got no fingers. I mean, you know, don’t get too crazy.” Of course I didn’t say it. I think he eventually found out, you know, over by the ice sculpture carved in the shape of a left ventricle. That would have best typified the life you were about to be initiated into, at that fantastic pageant.
Coming up on the left we hit Benny. Benny cannot be paraphrased or discussed in a few paragraphs, so we’ll have to skip over him. We’ll leave him there in the shop mounting lamps for a little while, and we’ll move right on. We’re almost sweeping back to the door, when we come to Johnny, Johnny La Crut. Johnny had the lowest status. He was illiterate. He was the Italian organ-grinder. Johnny looked like the kind of guy who would have a monkey in the street, an organ-grinder. Sol took him in in later years. Originally he used to mount lamps for Sol, and then eventually he got taken into the market as Sol’s semi-partner. Eventually he quit, and just retired; he was the smartest one. In typical Italian fashion, he was the only one who retired. He put away enough money living in a one-room apartment for twelve dollars a month to quit with a stash.
So we have Johnny La Crut, and then his boss, Sol. Sol was Cigarette Sol. You never saw Sol for a second without a Pall Mall hanging out of his mouth, and he always had tobacco stuck on his lip; he was always going, “pff, pff, pff,” always spitting a piece of tobacco out of his tough lip: “Hello, Michael, pff, pff, pff.” Sol was a very nice man; he was married to Effie. He was the brother of Charlie Fartser, who died of cancer.
Sol and Charlie were brothers. And Molly Bloom was their brother. Molly was the brother who didn’t do anything; he was the bum. He lived with Sol and Effie and the three children in one small apartment. The years would go on, and he never left the ghetto. Never. Molly Bloom, I learned later, was a character of James Joyce; a woman, the daughter of a major. But in this case, Molly Bloom was this Jewish ne’er-do-well who lived with the brother and the wife in a two-bedroom apartment on Allen Street.
Molly earned his living by, every once in a while, going to the sales where the men who were the principles in the market bought their merchandise. Molly would occasionally buy lesser merchandise and sell it out front. The stuff that Molly bought to sell was something that nobody else specialized in—used eyeglasses. Our market was one of the only places in America that I know of where used eyeglasses were trafficked in the open. On a typical Sunday outside 137 Ludlow Street, at the corner of Rivington, you might see Molly, with his face all red from the cold, with a few trays of eyeglasses bought at auction—a few dollars for several hundred pairs. They were bought at a subway auction, you know; stuff that people left on subways—unclaimed stuff. SO, there would be several hundred pairs of glasses, all jumbled up in boxes outside 137 Ludlow Street, and Molly would be selling them. Now, who would buy them but the poorest people, mainly the poor Jewish people who everyone has forgotten today. People say that every Jew is rich; after all, the Jews supposedly own the banks and the newspapers, so therefore there are no poor Jews. Of course I grew up around all poor Jews, but you’re not supposed to mention that. We were all supposed to be striving, you know, to control the world banking system. But Molly didn’t know about that, and he figured the next best thing to owning a newspaper or an oil industry was to sell used eyeglasses outside 137 Ludlow Street. So his customers were poor people, and they bought eyeglasses. They felt it was cheaper than going to an optometrist, a schmoptometrist, and getting a prescription, and having it ground, and spending forty dollars for glasses. They bought for fifty cents or a dollar. Now, they didn’t buy any pair of glasses; naturally, they bought glasses which fit them. If they were nearsighted they needed glasses that came from a nearsighted person; if they were farsighted they needed glasses from a farsighted person, and so forth. So how did they figure out if the glasses would work? Very clever—they tried them on. And what did they do? They read. So Molly would have a few torn pieces of newspaper, such was the eye
chart they tested their new powers of sight on. There would be a few old Jewish dailies, like the Forward, the Daily News, and the Post. I don’t mean a full sheet of paper, but a shred from the corner of the sheet. So these shreds of paper were mixed in with the glasses, and you’d see these old people putting them on, reading, throwing the glasses off, on and off, on and off, till they found something; and then they’d bargain with Molly, who’d knock a dime or a nickel off of the glasses, and that’s how Molly earned his living. To this moment I can vividly see Molly standing there outside in the cold, selling glasses, smiling when I came up to see him, his breath an airy cloud.
So that’s how Molly made money once in a while. That’s how he would support his alcoholic habit and puke on the floor in Sol’s house, and they’d have to move him out once in a while to a hotel. And once in a while he’d accidentally expose himself a little to the daughter. When Sol bought a vacation house out on Long Island, they’d invite Molly out but he never went to this house. He never left the East Side, for any reason. He loved the ghetto; he had everything he needed there. He had his bar, Hammel & Korn. That’s all he needed, the gin mill next to the synagogue.
Anyway, Sol saved his money and bought a small place out in Patchogue. After a day on a boat out on the water, we’d all barbecue at the house. It was so gorgeous. My father was there, my mother was there, everyone was there. We were so rested and happy. It was summertime. The reason I liked it was that, see, I never had a father to do anything with; he worked seven days a week.
The reason that I knew I had no father, it hit me when I was eleven, was when I went to a father-and-son Boy Scout dinner. I was the only boy at that Far Rockaway dinner without a father. So another kid’s father saw me—I don’t know why, he must’ve seen my face with schlumped shoulders; not slumped shoulders but schlumped, bent. I was so sad. It was the grayest day of my whole existence. I didn’t understand. You know, when you’re a kid you don’t know why you’re depressed; you just don’t feel good, and you don’t know why. I mean, I was eliminating the roast beef dinner, and here were all these lame fathers making speeches and bringing their sons up for awards. So anyway, this kid Aaronson’s father took me in, but his father was a weakling. I mean, I wanted him to be tough and loud—I wanted my father to be there, to yell at everybody at the Boy Scout dinner.
Because that’s what Benny would do, was yell. I remember once in a while Captain Queeg Benny would walk the deck on the “merchant ship.” He’d get angry; he’d throw his weight around every once in a while, and yell at everybody, and then one after the other he’d put them down: “And you, you funkin’ moron, and you, you this,” and then he’d give the entire crew the yell, “If it wasn’t for me, the lot of you would be in shit shape. Don’t bullshit me; you’re all a buncha morons.” And there wouldn’t be a peep; they’d all stop what they were doing and all be in fear and trepidation. Arrested as in a painting, fixed in time; this one polishing an urn, that one appraising a fragment of precious metal, another arranging or dusting—all fixed in time.
I remember one particular thing that happened between Benny and me. I was about ten or twelve and had decided it was time I learned to box. Being a small kid, I had always been pushed around and wanted to punch back. My uncle Nate happened to be close with a black fighter named Brown who was then training for the fight that would have given him a title shot. It was to take place in June, outdoors in Yankee Stadium, just before the heavyweight title fight.
Anyway, Nate called Brown and told him that his nephew wanted to learn to fight. It was arranged for me to meet the big black fighter at the Salem Crescent AC, up in Harlem.
We met and Brown slowly explained that I would be needing to bring a jockstrap, a pair of shorts, sneakers, and a towel. I remember feeling shy and embarrassed at the jockstrap part. Here I was, with an inferiority complex a mile wide, and only a kid—not yet trained in making my initial reactions, not feeling I even had a pair of balls, a real pair, a man’s pair—and this big black man is telling me I’ll need to protect these, in an easy matter-of-fact way. Already I grew in confidence.
Nate drove me home, back to Queens, and parted after some coffee with my father (his older brother, who he worshipped).
The next day I beamingly told my father all the details of my meeting with Brown, who he held in considerable esteem, being himself a heavy fan, every Friday night glued to the set. We were all around the table, father, sister, and mother; it seemed even our part-Chow, Skippy, was in on this proud moment. At last the skinny weakling would learn to fight. He had decided, and the world responded. It would help him learn to fly.
The little man responded in his typical Prussian-Russian way. Reasoning backwards, with heavy doses of scorn, he declared, “Boxing; it’s not for you. What, you go to Harlem every few afternoons by train? Are you kidding? Some six-year-old black will haul off and bust your head with one good right.”
That was it. I was finished before round one. Icarus, not reasonably talked from his foolishness bust, dashed instead to the rocks below—no glue, no feathers, no sun.
Brown, by the way, trained for that fight all winter and into the spring, only to splinter his forearm just weeks before the big day. He was finished for good. Those kinds of breaks never heal.
Even if they weren’t afraid of the little tyrant, they would pretend, which was enough to satisfy him. They knew it was his psychodrama. But they respected him anyway. In this sense, they respected his life. They respected him enough to let him yell. No one else yelled at anyone, see? In The Call of the Wild, he would’ve been lead team dog. The other dogs would have stopped, listening to the chief dog when it barked. They may have been feigning obedience, but that was enough—because therefore he was the boss. You understand? They didn’t really have to hear him. He wasn’t the wealthiest merchant, but he brought most of the good customers into the market. There were big buyers who’d come in from the South and buy a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of bronze from my father on a Sunday. That was a lot of money in cash. They’d also buy from other people, but they came primarily to see Benny.
Now let me bring in a few minor characters. There was Murray, my dear uncle Murray, beloved Murray. He was a beautiful man. Murray had a few character traits that were odd. He’d always repeat jingles that he heard on TV; he’d sing them during the day while working: “To look sharp, and be on the ball, to be sharp . . .” and so forth. He would always be humming, but when he would hum, my father would yell out from behind his stand, “Hey, Murray, you’re chirpin’ pretty good over there. You musta knocked in a couple grand today.” And that would be the litany they would start off with, then, “Ah, Benny, stop. Who can make as much as you do?” They would go on like that. They knew Benny’s weakness was to think he made the most, so they probably all figured, let him think he makes the most. But Murray ended up with a lot more money. Murray never sold as much, but he didn’t spend as much, either. He led a very low lifestyle. He owned a house, but they never ate in a restaurant; they hated restaurants and things like that. They went home and that was it. They went to the market like Chinese, for their life was at home; they lived for their home and for their children.
OK, we’ve completed the main course. We’re going to hit a few of the subcharacters. There were a few hangers-on: Goldsand, Morass—oh, the hangers-on were at least as interesting as the main characters—and Louie, who eventually had a monkey who bit him . . .
Goldsand is my very favorite adopted grandfather. He was a hanger-on who collected tinfoil for some reason. God knows what he thought he’d do with the tinfoil when the crash came. He must have had a gigantic ball of tinfoil somewhere—how big could it have been?—after fifty years of pulling tinfoil from inside cigarette wrappers and rolling them in a ball.
Goldsand was still alive; collecting a disability pension from World War I. What happened to him, he got mustard-gassed in France. Not badly, however, and he collected all his life. He was smart. He lived in a room for twelve
dollars a month until they jacked his rent up to thirty-five; that almost killed him. He lived in this room without heat and slept wrapped in newspaper. Wrapped his feet in newspaper and slept under a dozen blankets, rags. But he also bought a house. Where? The country. He was the only one who bought a Catskill country property, which is quite valuable today. I’d go there in the early spring when no one was there; he’d give me the key, for me to go open it alone. Then I knew I was a man. And I’d come back to the city and he’d say, “So—how was the countree?” and he’d look at me with that beautiful face; he’d look up and ask, “How was the countree?” He always wanted to know how the countree was.
Although Goldsand was seventy-two years old he wasn’t worried. He had forty-six more years to live.
How did he know?
Four years before, some very alarming symptoms overtook him. He began to sweat heavily, had difficulty breathing, ran a fever, the works. Sure that the end was near, Goldsand visited with Shapiro, the “king” of old men on New York’s Lower East Side. Shapiro, who was then ninety-eight years old, asked his ailing friend, “What’s the matter? . . . you afraid you’re going to die?” “Yes,” offered the ailing Goldsand. “How many more years you want? Fifty? OK, so you got ’em. Fifty more years to live.”
That was four years earlier. Now Goldsand had at least another forty-six years to go.
The illness?
Oh, that was cured . . . with a piece of crusty Italian bread.
A Savage Life Page 4
