My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere

by Orlean, Susan

  Angel’s nickname for Toney is Sleeping Beauty, because he sometimes takes naps on his breaks. His nickname for José is Eagle Eye, because José’s last name, Aguilar, means “eagle” in Spanish. Angel calls Jim McCague, a regular customer, Mr. OTB. Mr. McCague recently bet on a horse named Call Me Angel in Angel’s honor; the horse and Mr. McCague both lost. Angel calls Richard, the afternoon bagger, Lover Boy, because he’s always hitting on the cashiers; among the afternoon cashiers are girls he calls Hot Lips, Bambi, Sweet Pea, and Grouchy. It was Angel who came up with the name Peruvian Army for the group of shy, mild men who pack out the groceries twice a week. The soldiers of the Peruvian Army talk very little, and then only among themselves, so I never had any idea of what they thought about the market, or the neighborhood, or living in America. To me they seemed self-contained and somewhat detached from the modern world, but someone told me that they call Bruce the grocery manager Cabezón, which is Spanish for “big head,” because he has a large forehead, and Bruce the produce man Spuds, after the dog in the beer commercial, and they call Jerry Goldberg, the produce manager, Oscar, after Oscar from Sesame Street.

  MOST OF THE TIME, Frank Sinatra provides the soundtrack for the life and times of Sunshine Market. This is because Herb is a huge fan. One of the privileges of being an independent retail food merchant is that if you want to play “My Kind of Town” rather loudly several times a day in your store—well, it’s your business. “Strangers in the Night” is also your business. Also “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” and, for that matter, Frank’s entire Capitol catalog, plus his recordings for Columbia and Reprise. Several years ago, the cashiers submitted a petition to Herb requesting equal time for rock music. “It was very nicely written,” Herb says. “I thanked them for it, and then pointed out that there was a Key Food around the corner that was accepting applications.”

  A few weeks ago, Marta the cashier turned her radio at home to an unfamiliar station and half listened to it for about an hour, humming along, without giving any thought to what it was. Then she realized. “It was Frank, from the store!” she said. “I couldn’t believe! I didn’t know him in Guatemala, but I knew him from the store. I used to hate him, but now it was—I don’t know, okay.”

  One day, Rose Mary Cervantes was up in Herb’s office, and I saw her looking at some of his Sinatra tapes. The expression on her face was partly one of distaste and partly one of semi-scientific curiosity. She caught me looking at her and quickly put down the tapes and then said, “Really, I’m not crazy about Frank, but I’m getting used to him. If I had my pick, I’d pick soft rock or maybe the sixties, but really what I’d pick would be Julio Iglesias, because when I hear him”—she began fluttering her hands and rolling her eyes back—“my heart starts beating and it fills me up. Oh, yes, Julio. Ju-lee-oh.” Actually, Herb does have a few Julio tapes, and I pointed this out. “Yeah,” Rose Mary said gloomily, “but just Julio’s English ones.”

  ONE TUESDAY, which happened to be the day of the store’s tenth birthday party, the first truck to arrive was Pepperidge Farm. It was delivering four bunches of yellow and blue balloons, to decorate the cash registers (yellow and blue are the official colors of Sunshine Market); half a dozen yellow and blue carnation corsages, for the cashiers; and Rose Mary, whose boyfriend, the Pepperidge Farm man, was giving her a lift so she could get all the birthday supplies to the store.

  Rose Mary has worked at Sunshine Market since the store opened. Once in a while, she takes a vacation, but for most of the past seven years she has worked every single day, seven days a week. Last year, she didn’t take any vacation at all, because she forgot to make any plans. There are times when she looks as if she wished she had remembered. Before taking off her coat on the birthday, she began lashing the bunches of balloons to the cash registers. She stopped for a moment to ring up a grapefruit, a jar of honey, and a half carton of eggs for a skinny man with a mustache who had followed her in the front door. Someone practicing to be a psychic might enjoy working as a supermarket cashier. Ring up people’s orders and you develop quite a hunch about their next meal. This one gave a premonition of breakfast. It was not yet eight, but everyone in the neighborhood knows that if you want to get your shopping in a little early, no one at Sunshine is going to hold you to the clock.

  Ashima arrived a few minutes later, carrying a big sheet cake, frosted in blue and yellow, with white letters saying “Happy Tenth Anniversary Sunshine Market.” Robert Felder arrived next. He is the utility infielder at the market: He bags, he crushes boxes, he tidies up. Usually, he loves to clown around. Today, he was in an uncharacteristic bad mood, because the previous night a transit cop had issued him a summons for playing his radio too loud on the subway. Hanging up his coat, he told Rose Mary the story and said, “It couldn’t have been too loud. I was sleeping while it was playing.” The butchers came in next and went straight to the back of the store and started cutting up meat. Then Toney came. Ordinarily, Tuesday is his only day off, but he decided to come in so he’d be on hand for the party. Immediately behind him was the Arnold’s Bread guy. As Toney was taking off his coat, he said, “Hey, it’s Mr. Arnold’s! It’s the pushiest guy in the business. You want to stick around for the birthday party?” The Arnold’s guy elbowed his way past him, pushing a hand truck stacked with loaves, and said, “Toney, don’t mess with me today. I’m unbelievably late. Give me my money and let me get out of here.”

  At a few minutes before eight, Frank Sinatra was singing about Chicago, Herb was in the office reviewing orders, Jerry and Bruce were out front checking the day’s produce delivery, José was counting cases of groceries, and Neptali was price-labeling egg cartons that had come in from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Neptali, who is known as Nick because no one at the store can pronounce his name, is the store’s best labeler. He has smooth, slender, long-fingered hands and a loose wrist. He grew up in Ecuador, and though he worked in a food store there, nothing he did foretold his labeling facility. In Ecuador, prices were handwritten. After moving to America, he got a job at Key Food at the suggestion of a friend, and there he met up with a label gun. He got so good at labeling that the Key Food managers consulted him when they were buying new guns. He fired a round of price stickers onto the egg cartons. The pile of cartons was as high and wide as a chicken coop. Another customer who had slipped in early, an elegant old man, stepped up to him, motioned with his cane, and said, “Do you have any eggs for me, my friend?”

  The first customer when the store officially opened was a bald man in a green T-shirt. He disappeared down one of the aisles, then reemerged at the cash register with a box of Entenmann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts, two tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese, and a head of iceberg lettuce. At the last moment, he backed out of the line and jettisoned the lettuce in the Pepsi display at the head of Aisle 5. An elderly man in a tweed blazer came up behind him, picked up the lettuce, carried it over to Toney, and said, “Is it possible for a person to get a tender piece of meat around here?” As he spoke, he was gesturing with the lettuce. A moment later, he turned, took a few steps, put down the lettuce, and headed toward the dairy case. The lettuce was now in the Frookie All Natural cookies display. An Asian woman was passing the Frookie display. In her shopping cart were a box of Birds Eye Frozen Mixed Vegetables and two pumpernickel bagels she had just fished out of the roll bin. She picked up the lettuce, put it in her cart, and headed for the cashiers.

  The cashiers had pinned on their corsages. A woman with a sleek silver pageboy walked over to Ashima’s line, looked at her corsage, and said, “Who’s getting married?”

  Ashima said, “It’s the birthday of the store. No one’s getting married.”

  The woman said, “Rose Mary? Is Rose Mary getting married?”

  Rose Mary was one checkout line over, ringing up the groceries of three Indians—mother, daughter, and granddaughter. The mother had a caste mark on her forehead and was wearing a turquoise sari shot through with gold threads. Her daugh
ter was in black slacks and a red turtleneck. The little girl was in a plaid jumpsuit. There are seventeen sari stores in Jackson Heights. There are a dozen Indian grocery stores, where you can buy red and green lentils, garam masala, and puri mix. These women were buying Eggo Homestyle waffles, frozen corn on the cob, a loaf of Italian bread, and two containers of La Yogurt, strawberry flavored. Rose Mary said, “I’m not getting married. My boyfriend isn’t part of this. That’s not why we have the flowers.”

  The woman with the pageboy said, “Rose Mary, if your boyfriend won’t help out, then get rid of him.”

  A heavyset man entered the line behind her. He was wearing a gingham shirt and a baseball cap that said hbo on the crown. In one hand he was holding some Internal Revenue Service forms. Wrapped around his other wrist was a cinnamon-colored Chihuahua. Rose Mary said, “Hi, Eddie. Hi, Pancho.”

  Pancho trembled. Eddie patted him on the head with one finger and said, “Hey, what’s with the flowers?”

  The lines at the cash registers began to build. A freckle-faced teenage boy wearing an ORLANDO MAGIC hat: a bag of Doritos, a box of Strawberry Pop-Tarts, a can of Spam, a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, a gallon of milk, a box of Teddy Grahams. A glamorous blonde, wearing gold mules: a Sara Lee cheesecake, four packages of veal. A man and woman speaking Russian: a box of Post Shredded Wheat ’N Bran, a box of Grape-Nuts, a box of Honey Bunches of Oats. A woman in a pink cape: a pound of Hershey’s Kisses and a steak. A youngish man wearing a Yankees cap: one hero roll, two six-packs of Meister Bräu. An ample-looking middle-aged woman in purple stretch pants and spike heels: a package of Ore-Ida frozen French fries, a bunch of bananas, a one-pound package of Oscar Mayer wieners. A rotund, rosy-faced old man: a frozen piecrust, two packages of Brussels sprouts, a can of Campbell’s Chicken Broth, and a pound of butter.

  It was impossible for me to watch this cavalcade of products and not either picture them being eaten together or try to imagine the circumstances that led this particular person to need this particular, random-looking assortment of things at this particular moment. A good cashier, on the other hand, appears to notice nothing. Ashima, who everyone concedes is the best cashier, likes to chatter while she’s ringing orders; this makes her seem both totally focused and completely distracted, as if she were putting on mascara while driving sixty miles an hour. A skinny man with a crew cut, his glasses held together over his nose with electrical tape, unloaded three cans of Budweiser, a can of Krasdale apricots, a ham steak, a can of Blue Diamond walnuts, two kaiser rolls, and a box of Haviland chocolates from his shopping cart. “My son is at Pennsylvania State, in premed,” Ashima said, punching in the prices. “He’s a very good boy. I don’t know how I got so good at this. To me, it’s easy. Everyone loves me, because I am the best.”

  The party was supposed to start at ten, then at eleven, then at twelve. Then people started taking their breaks. At one, word filtered down from the office that Herb had a dentist appointment and had to leave immediately. Finally, at two o’clock, Robert said he was going to eat the cake if someone else didn’t start it, so a skeleton crew was left at their posts and everyone else came up to Herb’s office.

  Upstairs, Rose Mary pulled the cake out of the box and said, “I think we should cut the cake, and leave a piece for Herb to have tomorrow, and take a picture, and that’s it, because it’s too busy out there.” Sometime long ago, Rose Mary had ascended to the role of den mother here. There were eight people clustered in the corner of the office: Ashima, Marta, Rose Mary, Jerry, Robert, Toney, and Richard and Bill, who had taken a break from carving a side of beef. Someone was drinking a Coke. I took the picture, and then Robert had me take another, so that the Coke bottle would be turned the right way in the picture—with the label pointed toward the camera, so you could read it clearly.

  MY FAVORITE THING at Sunshine was a small sign in the back of the produce department that said:

  MELLOW, VERSATILE BANANAS—FOR A DIFFERENT TREAT,

  FRY OR BAKE AND SERVE HOT.

  Some supermarkets post recipes above certain products, or have their aisles choked with dump displays, or have music playing at subliminal levels to encourage acquisitive urges. Sunshine, by comparison, is an aloof selling environment. Herb likes a clean-looking store and Frank Sinatra, who has no track record as a sales tool. Toney hates having the aisles cluttered. One of Sunshine’s few concessions to conventional sales psychology was the banana sign. Many people left the store with a bunch of bananas. Either the sign worked or it was a case of restating the obvious. People seem to love bananas, and also green bananas and plantains, which were added to Sunshine’s produce department a few years ago, when the neighborhood was reconfigured ethnically. Also calabaza, fresh yautia, red batata, and coconuts. Also yucca, which are laid out like big costume jewelry on green liner paper, beside the avocados and the honeydews and the navel oranges and the Granny Smiths.

  Long ago, Jerry Goldberg, the produce manager at Sunshine, ran a green market on Allerton Avenue in the Bronx. Eventually, he got tired of standing outside in the cold. He has worked indoors at Sunshine for ten years, but he always looks dressed for Allerton Avenue. Jerry is in charge of ordering and displaying and tending to the produce. It is not a desk job. Mornings, he starts by prepping the vegetables to put on display. He has huge hands, with fingers as gnarled as parsnips. It is quite a sight to wander back to his worktable and catch him hacking at the lettuce heads, cutting off the ugly leaves and tossing them away. A few heads into it, he’s ankle deep in greenery. One day when I was hanging around with him, he had a dozen cases of heads to sculpt. “Look at these,” he said, motioning to the cases. “Half of them, the outer leaves, all get thrown away.”

  A husky man in a blue jumpsuit came up to the worktable and said, “Yo, Jerry, I’ve got something with your name on it.” Jerry kicked his way through the lettuce leaves, and the two men walked past the dairy case to the produce section.

  The man in the jumpsuit was Michael Singleton, and he was delivering from Loi Banana/Global Tropicals of Brooklyn. Most of the produce at Sunshine Market, and at most supermarkets in New York, comes from Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, where the wholesalers gather every morning before dawn. Loi Banana/Global Tropicals brings citrus, specialty items, and a few things that Jerry doesn’t find to his liking at Hunts Point. Michael had deposited thirty cases of fruits in the aisle beside the produce section—Ruby Red grapefruits, Don Antonio’s Delight Quality Cantaloupes, Seald Sweet Oranges, Qual-A-Key Limes, and Bonita’s Pride Tomatoes. One stack was strictly bananas and tropicals.

  Michael handed Jerry an order form. Jerry wiped his hands on his pants and took the papers. He had lettuce leaves on his shoes, strawberry stains on his jeans, and something green on the front of his shirt. When he read the order form, he groaned and said, “Twenty-three dollars for apples?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Twenty-three? You got no heart.”

  “I don’t make the rules. I just collect the money.”

  Bruce Mitchnick, the assistant produce manager, was walking past, advising a woman on how to peel a beet. Toney was following behind him, checking the seal on a bottle of Deer Park water for a nervous woman who wanted him to assure her it was safe. Bruce Mitchnick is small and solid and sometimes wears a weight lifter’s leather belt while he works, which when he is hoisting a melon or a case of tomatoes gives him the aspect of a gladiator confronting vegetables. For twelve years, Bruce owned a produce market in Kew Gardens. He started in the business as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. He loves fruits and vegetables. He is a fountain of produce lore. Once he told me, “Don’t wash anything before you eat it. That’s where all the vitamins are. If you wash the produce, you wash the vitamins away.” Another time he said, “People are afraid of broccoli rabe, but I know for a fact it’s delicious.”

  Jerry was saying, “Hey, Mike, what I need from you is five platanos, ten bananas, one calabaza, three avocados, one wax yucca, one coconut, two apples, and three
oranges.” He meant cases.

  Michael pointed at the stacks and said, “Right here.”

  Bruce stopped his beet discourse and said, “Jerry, take a look at these gorgeous strawberries.”

  Jerry said, “I can’t look at strawberries. I’m too heartsick about these apples for twenty-three.”

  The woman with Bruce grabbed his elbow and said, “Don’t leave me now. I’ve got the beets out of the water, and so now what?”

  One unwritten law in supermarkets is that whatever is just being unloaded and is not yet marked and not ready to sell is exactly the thing that people want. Being boxed and waiting to be unpacked makes all products irresistibly attractive to shoppers. Within seconds, four or five people were circling the stack that Michael had deposited. A woman with glittering eyeglasses got hold of half a banana sticking out of the top of the crate. Jerry shooed her away. A moment later, a pear-shaped man in a peacoat grabbed it. It did not budge.

  Michael said, “Jerry, sign off for me, because I got to get back to Brooklyn.”

  The pear-shaped man let go of the banana, looked at Jerry, and said, “I have to tell you, I have a problem with this.”

  Jerry said, “Mister, there are plenty of bananas out. There are bananas out you can get to.”

  The man said, “No, I don’t want any bananas. I was just thinking to myself, Why doesn’t he ever play any Al Jolson here? Sinatra I hear plenty, but I don’t think there’s as much Jolson as I’d like, and I’m here every day.”