Train Tracks (4 page)

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.”