I'm thinking about work. Specifically I'm thinking how lucky I was that I didn't end up crippled from trying to handle the 100 pound sacks of potatoes that Harry set me to unloading when I first started working for him at about 12 years old. Those potato sacks were stacked about head high to me. Fortunately there were only two ranks of them at the front of the truck, stacked bricks and mortar fashion. Some potatoes got bruised after I learned that there was no way I could handle those sacks on my shoulder the way I had seen Harry do. I tried the best I could to slow the descent of the higher stacked bags and ended up slowly dragging each to the end of the truck where I was again presented with a rank on bags almost head high once I climbed down. It took me several hours to unload probably thirty bags of potatoes.
Now that I'm thinking about this I'm realizing that I can't ever remember encountering hundred pound sacks of potatoes again. It just may be that Harry was getting old enough by then to doubt his ability to handle them. And it may be that he was paying attention to how I was unloading them; although I don't remember him checking on me. I've always thought I could easily have been dead under one of those sacks for most of a day before being discovered.
This came to mind again today, for I was thinking about it the other day in another context, because I'm listening to a Larry McMurtry book about Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. McMurtry is skeptical about a lot of Buffalo Bill's yarns, such as his claim that he killed an Indian at eleven years old while defending himself during a raid on a cattle drive he was working; but he seems pretty certain that the man was telling the simple truth about starting work at eleven years old. And McMurty mentions that his father and his several uncles were all handling more or less full responsibility for work on his grandfather's ranch by eleven years old in the early 1900's.
One of the things Buffalo Bill certainly did at eleven years old, according to McMurtry, was to singlehandedly take a small herd of twenty or so cattle to an army outpost thirty five miles away from Leavenworth Kansas, presumably after he had proven himself reliable at delivering messages on mule back within several miles of town. And that was at a time, the 1860's, when there were still at least some untamed Indians still to be found in Kansas, if only in the form of occasional raiding parties from wilder regions west of there. I've been trying to put myself into the mind of an eleven year old responsible for those cattle during what had to be at least one overnight, knowing that there might well be Indians about, even if that was unlikely.
Giants walked the earth in former days.
The other day I was reviewing the various sorts of work I've done over the course of my life in the context of finishing up a stint at one of the more boring sorts of work I've ever endured. And I promised myself I would make a list, so here goes.
-Unloaded 100 pound sacks of potatoes from a truck, possibly the most dangerous job I've ever done if you discount jobs that have involved driving.
-Waited on customers at the fruit and produce market.
-Sorted endless tomatoes into greens, pinks and ripes, and resorted them again and again and again, after unloading a tractor trailer load of boxes of them. I still remember the ugh factor of encountering a rotten one, seemingly always by surprise. This may have been one of the more useful early jobs I ever did. You have to learn to achieve a sort of out of body zen state to mentally survive sorting tomatoes for 12 hours.
-Unloaded most of a tractor trailer load of watermelons over the course of two days between waiting on customers at the market. I did that before reading Chairman Mao's phrase, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Helped more or less at a paper mill on the night shift, when I wasn't napping in the bin of paper scraps because the regular workers didn't consider me much help. I took away and still retain amazement at the the balletic artistry the lead guy exhibited as he threaded the first run of pulp through the big machine's almost quarter mile long run of rollers. I also remember the size of the cockroaches down in the level under the machine, where mushy paper pulp was almost a foot deep, and where I had to go once because I dropped a tool down there.
-Machined endless strangely shaped fiberglass wheels with brass bushings whose purpose I still can't imagine. One of my jobs was to help the foreman muscle a 55 gallon drum of brass shavings into his pickup truck every few days. Evidently he could hide taking the brass; but he couldn't hide using one of the union guys to help him load them after the shift end.
-Did public opinion polling of Job Corps dropouts in the projects in Chicago. It was hard for that company to find literate people willing to put on a jacket and tie and walk into the projects to question Job Corps dropouts so the job paid what I thought was a pretty good hourly rate; but I didn't know the half of it at the beginning. It turned out that achieving two completed interviews was considered reasonable quota for a 40 hour week. My supervisor berated me for turning in five interviews with my 40 hour time sheet that first week, and she had me correct the error by filling out a second time sheet under a variant of my name. I never made that mistake again and I became much more efficient at getting interviews as I learned the ropes. That job ended up paying an effective hourly rate that was astronomical. But it did have associated expences. After the first week I paid a fraternity brother to drive me and keep the car running so he could help with a fast getaway if necessary or at least report my disappearance to the police. But I never had so much as a really scary encounter during the course of doing a hundred or so of those interviews.
-Counted shoppers emerging from a supermarket and noted how many bags of groceries they had. For quality control purposes I was part of a two man team with a fraternity brother. We customarily started the day with a gallon of wine in my car facing the entrance to a supermarket and we ended the day recording very suspect numbers; but the market research company loved our work. Put not your faith in data unless you gather it yourself.
-Chauffered for a very wealthy family. I learned about pecking orders since I was at the very bottom of the chauffer one since I drove a Chevy station wagon. The black guy at the top of that pecking order was responsible for one of those 1920's cars with the separate compartment for the chauffer, something out of a movie. Plus he had an actual uniform and hat. I say he was responsible for the car because he never actually seemed to drive it. He only dusted it with a soft cloth. His Mrs. Gotrocks employer never went out.
Well, that's enough for now. I haven't even gotten to the Navy yet. I'll think on this jobs business again.
Showing posts with label Harry's Potato Market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry's Potato Market. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, October 12, 2009
A day of wonder in second childhood
First off, it's impossible to find time to think undisturbed. It's about 1:00 and I just sat down to write up this day of wonder. And almost immediately that possibly winter damned little woodpecker came back and started tapping at the patio door window and shamelessly displaying to his reflection. Yesterday he woke me up, very thoughfully just before the alarm went off, by tapping on the bedroom window. All the little buddies he was playing around with last week are gone. They may already be headed south. You had better give up with the windows guy, and get your backside south. It's getting cold.
Maybe he listened to me. He's gone now so I can get back to the events so far of the day.
Jas, who is off work because of Columbus Day, called at about 9:30 to ask if I wanted to go out and play. Of course I did; so he came by after stopping at the drugstore. While I was waiting for him I started two pounds of great northern beans on low. The package directions call for simmering them only a couple of hours after soaking them overnight; but I like them mostly disintegrated for Pasta Fagiole, so those beans are still over there slow cooking.
After Jas arrived we went over to the big new playground that just opened and took a couple of hour walk through the Wegman's and then through the Best Buy which are pretty much the only stores open over there at this point. The Wegmans is enormous! And it has friendly people giving out sample snacks here and there, which the little dusty playgrounds of my first childhood did not have. And even if those old time playgrounds had had people giving out snacks they would certainly not have included samples of buttery brie on bread. Very good brie, and the nice lady insisted on giving us some even after we told her we weren't shopping but only walking around.
As we were walking down one of the aisles I heard an old woman exclaiming to her buddy about the price of the gourmet cat food she was looking at. Once we were out of earshot Jas mentioned that she probably drove ten miles to price out the cat food the way Mom and Aunt Mary used to run around to all the stores buying this here and that there. Mom and Aunt Mary never bought catfood though. Cats ate leftover people food back in those days.
Old people sure are funny. They've got all the time in the world to go around doing stuff like strolling around five acre supermarkets eating free samples and checking prices. Which reminds me, I noticed that Wegmans sells the big bottles of soda for 89 cents, which is a lot better price than prevails at Redners where the best you can do, even on sale, is a buck a bottle. Not that I would save any money by going to Wegmans to shop. The place is positively filled with enticing stuff that is not priced at 89 cents and I'm an impulse shopper even when not hungry.
There is, for instance, and olive bar that has selections you don't even see down at the cheese and olive store in the Italian Market down in Philly. I could easily spend twenty bucks at that olive bar after I save 11 cents on a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.
And Wegmans has five kinds of caviar. Imagine that, caviar for sale right here in Collegeville. And most of that caviar isn't even expensive. Four of the caviar varieties are bargains at only $5.17 an ounce; a pretty darn good price compared to the 28 bucks and change that they want for an ounce of the one expensive variety. Caviar for poor folks. I'm sure only really rich people buy that expensive caviar. Regular guys like me and Jas would never pay that outrageous price. We would stick to the cheaper stuff.
And the produce section! What a thrill that was for two kids who worked at Harry's Potato Market back in our first childhood. That was back when we told people to please don't squeeze the tomatoes displayed under the big cardboard sign that said "FLORDIA TOMATS - 3 lbs FOR 50 (CENTS)".
I put that "CENTS" in parentheses because this darn computer doesn't have a key for the little "cents" symbol. I'll bet Wegmans has computers that have a key for the "cents" symbol; and I'll betcha dollars to donuts they have somebody who knows how to reliably spell "Florida" as well - or maybe they have a spell checker on their computers. Harry apparently didn't have a spell checker on his computer, and he didn't trouble to use me or Jas or Sam or Patty as spell checkers when he made up signs. We laughed about that Flordia sign every year for three or four years when Harry took it out each fall after the last of the local tomatoes were gone.
Harry's computer used to do other funny things. One time, for instance, he priced the figs for individual sale at far less than their bulk cost. Which didn't much matter anyway because there was a lot of shrinkage of those figs. . . a very lot of shrinkage. Harry himself liked them quite a bit, and we did too. Working at Harry's had very few perks; but one of those was eating all of the fruit you could possibly want to eat. It was accepted practice, for instance that the last watermelon off the truck simply had to be dropped, not far enough to make it mushy, but far enough to make it needful of cutting up.
But back to Wegmans. They have fruits and vegetables in their produce section that I haven't seen since I walked through the outdoor markets of Singapore and Hong Kong and Bangkok back when live monkeys were to be had in out of the way places, and not for pets. And, even forgetting about the exotic stuff, there are brussel sprouts still on the stem, about fifteen varieties of lettuce and an aisle of different types of tomatoes that has more shelf space than Harry's whole potato market. The most impressive thing is that they have all of those fruits and vegetables in both normal form for people who eat normal fruits and vegetables, and in super high priced organic form for the kind of people who turn their noses up at cheap caviar and insist on the 28 buck an ounce variety. And the milk! Don't even get me started on the milk except to say that they have at least three big milk sections scattered around that store.
Not that I had a lot of time to pay proper attention to the milk sections. As always Jas was in a hurry, just like he always was back in first childhood. Now, as then, he even wastes time in a hurry. He was always a few steps ahead of me and making me feel guilty for not moving along fast enough. So now I'm going to have to go back to Wegmans one day to see if one of their milk sections is like their produce section. At this point I can only report that it will not surprise me one bit if I find that they have goat and camel and yak milk, all in both normal and organic varieties.
More later. . . I have some stuff to do for tonight's Pasta e' Fagioli. My next post will start "After we left the Wegmans. . ." That next post will include the thrilling tale of our stroll through Best Buy and our brief stop at the big new Wawa, along with the events that led up to our visiting Dave at his little camp in the woods and then coming upon Dan, who was refueling his chainsaw, and getting his opinion of the french fries at the place we were walking to for lunch.
Maybe he listened to me. He's gone now so I can get back to the events so far of the day.
Jas, who is off work because of Columbus Day, called at about 9:30 to ask if I wanted to go out and play. Of course I did; so he came by after stopping at the drugstore. While I was waiting for him I started two pounds of great northern beans on low. The package directions call for simmering them only a couple of hours after soaking them overnight; but I like them mostly disintegrated for Pasta Fagiole, so those beans are still over there slow cooking.
After Jas arrived we went over to the big new playground that just opened and took a couple of hour walk through the Wegman's and then through the Best Buy which are pretty much the only stores open over there at this point. The Wegmans is enormous! And it has friendly people giving out sample snacks here and there, which the little dusty playgrounds of my first childhood did not have. And even if those old time playgrounds had had people giving out snacks they would certainly not have included samples of buttery brie on bread. Very good brie, and the nice lady insisted on giving us some even after we told her we weren't shopping but only walking around.
As we were walking down one of the aisles I heard an old woman exclaiming to her buddy about the price of the gourmet cat food she was looking at. Once we were out of earshot Jas mentioned that she probably drove ten miles to price out the cat food the way Mom and Aunt Mary used to run around to all the stores buying this here and that there. Mom and Aunt Mary never bought catfood though. Cats ate leftover people food back in those days.
Old people sure are funny. They've got all the time in the world to go around doing stuff like strolling around five acre supermarkets eating free samples and checking prices. Which reminds me, I noticed that Wegmans sells the big bottles of soda for 89 cents, which is a lot better price than prevails at Redners where the best you can do, even on sale, is a buck a bottle. Not that I would save any money by going to Wegmans to shop. The place is positively filled with enticing stuff that is not priced at 89 cents and I'm an impulse shopper even when not hungry.
There is, for instance, and olive bar that has selections you don't even see down at the cheese and olive store in the Italian Market down in Philly. I could easily spend twenty bucks at that olive bar after I save 11 cents on a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.
And Wegmans has five kinds of caviar. Imagine that, caviar for sale right here in Collegeville. And most of that caviar isn't even expensive. Four of the caviar varieties are bargains at only $5.17 an ounce; a pretty darn good price compared to the 28 bucks and change that they want for an ounce of the one expensive variety. Caviar for poor folks. I'm sure only really rich people buy that expensive caviar. Regular guys like me and Jas would never pay that outrageous price. We would stick to the cheaper stuff.
And the produce section! What a thrill that was for two kids who worked at Harry's Potato Market back in our first childhood. That was back when we told people to please don't squeeze the tomatoes displayed under the big cardboard sign that said "FLORDIA TOMATS - 3 lbs FOR 50 (CENTS)".
I put that "CENTS" in parentheses because this darn computer doesn't have a key for the little "cents" symbol. I'll bet Wegmans has computers that have a key for the "cents" symbol; and I'll betcha dollars to donuts they have somebody who knows how to reliably spell "Florida" as well - or maybe they have a spell checker on their computers. Harry apparently didn't have a spell checker on his computer, and he didn't trouble to use me or Jas or Sam or Patty as spell checkers when he made up signs. We laughed about that Flordia sign every year for three or four years when Harry took it out each fall after the last of the local tomatoes were gone.
Harry's computer used to do other funny things. One time, for instance, he priced the figs for individual sale at far less than their bulk cost. Which didn't much matter anyway because there was a lot of shrinkage of those figs. . . a very lot of shrinkage. Harry himself liked them quite a bit, and we did too. Working at Harry's had very few perks; but one of those was eating all of the fruit you could possibly want to eat. It was accepted practice, for instance that the last watermelon off the truck simply had to be dropped, not far enough to make it mushy, but far enough to make it needful of cutting up.
But back to Wegmans. They have fruits and vegetables in their produce section that I haven't seen since I walked through the outdoor markets of Singapore and Hong Kong and Bangkok back when live monkeys were to be had in out of the way places, and not for pets. And, even forgetting about the exotic stuff, there are brussel sprouts still on the stem, about fifteen varieties of lettuce and an aisle of different types of tomatoes that has more shelf space than Harry's whole potato market. The most impressive thing is that they have all of those fruits and vegetables in both normal form for people who eat normal fruits and vegetables, and in super high priced organic form for the kind of people who turn their noses up at cheap caviar and insist on the 28 buck an ounce variety. And the milk! Don't even get me started on the milk except to say that they have at least three big milk sections scattered around that store.
Not that I had a lot of time to pay proper attention to the milk sections. As always Jas was in a hurry, just like he always was back in first childhood. Now, as then, he even wastes time in a hurry. He was always a few steps ahead of me and making me feel guilty for not moving along fast enough. So now I'm going to have to go back to Wegmans one day to see if one of their milk sections is like their produce section. At this point I can only report that it will not surprise me one bit if I find that they have goat and camel and yak milk, all in both normal and organic varieties.
More later. . . I have some stuff to do for tonight's Pasta e' Fagioli. My next post will start "After we left the Wegmans. . ." That next post will include the thrilling tale of our stroll through Best Buy and our brief stop at the big new Wawa, along with the events that led up to our visiting Dave at his little camp in the woods and then coming upon Dan, who was refueling his chainsaw, and getting his opinion of the french fries at the place we were walking to for lunch.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Three men in a boat and the river upset
Jas just called me to cancel today's scheduled Scrabble and Pinochle games because he and Kathy are driving down to Florida a day early. They'll be down at their house in The Villages for the next couple of weeks. I'm imagining that I feel like Butch did when he drew a problematic Canasta hand.
Little did Butch know in the 1960's; but he almost surely coined a phrase that was new to the English language. When playing Canasta with Rose and Mom and Pop he would say, "Three men in a boat and the river upset." When I publish this post that phrase will appear on the web for the first time.
Sam's outrageous nickname for Rose and Butch was "Pruney and Mumbles;" which still makes me, him and Jas laugh on Saturday mornings when we remember it. It may well be the best nickname combination ever invented. Rose was one of those people who wrinkle up amazingly as they age. She was pruney at least twenty years before she died in the 1990's. And Butch, of course, mumbled. That phrase, "pruney and mumbles," had never appeared on the web until I published it in a post last fall.
At Harry's Potato Market in the 1960's Eddie Fight used to say "Smarty eh! Smarty had a party." That phrase, as I've transcribed it, will appear for the first time on the web after I publish this; but after searching around I think Eddie was parrotting a slight modification of the first line of a racist couplet from his youth. If you're interested in that couplet you can find it (where I did) in an online page from a book named Language, Communication & Education published in 1990.
This brave new internet world where one can skip blithely from learning the derivation of "Smarty had a party" to learning the surprisingly long and complex history of "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe" is something else, something fantastic. And after I publish this it will be able to provide someone with a bit of a sense of the world of Eddie Fight. But it can't bring back the full flavor of a Dairy Queen banana split enjoyed on a hot summer evening by a 14 year old.
Eddie Fight was an interesting character. His face was wrinkled, pruney, like Rose's; but he also had the most amazing cauliflower ears and an interestingly mis-shapen nose. Pop mentioned years after I knew Eddie that his real last name wasn't "Fight." In his youth he had liked to fight in all venues, especially bars; but he never fought very well and he was a Bantamweight who liked to take on Heavyweights. When I first met Eddie he was living in the back of the potato market shed where Lefty used to sleep on the pile of burlap bags until the time he pulled a knife on Patty. Later Harry put Eddie up in the second floor apartment of a small commercial building he owned about a couple of hundred yards down Ridge Pike from the potato market.
I think Harry used to pay Eddie something as well; but he rarely did any work. He might wait on a customer if Patty and I were both busy with other customers; but mostly Eddie sat on an apple crate under the awning with Harry on the long summer evenings and reminisced about old times. Sometimes Gap B joined them. Gap owned Trooper Banana so, like Harry, he was a produce entrepreneur. Gap liked to gamble, and there were several groups of poker players who really, really liked to have Gap in their games; so his schedule only allowed him to come over every once in a while to discuss commodity prices and logistics and high finance with Harry as Eddie listened respectfully.
Patty, who hadn't learned the obvious lesson from the knife incident with Lefty, used to mock Eddie. And Eddie would respond, "Smarty eh. Smarty had a party." Sometimes his fists would clench up when he said that; but Eddie's prime fighting days were mostly over by that time; and anyway, Patty was the son of his padrone, so it would have been very bad form for Eddie to take a poke at him. Not that Patty didn't often deserve a poke.
Along about 9:30 or so Harry would give us the word to close up the Potato Market and Patty and I would cover up the watermelons and tomatoes and cantaloupes and other stuff with tarps while Harry would go back and get Kingy, and later Major, to set up for guard duty. You didn't want to get within reach of Kingy or Major's chain once they were on post for the night.
John S used to love riding his bike recklessly right along the perimeter of the beaten earth area where Kingy spent his mostly lazy days, just to provide him with a little thrill. John got a big kick out of Kingy's impotent fury when he did that. Until one day when he skidded and fell over the wrong way, into the beaten earth area. It was amazing how many puncture wounds Kingy managed to inflict before John could scramble out of reach.
Often, on especially warm nights, after we closed up the Potato Market, Patty would drive me down to pick up his cousins, Joe A and Butchy D, and we would go over to Saint Gabes home for bad boys to play water basketball. Bold as brass, Patty would walk into the boiler room and turn on the pool lights when we arrived. Mostly the gate to the pool was unlocked so getting in was no problem; but if it wasn't unlocked we would scale the fence. The irony of us sneaking into a detention center completely escaped me at the time. Patty said it was OK as long as we were quiet, so it was OK.
We would play water basketball until one of the brothers noticed the lights or the din we were making and came down to tell us we had to leave. Sometimes the brother would officiously make us line up against the fence and give us a short lecture. Patty was always very respectful of the brothers and very contrite; but sometimes we would wait in the car for a few minutes until the brother had returned to the dormitory if Patty felt the game had been cut too short. Once the coast was clear he would turn on the lights again and we would return to the pool. Even I knew that immediately returning to the scene of the crime was a bad idea, and Joe A used to be terrified; but we never got caught twice on the same evening so Patty evidently had the situation figured right. He later became a lawyer with the Public Defender's office.
After our game, usually about 11:00, our toes hurting and oozing a little blood from pushing off against the rough pool bottom, Patty would take us to Dairy Queen for a banana split which we would eat as we tooled around in Harry's old Chevy before dropping off Butchy D in Bridgeport and Joe A in Jeffersonville.
Those days are long gone and a present day Dairy Queen banana split is merely the palest shadow of what it was then, so Eddie with the cauliflower ears has the last laugh after all and Butch's sentiment says it all.
Smarty eh. Smarty had a party.
Three men in a boat and the river upset.
Little did Butch know in the 1960's; but he almost surely coined a phrase that was new to the English language. When playing Canasta with Rose and Mom and Pop he would say, "Three men in a boat and the river upset." When I publish this post that phrase will appear on the web for the first time.
Sam's outrageous nickname for Rose and Butch was "Pruney and Mumbles;" which still makes me, him and Jas laugh on Saturday mornings when we remember it. It may well be the best nickname combination ever invented. Rose was one of those people who wrinkle up amazingly as they age. She was pruney at least twenty years before she died in the 1990's. And Butch, of course, mumbled. That phrase, "pruney and mumbles," had never appeared on the web until I published it in a post last fall.
At Harry's Potato Market in the 1960's Eddie Fight used to say "Smarty eh! Smarty had a party." That phrase, as I've transcribed it, will appear for the first time on the web after I publish this; but after searching around I think Eddie was parrotting a slight modification of the first line of a racist couplet from his youth. If you're interested in that couplet you can find it (where I did) in an online page from a book named Language, Communication & Education published in 1990.
This brave new internet world where one can skip blithely from learning the derivation of "Smarty had a party" to learning the surprisingly long and complex history of "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe" is something else, something fantastic. And after I publish this it will be able to provide someone with a bit of a sense of the world of Eddie Fight. But it can't bring back the full flavor of a Dairy Queen banana split enjoyed on a hot summer evening by a 14 year old.
Eddie Fight was an interesting character. His face was wrinkled, pruney, like Rose's; but he also had the most amazing cauliflower ears and an interestingly mis-shapen nose. Pop mentioned years after I knew Eddie that his real last name wasn't "Fight." In his youth he had liked to fight in all venues, especially bars; but he never fought very well and he was a Bantamweight who liked to take on Heavyweights. When I first met Eddie he was living in the back of the potato market shed where Lefty used to sleep on the pile of burlap bags until the time he pulled a knife on Patty. Later Harry put Eddie up in the second floor apartment of a small commercial building he owned about a couple of hundred yards down Ridge Pike from the potato market.
I think Harry used to pay Eddie something as well; but he rarely did any work. He might wait on a customer if Patty and I were both busy with other customers; but mostly Eddie sat on an apple crate under the awning with Harry on the long summer evenings and reminisced about old times. Sometimes Gap B joined them. Gap owned Trooper Banana so, like Harry, he was a produce entrepreneur. Gap liked to gamble, and there were several groups of poker players who really, really liked to have Gap in their games; so his schedule only allowed him to come over every once in a while to discuss commodity prices and logistics and high finance with Harry as Eddie listened respectfully.
Patty, who hadn't learned the obvious lesson from the knife incident with Lefty, used to mock Eddie. And Eddie would respond, "Smarty eh. Smarty had a party." Sometimes his fists would clench up when he said that; but Eddie's prime fighting days were mostly over by that time; and anyway, Patty was the son of his padrone, so it would have been very bad form for Eddie to take a poke at him. Not that Patty didn't often deserve a poke.
Along about 9:30 or so Harry would give us the word to close up the Potato Market and Patty and I would cover up the watermelons and tomatoes and cantaloupes and other stuff with tarps while Harry would go back and get Kingy, and later Major, to set up for guard duty. You didn't want to get within reach of Kingy or Major's chain once they were on post for the night.
John S used to love riding his bike recklessly right along the perimeter of the beaten earth area where Kingy spent his mostly lazy days, just to provide him with a little thrill. John got a big kick out of Kingy's impotent fury when he did that. Until one day when he skidded and fell over the wrong way, into the beaten earth area. It was amazing how many puncture wounds Kingy managed to inflict before John could scramble out of reach.
Often, on especially warm nights, after we closed up the Potato Market, Patty would drive me down to pick up his cousins, Joe A and Butchy D, and we would go over to Saint Gabes home for bad boys to play water basketball. Bold as brass, Patty would walk into the boiler room and turn on the pool lights when we arrived. Mostly the gate to the pool was unlocked so getting in was no problem; but if it wasn't unlocked we would scale the fence. The irony of us sneaking into a detention center completely escaped me at the time. Patty said it was OK as long as we were quiet, so it was OK.
We would play water basketball until one of the brothers noticed the lights or the din we were making and came down to tell us we had to leave. Sometimes the brother would officiously make us line up against the fence and give us a short lecture. Patty was always very respectful of the brothers and very contrite; but sometimes we would wait in the car for a few minutes until the brother had returned to the dormitory if Patty felt the game had been cut too short. Once the coast was clear he would turn on the lights again and we would return to the pool. Even I knew that immediately returning to the scene of the crime was a bad idea, and Joe A used to be terrified; but we never got caught twice on the same evening so Patty evidently had the situation figured right. He later became a lawyer with the Public Defender's office.
After our game, usually about 11:00, our toes hurting and oozing a little blood from pushing off against the rough pool bottom, Patty would take us to Dairy Queen for a banana split which we would eat as we tooled around in Harry's old Chevy before dropping off Butchy D in Bridgeport and Joe A in Jeffersonville.
Those days are long gone and a present day Dairy Queen banana split is merely the palest shadow of what it was then, so Eddie with the cauliflower ears has the last laugh after all and Butch's sentiment says it all.
Smarty eh. Smarty had a party.
Three men in a boat and the river upset.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Do the digits always add up to nine?
It used to make Harry's sister Lizzie crazy when she would notice that me and Patty M were adding up customer bills at the produce market in our heads. So when she was around and paying attention we would sometimes act like we were adding up the customer totals on paper. Pretty dumb because almost all the prices were in round quarters, so adding up the totals was easy and natural; and at that time I could effortlessly do calculations in my head out to five and six digits.
At any rate one time at Harry's I noticed that when you multiple 9 by 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., the sum of the digits in the answer always adds up to 9. Naturally I realized that this was trivial for numbers up to 9 x 10; but it went on after that even into results that were four and five digits long. This is not as hard as it seems. You don't do multiplication; you just keep adding 9 to each new result and then mentally check the new result to see if it's digits add up to 9. Way back then I could consciously sort of start a little part of my head to doing arithmetic while still going on with other things, like waiting on customers and adding up their bills and imagining female customers naked; almost as though all of me was concentrating on what I was supposed to be doing. That may sound odd, but all of us do something like it when we daydream while driving.
But back to the nines. As I recall, I discovered a case in the relatively low thousands where the digits didn't add up to 9; but now I can't remember that result. And, of course, I may have made a mistake when I calculated in my head to come up with that result. So it may be that the digits always add up to 9. But I doubt that because there doesn't appear to be a mathematical proof of it, at least in the first few hits listed by google when I search for "digits add up to nine." There seem to be some interesting math games there related to the properties of products of 9 and the properties of 9 digit numbers in that list; but my head hurts when I try to really dig into math games now; so I didn't inspect them further than to get the impression that none of say outright that the digits of a product of 9 always add up to 9.
I wonder how many customer bills I added up wrong during the period when part of my brain was endlessly calculating the products of 9 and I was very irritated to be distracted by anything else. See below if you have no clue what I'm talking about.
If you find an instance where the digits don't add up to 9 you get this post named after you.
9 2 x 9 = 18 --- 1+8 = 9
3 x 9 = 27 --- 2+7 = 9
4 x 9 = 36 --- 3+6 = 9
5 x 9 = 45 --- 4+5 = 9
9 x 14 = 126 --- 1+2+6 = 9
9 x 29 = 261 --- 2+6+1 = 9
9 x 57 = 51 3 --- 5+1+3 = 9
9 x 2374 = 21366 --- 2+1+3+6+6 = 18 --- 1+8 = 9
9 x 79647732 = 716829588 --- 7+1+6+8+2+9+5+8+8 = 54 --- 5+4 = 9
At any rate one time at Harry's I noticed that when you multiple 9 by 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., the sum of the digits in the answer always adds up to 9. Naturally I realized that this was trivial for numbers up to 9 x 10; but it went on after that even into results that were four and five digits long. This is not as hard as it seems. You don't do multiplication; you just keep adding 9 to each new result and then mentally check the new result to see if it's digits add up to 9. Way back then I could consciously sort of start a little part of my head to doing arithmetic while still going on with other things, like waiting on customers and adding up their bills and imagining female customers naked; almost as though all of me was concentrating on what I was supposed to be doing. That may sound odd, but all of us do something like it when we daydream while driving.
But back to the nines. As I recall, I discovered a case in the relatively low thousands where the digits didn't add up to 9; but now I can't remember that result. And, of course, I may have made a mistake when I calculated in my head to come up with that result. So it may be that the digits always add up to 9. But I doubt that because there doesn't appear to be a mathematical proof of it, at least in the first few hits listed by google when I search for "digits add up to nine." There seem to be some interesting math games there related to the properties of products of 9 and the properties of 9 digit numbers in that list; but my head hurts when I try to really dig into math games now; so I didn't inspect them further than to get the impression that none of say outright that the digits of a product of 9 always add up to 9.
I wonder how many customer bills I added up wrong during the period when part of my brain was endlessly calculating the products of 9 and I was very irritated to be distracted by anything else. See below if you have no clue what I'm talking about.
If you find an instance where the digits don't add up to 9 you get this post named after you.
9 2 x 9 = 18 --- 1+8 = 9
3 x 9 = 27 --- 2+7 = 9
4 x 9 = 36 --- 3+6 = 9
5 x 9 = 45 --- 4+5 = 9
9 x 14 = 126 --- 1+2+6 = 9
9 x 29 = 261 --- 2+6+1 = 9
9 x 57 = 51 3 --- 5+1+3 = 9
9 x 2374 = 21366 --- 2+1+3+6+6 = 18 --- 1+8 = 9
9 x 79647732 = 716829588 --- 7+1+6+8+2+9+5+8+8 = 54 --- 5+4 = 9
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sam, Jas and I were in rare form yesterday
It's been a great weekend despite the nasty rain and chill.
Last night Linda and I showed our stuff at the Ballroom on High up in Pottstown, proving that we remembered the intermediate Rumba steps that Jas and Kathy taught us on Wednesday and that we practiced here at home on Thursday. It's always dicey when we learn a new dance or even a new step. If we're not careful the new can seem to write over our memory of a formerly learned dance or step. But last night we proved to our own satisfaction that we still retain the Waltz and the Foxtrot and a little Jitterbug. The Rumba has not replaced any of them. And, the Rumba turns out to be a pretty useful dance. Last night we danced it to a number meant to be a Cha Cha, and it worked very well. It also worked for a number meant for a Bolero. Very gratifying.
Linda was working the bazaar at her church yesterday and today, so she missed seeing me, Sam and Jas in rare form yesterday morning. As we do periodically we took a real trip down memory lane to the old neighborhood in Trooper and various events around it.
We remembered the beautiful warm and still summer nights when the delicate scent of lilacs and honeysuckle would compete with the smell of burning hair that announced Foulke was disposing of the sweepings from his barber shop by night. And we remembered the time Little John got a neat new BB gun and immediately shot out a bunch of windows in Ziggy's pigeon coop next door. Alas, Big John bent the barrel of the BB gun into a nice "C" shape the next day after Ziggy complained. And we remembered the way the tar would ooze out of the road at the corner where it went around Carl and Mamie's house, so much tar in a puddle that sometimes you would find a bird or a mouse mired.
Jas told the story of Little John shooting out the pigeon coop windows; but this time he didn't tell, as he usually does, about the way he used to lay on his back and shoot up with his slingshot into the flock of homing pigeons as they circled overhead. He never shot one down; but not for lack of trying. Jas did tell about his adventures with Louie Lonzo when they both worked for Paul at the sale up in Gilbertsville. When they arrived at the sale Lonzo would open the back of the truck and announce loudly and repeatedly that "The Jonah" was there. Why he called Paul M "The Jonah" Jas doesn't know.
I can imagine the scene Jas describes, and so can Sam; because we both worked the sales in our time. We both rode in the middle of the bench seat of the truck after loading the back with an amazing quantity of fruit and vegetables. And then we worked ten straight hours, some days seeming so busy that there was never a moment without a customer. When I worked for Gap B he had a fellow who was much like Jas's description of Lonzo. Gap's fellow was a career fruit and produce salesman who had been with Gap for twenty plus years. He was paid enough cash under the table to have a typical suburban house over by Trooper School in which I'm sure he was a normal suburban husband with his wife and a typical father to his kids.
But at the sale up in Gilbertsville which he worked with Gap three or four days a week he was a carnival barker, and a very good one. He had a whole repertoire of gags that he used to draw in the customers and make the men laugh and the women blush. It kept the day interesting; even to those of us behind the counter who had heard the gags a hundred times. The beauty was in the sheer artistry and sometimes the sheer nerve. And it was always interesting to see how people reacted. There were people who got the jokes and people who didn't, people who walked away shaking their heads, supressing laughter, and people who walked away shaking there heads in confusion, still trying to figure out what he had meant.
Most interesting was the way people acted as though all they had heard was the line on the surface. "Top quality fruit," he might say, after picking up and weighing at chest height two apples or peaches that corresponded roughly in size to attributes of a cute young wife with her husband in tow, "firm and sweet; at the peak of ripeness and flavor." Or he might pick up two honeydews and cup them low toward a young woman with a nice backside and say, "Nice melons, Lady, smooth as a baby's behind, sweet to hold, sweeter to the taste." And, of course the women primly pretend that there was nothing at all unusual about the line. On an especially outrageous day he might pick up a carrot in one hand and two onions in the other hand while he said, "It's a chilly day out there, a good day to stay in and make a nice soup, and you can get your husband to help you stir the soup." Then he would put the carrot in the same hand in which he was cupping the onions so he could use his other hand to point to other vegetables that the ladies might want to put in the soup. And the hand with the carrot and the onions was making stirring motions that were almost, but not quite explicit, in and out motions.
Best was when some prim matron would lose control and laugh out loud, only to quickly catch herself and put on a blank look. It simply wouldn't do to have understood the other possible meaning of what the man had said as he was selecting the cucumbers. Maybe he had said, "You look like you know your produce. You want a cucumber that's nice and firm, not too big and not too small." And it certainly would not do to react when he partially inserted a cucumber into the bag and then pulled it most of the way out again and held it forward to more closely show how its skin was lightly oiled. "These are the best you'll ever enjoy Lady. Look at that cuke, smooth as silk but hard as a rock." And then his final words as he handed over he bags. "It's been a pleasure waiting on you Ma'am. Come back anytime you need anything. We know how to take care of a customer. Satisfaction guaranteed!"
Last night Linda and I showed our stuff at the Ballroom on High up in Pottstown, proving that we remembered the intermediate Rumba steps that Jas and Kathy taught us on Wednesday and that we practiced here at home on Thursday. It's always dicey when we learn a new dance or even a new step. If we're not careful the new can seem to write over our memory of a formerly learned dance or step. But last night we proved to our own satisfaction that we still retain the Waltz and the Foxtrot and a little Jitterbug. The Rumba has not replaced any of them. And, the Rumba turns out to be a pretty useful dance. Last night we danced it to a number meant to be a Cha Cha, and it worked very well. It also worked for a number meant for a Bolero. Very gratifying.
Linda was working the bazaar at her church yesterday and today, so she missed seeing me, Sam and Jas in rare form yesterday morning. As we do periodically we took a real trip down memory lane to the old neighborhood in Trooper and various events around it.
We remembered the beautiful warm and still summer nights when the delicate scent of lilacs and honeysuckle would compete with the smell of burning hair that announced Foulke was disposing of the sweepings from his barber shop by night. And we remembered the time Little John got a neat new BB gun and immediately shot out a bunch of windows in Ziggy's pigeon coop next door. Alas, Big John bent the barrel of the BB gun into a nice "C" shape the next day after Ziggy complained. And we remembered the way the tar would ooze out of the road at the corner where it went around Carl and Mamie's house, so much tar in a puddle that sometimes you would find a bird or a mouse mired.
Jas told the story of Little John shooting out the pigeon coop windows; but this time he didn't tell, as he usually does, about the way he used to lay on his back and shoot up with his slingshot into the flock of homing pigeons as they circled overhead. He never shot one down; but not for lack of trying. Jas did tell about his adventures with Louie Lonzo when they both worked for Paul at the sale up in Gilbertsville. When they arrived at the sale Lonzo would open the back of the truck and announce loudly and repeatedly that "The Jonah" was there. Why he called Paul M "The Jonah" Jas doesn't know.
I can imagine the scene Jas describes, and so can Sam; because we both worked the sales in our time. We both rode in the middle of the bench seat of the truck after loading the back with an amazing quantity of fruit and vegetables. And then we worked ten straight hours, some days seeming so busy that there was never a moment without a customer. When I worked for Gap B he had a fellow who was much like Jas's description of Lonzo. Gap's fellow was a career fruit and produce salesman who had been with Gap for twenty plus years. He was paid enough cash under the table to have a typical suburban house over by Trooper School in which I'm sure he was a normal suburban husband with his wife and a typical father to his kids.
But at the sale up in Gilbertsville which he worked with Gap three or four days a week he was a carnival barker, and a very good one. He had a whole repertoire of gags that he used to draw in the customers and make the men laugh and the women blush. It kept the day interesting; even to those of us behind the counter who had heard the gags a hundred times. The beauty was in the sheer artistry and sometimes the sheer nerve. And it was always interesting to see how people reacted. There were people who got the jokes and people who didn't, people who walked away shaking their heads, supressing laughter, and people who walked away shaking there heads in confusion, still trying to figure out what he had meant.
Most interesting was the way people acted as though all they had heard was the line on the surface. "Top quality fruit," he might say, after picking up and weighing at chest height two apples or peaches that corresponded roughly in size to attributes of a cute young wife with her husband in tow, "firm and sweet; at the peak of ripeness and flavor." Or he might pick up two honeydews and cup them low toward a young woman with a nice backside and say, "Nice melons, Lady, smooth as a baby's behind, sweet to hold, sweeter to the taste." And, of course the women primly pretend that there was nothing at all unusual about the line. On an especially outrageous day he might pick up a carrot in one hand and two onions in the other hand while he said, "It's a chilly day out there, a good day to stay in and make a nice soup, and you can get your husband to help you stir the soup." Then he would put the carrot in the same hand in which he was cupping the onions so he could use his other hand to point to other vegetables that the ladies might want to put in the soup. And the hand with the carrot and the onions was making stirring motions that were almost, but not quite explicit, in and out motions.
Best was when some prim matron would lose control and laugh out loud, only to quickly catch herself and put on a blank look. It simply wouldn't do to have understood the other possible meaning of what the man had said as he was selecting the cucumbers. Maybe he had said, "You look like you know your produce. You want a cucumber that's nice and firm, not too big and not too small." And it certainly would not do to react when he partially inserted a cucumber into the bag and then pulled it most of the way out again and held it forward to more closely show how its skin was lightly oiled. "These are the best you'll ever enjoy Lady. Look at that cuke, smooth as silk but hard as a rock." And then his final words as he handed over he bags. "It's been a pleasure waiting on you Ma'am. Come back anytime you need anything. We know how to take care of a customer. Satisfaction guaranteed!"
Friday, August 29, 2008
The things you remember
It's funny the things you remember. I was just at the bank depositing a check preparatory to paying the last of our ridiculously outrageous real estate tax bills. While I was at the bank I got a couple of hundred dollars in twenties. I'm pretty modern about paying with credit cards for most things but Linda is somewhat less so. We go through an outrageous number of twenty dollar bills around here.
I can remember when a twenty dollar bill represented one-third of my pay for a sixy hour week at Harry's Potato Market. That was before I claimed to have another job opportunity after my first year of high school and Harry raised my pay to $1.20 an hour. Of course that was cash pay, so there were no outrageous taxes taken out of. And the job carried some fringe benefits. I got all the fruit I had any desire to eat, and I could take home all of the spotted fruit Mom had any desire to make into pies and such. And I sometimes got to accompany Harry on his trips with that old truck to deliver boxes of produce to various little stores and restaurants in Norristown and Bridgeport and Trooper and Plymouth Meeting. Harry would talk to the owner and I would carry the box into the back. Sam, or was it John, told me about a time when a box fell off the back of the truck on Airy Street and spread fruit all over the road as they went up a hill. "Don't look back," Harry said, as they roared away.
Whoa! A hawk, a redtail I think, just made a kill down by the bamboo grove where I mowed yesterday. And there he flies away. That garter snake who's been hanging around in the garden must have gotten complacent travelling toward the creek. He forgot there is no high grass now. Well, he won't be wriggling long. It's surprisingly rare that I see a hawk on the ground - maybe ten or fifteen times in the thirty years we've been up here in Collegeville. Nature photographers must be supernaturally patient people.
Anyway, back to Harry. Another fringe benefit of my job at Harry's was watching Harry and the other characters who came and went at the Potato Market during those late grade school and early high school summers. Harry was a Sicilian of a kind they don't make anymore, or, if they still make them, you don't see them in this country any more. Or maybe I don't hang around in the right places anymore.
Several of Pop's friends were Sicilians. Lardy and Chink, I think, were Sicilians. Louis Hop was also a Sicilian, but he was an altogether different kind of Sicilian, and he wasn't really one of Pop's friends, he was a neighbor. Reds and Tommy were also Sicilians, I think, but they weren't Pop's friends either, they were business associates.
Reds was also an albino, a very exotic person in 1950's Norristown. I only saw him a couple of times, and that was when I happened to be with Pop on a trip to town when Pop visited him to drop something off or pick something up. Reds talked about coins sometimes after he and Pop had finished comparing their lists and doing their calculations.
Reds talked about coins as investments, not coins as spending money like the ones in the big bowl Uncle Joe Sky had in the middle of the dining room table as a centerpiece. Uncle Joe would tell me to dip into that bowl and take a few of those coins when I went to his house with Pop. I knew I wasn't allowed to dip into that bowl when I went by myself to visit Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy made the best waffles, and she would make those waffles anytime if you just went in and said hi and sat down at the kitchen table and talked with her while she stirred up the batter and heated the waffle iron over the gas. She was funny, Aunt Lucy, and interesting to talk with; but mostly I remember her waffles. She put lots the Caro syrup on top of the waffles on her plate. I liked to put a little pool of syrup on the side of my plate and just dip each bite of waffle in it.
Much later Pop said Reds was one of the smartest guys he knew and he wished he had the money back then to invest in coins the way Reds told him to. Pop had a pretty good coin collection but he just put it together by looking at all the coins he got in change. Sometimes he got a lot of change. When I asked why it was so dark in Reds' apartment Pop told me Reds had to stay inside with the shades drawn because too much light bothered his eyes. He also told me Reds had no hair anywhere on him when I asked why he had a bald head and no eyebrows. Another time Pop told me Reds had no pores, so he couldn't sweat and had to be careful about getting too hot.
Pop's friends, the boys he called them, were a diverse lot. I think the three Jiggses, Frankie, Chollie and Louie, were Neapolitans. Cappy was a Mundelaise, and Worm's people were Bolognese, I think. Butch and Doc's people were Marche's, like our people. The Count's people, I think, were Roman, from Rome that is. None of us thought of ourselves as Roman Romans. We were Italians in those days. Sicilians were Italians too, but they were a different kind of Italian. We went to Holy Saviour church. The Sicilians had their own church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Have I mentioned that I'm a pure Marche' from all four grandparents. That's pronounced Mark with emphasis on the M and the K and a little "eh" on the end. I could have joined the Marche' Club, but I never did because Pop never did. He had a long standing grudge about the Marche' Club from the time he returned from the Navy and they denied him a little disability payment he should have gotten by virtue of Grandpop A's membership. Sam and Jas could have joined the club as well if they wanted, but Marianne couldn't have - no girls allowed. Not that it matters anymore; the club is gone. Our generation is the last to have enough pure Marches to make a local club.
Grandpop L, a club member in good standing, had a little joke he told about Marche's that Mom translated for me. "What's worse than a dead body in the living room?" "A live Marche' at the door." I guess it works better in Italian. The idea is that you're going to get be able to get rid of the dead body a lot easier than you're going to be able to rid of the hardheaded Marche'.
Grandmom L, who was a Marche', used to occasionally refer to Sicilians as "Le Chiboudeys," when she was going strong with Mom and Aunt Mary M at the kitchen table. Or she would call them "Shockeys." But she only talked about them like when her daughter-in-law Aunt Nancy wasn't around. Shockey was just an Americanization of Sciacca, which was the village most of the Norristown Sicilians came from. Pop or his buddies would call one another Shockeys or Napolitans or Mundelaise or Bolognese all the time as in "You Shockeys are all alike" so that wasn't interesting. The fact that Grandmom L might refer to a Sicilian as a Shockey wasn't anything special.
But Chiboudeys was clearly something different, something interesting, especially because it was accompanied with that little hand flip Grandmon L gave when she smiled in that way she only did with Mom and Aunt Mary when she thought us kids weren't watching. It was a broader, purposely transparent version of the smile Mom would have on her face when she would say "This is delicious," about some dish she had taken a couple of little tastes of. I don't think Hillary Clinton ever met Grandmom L or Mom, so she must have learned that smile from someone else.
That hawk is down there again and he has something else. A mouse. It must be good hunting in the newly mown field. I have never seen a hawk on the ground twice in one day.
Mom dodged my questions about Chiboudeys for a long time. And when she finally did tell me what it meant the explanation made no sense. Mom said Chiboudeys meant "onion eaters." That made no sense because Mom had also told me once that they were so poor in the 1930's that Grandmom L would sometimes only have an onion to put in Grandpops lunch box as a substitute for a piece of fruit. So there was a clear case of a pure Marche' biting into a raw onion with his lunch sandwich and yet mom's claiming Grandmom used "onion eaters" as a secret epithet that made them all laugh.
Mom uncomfortably dodged when I presented her with this obvious inconsistency and she would never visit the issue again. It's a terrible world. A world in which a mother will lie to her own son.
And I still don't know what "Chiboudey" meant.
I can remember when a twenty dollar bill represented one-third of my pay for a sixy hour week at Harry's Potato Market. That was before I claimed to have another job opportunity after my first year of high school and Harry raised my pay to $1.20 an hour. Of course that was cash pay, so there were no outrageous taxes taken out of. And the job carried some fringe benefits. I got all the fruit I had any desire to eat, and I could take home all of the spotted fruit Mom had any desire to make into pies and such. And I sometimes got to accompany Harry on his trips with that old truck to deliver boxes of produce to various little stores and restaurants in Norristown and Bridgeport and Trooper and Plymouth Meeting. Harry would talk to the owner and I would carry the box into the back. Sam, or was it John, told me about a time when a box fell off the back of the truck on Airy Street and spread fruit all over the road as they went up a hill. "Don't look back," Harry said, as they roared away.
Whoa! A hawk, a redtail I think, just made a kill down by the bamboo grove where I mowed yesterday. And there he flies away. That garter snake who's been hanging around in the garden must have gotten complacent travelling toward the creek. He forgot there is no high grass now. Well, he won't be wriggling long. It's surprisingly rare that I see a hawk on the ground - maybe ten or fifteen times in the thirty years we've been up here in Collegeville. Nature photographers must be supernaturally patient people.
Anyway, back to Harry. Another fringe benefit of my job at Harry's was watching Harry and the other characters who came and went at the Potato Market during those late grade school and early high school summers. Harry was a Sicilian of a kind they don't make anymore, or, if they still make them, you don't see them in this country any more. Or maybe I don't hang around in the right places anymore.
Several of Pop's friends were Sicilians. Lardy and Chink, I think, were Sicilians. Louis Hop was also a Sicilian, but he was an altogether different kind of Sicilian, and he wasn't really one of Pop's friends, he was a neighbor. Reds and Tommy were also Sicilians, I think, but they weren't Pop's friends either, they were business associates.
Reds was also an albino, a very exotic person in 1950's Norristown. I only saw him a couple of times, and that was when I happened to be with Pop on a trip to town when Pop visited him to drop something off or pick something up. Reds talked about coins sometimes after he and Pop had finished comparing their lists and doing their calculations.
Reds talked about coins as investments, not coins as spending money like the ones in the big bowl Uncle Joe Sky had in the middle of the dining room table as a centerpiece. Uncle Joe would tell me to dip into that bowl and take a few of those coins when I went to his house with Pop. I knew I wasn't allowed to dip into that bowl when I went by myself to visit Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy made the best waffles, and she would make those waffles anytime if you just went in and said hi and sat down at the kitchen table and talked with her while she stirred up the batter and heated the waffle iron over the gas. She was funny, Aunt Lucy, and interesting to talk with; but mostly I remember her waffles. She put lots the Caro syrup on top of the waffles on her plate. I liked to put a little pool of syrup on the side of my plate and just dip each bite of waffle in it.
Much later Pop said Reds was one of the smartest guys he knew and he wished he had the money back then to invest in coins the way Reds told him to. Pop had a pretty good coin collection but he just put it together by looking at all the coins he got in change. Sometimes he got a lot of change. When I asked why it was so dark in Reds' apartment Pop told me Reds had to stay inside with the shades drawn because too much light bothered his eyes. He also told me Reds had no hair anywhere on him when I asked why he had a bald head and no eyebrows. Another time Pop told me Reds had no pores, so he couldn't sweat and had to be careful about getting too hot.
Pop's friends, the boys he called them, were a diverse lot. I think the three Jiggses, Frankie, Chollie and Louie, were Neapolitans. Cappy was a Mundelaise, and Worm's people were Bolognese, I think. Butch and Doc's people were Marche's, like our people. The Count's people, I think, were Roman, from Rome that is. None of us thought of ourselves as Roman Romans. We were Italians in those days. Sicilians were Italians too, but they were a different kind of Italian. We went to Holy Saviour church. The Sicilians had their own church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Have I mentioned that I'm a pure Marche' from all four grandparents. That's pronounced Mark with emphasis on the M and the K and a little "eh" on the end. I could have joined the Marche' Club, but I never did because Pop never did. He had a long standing grudge about the Marche' Club from the time he returned from the Navy and they denied him a little disability payment he should have gotten by virtue of Grandpop A's membership. Sam and Jas could have joined the club as well if they wanted, but Marianne couldn't have - no girls allowed. Not that it matters anymore; the club is gone. Our generation is the last to have enough pure Marches to make a local club.
Grandpop L, a club member in good standing, had a little joke he told about Marche's that Mom translated for me. "What's worse than a dead body in the living room?" "A live Marche' at the door." I guess it works better in Italian. The idea is that you're going to get be able to get rid of the dead body a lot easier than you're going to be able to rid of the hardheaded Marche'.
Grandmom L, who was a Marche', used to occasionally refer to Sicilians as "Le Chiboudeys," when she was going strong with Mom and Aunt Mary M at the kitchen table. Or she would call them "Shockeys." But she only talked about them like when her daughter-in-law Aunt Nancy wasn't around. Shockey was just an Americanization of Sciacca, which was the village most of the Norristown Sicilians came from. Pop or his buddies would call one another Shockeys or Napolitans or Mundelaise or Bolognese all the time as in "You Shockeys are all alike" so that wasn't interesting. The fact that Grandmom L might refer to a Sicilian as a Shockey wasn't anything special.
But Chiboudeys was clearly something different, something interesting, especially because it was accompanied with that little hand flip Grandmon L gave when she smiled in that way she only did with Mom and Aunt Mary when she thought us kids weren't watching. It was a broader, purposely transparent version of the smile Mom would have on her face when she would say "This is delicious," about some dish she had taken a couple of little tastes of. I don't think Hillary Clinton ever met Grandmom L or Mom, so she must have learned that smile from someone else.
That hawk is down there again and he has something else. A mouse. It must be good hunting in the newly mown field. I have never seen a hawk on the ground twice in one day.
Mom dodged my questions about Chiboudeys for a long time. And when she finally did tell me what it meant the explanation made no sense. Mom said Chiboudeys meant "onion eaters." That made no sense because Mom had also told me once that they were so poor in the 1930's that Grandmom L would sometimes only have an onion to put in Grandpops lunch box as a substitute for a piece of fruit. So there was a clear case of a pure Marche' biting into a raw onion with his lunch sandwich and yet mom's claiming Grandmom used "onion eaters" as a secret epithet that made them all laugh.
Mom uncomfortably dodged when I presented her with this obvious inconsistency and she would never visit the issue again. It's a terrible world. A world in which a mother will lie to her own son.
And I still don't know what "Chiboudey" meant.
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