March 15, 2013

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  The Pushcart   

   

  In the spring of 1934 my father built a singing pushcart

  He designed and decorated it himself

  And after his day at the WPA (if it doesn't rain)

  He pushes it from the garage under Mr Lempke's house

  He rents for a dollar a week - over the cobbled streets

  To St Mary's Park in the South Bronx

   

  As the evenings gentle on toward summer

  He waits at the park's entrance for the old Jews

  To shuffle out of the tenements for their evening stroll

  Old men who walk arm-in-arm and read from little books

  Whispering to themselves - Nodding always nodding

  As their old women sit and gossip on stone benches

  The young are still at work and will stroll much later

  My father waits for them too

   

  As it gets dark - I walk across the park along the lamp-lit esplanade

  My net-bag full of the evening's pretzels and his sparse supper wrapped in wool

  He is always there at the bottom of the hill under the tulip trees

  Standing next to his glowing creation

   

  The pushcart he has painted lemon-yellow and apple-green with its red trim

  Sparkles gaily under the crystal entrance lamps in the smogless dusk

  I hear it singing now as I run toward him

  Dodging the tottering old Jews - Nodding always nodding

   

  My father's pushcart sings because the charcoal brazier roasting the chestnuts

  Also makes steam for its whistle

  It's divided into orderly sections of open boxes

  Of Butterfingers and Baby-Ruths and luscious Milky-Ways

  Their colorful wrappers glisten like jewels in the magic light

   

  How beautiful the pushcart looks bathed in that crystal light!

  How wonderful the roasting chestnuts smell!

  How good those few ‘silver kisses' taste

  My father always gives me for bringing the pretzels and his supper!

   

  Next to the chestnuts waiting to be roasted and the peanuts waiting to be warmed

  Are rows of crimson pistachios and dried pumpkin seeds

  And striped sunflower seeds and rockhard salted chickpeas

  Like the ones my friend Louie Dinardi steals from his father's store

  And uses in his sling-shot to pop pigeons

   

  But my favorites are the big butternuts from Brazil

  I ask my teacher Miss Carlson where Brazil is

  And she shows me on the big earth-ball in the corner

  And says it's thousands of miles away - so that’s why they're so expensive

  Because it costs so much to bring them on a ship

  Across the ocean to the Bronx

  Once a week I sit with my mother at the kitchen table

  As she cracks their big brown shells

  My mother carries my little sister who has polio in from the bedroom

  And we both help her count the tasty nuts into little yellow bags

  My father sells each little bag for a nickel

  Sometimes my mother lets us have one or two for helping her

  But never takes any for herself

   

  My father also sells those big chewey pretzels covered with coarse salt

  He stacks them high on little round sticks at the back of the pushcart

  So very early each Sunday morning before church

  I roll my rusty Radio Flyer to the Jewish bakery on 3rd Avenue

  It's in the cellar of a big tenement under the EL

  The men who work there wear little round caps on the backs of their heads

  And sweat a lot even though they don't have any shirts on

  They're always covered with flour

  And laugh and yell at each other all the time 

   

  Their boss is a great big giant Rabbi with a dirty grey beard

  He has long curly hair way down in front of his ears and it swings back and forth

  As he fills my net-bags with pretzels

  And helps me carry them up from the cellar to my wagon

  I give him the coins wrapped in an old sock and he pats me on the head

  And gives me a free salty pretzel still warm from the big stone oven in the cellar

   

  When I get home my mother puts the pretzels in our oven

  She keeps them there all week and only takes out a few each evening

  So I can bring them to my father to sell when I bring his supper

  She lights the oven a little bit each day to keep them crisp and chewy

  And only takes them out when she bakes bread or spinach pie

   

  The best times of all though

  Are the sunny Sunday afternoons in the summertime

  When the Midbrook Giants play the House of David baseball team

   

  So early on Sunday morning before church if it's not raining

  I help my father push the pushcart to the ballpark near the river

  So we can get the best spot at the bottom of the stairs

  Everybody has to use them to climb up to see the games

  Because the field is so much higher than the street

  It was made out of thousands of tons of dirt and rocks

  The city dumped there long ago

  When they dug the subways under the Bronx

   

  When church is over I run back to the ballpark

  Even before the double-header starts I walk among the families

  Spread out on their blankets with my basket full of five-cent bags of peanuts

  I still remember the afternoon I set my all-time record

  Ninety-three bags! - Wow! - Ninety-three bags!

  My father couldn't believe it when I kept coming back for more!

  He stores a hundred-pound bag in his friend Mr Stavros' old truck

  Mr Stavros and his wife sell hot dogs and orangeade from their truck

  And she helps me fill all the extra bags with peanuts

  My father told my mother more than once - about all the bags I sold

  When he got home that night from St Mary's park  

   

  There are two colored guys on the House of David

  But no colored guys on the Midbrook Giants

  And the House of David almost always wins

   

  Before the second game begins the players find a pretty girl to pass the hat around

  Then the House of David picks out a little kid to try and guess

  Which one of the players has on a fake beard

  The prize is a great big shiny silver dollar and everybody laughs

  At the faces the House of David make as the kid pulls on their real beards

  Most people know who it is but the kid almost never guesses

  It's the skinny manager in the dugout until she comes out

  And gets in line with all the ballplayers and takes off her hat and her fake beard

  She gives the kid the silver dollar anyway

   

  Sometimes my father gets arrested by the cops

  Because he doesn't have a license for his pushcart

  My mother tells him to pay the alderman like the others do

  But he refuses because he says it isn't right

  And God will punish all those rotten crooks someday

   

  So the cops park their police car around the corner of the tenement

  And walk through the cellar and sneak up on him

  Most times they come early and it's my job to watch for them                                                                                                        

  When I see them I run and tell my father and he moves the pushcart down the street

  One of the cops who rides a police horse in the park is my father's friend

  And he told him that as long as he is moving his pushcart down the street

  They can't arrest him

   

  But sometimes the cops arrest him anyway

  And I have to help him push that heavy cart a very long way

  To the Alexander Avenue police station - The cops follow us slowly in their car

  The people in the street yell at them to leave the poor man alone

  "You bums"... He's only trying to feed his family"... they yell

  But the cops don't care and lock him up all night with the drunks

  He tells me to go home and tell my mother he won't be home

  Until he pays his fine to the judge in the morning

  And for me to bring the pretzels and his supper again tomorrow night

  Unless it rains

   

  The cops make my father push our beautiful pushcart

  Into their garage before they lock him up

  In the morning all the nuts and candy-bars and pretzels are gone

  (A few years ago they made a movie about that police station

  They called it "Fort Apache - The Bronx"

  And Paul Newman and Ed Asner played the cops

  It was just about the only building left standing on that block

  Because the junkies had burned everything else around it down)

   

  In the winter when it snows and the park is bare

  And the pushcart sits silent and empty and cold in Mr Lempke's garage

  My father sells old flowers in the subway cars all night

  He gets them from the wholesale markets on West 28th Street

  After the ice has melted in their iceboxes

  And the florists throw the flowers out because they're spoiled

  He takes me with him on the EL when I get home from school

  And we pick out the best flowers from the rusty barrels in the street

  In front of their stores

   

  I help him tie the flowers into little bundles

  And together we arrange them in his enormous flower basket

  And before he goes down into the subways for the night

  He puts me back on the EL and sends me home to my mother and sister in the Bronx

   

  Sometimes before I go to school in the morning

  He comes home all hurt

   

  He tells my mother they beat him up again last night

  After he sold his flowers and they stole all our money

   

  After my father goes to bed

  My mother hugs me very tight - and cries

   

   

   

   

  Note: During the 1930’s depression, there were a number of "House of David"

  baseball teams touring the US. The only requirement was that all players were Jewish

  and some of them who weren't adopted the faith. A few were former Major Leaguers

  that had fallen on hard times. One of them, Joe Boyce who played for the Midbrook

  Giants, briefly held the home run record in the late 1920's but it was never entered by the 

  record keepers of the time as they were told he was supposed to have spent time in prison.      

   

   

   

   

   

   

  • 11:53 am
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