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 resplended 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 starts 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 eveybody 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
That 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
And 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
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