As the northeast Bronx continued to develop, the small shops near the northeast corner of Mace Avenue and Eastchester Road gave way to a supermarket originally established by the Kruger family. Taken over by a succession of chains over the years, its various names included Pioneer, C-Town, Met Food, and Associated.
Most of the neighborhood kids were handed a short shopping list and sent there pretty much every day after school, sometimes twice a day during summer vacation. As a result, we all developed an intimate familiarity with every crevice of the store’s cramped, narrow aisles. We came to know the workers pretty well, too.
The deli department, managed and run solely by Louie, occupied the area to the immediate right of the entrance.
Soft and round, with a soft round head, ruddy cheeks, and warm brown hair that wrapped the back of his head—ear to ear—like a fur collar, Louie was middle-aged and spoke with the accent of many of our Jewish neighbors. Affable and ever smiling, always eager to be of service, he made you feel as if he’d been waiting all day just for you. He welcomed all who approached his deli counter with a hearty greeting: “What can I get for you today?” Then he’d scuttle away to fill the order.
With characteristic enthusiasm, Louie answered a curious kid who had inquired about an orange slab displayed on a platter inside the refrigerated deli case. He explained that it was called lox and that it tasted great with cream cheese on a bagel.
“Would you like to taste it, darling?”
She certainly did not, and declined politely.
Taken aback, he persisted. “You should always try something new. Here, have a little taste.”
With that, Louie lopped off a slice the size and shape of a cat’s tongue, and held it out.
The child took the cold, slippery piece and held it tentatively. “What, I should eat it for you? Taste it already.” Louie’s face lit up with the anticipation of seeing a joyful reaction to a delicious first treat. As she put it into her mouth, Louie’s expression of delight instantly changed to one of concern.
“You don’t like it. That’s all right, darling. It’s a taste you grow into. Here,” he said, handing her a piece of deli wrap. “Spit it out.”
Louie was so genial, and so much like a friend, that this same child soon broached him with another question that had been dancing around in her mind forever.
“What are those?” she finally asked, pointing to a stack of small rectangular blocks on his countertop. With their brown and white wrappers, they looked like candy bars. But why the depiction of a mysterious man in a turban and moustache on the label? And what did HALVAH mean?
“You don’t know what halvah is?” Louie seemed disappointed. “It’s like candy. You want a taste?”
She was astonished to think he would open up the merchandise just for her. “No…no thank you, Louie. I don’t want to try it.” She tried to sound firm, but a meek refusal was all her shyness would allow.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Louie said, gleefully unwrapping a bar and slicing through the chocolate coating to reveal the off-white insides of the confection. With a beaming smile he handed her the piece, explaining that it was made of ground sesame seeds sweetened with honey. Then he watched closely for her reaction.
His expression changed in an instant.
“You don’t like it.”
She didn’t want to hurt Louie’s feelings again. But there was no use pretending. “It’s…okay.” she gasped out. “Not bad.” She didn’t like it and he knew it.
Back in the days of Louie, there was also Richie, who stocked the shelves. From the vantage point of two ten-year-old girls, Richie was 20ish and tall, with dark longish hair, dark eyebrows, and a quiet demeanor. His head was always down, his attention always on his task, his hair falling across his eyes as if to hide from the world—or to shield the world from what those eyes might reveal.
With great discretion the girls observed Richie from afar, learning first-hand what those clichés of song and story meant about someone who was “tall, dark, and handsome,” and “the strong, silent type.” One day when the girls worked up the nerve to ask Louie about him, Louie’s smiling face turn somber. Whatever sad story Louie related is lost now, but it touched them and made them look at Richie with new eyes.
On their frequent trips to Associated the girls walked up Mace Avenue, passing the side of the store where an overhead door was often open to accept deliveries. At those times they would have to wind their way between the truck ramps and the off-loaded crates. Sometimes Richie would be out there in his gray smock, helping to unload. But most often the girls would find him near the dairy case stacking quarts of milk or Dannon’s yogurt—plain, strawberry, and dutch apple. Seeing reliable Richie was uplifting, despite his sad silence. There was a feeling of security in finding him always there, until the day he wasn’t.
In this neighborhood of mostly first- and second-generation German, Irish, and Italian immigrants, the homemakers of the neighborhood—always the women back then—did the big shopping once a week. Most of them didn’t drive. The rare woman who did drive did not have access to the family car on weekdays because her husband drove it to work. (Later, as more women and the teenagers of the family started driving, two-car households became more common.) The no-car women either towed their brown bags of groceries home in wheeled, upright carts or they requested delivery at checkout. For home delivery, items were boxed, not bagged. Within minutes of getting home, the groceries would arrive. Sometimes the groceries made it to their front doors before they did.
When we were old enough to get working papers, many of us applied to Associated for a summer or after-school job. By that time the classmates we had gone from kindergarten through grade 8 with had scattered to the various high schools around the Bronx. The store then became a place for meeting up with old friends as well as for making new ones.
© Barbara Cole 2020. All Rights Reserved.