When I was a kid I was the market. Uncle Frank worked for my Dad in the pharmacy; but he raised his own cows, made milk, and delivered it in the morning before coming to the store. In strawberry season, he would pick fresh strawberries, mix them in with the milk with sugar and deliver a bottle of fresh strawberry milk just for me. In the winter, the unpasteurized milk would freeze and the cream, being on top, would rise through the paper cap. Otherwise, I would have to use the aluminum tube to siphon of the fresh sweet cream.
Another seasonal treat was to follow the horse-drawn ice truck down the road and “steal” chips of ice as the ice man picked the blocks apart and delivered them carrying them over his shoulder into the house with huge ice tongues. He would put the ice blocks into the top part of the beautiful wooden ice box, into the tin lined compartment, where the electric fan would blow the cooled air below into the part that kept the food cold.
In the summer, we would run down to the tire shop and grab pieces of cooling rubber to chew on from the vat used to recondition tires. Which reminds me of going with my Dad to the eye doctor where the doctor would grind the glass himself and put the lens into the plastic frame by dipping the frame into a box of hot sand, placing the lens into the pliable space, and then letting the frame cool to hold the lens securely. No damn screws to squint at with a tiny screwdriver in order to fix the arms when the screws loosened and dropped out.
At the shoe store, the salesmen would tickle my feet with the metal device that had slides to measure the growing length and width of my adultifying feet. Once the purchase was made the sales slip would fly up to the accounting office through the pneumatic driven clear tubes like some drive-in banks still have.
In winter, we would squat behind cars at the stop signs and grab onto bumbers (remember them) with our gloved hands. Then we would hold to the bumper as long as we could with our leather soled shoes sliding on top of the ice as the car accelerated until we had to let go.
In the summer we would ride our bicycles to the sand lot of the neighborhood elementary school where we were with the same 30 neighborhood kids from grade 1 through 6 and we would choose sides for sand lot soft ball where we made the rules, where there were neither uniforms nor uniformity, where no parents, friends or neighbors came to watch, and where we found out about division of labor, office politics, and who are leaders were.
It was a different time then. The family wired haired fox terrier would be sent from my Dad's drugstore down the block to bring back a sandwich for lunch from the sandwich shop with the high wire based stools and the ice cream sundaes. The owner of one of the shops on my Dad's street would come out of the store as I walked by and pinch my cheek hard enough to hurt while telling my mother what a good boy I was. He stopped when one day as a six-year-old I kicked him in his shin hard enough to dump him on his butt. We both learned lessons that wonderful day.
I remember the local guy Louie who was not blessed with the world's most powerful brain. Louie got everything he needed in life by running errands for all of the shop owners. He was part of the glue that held our little worlds together. A few Louie's are an important part of our world, many become a social problem.
It was a different time. I walked through the neighborhood in the early 2000sands and knew few if any of the neighbors. I know some restaurant owners, bartenders, and few folks at some places around the city, but there is no catching up with long time friends as my goods are scanned in the self-serve line of the grocery store. I do still get special recognition and service from Rick at Zeskind's hardware store even though I only go there once a year at best. But everyone gets that at Zeskind's. Rick's special human and technical skills keep him in business against the tide of Lowe's and other chain stores. But I do not see him at social events a few times a year or barter with him as my Dad would have done as he did with other merchants in the town in which I grew apart from. I do not get a free loaner at the Toyota Dealership as my Dad did at the local Ford Dealership where he traded in his car every few years.
I have lunch with some retired guys as often as once a week most weeks and we talk about our city, the news, how the teams are doing, and which stores have closed, which buildings have been torn down, which new anchor stores are going up. We watch the gentrification of the city all along the waterfront while schools with no view of the water fail their kids, where Dad's have neither shops nor jobs, where the police think that their job is to wrangle folks into trucks and drop them off at the local jail.
My friend Gary quit his job protecting the tree-lined land around the waterways as the developers continually violated regulations and ignored the needs of humans and air from tranquil green spaces. And I watch as my decreasing circle of friends move away or fade away and become memories that are harder and harder to hold onto.
So I acquired a new sailboat. I moved to a new marina. I write a new story or poem. I keep working on the book that many think does not exist because I have been at it for so long. I continue to bartend at my age of 78 to keep physically fit and stay part of the world of people who include the young moving up, the middle who are sorting out family, kids, work, relationships, and those who like me are trying to stay part of something. I spend what energies I can working for Bernie and organizing for No Labels and trying to help my daughter with the sweet grandchildren while giving up chunks of my life to fill in for the drug addicted some time present sometimes absent always inadequate to the task huge hulk of a child who thinks he is a man because he has a woman to wash his clothes, cook his food, and suck his cock.
And it turns out that the times helping the young to grow and to explore is not a sacrifice but the most joyous part of my life. And as I help them learn colors, shapes, numbers, and letters I despair for the evil of a society that leaves so many of our children alone on the streets to raise themselves leaving them unprepared for the first grade, tuning out by the fourth grade, dropping out by the ninth grade and addicted, dead, in jail, or living in their parents basements until their thirties.
I will not go out gently or quietly. I will rage against the dying of the light. Feel the Bern.
Arnold Kraft Sherman
Copyright October 27, 2015 ©
