East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (17 page)

“Hah!” Uncle Max said as he stopped to point at the vehicle, “There it is. What do you think?”

What could we think? Wonderment, disbelief even in belief. Awe. Who bought a new car at that time? Who could afford it?

But that was Uncle Max again. A show man, a boss, a success. Maybe not a Rockefeller, but still he was a success. And later, after he had gone we still questioned why he had come. He had asked for nothing, no ‘head checks,’ no favors. As if we had any favors to bestow upon him. Why had he come?

About a month later he was back again. This time he carried a half-filled shopping bag. He said to my mother, “We’ll have the tea later. Come see what I got to show you.”

All of us circled the kitchen table. “What’s all this about?” my father asked.

Uncle Max said, “I want you to tell me what you think.” I stared at him as he removed a box of laundry soap and placed it on the table.

“What is this, you show us Rinso?” My mother said in a puzzled tone.

“Aha!” Uncle Max said. “You’re right. It’s Rinso. And now,” he said as he reached into the shopping bag, removed a strip of paper, placed it across the Rinso name on the box. There was rough printing on the strip of paper, it said Clinso.

“ClinsO?” I said puzzled.

“Right,” he said. “You’re a smart boy.” Then to the rest of the family, “ClinsO. Better than Rinso. Costs less to the grocery store so it sells for less. It works as good as Rinso. What am I saying? It’s better.” Pointing to the package he asked my mother, “Would you buy it if it was ten cents less than Rinso? Ten cents is a lot of money, yeah? You can buy a whole can of tomato herring for the family to eat for ten, eleven cents. That, with a slice of onion on a roll, a glass tea, you make a whole meal.” He was referring to Del Monte herring in tomato sauce in the oval can that was a big seller in our community.

My mother stared at him then at the box. Puzzled, she asked him, “What do you mean?”

“I mean I will make ClinsO. I will sell it to the grocery stores. What I’m asking you is this, would you buy it if it’s ten cents cheaper than Rinso?”

“Sure,” my mother said. “Why not?” She stopped for a moment turned to Uncle Max and said, “It will clean the wash, you mean it?”

“Guaranteed. Absolutely,” he said, his palm loudly slapping the table top. “One hundred per cent.”

“The Rinso people, they won’t mind?” my father asked.

“Why should they mind?” Uncle Max replied. “I don’t call it Rinso, do I? It’s ClinsO. Is ClinsO Rinso, I ask you? What business is it of theirs so long I don’t call it Rinso?” He waited for an answer, there was silence. He said, “A big company like that minds their own business, I mind mine. They can still make millions and I make a living and—”

My father interrupted and said, “But I thought a company like that, it don’t like to have somebody take their name.”

“Ai,”
Uncle Max said with a shrug. “Who’s taking their name? Who said ClinsO is Rinso? Did I say so? Don’t you hear a difference, hah?”

“I know, I hear,” my father said. “But don’t they care?”

“Care, shmare,” Uncle Max replied. “It’s not the same. They say Rinso’s the best laundry soap, I say ClinsO is. So what? I don’t care what they think, they shouldn’t care what I think. This is America where it says I can think and do what I want.”

My father shook his head sadly. My mother was about to arise from the table as she said, “You are making my head spin around. I think I’ll make the tea.”

Uncle Max said quickly, “Wait. I got more.”

“More soap?” I said.

“Aha! Who told you,
boychick?
Yes,” he said as he removed small rectangular red box from the shopping bag which contained paper strip across its name.

It smelled like a hospital, biting hard into my nose as I said, “It’s Lifebuoy, that’s the smelly soap.”

“No, no,” Uncle Max said as he passed the box to my father, “It’s Life Joy.”

“What? Another one?” my father said.

“It smells like Lifebuoy,” my sister said. “You can smell it a mile away.”

Uncle Max smiled. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be when you make a soap like that. And people can buy it cheaper than Lifebuoy. So I save them more money. Who doesn’t need to save money nowadays? Tell me.”

I was about to say something, Uncle Max bent as he dipped his hand into the shopping bag and removed a paper-wrapped brick of soap. “You remember,” he said to my mother, “you said last time you did the wash, other things, with Fels Naptha soap. Remember?” My mother nodded and he said with a quick point of his forefinger, “Well, here’s Mel’s Naptha, and sure, you guessed it, it’s cheaper. And you’re right, it’s better than Fels Naptha. What could be better than that? Tell me,” he said to my mother who stared as if hypnotized by his words and actions. Nobody said anything and Uncle Max suddenly asked, “Do we have a Melvin in the family, a
boychick
with that name? Maybe a cousin’s cousin?”

My parents glanced at each other, shook their heads as my mother said, “No.”

“No?” Max said. “Anyway, think about it and let me know if there is one.”

“Well,” my mother said removing the articles from the kitchen table, she placed them into the shopping bag. She turned to my sister and said, “Open the window so the smell can go.” My sister went to the kitchen window, screeched it open, the fresh fall air rippled into the room, began to dissolve the odors. “Ah!” she said. “That’s better.” To Uncle Max she said, “I can tell you, it smells like Lifebuoy, like Fels Naptha, the box looks like Rinso. What do you want to do, with all those smells, make us not want to drink our tea?”

“You see?” Uncle Max said with a loud laugh, “the smell, it works. Right? And I’ll tell you, only you, what I’ll be doing next. There’s that soap that you like, Lux. I’m working on that and I got my name for it, Lux-ur-ee. What do you think of that? And there’s more than soap in this world. There’s coffee, yes. The big seller is Maxwell House, yes?” He shook his forefinger at us for emphasis as he said,” And I will make a Max’s Swell House Coffee just as good, better, I guarantee it. And it will cost less.” In my mind I could see the Maxwell House blue can emblazoned with its new name as Uncle Max went on with, “There’s a hundred, a thousand things I could make. Like Roastum for Postum, like Hello for Jello. You wait and see what I can do.”

“It’s too much, too much,” my mother said throwing up her hands.

Later, when he was gone, we sat at the table not knowing what to think. Finally my father said, “Is he crazy or am I crazy?”

“Who knows?” my mother said. “But crazy it could be.”

“Lux-ur-ee Soap,” my sister said with a laugh. “What’s he talking about?”

We didn’t see him again for over six months. He entered our flat carrying a shopping bag, a smile on his face, a glad hello to all of us. My mother, at the kitchen sink, wiped her wet hands on her apron. He went directly to the kitchen table, removed a box, ClinsO printed on it, all done professionally. Except for its name, ClinsO, and a few minor changes here and there, it was a Rinso box. He reached into the shopping bag once more, placed a small rectangular paper wrapped article on the table as well. Its perfumed smell spread across the kitchen.

He turned to face us as my sister said, “Lux-ur-ee Soap. And the label looks like Lux.”

Uncle Max nodded emphatically. “I made it first,” he said, “before Life Joy because it will sell faster.” He beamed at us and said,” Well?”

“I got to say,” My father said shaking his head in wonderment. “You really made it.”

“What do you think, I talk just to talk? Look at it,” Uncle Max waved his hands at the two items. “I’m selling this already. To grocery stores, to the pushcarts on Orchard Street, to Jennings Street in the Bronx, to Bathgate Avenue, even to the
Talayner,
the Italians, on Arthur Avenue. I had to talk them into it at first, but after I got the first eight, ten stores and pushcarts selling it, other people heard about it, those two articles made a name for themselves and it all got a lot easier.”

“You mean it?” my mother said sitting down slowly in a chair.

“Why should I lie to you?” Uncle Max said.

My mother served tea and some cookies, at intervals throwing glances at Uncle Max who said, “Here. Take the soap. Use them in good health.”

“Are you working on those other things—Life Joy, Mel’s Naptha?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sure. When I have the time. And don’t forget the coffee and the Roastum. I’ll make them too.”

I could visualize Uncle Max as the USA king of soap and food. It seemed as if he could make anything once he set his mind to it. There was butter and cheeses, canned salmon and the herring in tomato sauce he had mentioned the other time he had been in our house.

It was almost unbelievable, but he had done it. We heard that he was selling to more and more outlets, that he had added Mel’s Naptha soap to his line.

It must have been more than a half year later that he showed up again, nattily dressed as ever. When he sat down at the table and tea and sponge cake was served to him, my mother said,
“Nu,
well, Max, and so how is business?”

He sat silent for a moment or two staring into space, then he said, “The
momzerin,
the bastards, I fixed them, the Rinso people, all that. They went to court and I was supposed to stop selling my ClinsO, any of those items, but I showed them, the
momzerin,
I made more merchandise at night, I sold them to big customers I knew, I delivered at night, so those
momzerin
shouldn’t know. I have the Rinso people
in dred,
buried. And I sold it for cash, cash only.”

“You are not in business?” my mother said aghast.

“They closed me down,” Uncle Max said.

“You lost it all?” my father said in a hushed whisper.

“All, shmall,” Uncle Max said. “What they got from me was
bupkiss.
Nothing. I had no money—”

“No money?” my mother called out loudly. “How—?”

“Listen,” Uncle Max said. “I’ll tell you a little secret. Years ago when Belsky, the
momzer,
stole all that money, I had a good lawyer. Smart, oh, he was smart! He’s cousin Morris’ boy, Charlie, you know him. Smart, he went to college, to law school, he knows everything.”

“So what did he do?” my mother asked eagerly.

“So he put everything in Mollie’s name. Everything. The soap business we bought, that was the Brite White soap company. The ClinsO company that makes those other things I showed you, that was a separate company, that was my company. It was a company on paper, like Charlie said. I didn’t make a profit, not in my books. I bought everything from Mollie’s company and I paid her on the spot. Yeah, it’s legal. All the profit was Mollie’s. Sure, they closed down my company, but me, what could they get from me? I got no company, I got no money, no car, nothing. Mollie’s got it all. So I have the Rinso company
in dred,
buried. When they told me to close down, I made the extra stuff at night. It’s not on the books. They’ll never find it. Never.”

“Ai,”
my father said lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “Me too, I got no money, no job, no nothing. It should only happen to me, I should be so lucky.”

Uncle Max smiled at that. “And something else,” he said.

“More?” my mother said.

“We sold the Brite White company.”

“You sold a company that makes you a good living?” my father said bewildered. “Why?”

“Because the soap chef began to ask for more money. On the books he worked for Mollie’s company, not for me. He knew all about the court business but he thought he could hold me up for more money. But I’m not a fool, you give him once there’s always more times. Who needs it? So he’s the chef for the new people, let him ask them for more money. Let him see what they give him. Me, I already bought a dress business. I call it the Nu Design Dress Company. I bought it cheap, they were going bankrupt.”

“What!” my father said. “In the
schmateh
business? I thought you always said it was not for you, there was too much competition, it was—”

“Who, me? I said that?” Uncle Max said his voice rising in disbelief. “Not me. Never. I never said anything like that. Not once, ever. I always said I wanted to go in business on Seventh Avenue, but in the right way. What are you talking about?”

There was no use in arguing with Uncle Max, he would not hear of anything else. The truth, his truth, was whatever he said at the time. And more, he was thinking of his new kingdom, he had lost the soap kingdom, that of ClinsO, the other soaps, the vision of Max’s Swell House Coffee and Roastum had disappeared, but he was ready for the coming one.

Watch out, Seventh Avenue!