East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (18 page)

 ALL THE MONEY I NEVER DID MAKE

Those were the times when we had no money, none at all. Those were bad times, terrible times. We lived in a world that had gone crazy, people who desperately needed basic things, food, clothing, the barest minimums to make life bearable, yet could not afford to buy them, yet all the while surplus food rotted in warehouses, gluts of everything imaginable lay unbought in the stores.

We lived at that time in the Lower East Side, a huge mass of people compacted together, all with basic wants. And we dreamed dreams of escape from this, our world full of smashed hopes and of no substance.

That was the time we went to school, where we studied and for a time during the day we met our friends and forgot that outside world. I was thirteen then.

After school, an all-boys junior high school, after we had come home and done our homework, after we had eaten our supper, that was what we called it in those days, we would run downstairs from our tenement flats into the darkened street and four or five of us would meet under the corner street lamp. We would talk, of school, of handball, basketball, stickball games, lately of girls our own age who lived in the neighborhood. And we sang.

One of us, a bit more affluent than the rest, one who had a spare nickel, bought a colored song sheet, each issue printed on a different-colored paper, blue or orange or green or a pinkish-red. The song sheets contained the lyrics of the most popular songs—”Flying Down To Rio,” or,” The Carioca,” or, “Brother Can You Spare A Dime.”

And huddled together beneath the light of the street lamp, we read the words on the colored sheets and we sang, if we knew the tunes. If not we listened to those who did and followed their tune with a faltering echo of ours, our words and melody fusing together while the passersby would walk past, most of them ignoring us.

once, a man, an old immigrant, walking by as we sang, called out to us, “It’s your America.
Ai-yai-yai,
to be young!”

We talked and we sang. We schemed. How to make money to get out of the tenements.

“You make money with your brains,” Goldie said one night.

His last name was Goldenberg but we called him Goldie. His hands were tremendous in size, he was the best handball player in school. on the outdoor playground court set against the huge wide wall of the ice factory, he could, almost on demand, smash a killer, the ball hitting the bottom end of the wall, sending it skittering on the floor of the court, impossible to return by his opponents.

“Yeah, sure,” Max said in a scoffing tone. With a nod, “You make money by work, that’s how.”

“Oh, yeah,” Izzy said. “Show me where there’s work. Where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody’s got money. You can’t make money without money.”

Goldie laughed at us. Near us, on the opposite corner of the street, in the sudden heat of the early June night, the candy store had removed its portable windows leaving the top of the marble counter of the soda fountain open to the street. Some people were clustered there, a man ordered a two cents plain. Another was drinking a large five cents chocolate soda, his head held high, his throat extended as he drained the bubbly liquid.

. “Look at that,” Goldie said. “What’re they doing? Drinking sodas. And what does that mean, what do you think of?” He waited for our replies. We were puzzled by his question, we remained silent. “I think of thirsty people, right?” We nodded and he went on with, “And when I think of thirsty people, I think of egg cream. I think of Auster’s egg cream.”

“Ah,” I said. “The best. Auster’s egg cream.”

“You bet,” Goldie said. “The one, the only. Everybody knows Auster’s egg cream. When they can, people go to his place, just for it. It’s a couple cents more than a regular chocolate soda, but people want it, they pay it when they can. You know what?” he asked glancing around at us.

“What?” Max said.

Goldie’s voice lowered. “See that candy store across the street?” he asked. “My older brother worked there last summer, remember? And people would ask him if they had an egg cream like Auster’s. Sure, he said. But he lied. The man who owned the candy store don’t know the formula of Auster’s. Nobody does, Auster keeps it a secret. If we knew the secret,” he whispered, “we could make a fortune. Auster’s making money, just ask them at the candy store here,” he said. “Ask anybody’s got a candy store, any place in New York. They all try to make it like Auster’s. They put eggs in the chocolate syrup, no dice. They even put Karo syrup in it, yeah, my brother’s boss tried that once. No dice. They try everything. No dice. And Auster don’t tell, he just goes along and makes his own syrup.”

“So he’s making a fortune,” Max said. “So what?”

Goldie shook his head sadly as he said, “So if you knew the formula, you would make a fortune, right?”

Suddenly caught up with Goldie’s idea, I said, “We could make it and sell it to all the candy stores.”

“Right,” Goldie said. “We make it, the candy stores do all the work when they sell it. They dish out the seltzer on top of the syrup, they mix the egg cream with the soda when the glass is filled, they take the money, put it in the cash register, they wipe up the counter, they wash the glasses. And we just make the stuff, sell it, and with the money we buy the stuff we need, we take some money for ourselves, the rest we put in the bank. How’s that sound?”

“I don’t know,” Izzy said. “It ain’t that easy. How do we get that formula? Auster ain’t giving us that secret.”

“We find out,” Goldie whispered.

“How?” I asked in a whisper.

“We go to Auster’s store after it’s closed. We look around. He’s got the stuff there he puts in when he makes the egg cream syrup. We’ll find out what he uses.”

Izzy spread his hands out in disbelief. “That’s all we got to do,” he said. “Just go into his store and steal the formula. That’s all, huh?” he said with mock seriousness.

“That’s not stealing,” Goldie said. “We don’t take anything, we just look around. If you don’t take, you’re not stealing.”

“Hey, what’re you talking about?” Max said to Goldie.

Some strollers were walking slowly by, the group became silent. We straightened up from our huddled scheming and we watched them closely as if they were spies sent to discover our plot. When they had gone by, we huddled once more, three of us staring at Goldie.

Goldie was saying, “Stealing is if you take what’s somebody’s. Right?”

“Right,” the three of us said in unison.

“So it’s simple,” Goldie said. “We don’t take anything. No take, no steal.”

“But if the store’s locked and we get into it, that’s against the law,” I said.

There was something about this plan that I wanted to like. oh, how I wanted to make money and rise out of poverty. oh, how I needed things. Each year, once a year, just before the Passover holiday, my family had bought me a new suit. And shoes. And a new shirt and a tie. New clothing for the entire family. That was in the good times, before the Depression, when my father earned some money. But now he didn’t, and he hadn’t for the past few years, and for four years I hadn’t gotten a suit. I had had to wear my old worn suit, somewhat small for me now, my wrists and a part of each arm above them exposed. The cuffs of my pants had been let down by my mother and I had gone into the street ashamed’ of how I looked crammed into that suit, my exposed wrists jammed as deeply as possible into my pockets. I tried to hide my shame, while a few of my friends, so very few, wore their new suits, and, oh, how I wanted that Passover suit now.

Listening to Goldie, I could see it in my mind, the smooth cloth full of newness, the sleeves long enough, just right, the pants long enough. And a new pair of shiny shoes. How I wanted all of that!

Goldie was saying, “So what if we get into the store. Who’ll know? We get in, we get out. We got nothing on us, we got no hot goods, what’re they going to do about it?”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “We don’t do anything to the place, we don’t break nothing, we’re just looking around and—”

“How’re we going to get in?” Max asked.

“There’s a window there, high up over Auster’s store kitchen in the back. We boost each other up, we open the window, we’re in,” Goldie said with a snap of his fingers. “We got us a searchlight, we look around. When we’re finished, we leave.”

“What about the cops?” I whispered as I looked up and down the street. Perhaps, just maybe, right now, the foot patrolman was walking his beat up this street.

“The cops? What cops? At night? Eleven o’clock? Nobody’s around. They—”

“Eleven o’clock at night?” Max asked in astonishment. “It’s too late.”

“When else?” Goldie asked. “Auster’s closed. At night, especially at eleven o’clock or so the cops are busy, they’re doing all kinds of things. They’re eating, they’re sitting in the back room of somebody’s place, maybe an all night restaurant, a place like that. They know where to go, they’re getting paid off—”

“You’ve been seeing too many movies,” I said. “What if the cops come?”

Goldie whacked his huge hands against his thighs. “So what if there’s a cop? He’s on his beat. We got one of us, he stays outside, he’s the lookout. He sees the cop coming down the street, the lookout he can see him a mile away when the cop passes a street light. The lookout, he whistles, like this,” Goldie chirped three short notes, “the lookout, he walks into the doorway and the hall of the building next door to the store, the cop doesn’t see him, the cop goes down his beat. A few minutes later, he’s gone. What’re you getting all so worked up about?” he asked incredulously.

“What if the cops see us in the store?” Max asked, his words tip-toeing on one another.

“So he sees us,” Goldie said loudly. Some of the soda customers across the street at the candy store heard his sharp voice, momentarily stopped their drinking and peered across the darkness to the cone of light where we stood under the street lamp. All of us said to Goldie, in soft sibilance, S-sh! He glanced across the street, his voice dropped to a whisper as he said, “So he sees us, so what? Maybe one in a million shot. If he catches us we tell him the window there in the back was open, we went in to see if Auster was being robbed. We say we wanted to help out, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?” We said nothing, we glanced at each other, looking for a hint of some sort from one another, either agreement or disagreement with the plan. I didn’t know and I waited in silence. Hearing no objection from us Goldie said, “You’re in?” We glanced at each other once more, nothing was said. Goldie said somewhat angrily, “Yes or no?”

Izzy gave a great audible sigh. “I’m in,” he finally said.

Goldie began to smile. He looked at Max then at me. Max, silent, slowly began to nod his head. When Goldie stared at me, I, too, cautiously, began to nod. We all agreed to meet the following night. We would meet at ten o’clock, we would proceed to Auster’s. We would do the job.

I went up to my house, it was late for me. Later than usual when I came up from the streets after meeting with the guys. My father was asleep in the bedroom. My mother said nothing to me but there were unspoken words on her tongue as she gave me a stern stare.

I told her there was a big, tough test coming up in school soon and I had been studying with Goldie. Tomorrow, I would also be home late, I had to study. Not too late, she said. I’ll try, I replied, I’ll do the best I can, I had to pass that test, I had to study. Get a good mark, an A, she said to me.

That was the first step, I told myself, to get her used to my coming home late tomorrow night. I hadn’t wanted to lie to her, I fervently wished that I hadn’t had to, but I knew that tomorrow night I would be coming home much later and I knew that she and my father would be asking pointed questions. Anyway, what could I do? I had planned my excuses with her as best as I could. The words, school, and, study, were magical words with my parents. Anything was allowed when the words were mentioned. Well, almost anything.

I slept poorly that night. Visions of cops crept into my mind and my mounting feeling that I didn’t want to be caught. But I thought of Auster’s egg cream, the best in the world, that made the palate salivate and sigh with blissful contentment. For when you wanted the very best.

And all that money, coming in if we knew the formula. If I got the money, I’d buy clothes for all the family, my parents, my brother and sister, and I’d order a case, weekly, of Good Health Seltzer from the seltzer man who carried up, on his shoulder, the long narrow wooden crate that contained the filled bottles with their metal siphons and carried down the empties. Without leaving the house, my family would use the magical formula egg cream any time we wanted. That was living.

But the cops, the cops... And I tossed and turned all night. Yet, I reassured myself, Goldie was confident, he was our leader. He knew, he wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t he the best handball player in school? So why should I be afraid?

The next night at ten o’clock, we met under the street lamp. Three of us were there, Max hadn’t shown up. We waited impatiently for him for a few minutes and finally Goldie, in disgust, said, “He won’t show. He’s afraid. What’s he got to be afraid of?” He paused, studied our faces, shrugged and said, “Forget Max, we’re better off without him. If he’s so scared, he’d only do something to make some trouble for us at Auster’s. Let’s go.”

We walked down the darkened streets in deep silence. Now and then, when I felt that Goldie wouldn’t notice it, I glanced wildly around me to see if there was a cop following us. Nothing. Darkness and the occasional black form of a walker, a lone automobile riding ghostly in the shadows.