Outside the store was a weather beaten, oak newsstand striving to stand upright. Upon opening the door, our sneakers stood upon a splintered floor whose area was approximately 9’ X 30’. Two telephone booths were at the far left end, and the counter was to the right. It was the neighborhood assembly area, the command post, the candy store.
Here we held seminars ranging from a review of the previous day’s ball games to a critique of a haircut that Willy The Barber sculpted out of Mutt’s black hairs.
Mutt stepped into the store with Willy’s coif. Lunchee was the first to greet, and then attack.
“Hey Mutt, did you want Willy to give you that iron pot? Did you see it before you left his barbershop? Mutt was confused.
“What’s with the iron pot, Lunchee?”
“It looks like Willy put an iron pot on your head and trimmed around it. Go back. Maybe he could prune it so you wouldn’t look like a monk.”
We were young, with none, or few problems, so fun reigned supreme. Hardly a customer left the store without a scathing comment about their appearance, their clothing, or their personality. Of course, we were charming and attractive.
How many of us considered what our future would be as adults? Future? Future was too far off to concern us.
With conversation fading, Jerry shouted,
‘Let’s go outside and outstare The Painter!”
With hands in his pockets, The Painter stood at his second floor window immobilized and gazing, while we bunched up on the street below. Silently, we craned our necks trying to outstare him. When he finally moved, we burst out with a “Yay”. Did this prepare us for the future? It didn’t, but we had laughs.
Lillian hated the name Strictly. Sol, who was behind the counter baptized her Strictly because she injected it into every sentence she uttered. For example, “Flame-Glo lipstick? It’s strictly for the birds. Errol Flynn? He’s strictly for the kids. Summer school? It’s strictly for the dummies.”
She stepped into the store, Sol, the owners’s son asked,
“What ‘ll you have Strictly?”
He knew Strictly was the trigger that would ignite a rage. She was about to leave when her mother, who was paying for a newspaper entered the battle.
“Sure she’s Strictly. She’s strictly kosher.”
“Strictly kosher my ass. “She’s strictly bullshit,” replied Sol.
It was endless entertainment. Future? Why worry about something we can’t touch, taste, or feel?
Sol’s father sold the store to Refugee Jack.
Propelled by a profusion of farts, Alvin taxied into the store. Without stopping for recognition by the boys, he continued the staccato, then stopped at Refugee Jack’s wife. She was stunned. Refugee Jack was apoplectic.
“Do you know this woman is a lawyer?” Jack shouted in Yiddish.
“So, let her sue me for farting,” Alvin replied.
Now, with his shorts deflated, he joined the boys to receive his kudos.
Our performance with The Painter, Sol’s Strictly, Mutt’s Ironpot, and Alvin’s flatulence, may sound trivial and uncouth, but this is what provided us with the solid background for our future.
Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage. And all the men and all the women are merely players.”
Did stealing a broom from a fire escape help mold us into the men we would be? Of course not. But the stick on that broom was the perfect bat for stickball. Would anyone care in the future that Sol baptized Lillian Strictly? Would noting that we successfully outstared The Painter on our college application open the door to a prestigious college? How do we place fun on that document?
Well. The candy store was our adolescent stage, and we were playing to a very appreciative audience.
These players became accountants, chemists, an upscale home-builder, a teacher, a lawyer, a pilot trainer, a jeweler, and a postal employee. Not bad for the splintery stage upon which we performed.
For more humorous stories about the Bronx read: Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir by Daniel Wolfe