Free The Street by Mordecai Richler Page B

of the hill, was separated from Shawbridge by thatbridge reputedly built by a man named Shaw. It was a crazy-quilt of clapboard shacks and cottages strewn over hills and fields and laced by bumpy dirt roads and an elaborate system of paths. The centre of the village was at the foot of the bridge. Here were Zimmerman’s, Blatt’s, The Riverside Inn, Stein the butcher, and – on the winding dirt road to the right – the synagogue and the beach. In 1941 Zimmerman and Blatt still ran staunchly competitive general stores on opposite sides of the highway. Both stores were sprawling dumpy buildings badly in need of a paint job and had dance halls and huge balconies – where you could also dance – attached. But Zimmerman had a helper named Zelda and that gave him the edge over Blatt. Zelda’s signs were posted all over Zimmerman’s.
    Over the fruit stall:
    AN ORANGE ISN’T A BASEBALL. DON’T HANDLE WHAT YOU DON’T WANT. THINK OF THE NEXT CUSTOMER .
    Over the cash:
    IF YOU CAN GET IT CHEAPER BY THAT GANGSTER ACROSS THE HIGHWAY YOU CAN HAVE IT FOR NOTHING
    However, if you could get it cheaper at Blatt’s, Zelda always proved that what you had bought was not as fresh or of a cheaper quality.
    The beach was a field of spiky grass and tree stumps. Plump, middle-aged ladies, their flesh boiled pink, spread out blankets and squatted in their bras and bloomers, playing poker, smoking and sipping Cokes. The vacationing cutters and pressers seldom wore bathing suits either. They didn’t swim. They set up card tables and chairs and played pinochlesolemnly, sucking foul cigars and cursing the sun. The children dashed in and out among them playing tag or tossing a ball about. Boys staggered between sprawling sun-bathers, lugging pails packed with ice and shouting:
    “Ice-cold drinks. Chawk-lit bahs. Cig’rettes!”
    Occasionally, a woman, her wide-brimmed straw hat flapping as she waddled from table to table, her smile as big as her aspirations, gold teeth glittering, would intrude on the card players, asking – nobody’s forcing, mind you – if they would like to buy a raffle in aid of the Mizrachi Fresh Air Fund or the J.N.F. Naked babies bawled. Plums, peaches, watermelons were consumed, pits and peels tossed indiscriminately on the grass. The slow yellow river was unfailingly condemned by the Health Board during the last three weeks of August, when the polio scare was at its height. But the children paid no attention. They shrieked with delight whenever one of their huge mothers descended into the water briefly to duck herself – once, twice – warn the children against swimming out too far – then, return, refreshed, to her poker game. The French Canadians were too shocked to complain, but the priests sometimes preached sermons about the indecency of the Jews. Mort Shub said, “Liss’n, it’s their job. A priest’s gotta make a living too.”
    At night most people crowded into the dancehalls at Zimmerman’s and Blatt’s. The kids, like Noah, Gas, and Hershey, climbed up the windows and, peashooters in their mouths, took careful aim at the dancers’ legs before firing. Fridays, the wives worked extremely hard cleaning and cooking for the sabbath. Everybody got dressed up in the afternoon in anticipation of the arrival of the fathers, who were met in Shawbridge, most of them having arrived on the 6:15 excursion train. Then the procession through Shawbridge, down the hill and across the bridge, began; an event that always horrified the residents of the village. Who were these outlandish, cigar-chomping men, burdened with watermelonsand Kik bottles, salamis and baskets of peaches, yelling at their children, whacking their wives’ behinds and – worst of all – waving merrily at the sombre Scots who sat petrified on their balconies?
    Noah showed up last.
    “Pinky’s Squealer wants to come with us,” Gas said.
    “Did you tell him where we’re going?”
    “Ixnay. You think I’m crazy?”
    “He’s got a