Free Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin

cleaved the meat. I was a regular in the store, even when I was only six or seven, for I would do the shopping when my mother wasn’t feeling well. Armed with her list, I would watch as they hauled down a huge slab of beef or side of lamb and carried it to the butcher block to be cleaved and cut into steaks, short ribs, or lamb chops. After the meat was cut, they would turn me over to Artie, the vegetable man, who would pick the choicest fruits and vegetables from the display he had made that morning.
    When I came in they would often tease me that I had been fast asleep long after their workday had begun. Before dawn, Max would drive to the Bronx Terminal Market, on the Harlem River near Yankee Stadium, to pick out the day’s meat and vegetables. “Take me with you,” I would beseech him. “Let me see what you’re doing while I’m asleep.” Finally, he agreed, discussed it with my mother and one Saturday morning, picked me up in his truck just before three. My mother had furnished fresh coffee cake, which we devoured as we made our way into the Bronx. Perched on the high front seat next to Max, I began my customary interrogation. Had he always wanted to be a butcher, how had he gotten started, where had he come from? He told me he had arrived in the United States from Germany during the Depression, sponsored by his uncle Ottoman in New York. When he reached the city, however, things were so difficult that his uncle had no work for him.He saw an ad for a position in a North Shore butcher shop and walked twenty-five miles to Long Island to ask for the job. Though he knew nothing about cutting meat, he persuaded the owner to take a chance. Eventually, they became partners. From that shop, he moved to the store in Rockville Centre.
    It was almost 4 a.m. as we approached the sprawling labyrinth of the Bronx Terminal, then the largest wholesale food market in the world, occupying thirty-two acres, stretching from 149th Street to 152nd Street and called a “terminal” market because it was the end of the line for runs from farms to the city. Although it was still pitchblack when we pulled up to the long brick warehouses, there were so many people gathered around the illuminated counters that it seemed like midday. Fruits, lettuce, celery, and broccoli were displayed in wood-and-wire slotted crates, which were discarded as they emptied. Kids would come at day’s end, lug off the discarded crates, and, with old roller skates, fashion homemade scooters. Firmly clasping Max’s hand, I walked with him for nearly an hour as he picked out what he wanted, and then stood beside him as he loaded it into the back of the truck. Soon we were back on the road, heading east toward home, just in time to see my first sunrise.
    For me, each store was a treasure house of lore about the varied lives of the people of my community. I marveled that for Carl and Edna Probst, the husband-and-wife team who ran the delicatessen, unlike my own parents, there was no separation of the workplace and the living place, no division which forced the woman to stay home with the children and the man to spend his working day in the city, away from his family, his leisure time away from his place of work. I imagined that when I grew up I would enjoy a similar marriage—my husband and I would work side byside, day after day, waiting on people, making potato salad, and slicing cold cuts.
    Whenever I entered the delicatessen I was greeted by the blended odors of good cheese, cold cuts, and pickles. In contrast to the neon lights and wide corridors of modern supermarkets, the delicatessen was small and narrow, with dark wooden shelves that resembled library stacks, packed from floor to ceiling with colorful cans instead of books. Because the shelves were so high, long-handled clippers were needed to reach the hard-to-get items. When the store was not crowded, Edna and Carl let me manipulate the clippers myself, positioning the arms around a box of cereal or a can