I Think I remember part 6

It is harder than I thought to remember 75 years in consecutive order. So at times I swing back and forth. I guess it is ok, since all the parts make my life. Some may be better than others and some more interesting while some are dull, but the whole creates me.

When we lived on the lower East Side, my parents would often take us to the Farmers Market in Freehold New Jersey. My brother and I would be in the back of the truck while they would try to sell bananas from the stand set up on the side. I can still remember the smell of potatoes frying. It was a sort of greasy and salty smell I have never found anywhere else. My mother, when we talked in later years would say it was due to the fact the grease was seldom changed during the night. There were no health department rules back then.

There was the man that had a little table set up and he sold soap. He said to anyone that would listen, and there was often a little group around him, that his soap was made by scientists and had Lanolin in it. He would shout to the group, "Do you know what is in your soap?" Does 100% pure mean 100% animal fat or 100% lye? What are you putting on your face? I could not help but stare at this man I thought must be a great scientist or doctor. He knew what we needed for our skin or what made us turn red and why I got little pimples after scrubbing my face in the morning. I felt like he personally looked at me standing in the group of adults and knew what was happening in my life. I had no idea that one day I would walk through a store and there would be hundreds of soaps, some with lotion, some with creams, that lanolin was only the beginning of the end of lye soap.

How did I remember that? Well, I listened for about 6 hours while we lay in the back of the truck. Sometimes we were allowed to walk around for a little bit. I stood in the group in front of his table trying to see what was different about his soap and the soap we used at home. My mother would say about $1 which was better put in food or rent. My father said it was all a shell game and I should learn to tell the difference early so I won't get fooled later. Life he said is nothing but a shell game and the trick is to learn how to play better than the other guy, all the other guys.

In the morning when we returned home to the walk up apartment where we were living, it was like a holiday. We got bananas in cereal and thought it was heaven. Bananas were to sell and too expensive to buy for eating . But my mother on those nights always managed to get one or two for us. It was a real treat.

I guess the smallest things we remember in life are always the best and in memory are better than thy were in reality, but that is what memories are for.

My mother told me they went to someplace called the "docks" where my father bought the bananas off ships coming from a place called Costa Rica. The next day I went to the library and found a book that had pictures of Costa Rica, a beautiful place with lots of trees and colorful birds flying around everywhere. Children wore colorful dresses and shirts that looked like a storybook. How wonderful I thought to live in a paradise like that instead of the apartment we lived in with the toilet in the hall that we shared with another family.

The roaches and mice running everywhere. The tub in the kitchen was used as a counter in the day time. There was a metal cover that come down from hooks on the wall, but at night we would pull the curtain around and hook the cover up and we could bathe. The big problem was the water which barely made it to the 5th floor. When it did it was a rusty brown. Now it know how nasty it was, but when you are living in something, it seems that is the way it is and you don't realize how different it is from others.