Growing up in the Bronx was such a wonderful, mad experience. Of course, this is only with hindsight, at the time, it was all felt perfectly normal. My parents were newcomers from Eastern Europe and embraced American culture with open arms, or at least they thought they had. What they really embraced was the curious, unique brand of American culture that was filtered through a mesh of Bronx Jewish style. How marvelous this was when I look back. It was more than running the streets all weekend, or buying egg creams at the corner candy store. It was also buying chocolate covered halvah and apricot shoe leather on Jerome Avenue and eating pizza slices from Frank's Pizza and bagels from our local bagel bakery. It was queuing up at the bakery, K&Z, for rye bread and raisin pumpernickel bread where the cry of "Who's next" was always answered with, "It's my next". Buying hot dogs from Epstein's, pastrami from Schweller's, and shmaltz herring from Olinsky's was part and parcel of daily life. Accompanying my mother on her daily shopping expeditions, trailing behind the ubiquitous wire-mesh shopping cart, was the adventure of my early life. Often my mum would leave my baby brother sitting cross-legged in the street while she shopped. He was happy to sit for ages listening to a local busker playing his violin. In those days it was perfectly safe to leave children outside alone.
More than any of these food or shopping-related memories is the memory (and it makes me laugh so much now) of sitting on plastic-covered furniture on hot summer days and peeling myself off the couch as my shorts-covered legs got hot and sweaty and sticky. This was such a Bronx phenomena - the covering of the brocade couch and armchairs in custom-made, clear plastic covers to protect the furniture. Quite a few of my friends' apartments had the same sort of gold or olive-toned brocade covered couches and zipped on top were these thick, clear plastic abominations that made sitting in the living room in the summer a really unpleasant affair. I guess it was good that we were never really allowed to sit in this room. The living room (and this in a tiny apartment) was reserved for company. Only honoured guests got to stick their asses to our plastic-covered couch. We, the immediate family, were mostly relegated to sitting round the formica kitchen table and this is where most adult conversation took place. As the years went by the plastic got less malleable and stiffer and would eventually develop cracks that were taped up so we could continue to endure the plastic horror of our three piece living room suite of furniture.
One of the the most bizarre Bronx memories I have is of the apartment that Ralph and I finally rented that was to be the first place we set up home as newlyweds. We went to view the apartment before signing a rental agreement and the people that lived there had the requisite Bronx Baroque-style brocade covered couch fully encased in made-to-measure clear vinyl covers. That was not a surprise. After all, every good Bronx housewife in those days was concerned with protecting her furniture, the surprise was the kidney shaped marble topped coffee table taking pride of place in the centre of the room - covered in fitted clear vinyl!
I remember Ralph's expression on seeing the plastic slip-covered vinyl. He was stunned and amazed. Being English and new to the Bronx, the entire experience of plastic slipcovers was new to him and the idea of covering an almost indestructable piece of marble in plastic was almost too much. I remember that we waited till we left the apartment before we burst into laughter.
All these memories flooded back to me this week. I'm not sure why. A sudden attack of nostalgia? Perhaps a moment in time that reminded me of being a kid in the Bronx, without a care in the world? I checked the internet and apparently you can still buy custom-made plastic slipcovers. You can still buy marble-topped tables, though the kidney-shaped one with french provincial cabriolet legs that my parents had, might be tough to replace. You can buy bagels, pizza, chocolate-covered halvah and even apricot shoe leather, but I can't replace these wonderful memories. The memories of a carefree childhood in the streets of Mosholu Parkway, jumping down flights of stone steps in my roller skates, sitting at the counter of the local candy store and having an egg cream, and well, just being a kid.
Remembering has become a source of genuine,simple pleasure. I'm only pleased that I don't have to sit on that damned plastic-covered furniture anymore!
