we’re definitely dividing into tribes – the extreme religious are following their own rules while we can’t seem to get any one else to follow them as long the others don’t. in other words, everyone is going their own way. We may be the only ones observing everything that the crazy government forces on us, But that’s because we’re terrified and old. okay, so we broke them by meeting with kids, and maybe going a little farther than 1000 meter here and there. but it doesn’t count.

but people need to do what they need to survive. the religious feel their rabbis understand much more than the government that hasn’t proved any succees in fighting corona. They hide their sick at home and bury them in secret and put a top priority on sending their kids to school – talmud torah, and yeshivas. they say that 25% of the men have contracted corona. on the other hand the arabs have seemed to stop the spread in the villages by cooperating with each other.

most of my neighbors also seem to follow the rules, but we all cheat. even though we don’t have financial problems, we’re going crazy from loneliness and boredom.

we ‘re not in the situation of the people in small business who have been shut down without any air, and means of support or any hope for the future. the people who work in the market, the little shops who have been having to contend with big businesses and chains for years and now are totally screwed. the government has no interest in them and doesn’t sustain them in any way, and their have gone past despair. maybe they’ll help us get back to socialism if we live that long…

in the meantime, we’re all trying to get by in our small groups – leaderless and frightened.

Please excuse the fancy stuff – the experiments with format will go on a bit until I figure it out. 

There is a square near our home that was always crowded with cafes and restaurants.  At least 3 hairdressers, a nail salon, a dress shop and what – maybe 4 cafes, the center so crowded with tables and chairs it is hard to tell what belongs to what.  And now the cafes are closed.  But food stores are open so there have sprung up a whole bunch of high class bakeries, delis, chocolatiers, and other take-aways.  It seems to be working, even though the usual joy in not apparent.  We went to visit the new neighborhood butcher – a famous television chef and personality – and his shop was full of amazing delicacies.  Aharoni himself was there, guiding our purchases, explaining his products, delineating his plans, and sharing with us his plans for future products to brighten our lives.

Well, maybe he isn’t all that unrealistic.  Like Donald, Bibi is promising a vaccine soon.  We’re testing on humans now.  A homemade product that might relieve the plague and the constant depression that seems to have overcome us.

i’m still just treading water in this site – erasing important things and writing junk instead. i thank you all for sticking around while i learn how to do this. right now i’m trying to get a format of posts that i can just fill in every day, but you know who it’s from and where i’m coming from.

i’m afraid this format is making me banal. i know it is. i feel too public, even though no one has written me yet. so i’m going to talk about another city, one that disappeared in 1964. it might bring back my mojo…

i grew up in Rochester, New York. My family came there when i was 3 1/2 and even though my father couldn’t get his medical license as a chiropodist, and became a barber, it became something of a paradise, in large part because we lived off of Joseph Ave. When the accountant of the barber’s union ran off with all the money, and the downtown barber he was working for could no longer afford to keep him, he rented a shop on 329 Joseph Ave. I don’t know how they did it. My mother had been fitting corsets in people’s home, dragging me along for a while until the local Jewish organization helped to get me into a nursery, and working at Hickey-Freeman, but when the clientele started building up in my father’s shop, she also became a manicurist for the Jewish boxers and wrestlers in the neighborhood. Does anyone remember them? King Solomon, for one?

in any case the street became a sort of home for me. when we lived on Selinger Street, the corner of Joseph Ave was where Rabbi Kurtz lived, and my brother spent most of his free time there. But further on Selinger, past Joseph Ave, was the shochet, to whom we would bring the chickens we bought from the public market. he would slaughter the chickens and pass them on to the plucker, and then the finisher, who sat next to a bunsen burner and cleaned off the ends. then we’d take them back home for kashering.

My father’s shop then had a connecting door to the grocery store next door. next to the grocers was a butcher named Cook, and next to him was a fish store. Next to this group of shops was a red-brick church. i used to sit on the steps and wonder what was inside. It was Catholic then, and then Baptist, and i think it might still be there. the rest isn’t.

a few years later my father’s shop moved to 508 Joseph Ave, a larger shop, painted light blue. i don’t remember neighbors there, but i spent a lot of time sweeping floors in exchange for the pepsi from the machine. i loved doing it. i loved watching my father work, the leather strap he sharpened the scissors on, the disinfecting machine, and the rich library in the back where he escaped to put his feet up when there were no customers.

We managed somehow to buy a house on the corner of Clifford Avenue and Remington Street and another part of Joseph Avenue was discovered to me. I was a little older and could walk the street myself to Joseph Avenue, to the library. I went with my brother and he would go to the books for big children but i kept to the picture books, until one day the librarian suggested i look through the books on the other side of the room. that moment changed my life. for years i would take out 7 books a week during vacations.

a few doors north on Joseph Avenue was a soda shop, i think it was called Ida’s but i’m not sure. It took me a while to discover it, but once I did i was hooked on chocolate sodas. I learned about more popular places later, like the one on the corner of Clinton, but the little one on Joseph has always remained in my mind. i always passed it on my way to the Workmen’s Circle school twice a week and sunday morning. it was not an inviting place, and the owner wasn’t particularly friendly, so i wasn’t tempted often, and anyway i didn’t have money, but it was wonderful to watch the syrup, the milk, and the soda mix together at the fountains.

maybe because it was such a jewish neighborhood there were places we frequented and other places we avoided whenever possible. Across the street from the soda shop was a deli – not the one we spent a lot of time in – but with a pickle barrel outside and herring for sale inside. Orgel’s down the street was beyond our means most of the time, but it had vital jewish equipment, and i still remember Mr. Orgel’s haunted face.

we moved away in the late ’50’s but we used to go back for shopping and visits. Then in ’64 there were race riots and most of the stores were destroyed. the sense of transience of an entire neighborhood and way of life remains with me.