New Phase 8: A 2 Cent Plain

Westlake Village, California

January 5, 2011

4;21 PM 

In the meantime: Well remembering that it takes a bit of time before pot begins to work on me, I thought that, so long as I was standing — albeit painfully standing — and as I hadn’t checked my computer for a while, as I…”

Setting the table. “You need help?” Marsha asked.

In my advanced stage of helplessness, feeling older than I really am, but not wanting to appear to be as old as I really am, or, for that matter, as helpless as I really am, doing the ‘macho’ thing. “No..” I said “...let me try on my own.”

As I hobbled from the kitchen to my desk, ‘oh, yes!’ I did feel pain, but the white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie apparently doing it’s job… I really didn’t care.

Okay, so after painfully hobbling to my desk…

Well, come to think of it, maybe not all ‘that’ painfully as I really was but now that I’m at my desk and as we’re waiting for the white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie to ‘totally’ kick in, I might as well — so long as we have to wait any way, I might as well go on with my, uh?...What the hell? Oh, yeah! My inconsequential seltzer water story.  

‘Inconsequential’ you might ask?

‘Yeah’ I might say, but so long as we’re waiting for the white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie to ‘really’’ kick in.

Said that before, did I?

Yeah, think so.

Okay, but under the circumstances and considering what stuff cost nowadays!

Okay, ‘yeah’, other than drinking it to wash down that rather dry, tasteless white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie to…

Sitting here at my desk with my left leg stretched forward, I get the impression that maybe my knee’s not all ‘that’ painful.

Okay, but seeing as I’m waiting for Marsha to call me to the table for dinner, might as well go on with my ‘Inconsequential’ seltzer water story.

I am well aware that seltzer water has very little – if ‘anything’ to do with my bad knee and marijuana laced cookie story, but I can’t imagine any other time when I might be…

You know...

When I might be ‘stoned’ enough to be able to think of some kind of a lead in to tell you what I want to tell you about…

Way back in the mid forties— mid 1940’s, that is!

On the west side of Chicago, when I was… oh, maybe eight or nine, or at least old enough to cross busy Ogden with its screeching, clanging streetcars that used to keep me awake on hot nights, I would walk the four city blocks to…

‘Diamonds Delicatessen’.

I would walk the four city blocks with a dim in my pocket that…

When other a movie day, my folks would want to, for some unknown reason, get rid of me — In later years I figured out why — they’d give me a whole ten cents for…

‘Shtikl’?

‘Yiddish’?

As Jews are to be found all over the world… Mainly in Eastern Europe, along with Spain and Italy and ‘wherever’; in time a universal language developed consisting mainly of ‘Hebrew’ and ‘German’ and ‘Russian’ along with occasional words from those ‘wherever’ places thrown in making a language that was somewhat understood by Jews from from… well, from ‘wherever’.

 ‘A shtikl for a nickel and a two cents plain.’

  ‘Shtikl’: Yiddish; to rhyme with ‘pickle’ therefor, ‘Shtikl’ meaning a small piece of something.

‘Seltzer water’.

Seltzer water mixed with chocolate syrup is called a ‘chocolate phosphate’, except on the east coast where it called an ‘egg cream’ because, adding an ounce of milk changes the taste and color of a chocolate phosphate.

Hence! An egg cream and a scoop or two of ice cream and you have a chocolate soda.

However, I’m not talking about a ‘chocolate phosphate’, an ‘egg cream’ or a ‘chocolate soda’.

What I’m talking about is a ‘two cents plain’.

I don’t know if they did this in any other large, or, for that matter, any small city?

But so long as I grew up on the west side of Chicago, going back to the late thirties into and through the mid forties, all candy stores along with delicatessens of all sizes had a soda fountain where, for two cents, one could purchase a Coke glass full of…

Remember now, I’m not speaking of those panty-waist six or eight ounce Coke glasses they have nowadays, but a ‘real’ Coke glass containing twelve ounces of — well, I’d guess preferably Coke! But in my case, ‘Seltzer water’.

Hence, for ‘two cents’; in west side Chicago Yiddish lingo, a ‘two cents plain’.

As for the ‘shtikl for a nickel’?

Go into any ‘real’ Kosher style delicatessen and, hanging from hooks, you will find salamis – usually ‘Vienna’ brand salamis of numerous lengths and weights in the process of drying the fat out, and as the salamis dry, they become hard and wrinkly — and the dryer the salami becomes, the wrinklier and harder the salami became.

Now, believe it or not, people pay more for the hard, dry, wrinkly salami than the soft, fresh greasy salami…

And what do they do with the very tip, the very end with the string that allows the salami to hang from a hook while in the process of becoming dry and wrinkly and costing more money?

As the guy slicing the, by now brick hard meat can only slice so far, there is this salami tip that, depending on the frugality of the deli owner and the sharpness of his knife, can weigh anywhere from two or three ounces to a quarter pound.

This rock hard salami tip, in Chicago, west side Yiddish lingo, is referred to as a ‘Shtikl’.

So, going back to the thirties and forties.

Going into one of the larger — ‘Diamonds Delicatessen’ and dropping my dime onto the counter, I would ask for…

“A ‘two cents plain’ and a ‘shtikl’, that costs a nickel, please.”

And sometimes, that ‘shtikl’ would weigh a quarter pound, but I may have received preferred treatment because...

A little explanation here.

I may have received preferred treatment as most of Diamonds counter people knew me because…

Diamond Delicatessen was located on the corner of a —at least in my memory...

...huge three story, ‘L’ shaped white brick building situated on the corner of Kedzie and Ogden.

Having the ‘AFL/CIO’ union hall on the ground floor north, that my grandfather, Morris Barrash, being a union carpenter — living on Sawyer Avenue, three blocks from his daughter’s family, would either meet me at Diamonds or bring me along whenever he attended the weekly union meeting, always having dinner with me before attending the Union meeting.

To the west of Diamonds, on the ground floor was the ‘Douglas Theater’— the only completely ‘Yiddish’ professional theater in Chicago having the countries, or possibly the world’s top Jewish performers.

Returning to a ‘Shtikl’ for a nickel and a two cents plain’.

I so remember sitting at the counter of Diamond Delicatessen, the string around my wrist, the shtikl held within my hand as I gnawed on the brick hard end of a Vienna salami.

Good thing I had good teeth back then.

Years later, guess maybe I was in my forties, when I remembered seeing an ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ story on television about a woman that murders her husband by beating him over the heat with a frozen pork tenderloin, then cooking and feeding it the cops that came to investigate the murder. Effectually eating the evidence.

If a thug, if the thug was so inclined; wrapping the string about his wrist, the thug could use the brick hard salami shtikl as a blackjack, then, so long as his teeth were in good shape, and there wasn’t too much hair or blood, eat the evidence.      

However, back to Diamonds Delicatessen in the Mid forties.

A ‘two cents plain’ and a ‘shtikl for a nickel’? So what about my dimes remaining three cents, you might ask.

So, you think Kosher dill pickles grow on trees?

5:15 PM

Still at the desk. My left leg still outstretched before me.

In Pain?

Love that heavenly tasteless white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie.

In pain? Hell no!

“Dinner’s ready…” Marsha called from the kitchen “...you need a hand?”

Maybe not, but— marijuana still, even at my age, making me a bit horny.

“Yeah, baby…” I called back “... that would be nice.”

“Okay.” Crossing the room, taking my left elbow, helping me to stand, helping me to my, uh, foot.

“Hey, Marcie…” hobbling on one foot “...think I need some balance, baby.”

Marsha still beautiful, at least in my eyes. The white chocolate and crushed macadamia nut maharajah laced half cookie adding to her, at least in my eyes, ageless beauty.

“Think I need some balance, baby.”

Knowing me. Knowing that even at age seventy-seven, knowing me.

Truth be told! Loving her husband. Glad to still be desired. Glad to still be ‘wanted’.

Truth also be told! From any distance of ten feet or further, reaming desirable, Marsha Lipensky is still followed by the eyes of younger men. Older men? Distance doesn’t matter.

“Okay...” Seventy-five year old Marsha said “...it’s okay.”

As I gently took hold of her soft right breast.

Strictly for balance, of course.

Next: New Phase 9: The Second Half.