HUNGRY GERALD

HG’s beloved, late sister, Beulah Naomi Katz, loved to negotiate. The Yiddish word for negotiate is handel and Beulah was a world class handeler. She probably inherited this talent from HG’s Mom, Ida Kopkind Freeman. Beulah once took Mom to Best & Co., the venerable Fifth Avenue department store, to buy gloves. Mom asked the saleslady the price of a pair: “Nine dollars, Madam.” Said Mom: “I’ll give you five.” Beulah had to point out that while this tactic might work in The Bronx, it was ineffectual on Fifth Avenue. A jewelry vendor in a Morocco market said of Beulah, admiringly,: “She bargains like a Berber woman.” HG/BSK’s children enjoyed accompanying Beulah to American flea markets, church sales, stoop sales and yard sales. Whatever the price (a quarter), Beulah was sure to get it for less (“A quarter? This is my niece, an award winning journalist — she’ll pay a nickel”). However rarely, Beulah’s handeling skills didn’t always succeed. She was very fond of sweet Vidalia onions from Georgia. When in Atlanta for a family event, Beulah met the leading produce broker of Vidalia onions. Beulah wanted a monthly shipment and she wanted them at a wholesale price. No, said the broker, you will pay retail. A hot and heavy negotiation took place. The broker wouldn’t budge. An almost irresistible force had met an immovable object. Beulah got her Vidalias. She paid retail. HG enjoyed negotiating for rugs in the souk at Marrakech. This retail maze is one of the features of the colorful Moroccan city. The rug merchant would unroll many rugs. HG would favor one rug. The merchant would state the price. Astronomical. HG would look sad, and between sips of mint tea offered by the hospitable rug seller, would make a gracious speech: “Dear Sir, you have beautiful, rare rugs. I am honored to have seen them in your distinguished shop. Alas, though American, I have very limited means. The pressures of educating my children, etc. I have champagne tastes but a beer budget. I don’t want to insult you by offering the low sum I can afford.” The merchant was sympathetic. “You are very courteous. I will not be insulted. Name your price.” HG said the number. The merchant laughed. Was HG joking? After these preliminaries, the bargaining began. Back and forth flew the numbers. Finally, HG named his final price. An emphatic “No”. HG/BSK said goodbye and left the shop. After a few steps, HG felt a tug at his shoulder. It was the merchant. The final price was accepted. It was about 80% lower than the original sum asked by the seller. It was a very successful encounter. HG thought he had snared a bargain. The vendor, HG is sure, happily enjoyed a substantial profit. A satisfactory haggle.

The younger generation is disbelieving when HG mentions how cheap New York living used to be. In the 1950’s a quite liveable one room apartment in Greenwich Village or Chelsea rented for $35-45 a month. In the 40’s, a pastrami sandwich was 15 cents (later raised to 17 cents as wartime inflation took hold). The subway was a nickel and there were ferocious protests when the fare was raised to a dime. (Yes..everything is comparable and salaries were low then and inflation has risen…but still…New York was then an affordable, working and middle class city; now it is a city built for the rich with everyone else struggling to stay afloat). During the 1940’s HG’s beloved late sister Beulah Naomi would take young HG to lunch at Larre’s, a French restaurant on W.56th Street in order to give the young man a taste of European civilization. French was spoken at almost every table as wartime immigrants and high school French teachers paid homage to Francophone culture. This what you got for 50 cents: All the French bread you could eat, of course, plus a small, gratis salad. An hors d’oeuvre cart passed through carrying modest treats like lentils, shaved carrots, string beans. Soup (onion or consomme). A long simmered stew with a fancy French name (either beef or mature fowl). Dessert (usually custard described as “Creme Caramel”). Coffee. No, it was not Henri Soule caliber French food but it was okay. Beulah Naomi and HG didn’t know that during World War Two, Larre’s was the favorite restaurant of a group of artists. Robert Motherwell (then interested in surrealism) and other avant-garde visionaries would lunch at Larre’s twice a week with famed French surrealists displaced by the war — among them Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton. After lunch, the group would stroll to Third Avenue, then filled with antique and second-hand furniture shops. They would browse these shops trying to determine which objects were “surrealistic.” Duchamp (who gave the world the first “ready-made” piece of art i.e. a hanging urinal) was the final arbiter.

When HG was a kid it was possible to have a very good time in Manhattan for little or no money. The best of all bargains (a five cent fare) was the Fifth Avenue double decker bus which ended service in 1953. The upper deck (where HG and his late beloved sister, Beulah K., always sat) was a sunny, open space — an absolute panacea to packed urban streets and over-crowded apartments. The Fifth Avenue Bus was an Irish enterprise. The driver and conductor had rich Irish brogues and piously crossed themselves when they motored past St. Patrick’s Cathedral. HG and sister would clamber onto the bus at Ft. Tryon Park at the northern tip of Manhattan (this was preceded by a visit to The Cloisters, the wonderful museum of medieval art in the park). From the the top of the bus, you could take in lovely views of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades. From our Ft. Tyron start, the bus would journey along upper Broadway, east on 110th Street to Fifth Avenue. Ah, upper Fifth Avenue with Central Park on our right and the homes of plutocrats on the left. Then, Tiffany’s and the fashionable shops. On a sunny spring or autumn day there could not be a better trip. Last stop was Washington Square Park with its colorful crowd of Moms, kids, bohemians, eccentrics. A stroll through Greenwich Village to Little Italy and a vast (25 cents) bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in robust red sauce. Hey, you don’t need a million dollars to live like a millionaire. At least, not then.