There was the retail side-the greeting and the waiting on customers-but I was too short to be seen above the countertops. To the consumers on the other side, I was more or less a floating head. My father was constantly dodging me because I was underfoot and the operating space behind the counters was minimal. The starched white apron my father gave me for protection was way too big. It dragged on the baseboards, picking up sawdust around the hemline. Occasionally, I’d trip on it. When that happened, I hiked up the cloth. Eventually, it would fall down again.
I’m sure I was a disaster. I’m sure I got in Dad’s way. But he never said anything to me about it.
Dad knew I couldn’t remain an ornament. He had to give me something to do. My first assignment was shoveling the three most popular salads-potato, cole slaw, and macaroni (this was prior to the urban elite pasta salad)-from the cooler into pint or half-pint containers. This job was a snap because the salads were priced by the pint. A pint of cole slaw was X number of cents. A half pint totaled X/2. I was a math whiz in school. I had absolutely no trouble figuring out how to halve things.
Having mastered salads, I was given my next assignment- the weighing and wrapping of dill pickles. This, to my surprise, turned out to be a very tricky affair.
I was given a stool in order to see and read the scale. But first I needed to learn how to read a scale. Back then, before the advent of LCD and the digital revolution, watches were analogs, and scales were mean critters consisting of columns of prices and rows of weights-a veritable crisscross of numbers that bounced up and down with a spring weight. To find out how much something cost necessitated finding the correct intersection between price and weight along a skinny red line. I’ve known adults who never mastered the art of reading this kind of scale, just as I’ve known those who never got the hang of a slide rule.
It took me some time. For the first week, all my pickle prices magically came out in pounds, half pounds, or quarter pounds because-being a math whiz-I could divide the price by factors of two. Anything in between was rounded off to the nearest whole number divisible by two. In order to please the customer, I usually rounded down. I’m sure I cost my father some pocket change.
If he noticed it, he never said anything.
Eventually, I vanquished the scale. It was a proud moment that should have been worthy of some kind of certification. But knowledge has its own rewards. Reading the scale now allowed me to weigh things-items like lox and precut cheeses and meats, fishy pickled herring and the wonderfully oily Greek olives.
With two skills mastered, I was determined to crack an-other-wrapping. Origami enthusiasts needn’t have worried. Still, I was proud of my neatly swaddled packages with just the right amount of sticky tape on them. And when I wrote the word “pickles” or “Swiss” on the white paper in my own handwriting, no one could have been more pleased than I was.
My weighing and packaging skills had been honed to such an extent that Dad took an enormous chance. No, I was still forbidden to use the meat slicers, but he let me try the bread slicers.
For those unschooled in the literature on bread slicers, I shall explain. To slice a whole loaf of bread, one usually places the bread against a back bar, then turns on the machine. With a manual handle-which the operator slowly pulls toward him or her- the bread is advanced and forced between a series of moving parallel blades until it emerges out the other side in neat, perfect slices.
Immediately upon exiting the blades, my first rye fell apart, the slices fanning out like a deck of cards. Spotting the trouble, Dad once again explained to me that as the bread advances between the blades, it is necessary to secure the loaf on the other side with your hand. This must be done with care, as fingers are not supposed to get close to the blades. Was I up to the challenge?
Indeed I was. After a couple of failures, I was finally able to produce a successfully sliced loaf of rye. I was even able to hold it aloft, vertically by the heel, as the experts did.
Alas, it was the next step that tripped me up. I placed the rye directly into the white waxed-paper bag. Needless to say, again the rye fell apart.
As I apologized profusely, the customers just laughed it off.
Isn’t she cute?
C’mon, guys. I’m trying to do a job here.
Of course, the crucial error was not housing the rye in a tight plastic bag and securing it with a flexible steel tie before I placed the loaf in the white waxed-paper bag. Of course, that step necessitated opening the plastic bag while still holding the rye in the air.
Not an easy task of coordination. A few of my loaves ended up as fodder for the sawdust floor.
More waste.
If it bothered Dad, he never said so.
Eventually I mastered the coordination necessary for packing the ryes. And not just ryes but loaves of challah and wheat bread as well. These were a challenge unto themselves, because challahs and wheat breads are much softer. They required a delicate touch with the bread slicer.
Not one to rest on my laurels, I demanded more. Dad must have felt that I was up to the ultimate challenge, because he put the entire bakery under my charge.
The entire bakery, and I was only eleven.
This was monumental.
Faye the bakery lady.
Take a number, please!
There I was, wearing a hairnet, slicing breads, twirling plastic bags with a flourish, and handing out free sprinkle cookies to toddlers.
The coup de grâce came when Dad started taking me to the wholesale bakery to pick out items for our little bakery. We chose the usual rolls and breads and bagels and Danish. But now, since Dad had a genuine bakery lady, he began to invest in more coffee cakes, coffee rings, babkas, and cookies.
The smells were incredible. Hot and yeasty doughs laden with sugar, chocolate, nuts, and cinnamon, glazed with thin white frostings. The aromas, more than the visuals, made my mouth water. We chose our fare straight from the ovens, still hot, resting on parchment paper. At first my dad made all the selections. As I got bolder, I began to make a few suggestions of my own. Sometimes he listened. Sometimes he did not.
One week there was a particular coffee-ring cake that appealed to my eye as well as to my nose. It was a typical cinnamon yeast dough topped with circles of cherries, lemon, blueberries, and apple, the fruit swimming in seas of pectin and sugar. I had to have it. Though not particularly aromatic, it appealed to my eye.
“It will never sell,” Dad said.
“But it’s pretty.”
“People buy with their noses, not with their eyes.”
“People like fruit rings,” I countered. “And if it doesn’t sell, we can take it home.”
I was the youngest in my family and the only daughter. I batted my eyelashes and Dad melted. Arriving at the store before the opening hour, I set out the coffee cakes, the cookies, the rolls, and the breads. I tidied up the plastic and paper bags. Unplugging the cord to the bread slicer, I cleaned it of yesterday’s crumbs and seeds. I plugged in the bread slicer. Then, with my duties done, I waited for the customers to come out of the starting gate.
Our first consumer came in a few minutes after the doors opened at nine. She was a forty-plus woman-Jewish, as many of our customers were-who scrutinized my baked goods. I saw her eyeing my pretty coffee ring. The artificially red cherries, the egg yolk-colored lemon filling, the blueberries, and the apples.
She scrunched up her brow. “I’ll take that one,” she stated.
My father was looking over his shoulder as I scooped the cake under my hand and placed it in a pink bakery box, tying it with bakery string.
“Bingo, skittle ball in the old pocket,” he whispered to me.
I had never heard the expression before. And Dad never used it again. But I never forgot it.