IT WAS OBVIOUS TO ME in my youth that my parents wouldn't be able to send me to college, much less medical school. If I was to get a higher education, I would have to work and save.
During summer vacations, when I was eight or nine, I quickly graduated from street corner lemonade stands to selling soda pop and sandwiches. I bought rye bread and salami at a delicatessen and made sandwiches. I bought bottles of soda pop from a nearby wholesaler and packed them in ice in my little red wagon. I sold lunches to women who worked in a garment factory on Van Sinderen Avenue, the borderline between Brownsville and East New York.
I did very well until I was squeezed out by the owner of the delicatessen. Able to gauge my success by the increase in the size of my orders, he put his nephew to work on my route, undercut my prices, and drove me out of business.
In the years that followed, I delivered tuxedos for weddings, assembled screwdrivers in a factory, and worked the first frozen custard machine in Brownsville. None of them paid much, but I had to save for college.
Two other jobs that I stored away in what I later called my mental root cellar—working as a bakers boy, and later as waiter in a luncheonette—stayed hidden in deep memory until Flowers fir Algernon needed them.
When I was fourteen, I went to work as a deliveryman's assistant for the East New York Bagel Bakery, beneath the elevated train, around the corner from where I lived. To start at four in the morning, I had to get up at three A.M. I worked until seven A.M. until the driver dropped me off at Junior High School 149. Out of school at three in the afternoon, homework, dinner, and then to bed while it was still daylight.
At first, my job was to help the driver load the back of his van with baskets of hot bagels, some plain, some with poppy or sesame seeds, some with salt. I would sit beside him in the passenger seat while we drove to groceries and restaurants that had not yet opened for business.
As we approached each location in the predawn hours, the driver consulted his order list and called out the size of the order. "Two dozen. One plain, one poppy."
The back of the passenger seat had been removed, so I would turn, grasp three still-hot bagels in each hand, and call out "Six! A dozen! Six! Two dozen!" There were no baker's dozens then. Poppy- and sesame-seed bagels were painful because they scraped my fingers. But the salt-covered bagels hurt most of all when they touched my raw skin. I bagged them, and as the driver pulled to the curb I jumped out and left them in still-dark doorways.
I remember the day he changed the route to deliver to a new customer. As we passed the corner of Livonia and Saratoga avenues, I saw lights on in a candy store. "That's strange," I said. "Maybe it's being robbed."
He laughed. "Midnight Rose is open twenty-four hours a day. Nobody in his right mind would rob that store."
When I asked why, he shook his head and said it wasn't too smart to ask questions about the wiseguys who hung out at Midnight Roses place.
At about this time, I got to know an older boy whose family moved in across the street from my home on Snediker Avenue. He was training to become a boxer, he said, but since he was actually too young to box, he confided in me that he planned to use his older brother's nickname, "Kid Twist." He would fight as "The Kid."
I told him I wished I had enough money to pay for the Adas Dynamic Tension Method so that I could put on muscles like Mr. Adas in the magazines and comic books and learn to defend myself against some of the bullies who picked on me.
The Kid weight-lifted at the Adonis Club on Livonia Avenue, and one day he took me with him and introduced me around. Some of the musclemen laughed when they saw how skinny I was, but they were very polite to The Kid, and gave me advice on how to pump iron. I see them clearly in my mind now, standing in front of mirrors after lifting weights, flexing oiled muscles, the smell of sweat filling the air.
Hoboes dropped in from time to time, to wash up and sometimes to sleep in the back for a night or two. I listened with fascination at their stories of hopping freight trains across the country and meeting old friends with strange names at hobo camps. I thought of quitting school and hopping a freight in the nearby rail yards to see America. Then I'd have something to write about.
Later, I learned about "Kid" Reles's brother. I still have the newspaper clip from November 13, 1941.
ABE RELES KILLED TRYING TO ESCAPE
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, a major hit man for a murder-for-hire ring, had been testifying against his confederates, and the Mafia who used their services. Early ... Wednesday, November 12, 1941, although closely guarded by five detectives, Abe Reles either jumped, fell or was pushed out of the sixth floor window of the Half Moon Hotel on the Coney Island boardwalk. Reporters dubbed him "the canary that could sing but couldn't fly."
Then I understood what the bagel delivery driver had told me about the men who hung out at Midnight Rose's Candy Store. They were the Mafia's execution squad, and reporters called them "MurderInc."
The killers operated right in my neighborhood, and received their hit contracts from the bosses in Manhattan who phoned them at the candy store. My boxer friend's brother, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, had been one of their most feared killers. Shortly after the article appeared, my friend and his family moved from the neighborhood without warning, and I never saw him again.
I was soon promoted from the bagel delivery van to an inside job as bakers helper. Later, when I was practicing writing scenes from my own experiences, I wrote a brief sketch of my impressions of the bakery. Here, unedited, is that memory.
The bagel factory—the smell of raw dough, and the whitened floors and walls ... working and kneading the dough in circular motions. Rolling it into long thin tubes, and then with a quick twist of the wrist making them into little circles ... another [baker] laying these out neatly in a huge shallow wooden tray ... stacking them high ... to be wheeled over to the urn and oven. There a boy stands lifting them out of the tray three at a time and throwing them into the bubbling urn ... then scooping them out, dripping and slimy, with a wire net ... dumping them on the baker's table. The baker spreads them neatly along the long wooden oar, slides them into the kiln, leaving long deep rows of bagels on wooden paddles while he fills up the next oar ... Pulls out an oar covered with browned bagels, and runs a string along beneath the bagels to separate them from the wood ... finally, dumping them into huge wicker baskets where they will be taken out into the waiting truck for delivery in the early dawn. The baker with the lame foot ... the one who has the rasping voice...
Many years later, I used that setting in the novel version of Flowers for Algernon.
The night shift at the bakery interfered with sleep and study and my grades suffered, so I took a job as dishwasher in Parities ice-cream parlor on Sutter Avenue. He soon promoted me to soda jerk, then to sandwich maker, counterman, and short-order cook. At sixteen, I found a better job on Pitkin Avenue, a more prestigious location near the Lowes' Pitkin Theater, to wait tables in Meyer's Goody Shoppe.
There was no longer a Meyer at Meyer's Goody Shoppe. The luncheonette and ice-cream parlor was owned by Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Sohn, both of whom nearly drove all us waiters crazy.
Sweet and gentle Mr. Goldstein always spoke of his desire to help poor boys who were working their way through college. Near the entrance, on the wall behind the cash register, he'd hung photographs from former waiters who had, as he said, "made good." Some were in Army, Navy or Marine uniforms. Others were wearing graduation robes. Goldstein spoke of "his boys" with affection. When I had first applied for the job, and told him my parents wanted me to go to medical school, he patted my head, and said I was a good boy to listen to my parents.
During the nights he was on duty, if business was slow, he was calm and would sit at the counter and discuss issues of the day with the idle short-order cooks. But when things got busy, he became transformed. Reflective Mr. Goldstein became a screamer, shouting orders at us over the customers' heads.
Mr. Sohn was a different sort of character. "When business was good, he stuck to the cash register. We were free to handle our tables in quiet dignity. But during slow periods, before the crowds came in, or between the dinner rush and the after-movie rush, Mr. Sohn would slip into the dining room and, under the pretext of inspecting our stations, he would take possession of most sugar dispensers, ketchup bottles, and saltshakers and hide them on the shelves below the cash register.
One of the veteran waiters explained that it was Sohn's reaction to one traumatic day when vandals had emptied all the saltshakers into the sugar dispensers. Sohn was also convinced that someone was stealing knives, forks, and spoons, and he intended to find the culprit. He made frequent sorties from behind the cash register to the dishwasher's station and removed much of the flatware. This led to a shortage of every kind of cutlery whenever Sohn was on duty.
At first, it created intense rivalry among the waiters. None of us wanted to tell our customers there were no spoons for their ice cream and coffee, no forks for their chocolate cake. Irate customers would storm out without tipping and without paying, and it was no use trying to explain to Sohn that it was his fault.
I learned from the veterans how to survive. During Sohn nights we prepared ourselves by slipping flatware into our pockets, under our belts, and beneath our shirts. We occasionally joined forces to divert Sohn's attention, and penetrated his fortress to liberate sugar, ketchup, and salt.
Quiet Sohn and Screaming Goldstein kept us waiters on our toes—sometimes on each other's toes.
In the two years I'd worked there, I accumulated enough tips for my first year's tuition at NYU. Then one evening my life turned a corner.
The after-movie crowd started arriving at ten o'clock. The place filled up quickly, and soon there was a crowd waiting outside. When four couples arrived and broke through the line, Goldstein did something I'd never seen before. He greeted them, smiling and Owning, led them past the other protesting customers, and directed them to my station.
As I went to get water and menus, Goldstein suddenly showed up with glasses of water on a tray. "How come there are no napkins on the tables?" he shouted at me. "Where's the silverware? Why don't they have menus?"
"Mr. Goldstein, they just sat down."
Explaining was useless, so I tried to ignore him as I took their orders. He bustled around, smiling at them. A few minutes later, when he passed me near the kitchen, he said, "What's taking you so long?"
"I just put my orders in, Mr. Goldstein."
"They're ready. On the counter."
I turned to look, and sure enough, the normally lethargic countermen had gone into action and given my new customers' orders of sandwiches and waffles priority.
"What's going on?" I asked one of the older waiters.
"Give 'em good service," he whispered. "Those guys hang out at Midnight Rose's."
I carried two cups of coffee with glass creamers balanced on the edges of the saucers in my left hand, and three sandwiches and waffles spread across my right arm.
Goldstein again reappeared from between two aisles. "What's taking you so long?"
"I'm delivering their orders."
"These are special customers."
"I've figured that out already. Mr. Goldstein, please give me a chance..."
He blocked my path. "Watch those creamers!"
I looked, and saw that my trembling hands were making the glass creamers alongside the coffee cups jiggle on the edges of the saucers. He walked backward, facing me, shouting at me. The more he shouted, the more they jiggled. I had learned that a glass creamer, if dropped, would break on the third bounce. If you could kick it to one side before that, you could prevent it from shattering.
Jiggle. Jiggle. One dropped, and bounced twice. I tried to kick it aside before the third hit, but failed. It shattered. I attempted to block-kick the second creamer: Bounce ... bounce... break! By now I was off balance and the sandwich plates nestled along my right arm wobbled. I tried to grab them but it was too late. Everything else I was carrying crashed to the floor.
"Mazel tov!" someone shouted, amid laughter. Then a couple of others took up the cry, laughing and applauding as if I were a bridegroom stomping the wineglass at a wedding. Someone called out, "The kid ain't stupid! That's better than washing them!"
Goldstein's face turned red and menacing. "What's the matter with you?" He addressed the mocking customers. "A college boy, and he can't even wait on tables." And then to me, "Clean it up, moron!"
His expression of disgust said it all. He'd given me a chance to work because I needed money for college, and I had betrayed him by breaking his dishes in front of his special customers. He walked away and didn't speak to me for the rest of the evening. But my Murder, Inc. customers left me big tips.
At closing time, I finished cleaning up, refilling sugar bowls and ketchup bottles and mopping the floors around my tables. Then I went up to him and said, "Good-bye, Mr. Goldstein. I'll send you a photograph for your mailing wall as a token of my appreciation."
His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"You've helped me make a decision. I can't put up with this crap anymore. I'm enlisting in the Merchant Marine."
"What about college?"
"That'll have to wait until after the war is over."
He looked at me long and hard. His voice was cold as he said, "Good luck." And as I headed for the door, he shouted so that everyone would hear, "Hey, moron!"
I didn't turn.
"Hey, smart college boy!"
I looked back at him.
"Try not to break everything on the ship!"
That's how, years later, I could imagine what Charlie Gordon felt during the scene in a restaurant when he sees a mentally handicapped busboy drop and break a tray of dishes, and the owner shouts: "All right, you dope, don't just stand there! Get a broom and sweep that mess up. A broom ... a broom, you idiot!"
Suddenly, I was furious at myself and all those who were smirking at him. I wanted to pick up the dishes and throw them. I wanted to smash their laughing faces. I jumped up and shouted: "Shut up! Leave him alone! He can't understand. He can't help what he is ... but for God's sake, have some respect! He's a human being!"
I was able to see it through Charlie's eyes and feel his emotions. I was able to write it, because it happened to me.