In this department, informal sociologists have explored the impact of American society, its modes and its machines, on the Jewish family, its cultural patterns, and its various members—and vice versa. In this story, not at all sociological and even more informal, some will find themselves even further enlightened on this absorbing theme.
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Promptly at five minutes to six each evening Papa Kramer pushed open the gate to the yard, came wearily down the broken walk, climbed the porch stairs, opened the screen door, set down his lunch-box, and asked, “Supper ready?” It would take him fully ten minutes to remove his coat and cap, wash his hands and face, and enter the kitchen, but supper had to be ready when he appeared, and each member of his family in place at the round golden oak table.
This evening, as he sat down to his meal, all the children were present except Harry, the middle son.
Papa Kramer muttered his prayer over the rye bread, broke a piece, and chewed on the good side of his teeth. Then he passed the plate and, without raising his eyes, murmured, “Everybody is here?”
“It’s Harry,” said Mama Kramer.
“He’s not here,” he declared soberly.
That was all he said, but his eyes darkled. He ate his soup with the matzoh ball and then the meat cooked with carrots and potatoes, and was sipping his glass of hot tea when the back door opened and, with a thump that fairly shook the little house, Harry fell in. That was his way. He never went down a staircase, he hurtled himself down. Mama Kramer said he was the only creature she had ever seen who could fall up a flight of stairs.
Now he bounced into the kitchen, went pale at the sight of everyone already sipping tea, and quietly dropped into his chair. Panting, he lowered his head and waited while Mama Kramer, without a word, went to the stove to prepare his plate.
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Papa Kramer sucked a mouthful of tea through the piece of sugar in his teeth, set his glass down, and declared to no one in particular, “The door opens, and in comes a stranger. He does not say ‘Good morning!’ or ‘Good evening!’ or ‘How are you?’ He pulls out a chair, sits down, and eats.”
Mama Kramer put the plate before Harry. “The boy is hungry. Aren’t you hungry, Harry?”
Attacking the soup, Harry nodded vigorously.
“He is hungry,” the father remarked solemnly. “All day long he runs around. Why should he not be hungry? His stomach shakes up and down and becomes empty. Hungry? He is famished! But how does he sit down? Does he wash? Who eats without washing? Look at those hands, the fingernails! A pig eats without washing.”
“My children are not pigs!” snapped Mama Kramer.
“Ha, that is what we have always believed. Their grandparents were not pigs, their parents are not pigs. Then why should he eat like a pig? Only a pig eats without washing.”
Harry spooned up the last drop of soup and reached for the bread.
That instant Papa Kramer’s hand shot out and struck his wrist. “Go wash!” he bellowed.
Like a deer Harry leaped from the table and swerved toward the sink. Energetically he snatched at the soap and lathered his fingers, the backs of his wrists and up to his sleeves. Papa Kramer glowered at his family. Normally a mild man, he was considerably bewildered by the volume he commanded when he raised his voice. Since he always counseled gentleness he felt guilty, and now tried to stare everyone down to confirm his authority.
“When I was a child,” said Mama Kramer, as though to herself, “no one let out a holler in the house.”
“When you were a child,” he retorted, “times were different. They washed before eating.”
That moment Harry slipped back into his chair. As he did there was a clatter, and coins spilled from his pocket to the floor. Hastily he bent down and scrambled underneath the tablecloth to pick up the objects.
His father shrugged. “It rang like money.”
Harry was crimson. He dug fiercely at a potato and crammed it into his mouth.
“I say it was money.”
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Harry was silent. He ate as though the truant officer were after him.
“Your father says it was money,” Mama Kramer urged.
“Pennies!” Harry finally gasped, and stuffed himself with a gobbet of meat.
“He says it’s pennies.”
“That was not one penny,” the man meditated aloud. “It was not one penny that a boy may get to buy a candy or chewing gum. It was not three or four pennies that a boy may save if his tooth is not too sweet.”
“Those were many pennies,” Mama Kramer addressed her middle son.
But still Harry would not reply. To help him gain time she rose to fetch his tea.
“This is a mystery,” said the head of the household. “Has he gone to the bank and drawn out the savings he does not have? Did someone stop him on the street and say, ‘Here, I have too much, take from me a bundle of pennies?’” Again he raised his voice to that auditorium volume that shook the ice in the old icebox. “Where did you get the pennies?”
“From a machine,” Harry muttered.
The man smiled grimly. “You see, wife mine, what a wonderful country this is, and what a fortunate son we have? For thirty years I have been in this country. After all, I am not a man who has not seen machines. I have not built them, but I have watched them. I have even worked with them. But a machine that gives pennies that I have not yet seen.”
“What kind of a machine is it, Harry?” the mother asked.
“A peanut machine,” he replied in a hollow voice.
“A peanut machine? You mean a machine that gives peanuts?”
He nodded.
“He means a machine in which you put a penny in a slot,” Seymour, the oldest son, explained. “You turn a handle, and peanuts come out.”
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Papa Kramer regarded him stonily. “I have not asked you. He has a tongue, let him talk. He knows of a machine that gives pennies. Why should it be a secret? I am a hard-working man, let him tell me. I, too, will go to the machine and get pennies.”
At last Harry was ready to talk. “It’s the peanut machine near the Orpheus picture theater. You put in a penny and out comes peanuts. I like peanuts.”
“He likes peanuts,” said Mama Kramer. “Is there any harm that he likes peanuts?”
Her husband struck the table with the flat of his hand. “I have not said anything against peanuts! I do not have my own teeth, so I do not eat peanuts. But I have watched people eat peanuts.”
“They’re very good,” Seymour again offered.
“Who said peanuts is bad?” he shouted. “All I want to know is how is it that for everybody in the world when they put a penny in it gives peanuts, and for him when he puts a penny in it gives pennies?”
“Shh!” said the mother. “Let the boy talk.”
“I am keeping him from talking?”
“I’ll talk,” Harry went on eagerly. “It’s a good machine.”
“A good machine!” the man rolled his eyes. “What could be bad about such a machine?”
“I mean that it gives a lot of peanuts, and I always go there. Some machines give only ten or twelve peanuts!”
“It’s true,” Seymour corroborated.
“On this one if you turn the handle it gives maybe sixteen peanuts.”
“But you gave the handle a good turn. Ha, he gave the handle a good turn, and out came pennies!”
“That’s right, Pa.”
“How many pennies did you get?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen to him. He finds a machine that gives pennies, but he doesn’t know how many pennies he’s got. Empty out the pockets.”
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Reluctantly Harry pulled out his loot. He had pennies in his righthand pocket, pennies in his lefthand pocket, and even pennies in his back pocket. Everyone was silent as Papa Kramer reached over and quietly made little heaps of five pennies.
“Look! This is something to see!” he declared. “Look at this, eighty-seven pennies. A wonderful machine.”
“What do you want from him?” Mama Kramer protested. “Is it his fault that the machine gives pennies?”
He glared. “I have not said it is his fault. Who has said that it is his fault? I say only that a machine that gives eighty-seven pennies is a machine for people to see.”
“I think it got too full,” Harry volunteered. “It got crammed so full of pennies that some got into the place where they keep the peanuts. They should fix that machine.”
“You think your son is a boy?” the man addressed his wife. “Your son is a man. He speaks wisdom. He knows that if a peanut machine gives pennies, there is something wrong. It should be fixed. Did you tell anybody to fix it?”
Harry lowered his eyes.
“Your father asks did you tell anyone to fix it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“There was no one there. The peanut man comes once a week. I think he comes tomorrow.”
Papa Kramer rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Then tomorrow you will go and tell the man.”
Harry was silent.
“Your father says tomorrow you will go and tell the man. Do you hear?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“And tomorrow you will give the man the eighty-seven pennies.”
Harry growled. “One belongs to me!”
“Then tomorrow you will give the man eighty-six pennies. Do you hear?”
“Yes, Pa.”
Papa Kramer pushed the pennies back to Harry and dusted his hands. “It’s other people’s money. Take good care of it.”
Quickly Harry gathered up the coins and thrust them into his righthand pocket, his lefthand pocket, and his back pocket.
“I used to hear that in America people found gold in the street, but this is the first time I have heard of machines that give pennies.”
Harry swallowed his tea. “I’ll fix the cord on the big lamp if you want. Ma!” he declared, and so escaped.
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The following evening Harry was at the table long before his father appeared. The supper dish, after the soup was served, was potato pancakes and applesauce, so no one spoke as long as Mama Kramer, working feverishly at the stove, continued to serve the hot golden pancakes. With homemade applesauce, slightly chilled, there is nothing in the world like potato pancakes. Papa Kramer, who preferred cinnamon and sugar on his, proceeded slowly, savoring the crisp edges and smiling at his wife.
When the tea was served, he sighed and glanced askance at his middle son.
“What did the man say?” he asked calmly.
Harry sat up. “He didn’t come.”
Papa Kramer blew on his saucer of tea. “Every week he comes, but today he did not come.”
“He didn’t come while the boy was there.”
“That’s right!” Harry burst out. “I went right after school. I waited until it got dark, but he didn’t come.”
“Maybe he came earlier. After all, he didn’t know you were waiting for him.”
Harry drank his tea industriously.
“Where are the eighty-seven pennies?”
“Eighty-six!”
“Your father wants to know, Harry.”
“I got them.”
“And the machine,” Papa Kramer went on slyly, “still gives pennies?”
“Today it gave a few peanuts, too.”
“Ha, then you tried it again!”
Harry blanched. “I had to try it. Pa. Suppose it was fixed already?”
“And you got more pennies?”
“It wasn’t fixed yet.”
“How many?”
Harry splashed hot tea on his shirt.
“He’s scalded!” his mother exclaimed. Tenderly she daubed at him with a dish towel. “You get him excited, and he scalds himself.”
“I get him excited,” Papa Kramer shut his eyes. “The pennies get him excited.”
“I’m all right, Ma.”
“He’s all right.”
“Sure, he’s all right,” she pouted. “But he could have burned himself.”
“I think he burned himself on the peanut machine.” He raised his voice to a thunderous roar: “How many pennies?”
“Forty-six.”
“That machine is growing weak already.”
“Maybe other people are taking out pennies, too,” Mama Kramer countered.
“I don’t care about other people. Other people do not belong to me. So when will you tell the man?”
“Tomorrow—if he comes.”
Papa Kramer chortled grimly. “It will be Yom Kippur before you tell him.” He raised his eyes to his wife. “Tomorrow you will go.”
“I?” she protested. “What have I to do with a peanuts machine?”
“Go!”
She shrugged. “When do I eat peanuts?”
“Go,” he insisted.
“I’ll go,” she muttered.
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The following evening Papa Kramer had not put a spoon to his soup before he asked, “And the man?”
“He came, he came,” she grumbled.
“And—”
“He didn’t believe me.”
Harry bowed his head.
“And who can blame him?” His father nodded to himself.
“The man turned the handle, and peanuts came out. I turned the handle, and peanuts came out Only when Harry turned the handle did pennies come out.”
Papa Kramer snickered. “Have I not said we have blessed children? But the man was grateful. He thanked you.”
“He called me a crook,” she replied sadly.
He grew pale. “What is this? A hooligan, a man?”
“A common sort, with a red neck and eyes like the black beads on my old dress, the one that my deaf Aunt Bessie sent me.”
“How could a man call you a crook?” He shook his head perplexedly.
“He said he’d call the police.”
Papa Kramer stroked his cheek. “We want no trouble with the police.”
“He said that for three weeks he has been finding less and less pennies. He put in the same peanuts but out came less pennies. He figured up I should give him five dollars.”
He shuddered. “You!”
“I am the mother of the boy.”
“Then you should have given him the pennies and gone away.”
She set her jaw. “He calls me a crook, and I should give him pennies?”
“But the boy had eighty-six and—how many more?—forty-six.”
“And I should give them all to him when he opens up a big mouth on me?”
He was baffled. “So what did you do, Mama?”
“I told him to be ashamed. I told him to close his big mouth. I told him—never mind what I told him. I am not a greenhorn. A man like that gets nothing from Goldie Kramer.”
He sighed. “And so it remains.”
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Harry spoke up brightly. “No, he took the machine away.”
Resignedly Papa Kramer tasted his soup.
“It’s cold.”
“I’ll give you warm.”
He turned to his middle son. “And the pennies?”
The boy avoided his eyes.
“Your father asks about the pennies.”
“Some I lost,” Harry quavered.
“Some he lost!” he mocked. “He has a fist like a safe in a bank, but now he has lost the pennies.”
Mama Kramer set a fresh plate of hot soup before him. “So now you are speaking up for the big mouth with his red neck and his eyes like beads. He called me a crook, and you speak for him.”
“I do not speak for him. I speak for our son, the banker, the merchant. What has he done with the pennies?”
“What have you done with the pennies? Your father is talking.”
With a growl Harry began to empty his pockets. But though he searched in his righthand pocket, in his lefthand pocket, and in his back pocket, he could find no more than twenty-three pennies.
Papa Kramer grew wroth. “And that is all?”
“He says he lost them!”
With a regal gesture Papa Kramer waved his son to the metal charity-box that was nailed to the wall under the calendar from Rabinovich’s Kosher Meat Market. “Into the pushke!”
“Pa!”
“I said, ‘Into the pushke!’”
“Ma!”
“He said, ‘Into the pushke!’”
On leaden feet Harry arose. Deliberately he moved to the box and dramatically, one by one, he pushed the pennies through the slot. Each ring and clang made him shiver.
“At least,” said his father when Harry was done, “the poor will enjoy this money.”
“If you had seen that big mouth with his red neck you would have said worse than I did.”
He ignored her. “Is that all we are having for supper?” he asked mildly. “After a hard day all I get is only soup?”
With a toss of her head she marched to the stove to fetch the meat and potatoes.
Eagerly Harry stepped over to help her. As he turned, his brothers saw his pocket bulging. With a frown Seymour silenced Dave. Mama Kramer traced their glances and she, too, observed what he had seen. But their father, reaching for the bread, was mumbling, “Can a man make a meal on soup?” He alone did not see the shining white baseball. It was an official big-league baseball, brand new.
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