Ruth Glazer’s informal sociological exploration, “The Jewish Delicatessen” (Commentary, March 1946), was one of the earliest of a number of studies of types and institutions in American Jewish life that have appeared in this department. Here Mrs. Glazer turns her talents to painting a larger canvas, and presents a picture of the West Bronx version of the American scene and its economy of abundance as applied to everyday—and Sunday—living.
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When the Woodlawn Road-Jerome Avenue express rushes out of the tunnel at 161st Street in the Bronx, the subway rider catches a glimpse of rows of six-story apartment houses flanking the elevated tracks on both sides and extending far back into the hinterland. Viewing the repetitious pattern of yellow squares made by the lighted windows block after block, the outlander cannot resist musing profoundly to himself, “Ah, those poor people living out their pallid lives in regimented cells, one above the other.” But lucky for him that the Bronxite wedged next to him cannot read his thoughts; he would transfix him with that characteristic glare of the embattled straphanger. Pallid? Ha!
Why, there’s more life, vigor, and excitement in one single Bronx apartment house at six o’clock in the evening than in a thousand elm-lined Main Streets on a Fourth of July. Visualize six little girls, none over three and a half feet high, dragging their roller skates up over the marble staircase; two or three fourth-floor mothers trying to summon recalcitrant sons to dinner; the building superintendent, flanked by irate ground-floor tenants, descending on a group of boys engaged in playing “association.”
To be sure, the returning fathers, crushed by forty minutes in the subway, are extraordinarily noiseless at this hour.
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The West Bronx is located in time midway between the lower East Side (or the East Bronx) and West Side Manhattan. It is a community whose residents seem occupied full time in discovering the wonderful things produced by the world that can be had for even the moderate amount of money at their disposal. In so doing, they have created a style of living all their own.
Take any of the main arteries that mark the topography of the West Bronx—170th Street, Burnside Avenue, University Avenue, the Upper Concourse, Fordham Road. What streets anywhere can match them in their sheer number of food stores, ice-cream parlors, delicatessens, restaurants, specialty shops for women and children, haberdasheries, and that special institution of the area, the “hardware” store, which maintains only the most distant kinship with establishments elsewhere engaged in selling nuts, bolts, gardening tools, and other such items. These “hardware” stores are crammed with every conceivable ingenious brightly colored gadget for the kitchen—painted bread boxes, the newest thing in shelving, 22-carat warranted gold-plated china tea sets, chromium Hanukkah candelabra, ruby glass luncheon-sets, and a whole window of bottles, sterilizers, infant china and silverware, and complicated devices for warming baby food. For the West Bronx is nothing if not a crèche.
Indeed, the earmark of any display in the West Bronx store is the profusion. Park Avenue can have its Gristedes with six carefully polished apples bedded down in tissue paper and exposed to public view on a white lace doily. In the West Bronx there are veritable mountains of apples in all varieties, prices, and stages of edibility. From the dim, dark, cool interior of the fruit store, they proceed in carefully segregated groups, from the most expensive to the least, until finally whole bushels of green ones spill out of the flimsy enclosing boundaries of the store onto the street.
As for the bakeries, who would hazard even a guess on the number of barrels of whipped cream which are beaten up in the early morning hours behind the glass and tile facades of the West Bronx bake shops, and which later in the day make their appearance atop and inside every shape and manner of cake—including the humble coffee ring?
Where else in this world can there be found anything to compare with the Victory Layer Cake—not to be confused with the cake of the same name, say, in the chain bakeries of Manhattan? There it is a triumph in deception, with its chemically achieved batter, a composite of protein substitute for egg, karo for sugar, some dried-out milk curds, a bit of flour, and various chemical elements—sodium propionate, monosodium glutamate, etc.—topped off with that culinary superfraud of mass-production hygienic kitchens, “marshmallow icing.”
Victory Layer Cake, as defined in the West Bronx, is quite another matter. Its inspiration is clearly one derived from some heathen and sybaritic god of another time. But essentially it is a simple construction with an all too transparent purpose: to pile the largest quantity of whipped cream into the smallest cubic area. This feat is accomplished with ingenious simplicity, by piling, between seven or eight of the thinnest slices of chocolate cake ever carved by a Bronx baker, quarterinch layers of whipped cream, not marshmallow, not a gelatinous substitute with more protein content, but simple, thick, rich, heavy whipped cream. It is to be noted that this triumphal concoction is purchased by the pound.
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But for all the glory and glamor of his whipped-cream cakes, the true art of the Bronx baker, the real and individual cornerstone of his reputation, is his bread and rolls. Although it is true that it has not been attempted outside the area, is it so hard, after all, to whip up some cream and put it between a few layers of cake? But where else do they bake a rye bread with caraway seeds that is not a sour, heavy lump requiring paper-thin slicing to be edible or, at the other extreme, that sweetish, pasty loaf so uncomfortably reminiscent of white bread? The true rye is soft and crusty when fresh, and grows more flavorful as it ages. Any Bronxite would smile at the raptures of our more fluffy-headed lady food columnists in the metropolitan dailies when they first taste rye bread. “It’s an exciting, delicious tastetreat,” they chirrup, “especially when spread with fresh, sweet butter.” As any gourmet north of the Harlem River could have told them, it’s not only a “taste-treat,” but also the staff of life.
The course of the week in the Bronx could almost be plotted according to the bread that the housewife buys. Except for the occasional loaf of packaged bread, brought in conscientiously for its breakfast-toast-making properties, the daily staple is rye bread, with an occasional loaf of whole wheat or pumpernickel for variety. Com bread has, somehow, never been able to achieve a regular position and is generally sold in half-pound or pound chunks carved out of a huge oval five or ten-pound loaf. It is always bought with a kind of daredevil, on-the-spur-of-the-moment air. As if yielding to some hidden and finally irrepressible impulse, the housewife will call out, “ All right, and give me a piece of com bread, too; but not too big.” Although the Sabbath may not be observed in other respects, for Friday night and Saturday one buys chaleh. (In some areas, where all sense of proportion has been lost, chaleh can be had every day in the week.) On Sunday, rolls achieve a sudden prominence with the Sunday morning trip downstairs for the Sunday paper “and a dozen rolls.” These range in variety from the classic bagel and its variant, the egg bagel, through die pletzel, Bialystoker and otherwise, the seeded water-rolls, the soft sweetrolls, until finally at the end of the spectrum it is hard to distinguish the crumbly yellow crescents from cake. Recently, finding no other way to satiate the appetite of his customers for pletzels, the baker has added yet another variety of bread to his shelves—“Something New—17c—Try It—Onion Bread.” All this is displayed with a sensenumbing profusion in bins and racks behind plate glass—an element of decor that, in addition to its decorative properties, has proved itself to be one of the few devices capable of thwarting the thumb-and-forefinger test for freshness.
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The same cornucopia effusion marks the groceries and the dairy stores with their windows crammed full of row upon row of cheeses and tubs of butter, and the appetizing stores which lure passers-by with whiffs from their open barrels of pickles and peppers, sauerkraut and sour tomatoes. The delicatessens, however, hide demurely behind window displays of dummy beer cans. But for those who have eyes to see there are steaming frankfurters and knishes on the grill and untold delights behind the clouded glass and shredded colored cellophane.
Only one institution remains austerely aloof from this kind of display. This is the kosher butcher store. Even the chicken market indulges in a kind of raw profusion, exhibiting trenches of vari-colored chickens for the selection of the housewives. But the butcher store is quite a different matter.
Whereas on other days the patronizing of the various food stores is a matter requiring only an ordinary degree of acumen, tact, and watchfulness, a certain air of solemnity settles over the West Bronx on Thursday. Thursday is devoted to einkoifen far shabes. Even emancipated young housewives have been caught up in the tyranny of this custom. This is the day when the housewife descends to do battle With the butcher in earnest. Small purchases during the week of “a few veal cudets,” or “a piece liver” can be regarded as minor skirmishes. The one point that must be firmly grasped is that one does not buy meat from a butcher, cholile; one negotiates. One lives in a state of armed truce.
The young bride, for example, goes through a long period of training before she dares ask for so much as a single lamb chop. This rigorous course includes elements both scientific and psychological. To know the cuts of meat derived from the cow, the calf, and the lamb is, of course, elementary. (For to what end all this fencing if one simply gives away one’s hand by asking for two pounds of meat for pot roast?) Even more important are the little professional tricks suspected of every butcher by every wellversed housewife. This information is generally delivered sotto voce as the butcher disappears to get the cut of meat requested; viz., “If he asks you what you want it for, tell him you want to broil it. It’s his business that you want to use it for chopped meat?” or “Make sure when you ask for mittel chuck, that he doesn’t give you single chuck.”
This masked antagonism, this deep-lying mutual suspicion between the kosher butcher and his customer, is symbolized by the customarily empty showcase. The only function of this elaborate testimonial to refrigeration seems to be to set a restraining barrier, a neutral zone, between the two contending parties. Every piece of flanken, every shoulder steak must be custom-cut, and each piece of meat is held up for inspection with the furtive glances, the special avowals which only a butcher knows how to utter. Occasionally a timid young woman will attempt to influence his mysterious choice as he disappears into the refrigerator. “A small piece of calf s liver,” she’ll say, “I hope it’ll be good. It’s for the baby.” To dissipate the illusion that the prospective cut is not already predestined, the butcher will respond, “Whaddya mean ‘good’? Would I give you a piece of liver that isn’t good?” Is there a reply?
Unlike other stores, too, there is a leisurely, almost club-like atmosphere here as the women gather of a Thursday morning. Then the butcher holds court, announcing his opinions on the world, commenting on departing customers. There are no small private conversations between neighbors. No. There is a general public discussion and everyone is included. “Well, Mr. Pizetsner” (not “Sam,” as he might say to the grocery-store man), will begin an older and more favored customer, “and how are your sons these days?” “All right, thank God; the new business in Flatbush is doing fine.” “So, how do you like living in Brooldyn, Mr. Pizetsner?” “Well, it’s not so bad. We have our own house. . . .” “It must be a terrible trip for you every day. How come you don’t move the store to Brooklyn?” “Listen,” says the butcher, as he prepares to quarter a chicken, “everyone says the same thing. My wife wants me to give up the business. (chop) The boys have a good spot for me there. (chop) But you know what I say . . .? (The cleaver is suspended.) I tell ’em, I couldn’t give up my business here. Where would I ever find such customers? They’re not customers. They’re dolls!” (chop, chop) Really, could you buy in the A&P?
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In view of the breathtaking variety of food which confronts his eyes and nose as he walks down any one of the main streets, the incautious observer might well conclude that Lucullan feasts are concocted each evening in Bronx kitchens and that Bronx housewives are culinary paragons. Nothing, alas, could be further from the truth. Quantity, perhaps, or wholesomeness, yes (or maybe). But variety—never. For the older generation there were certain extenuating circumstances. Burdened with the care of many children in cramped quarters, the mother of the family cooked dishes which required a minimum of preparation and watchfulness. Conservative calculation would reveal that in the first thirty years of her married life a good mother of the old school demolished 1,560 chickens and served up 6,240 portions of pot roast. As might be deduced from these figures, the older generation was not particularly aquiver over the culinary art; their approach was not adventurous but strictly utilitarian.
I remember once overhearing the following conversation in a neighbor’s kitchen:
“Mmm, Mrs. Siegel. It smells wonderful. Tell me, what are you cooking for dinner?”
“Who can tell?” she replied. “All I know is that I’ve put up a pot of water and an onion and some meat. If all goes well and the family comes home early we’ll have some soup and some soup meat. And if the water cooks out and the meat bums a little, we’ll have pot roast.”
Offsetting this casualness toward everyday cookery, this generation brought a certain prayerful solemnity to the preparation of certain festive dishes, where failure cannot be turned into a last-minute success. There is, for example, the delicate business of untershlogen a borsht (beating eggs into a borsht). The first step requires the cook to make her peace with the world and renounce all anger against her fellow-mortals. Having done this, she may proceed to break two eggs into half a cup of warm borsht and pour it ever so slowly, beating it with a steady hand, into the soup. But if her spirit remains troubled the borsht will infallibly be streaky, and no scientific explanations to the effect that the borsht was too hot or the eggs too cold will ever convince the cook who knows.
Sometimes American-born daughters, learning in the institutional ads of that hallowed myth about recipes handed down from generation to generation, attempt to introduce this charming practice in their own families. There has been, however, one difficulty. The ladies from the old country have developed a kind of shorthand for recipes, something akin to the reply of the teacher who, when asked how to spell “immediate,” answered ‘With two m’s.” So the girl who has painfully managed to extract and translate what she thought was the recipe for cookies, suddenly notices that she has no specification for flour. “Don’t you use any flour?” she will ask. “Why, of course,” replies her mother, aghast at such ignorance. “Well, how much?” she will pursue. “Who can tell in advance? Whatever the batter requires . . . .” This sort of exchange is discouraging. No wonder, despite their pride in their advanced and experimental outlook in the arts of living, the daughters of the new generation have unwittingly slipped back into the old inherited routine. Few, consequently, escape the chagrined surprise of hearing their own sons complain, in that classic formula, “Aw, ma. Chicken soup again.”
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The truth is there are only two kinds of occasions that utilize the full resources of the food stores. One is the ceremonial dinner, which proceeds gravely through ten courses, both hot and cold, in high disregard for the eating capacities of the guests. The second, and more common, is “having a few friends in for the evening,” which inevitably concludes with a midnight snack. Once having decided between the delicatessen store and the appetizing store, the rest is according to ritual. The evening guests are customarily presumed to have gone without food for three days and their prospects for the future are also not considered very hopeful. With this in mind (assuming the nod to have gone to the appetizing store) a not ungenerous sample of every type of “home-made salad,” and of every variety of smoked, pickled, creamed, or otherwise bedevilled carp, whitefish, sturgeon, herring, butterfish, and salmon, and half a dozen kinds of cheeses are extracted from the trays and barrels of the appetizing store. Every suggestion of the naive husband (along to help carry the packages) that surely a limit has been reached, is silenced with the slogan, “Better too much than too little.”
Sometimes one wonders whether here we have not been the victims of our own enthusiasms. During the war, all the synagogue sisterhoods, B’nai B’rith chapters, and, in fact, every organization engaged in entertaining Jewish soldiers, worked on the assumption that next to the unconditional surrender of Germany the dearest wish of every Jewish recruit was for a breakfast of lox and cream cheese and bagels. In the service of this myth men have spent the night speeding over treacherous roads to the nearest metropolis in order to get fresh hot bagels for “the boys.” Undeniably these breakfasts were always well attended and the supplies devoured. But perhaps it was only because such breakfasts were as much of a rarity to the soldiers as to the good ladies of the sisterhood.
How explain the vitality and longevity of the delicatessen and appetizing stores in Jewish neighborhoods, considering that they are, so to speak, dietetically out of bounds, except for “occasions”? For unchanged is the tradition from mother’s time—to admit to one’s neighbor that one is having delicatessen for an evening supper, unless there is a clear and present emergency, is to admit that one is an incompetent, shiftless wife and mother who cares nothing for the health of her husband and is cheerfully ready to poison her offspring. Happily for the younger element and husbands, there are two types of occasions on which the holder of the purse strings may relax the first principle of any Bronx housewife—namely, No Delicatessen. The first, already mentioned, is situations of extreme emergency, to wit, a gas main has broken and the house is deprived of light and fuel; or the family has just moved and the barrel with the dishes seems to be inexplicably missing; there has been a fire and the kitchen has been destroyed; or mother has been downtown shopping at Klein’s. At other times a coalition of all other members of the household can temporarily so overpower her that she will look the other way when the provisions are brought onto the premises. But, on ordinary days, to initiate such a thing herself is to commit two other sins, in addition to those noted before. She is guilty of extravagance, because everybody knows what prices in appetizing stores are, and, worst of all, she is not Giving Her Family a Hot Meal!
For let a girl be never so flighty, let her breakfast daily on Pepsi-Cola and salami oblivious to the tears and prayers of her mother, once she is mistress of her own household she is immediately an authority on nutrition and the intricate relations of vitamins and calories and proteins to health. And it is this last that, when all is said and done, shapes the patterns of the meals and menus typical of the West Bronx. Good, healthy, nourishing food! “Can a boiled egg be bad for you?” “Who ever heard of chicken hurting anyone?” With such sweet reasonableness tradition conquers another generation.
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Perhaps it is because in her youth the present-day housewife slept most of her nights on a folding cot put up in a hallway or a dining room or in the kitchen. Whatever the reason, today both sides of Jerome Avenue are lined with stores specializing in bedding: special extra-thick mattresses, extra-curly coiled springs, super-warm and light quilts made of 100 per cent imported white European goose down. Macy’s, which is capable of packing a quilt with simple lamb’s wool, is somehow not good enough. But it doesn’t stop here. A girlhood spent sitting on hard kitchen chairs, or worse, on stiff-backed, gloomy dining-room chairs, bears fruit in the Bronx living room filled with the softest of down-cushioned chairs and sofas upholstered in the brightest of “cherry red” or “chartreuse.”
Now the down cushion, as everyone knows, is like the most delicate of soufflés—every jar, every touch, the merest fingerprint is clearly visible on the dimpled surface. Although it is true that she spent her youth badgering her mother to “throw out that damn dining room set, and get a living room so that we’ll have some place to sit, for-god’s-sakes,” the pleasure of looking at the unruffled surface transcends the grosser—and more masculine—enjoyment of sitting on it. Protests from the man of the house—“But, my God, what did we buy it for, if not to sit in?”—are met with that look of contempt which the aesthete bestows on a philistine.
The delight with the soft and sumptuous does not end with pillows and coverlets. Everywhere straight lines are abhorred. Lamps are preferred in the form of baroque vases, their shades adorned with poufs and swaths of ruffling, the drapery is of a weight and quantity calculated to set a luxurious barrier between the beholder and the University Avenue view. Wherever there is an upholstered surface, it is tufted; wherever a wooden one, it is carved into sinuous outlines and adorned with gilded leather.
But a couch, after all, is at best a couch, a chair is a chair, and a drum table, however gilded its adornments, still only a drum table. The hallmark of individuality, the sign of a discriminating owner aware of the finer things in life, is the handpainted oil painting. On the whole, they are of two types—the landscape and the portrait. The almost overwhelming preference for the landscape, or, more properly, the “scene,” probably indicates that people like to get their money’s worth. The scene is generally made up of four compositional elements arranged traditionally as follows: a rather gloomy green forest in the left foreground, a road winding diagonally across the picture, and a brighter area (a field of waving wheat or flowers) extending backwards from the middle distance on the right hand side. The whole is enlivened (here’s where the value comes in) with a figure walking down the road. These classical elements, however, are changeable and interchangeable. The road, for example, may become a winding brook (in which case the figure is replaced by a swan), or the field may become a lake, or the forest and field may change places. But the formula remains, light balanced by dark, or sunshine by gloom, to put it moralistically.
There are two comments which are appropriate upon seeing such a picture for the first time:
- The practical—”I’m telling you, the frame alone is worth it.”
- The aesthetic—“A picture like that, you won’t get tired of looking at so fast.”
I know of an exile in Tennessee who was unable to find anything in all of Nashville, or its environs; to match the splendor she remembered, and finally resorted to importing her furniture from the Bronx. You have only to step into her living room to feel yourself transported 500 miles back to the Grand Concourse. Even the draperies fall in litle puddles on the floor in the prevailing manner indicating (1) opulence—“Let it be a little longer”—(2) superlative housewifery—“Her floors are so clean you could eat off them.”
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Bronx style extends to clothing, too, for undeniably there is a Bronx style, the result of an appreciation for, even a reveling in rich fabrics, in sumptuous textures, in elaborate folds, in dense colors, and in complex designs. This emerges in the extravagant hats, the weighty fall of a dress, the dark and brilliant nail polish, and the sculptured, appliquéd, and platformed shoes.
Even men can taste a little of this sheer exuberance of costume, now that it has been semi-legalized as “California style.” They can have silky gabardines (just a bit more silky than Brooks Brothers would approve), smooth, rich flannel shirts, of an altogether different nature from the scratchy, plaid, woodsman’s type, and brilliant, broadly knotted ties. And so—a suit is not a suit, but an experience, just as a fur coat is the achievement of a decade of yearning. It would be a shame if people didn’t notice.
For Sunday afternoons the men have developed a special style suitable for airing the baby, milling about on the Concourse, visiting relatives in the neighborhood, and not inappropriate for local parties or poker sessions. This costume, often the cause of hidden, or sometimes energetically expressed, distress on the part of the wife, enables the Bronx husband to indulge his liking for informality (no tie), color (!), and comfort (sport shirt). With the aid and abetment of local haberdashers (unwittingly assisted by Esquire’s Bold Look), the men have gained their first victory in a decade over the delicate sensibilities of Bronx taste which draws a sharp distinction between what is proper for everyday and what is required for occasions. The women, however, will not be deterred from their knowledge that Sunday is the day to be straitened by corsets, pinched by shoes, hobbled by skirts, and burdened by furs.
Paradoxically enough, the New Look with its voluptuous flowing lines and its emphasis on the curving feminine form has not brought unmixed joy to the female population of the West Bronx. Because accompanying the New Look is also the New Hairdo which requires a closely cropped cap-like effect at the opposite pole from the upsweep, that seemingly careless arrangement of fluffs, curls, waves, and ringlets lacquered firmly into place from one week’s appointment with the hairdresser to the next, which has been the mode for the past ten years. Today it is only the forty-and-overs who still cling, although in diminishing numbers, to the hairdo which is already beginning to betray their generation.
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The role of the Concourse in Bronx life, like its geographical location, is central. Its once aristocratic buildings have become shabby and it no longer has its former prestige. But as the longest and broadest avenue in the Bronx it is still a name to conjure with. Do you desire a pastoral afternoon? At one end of the Concourse there is a small but intricate park, complete with bandstand and Sunday afternoon concerts. Or perhaps your taste fancies a walk on civilized pavements. There is the middle section where one may see and be seen. And at its far end is the big shopping center that is almost the lodestar of Bronx life. Here the best furniture and clothing stores display their brightest wares so that the young may gaze and be educated and the old may sigh and envy.
But the architecture of the Bronx is basically characterized by the long sober lines of six-story apartment houses, built some twenty to thirty years ago, running in a northerly and southerly direction, intersecting the main avenues. The majority of these edifices are built in a plain, unpretentious style vaguely suggesting Italian Renaissance fortresses. In harmony with their solid construction are the gloomy but magnificent hallways that even the marauding hands of three or four generations of children have not been able to disfigure. There are black-and-white tiled floors, laid out in formal patterns to resemble marble; there are gilded, pilastered walls, heavy mirrors, tables and chairs of an indefinite but regal historical period, and rococo flambeaux on the walls, unfortunately requiring the prosaic aid of electricity. The arrangement and interior architecture of the apartments also suggest palace chambers. The entrance to a meanly proportioned living room, for example, will be guarded by two elaborate French doors; the walls imitate wood paneling; the floors are parqueted; once again, there are flambeaux on the walls. Most buildings front directly on the street, but many, built on a larger scale, have center courts frequently ornamented by a pirouetting nymph or a cupid cut in stone.
The “new” houses of the Bronx (some are more than ten years old) are all built in a uniform “modem” style, with white or cream brick facade, casemented windows, and chromium-decorated doorways. Their interiors are likewise constructed smoothly, with a minimum of doorways, mouldings, and decoration. Despite their great number, these houses always seem exceptional, and, somehow, frivolous, appearing at random among the “regular” apartment houses, and practically never in solid blocks.
The sobriety and regularity of the life of the West Bronx is suggested more by the even and dull architecture of the side streets than by the color and movement of the shopping avenues. This regularity is enforced by the schedule of the head of the family: when he must get up to go to work, when he returns—this sets the boundaries of the day. Few of the housewives can afford to break the pattern with club meetings and charitable activities; most are completely absorbed by the creatures of their own creation—home, children, their style of living. Only the children, and particularly the adolescents among them, are free. Probably the children are little different outwardly from other city children. The girls play with their dolls, or mimic their mothers, or rather awkwardly play in street games. Once out of the confines of their apartments, the boys rush around the streets in packs, dressed uniformly during most of the year in plaid shirts and corduroy trousers. At play, both groups are rather anonymous. But the adolescents are another story.
When the weather is warm and pleasant, numerous islands of greenery, groupings of stone benches, and even little parks seem to appear in almost every area of the West Bronx. During the day the benches are occupied principally by mothers with baby carriages, old men talking with their friends, and old ladies sunning themselves. In the early evening these areas lose their calm. The benches are still occupied by the old, but perched on the iron railings or standing about in knots in out-of-the-way comers are groups of teen-age boys and girls. Gradually the darkness begins to seethe with their laughter and talk. Those still unattached wander casually but tensely up and down the paths hoping to be invited into a “crowd.” The girls here are young, carefully made up, carefully dressed, very wise, and terribly shy and afraid, for all their outward brazenness. The boys are very bold in their new power. It is up to them to set the tone of the group, to tease the girls, to make wisecracks about the passers-by, while the girls “just die laughing.” The “crowd” is free-floating in space and time. What relation can it have to a stifling apartment, to dowdy mothers, to school, to relatives? It is disembodied excitement; night after night the girls and boys are drawn by it to the same spot.
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The college students soon find themselves too old for this teen-age “crowd,” or too busy, or too superior. For many it means a period of loneliness, especially if they go to City College or Hunter College, which are restricted, respectively, to men and women. (Although today, as an aftermath of the war, these schools have a sprinkling of the opposite sex.) But in the West Bronx, at least, they have one rendezvous which has as much fascination as any park railing or street comer. This is the reference room of the Fordham Branch of the public library. Here, every evening and on Saturdays during the school year, every seat is taken with earnestly studying figures. As everyone knows, of course, a borrowed sheet of paper can lead to a conversation, a conversation to a date, a date to a romance, and a romance, well. . . .
But the adolescents and the college students represent temporary aberrations in Bronx life.
Some do manage to leave—a few intellectuals, those who marry non-Jews, or take jobs in strange cities. But those who remain are slowly drawn back into the vortex of family existence and the pattern of Bronx living.
It doesn’t take long for the teen-agers to discover that the generalized excitement of the crowd is not enough, and they begin either to pair up within the crowd or to find themselves boy friends or girl friends outside it. Their progression here is as simple as a pick-up in the Fordham library. Before she knows it, the young girl, who required not much more than a new suit every spring and a “good dress” for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, absolutely needs a “cocktail” dress, platform shoes, a fur jacket, if possible, and whatever other trappings she can afford or her mother is willing to buy for her. From here it is only a step to the suddenly awakening consciousness of interior decoration. When there emerges the chain of thoughts beginning, “When I get married. . . .” the circle has been closed.
So the present generation is only the continuator and the embellisher of the Bronx style. It does not revolt against the given. It does not seek for new modes of expression in its domestic arrangements. The younger generation (aside from the intellectuals, who, even so, are more infected by this milieu than they think) has not yet exhausted the present pattem. (The translation of sheared beaver into Guatemalan cotton or slipper satin into Javanese batik, or the use of leather Mexican drums for coffee tables, as against leather-topped mahogany, is a change in form, not substance.) To judge from its present unabated vigor among the newest generation, it would seem that some time must elapse before the hyperbolic extravagances of the imagination as applied to everyday living will begin to pall.
Elsewhere in this country the mechanics of living comprises only the framework within which other events are supposed to occur—like making money or belonging to a golf club, or playing bridge, or doing all the other things that handsome American families are shown doing in automobile ads. But in the West Bronx . . . there it is life.
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