When I was eleven years old I was introduced to the world of work at DeRosa’s fruit store on Fifth Avenue and Degraw Street in Brooklyn. Through the intervention of my persuasive grandfather who was always looking out for my leisurely interests, I was hired by Gaetano DeRosa at $4.00 a week to polish apples and stack fruit. “Stacker” was my official title but I was also a “go-fer” who in his spare time swept floors when needed, especially when Mr. DeRosa looked my way. For the most part the job was uneventful unless a few apples or oranges hit the floor and Mr. DeRosa hit the ceiling. With my first salary of four one-dollar bills I impulsively stopped at a sporting goods store on my way home and used all of my hard earned money to purchase an extraordinary hunting knife in a cowhide sheath. It was a wonderful idea, I thought, until I brought it home and Grandma looked at me as if I were un babbu stuppidu. I was told it was not only sinful but a horrible mistake not worthy of a member of our family. From then on I dutifully brought my earnings personally to Grandma from which she doled out all of a quarter for me to lavishly spend on anything I so desired. Summer ended and so did my first job as a “stacker” in our free enterprise system.
Not too long after, I was recruited again by my grandfather to join the staff at Giuliano’s’s drug store on Fifth Ave. & President St. Although I was not pleased with the idea, I was somehow impressed because of the gray jacket I was to wear so I would look like a young pharmacist. Feeling sorry for myself because of the loss of free time after school, I would eat an entire fresh mozzarella on my way to work while noticing that my friends were enjoying themselves playing stickball on Union Street. My favorite part of the drug store job was the nightly ritual of serving myself a double cone of free ice cream before heading home at the end of the day. This new job in training under the tutelage of a boy two years older than me was to eventually become a full-fledged soda jerk. However, in the meantime I was to empty the coal furnace of its ashes as often as once a week and wash all the dirty glasses behind the soda fountain. Bronzino, the young pharmacist who worked for the Giulianos, had a difficult time adjusting to my devil-may-care attitude and was sticking it to me whenever he felt like it.
“This, young man, is what a clean glass is supposed to look like”, the know-it-all would raise his voice to me, pushing the glass within an inch of my forehead.
After the third time, it was all I could bear so I told him to shove his glasses behind him somewhere south of his belt. Of course he immediately fired me for that but I felt somewhat vindicated and proud of myself. Until, of course, I saw the whites of Grandpa’s eyes. Without even hearing my excellent defense or any of my impassioned pleas, my grandfather immediately took me by the arm and the ear and marched me back to the drug store. There, in front of customers and the world, I was made to apologize to the arrogant Bronzino. Against his better judgment, he reluctantly accepted and I swallowed my pride and my ice cream on the way home that night.
During the pre-Christmas holidays my mother worked part time as a sales clerk for Rose and Ellie’s variety store on Fifth Avenue, across the street from the drug store of all places. You guessed it. She got me the job of working there after school and on Saturdays. Rose and Ellie were a Jewish couple selling their wares in an Italian neighborhood. They had hired me not only because of my mother but for the reason that I knew a few words of Sicilian and they needed an interpreter for the old Italian ladies who shopped on the avenue. For those of you who don’t know, a variety store sells knick knacks and everything in between. And a helluva lot of plates, cups and saucers which had to be carried up from the basement. Now in this basement lived a very large undomesticated cat who apparently did not like fourteen year-old Sicilian boys. That cat was a demon, and more than once I dreaded going down into that dungeon. On one memorable afternoon, I had to retrieve some cups from the basement. When I was squeezing myself between the stacks of boxes I saw that monster cat above me on top of a shelf. I was apparently blocking its path so it raised its back, hissed and leaped through the air toward me while I leaned back to get out of its way. It was too late and the cat grabbed on to my left leg with its sharp claws until it drew blood through my corduroys. While yelling for Rose or Ellie to quickly come and save me I violently shook the cat off my leg and ran to the stairs. It was a narrow escape and I have never forgiven that damn cat. Of course, I stayed away from the basement until I brought a decent baseball bat from home. Then it would squint its eyes at me and hiss while I cursed it and waved the bat in its direction. I soon quit Rose and Ellie’s to play stickball on Union Street.
My next and last job before graduation from high school was at the corner candy store for Sal and Rosalie. I was still working my way up but now I was an experienced soda jerk, and also experienced in the ways of “stacking’, emptying coal furnaces and washing glasses for irritable young pharmacists. I was also good at fighting monster cats but I dreaded going down into dark basements. I worked at the candy store for about a year and my young apprenticeship was soon complete. At that time I thought the hard part was over with and that from now on it would be clear sailing. But when I graduated from high school and crossed the river to Manhattan (which we called New York back then) that’s when the real work began.
