A Tale of Two Bagel Stores.
I swear these two stories are true.
(Perhaps someone from Da Bronx can back me up).
Tale #1 - The Underground Movement
If any time is designated as “official bagel time”…
it would most probably be Sunday morning.
It certainly was at our Sunday breakfast table in the Bronx.
My Sunday morning task:
Go to the Appetizing store…
and pick up what would go on the bagel.
If you don’t know what the nearly extinct Appetizing Store is… allow me to direct you to the esteemed Wikipedia. It definitely states:
“An Appetizing Store is best understood as a store that sells "the foods that one eats with bagels”.
So there you go. (It also sold exotic treats like Halvah and “shoe leather” sheets).
So at my local appetizing store, every Sunday, I’d pick up all that stuff that I would NEVER eat!! Pickled Herring, Smoked Whitefish, Sable, Salmon, Chubs, Nova… Yeech! My family loved it. Give me at BLT on a bagel and I was happy
BUT…we didn’t ever buy our bagels at the appetizing store. In fact, we didn’t buy OUR bagels anywhere on Sunday morning. Oh no! For us, that was a ritual that occurred late Saturday night!!
To me, the transaction seemed like it took place at 2:00 in the morning,
but it was probably more like 9 P.M. (Often after Chinese at Hom & Hom or pizza at Half Moon on Arthur Ave.)
My family would drive down Jerome Avenue to about 167th Street. We weren’t the only ones there. Cars were double-parked, up and down the street. BUT… There was no bagel store in sight. No signs. No entrance door. If you didn’t know about it… you’d never know about it.
But then…
Like we were entering a heroin den or some secret society meeting… my Dad would lead us down a narrow rickety metal staircase… to an amazing “bagel netherworld” .
The whole experience was like a dream.
The first thing to hit you was that incredible smell of freshly-baked dough.
I also remember it was always extremely hot
in that cramped, low-ceilinged “factory” beneath Jerome Avenue. And it was rather hard to see… with the dim lighting and smoke emanating from the huge ovens.
The “bakers”… like culinary Ooompah Loompahs,… would knead the dough, shape them by hand into perfect “rings”.. and line them up, one after another, on a seemingly endless “conveyor belt”.
Then, the “unborn” bagels would disappear into these massive, industrial ovens…
and minutes later…
emerge, ”full-grown”, tumbling into a welcoming bagel bin.
Perfect bagel masterpieces!
Wide-eyed and mesmerized,
I’d watch the entire process as if a divine miracle was occurring right in front of me.
Then, we’d eagerly get on line to get our brown paper bag filled up with these hot wonders.
And clutching our still-warm satchels, slowly make our way, back up the stairs…
to return to the real world
And while our treasures were designated to be served the next morning…
more often than not, on the way home…
my Dad would break off a toasty piece, hand it to me…
and between the taste and the entire experience…
I felt that I was blessed with poppy-seeded manna from heaven.
Tale #2: The Boulder
Not far from my “underground” bagel dreamland, a few blocks down on Jerome Avenue,
was another, more “earthly” bagel place.
While I was hardly a “regular”…
I would make the occasional stop on my way, walking to Yankee Stadium.
This bagelry was above-ground.
Located, un-glamorously, next to a semi-vacant, dirt-filled “lot”.
But one day…
this nondescript bagel outlet… became famous! (Or rather, infamous!)
Right there… ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE BRONX HOME NEWS… was a shocking photograph!!!!
This innocent local bagel place was… CRUSHED BY A GIANT BOULDER… that had rolled down from atop a hill above the neighboring lot!!!!
THE BRONX WAS ABUZZ!!!
As the gruesome details emerged… it seems that the owner, (a rather portly gentleman of about 300 pounds)… had met his match with the boulder… and was tragically killed…. AS HE WAS SITTING ON A TOILET!!!!! (They actually had a PHOTO of this!)
It was all a bit too much for a 10 year-old boy to deal with!!!
But it was all my friends and I would talk about… (and admittedly, joke about)… for weeks!
Now, you may ask… Are these bagel fables ? Or… Did they actually happen?
I swear on my toasted everything bagel with melted butter…
THEY DID!
Would love to hear your bagel memories.
