Mort Zachter - Dough

DOUGH

Winner of the
Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Award for Creative Nonfiction

A Memoir

MORT ZACHTER

Published by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
2007 by Mort Zachter

Portions of this memoir first appeared in U.S. One,
The New Jersey Lawyer, Weatherwise, Moment, Poetica, and Fourth Genre
(a publication of Michigan State University).

All rights reserved

Designed by Erin Kirk New
Set in 10 on 15 New Baskerville
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America

07 08 09 10 11 c 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zachter, Mort, 1958
Dough : a memoir / Mort Zachter.
p. cm. (Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Award for Creative Nonfiction)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN -13: 978-0-8203-2934-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN -10: 0-8203-2934-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. JewsNew York (State)New YorkBiography. 2. Zachter, Mort,
19583. JewsNew York (State)New YorkBiography. I. Title.
F128.9.J5Z27 2007
305.8940747dc22
[B]
2007006707

Frontispiece: The storefront of the family bakery was featured
on a postcard for City Lores Endangered Spaces Project.
Photo by Harvey Wang.

ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-3570-4

The life of every man is a diary in which he means
to write one story and writes another. And his
humblest hour is when he compares the volume
as it is with what he vowed to make it.
J AMES M. BARRIE

If we had invested in real estate, we would be rich.
HARRY WOLK

To my parents, Helen and Phil
In memory of my uncles, Joseph and Harry
For my children, Aleeza and Ari

DOUGH

Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Bread.

As a child, before I noticed much else, I smelled bread; but, had I known where to look, I would have experienced more.

In 1926, my Russian immigrant grandparents, Max and Lena Wolk, established a bakery at 350 East Ninth Street in New York City. Although my grandparents and their two sons are long gone, the business they started still exists in that very spot. It has changed, as all things do over the course of three generations. Yet, when I look at a 1960s photograph of my uncles, what I remember is that time and that place.

The black-and-white image shows two bespectacled men with short cropped hair and white-collared shirts, displaying bread and cake. Not by chance, my uncle Harry Wolk poses behind the cash register. Despite spending most of his time elsewhereprecisely where is still a point of family contentionhe possessed the financial brains of the operation. Uncle Harry was always telling jokes; he was an actor on a stage, and the customers loved him. But in this photo, he doesnt even smile.

His solemn-faced brother, my uncle Joe, is more accurately portrayed in the photo. Uncle Joe never laughed, at least not that I remember, and the customers said he was crusty. A religious man, Uncle Joe moved the merchandise but would have preferred to be praying. The letters CM , HP , and P written on the boxes behind him might as well be hieroglyphics; over the years their meaning has been lost. My mom, their sister, thinks the P might stand for prune Danish, but shes not sure. She was left out of the picture.

Memory is a funny thing, more gray than black and white, and constantly evolving. To illuminate my shadows of recollection, I pieced together this montage from the surprises and stories my uncles left behind.

Let me begin this way: in their entire lives, my uncles never baked a thing.

Im opposed to millionaires, but it would be a mistake to offer me the position.

Mark Twain

On a sweltering August afternoon, the clatter of jackhammers blasted through the open dinette window. I sat in the hallway next to the only phone in my parents Brooklyn tenement. Their apartment had no air conditioningnever did, never wouldand my backside stuck to the vinyl seat cover of the telephone chair. The black rotary phone rang. I looked down at the dusty piece of history and imagined Alexander Graham Bell calling from the great beyond. I picked up the receiver, which felt heavier than I remembered. Hello.

Hi, Mr. Zachter, its Bruce Geary.

The voice was old but quite lively. Mr. Geary sounded Irish, but I had no idea who he was.

Yes. I was Mr. Zachter, just not the Mr. Zachter he thought he was talking to.

There is a million dollars in the money-market account. I suggest you buy a million dollars worth of treasuries to maximize the return.

I was hearing things. No one in my family had that kind of dough. The heat had gotten to me. It must be a misunderstanding. A practical joke. I stared at the river of stains running down the walls from the ceiling. When I had lived here as a child, sleeping in the dinette with my head next to the Frigidaire, the upstairs apartment bathroom had leaked. Some things never change.

But some do.

Hello, Mr. Zachter, are you there?

Yes. This is Mort Zachter. My dad is in the hospital. He had surgery for colon cancer and wont be home for a while. Who are you?

Im your uncles stockbroker, known him forty years. Ive been working with your father recently.

At that moment, Uncle Harry, who had moved in with my parents two years before due to his dementia, sat in the living room, slowly sinking into an upholstered chair with broken springs, his feet resting on a well-worn patch of carpet. His uncombed hair was more yellow than gray, his face paper white; his eyeglasses rested on the tip of his nose, but his eyes were vacant. He needed a shave.

Mr. Geary, did I understand you correctly? Did you say my uncle has a brokerage account with a million dollars in the money-market fund?

Yes.

I let that settle in for a minute. I didnt know how to respond. Growing up I had felt poornot a homeless, hungry, dressed-in-rags poor, but a never-discussed sense that we simply couldnt afford better. Not better than our one-bedroom apartment, not better than vacations in Art Deco dives on Miamis Collins Avenue only in the summer, and not better than view-obstructed seats behind a pole at the old Yankee Stadium. At thirty-six, I knew lives of not-better-than plus a million dollars didnt add up.

Mr. Geary broke the silence. Would you like me to send you the papers to get signed giving you power of attorney over the account?