Elye and Pinye work in different shahps. Elye is an ahpereydeh. Pinye is a presseh. An ahpereydeh sews on a machine. That’s something you have to learn. The machine doesn’t run by itself.
How did Elye get to be an ahpereydeh when our family never had a tailor or a machinist all the way back to our great-great-grandfathers? We’ve always been rabbis, cantors, beadles — that’s what my mother says. Who would have thought we’d fall so low? But this is America. In America there’s nothing you can’t do. You can be anything.
Take a rabbi, for example. A rabbi is supposed to have studied for years. But in America there are rabbis called revrindz who were ordinary butchers back in Russia. Elye met a revrind who does circumcisions. In the old country he was a woman’s tailor.
“You must be joking,” Elye said. “This is America,” answered the revrind.
So how did my brother learn to run a machine? The same way the ladies’ tailor learned to do circumcisions. It took him a while to get the hang of it. First they gave him some leftover fabric to practice with. The next morning they told him to start sewing. You probably think he made a mess of it. Actually, he did pretty well. He did a lot better than Pinye.
That’s not because Pinye is lazy. Nothing is further from the truth. Pinye is ready for any drudge work that will help him make a living in America. His problem is being nearsighted and in a rush. They sat him down next to Elye and gave him some leftovers too — and right away he has an eksehdent and sews his left sleeve to the machine! He’s lucky he didn’t sew his hand to it. Did everyone split their sides! All the ahpereydehz were hooting and hollering. Grinhawn, they called Pinye. A grinhawn is someone just off the boat who doesn’t know which end is up. It’s a bad name to be called, a lot worse than a thief. And that wasn’t all. Listen to this.
In Elye’s shahp where Pinye tried learning to sew, there happens to be an old friend of ours: Pinye’s bugaboo, the tailor from Heysen. It was just Pinye’s luck to meet up with him again — and what a meeting! The tailor from Heysen is a big shot in that shahp. He’s not an ahpereydeh, he’s a kahdeh. That means he cuts the fabric that the ahpereydehz sew. And he thinks he’s too good even for that. He doesn’t plan to hang around long because he has his sights set on being a dizeineh. A dizeineh is big time. He can make fifty, seventy-five, a hundred dahlehz a week! When you strike it rich, you strike it rich. As Brokheh puts it: “God gives everyone a lot. He gives some a lot of money and some a lot of trouble.”
Pinye ran into the tailor from Heysen his first day in the shahp. The tailor took off his snazzy glasses, stuck out a hand, and said: “Hallaw, homeboy! Hah duh yuh doo?” Pinye is so blind that he didn’t recognize the joker until he mentioned the Prince Albert. Then, says Pinye, he felt three holes in his heart. You might ask what the tailor from Heysen ever did to Pinye. But Pinye can’t stand the looks of him. He wouldn’t work with him in one shop if he were paid a thousand dahlehz an hour. That’s what made him sew his sleeve to the machine. He was that flustered.
In short, Pinye’s not cut out to be an ahpereydeh. He’s found a dzhahb in another shahp as a presseh. Right now he’s an assistant presseh. Once he learns the ropes, he’ll be up for promotion. He can rise pretty high, he says.
How high is that?
“It’s anyone’s guess,” Pinye says. “The sky is the limit. Not even Kahnegi, Vendehbilt, or Rahknfelleh knew how far they would go.”
Meanwhile Pinye is having a hard time. His problem is always being in a hurry. He doesn’t see too well, either. Every night he comes home dragging his tail.
One night he came with a burned nose. What happened? He burned it on his own iron. How do an iron and a nose get together? Pinye blames the nose. He was bending over to look for some fabric when it ran into the iron.
“A shlimazel! If he fell into a snow bank, he’d crack his skull on a rock.”
I don’t suppose I have to tell you that’s from Brokheh. She has a big mouth, Brokheh does.
Brokheh isn’t satisfied. Neither are my mother and Taybl. Have you ever seen a satisfied woman?
They don’t like the men’s slaving to make a living in America. A dzhahb in a shahp is no treat. It starts at seven-thirty every morning and you have to allow an hour for travel, plus time for morning prayers and a bite to eat. You can figure out for yourself when that means getting up — and you want to be on time, because you’re docked half a day’s pay for each five minutes you’re late. How does anyone know how late you are? Leave it to America! Every shahp makes you tell it when you come to work. It’s called pahntshink deh klahk.
The klahk hangs on a wall. Elye says it’s called a klahk because it goes klik-klahk. A klahk that fits into your pocket, he says, is a vahtsh. “So why is it called a vahtsh?” I ask. “What should it be called?” Elye says. “A tahk,” I say. “Why a tahk?” Elye asks. “Because it goes tik-tahk,” I say. Elye got mad and told me I’d learned to think backwards from Pinye.
I’m glad Pinye wasn’t there. They would have fought over vahtsh just like they did over brekfish. Elye said it’s called brekfish because you eat herring. “In that case,” said Pinye, “why isn’t it called brekherrink?” “What a dope you are!” Elye said. “Don’t you know a herrink is a fish?” Pinye saw that Elye had him there and said: “You know what? Let’s ask an American.”
Well, right away they stop a smooth-shaven Jew in the street and say to him: “Brother! How long have you been in America?”
“Thirty years,” says the man. “How come you ask?”
“We have a question,” they say. “Why do Americans call the morning meal brekfish?”
The Jew looked at them and said: “Who says it’s called brekfish?” “Then what is it called?”
“Brekfist! Brekfist! Brekfist!” The Jew shouted three times in their face and turned to go. First, though, he added:
“Grinhawnz!”
It doesn’t look like we’ll grow old in the shahp. Elye says there are problems with the fawmin. Every shahp has a fawmin who’s in charge. In fact, every floor has a fawmin. The fawmin on Elye’s floor is a rat. He’s an old ahpereydeh who was promoted. The workers say he’s worse than the bawss. There’s a rumor that he’s tinkered with the klahk to make you seem late when you’re on time. A real bastard! And Pinye has even nicer things to say about his shahp. You’re not allowed to look at a noospeypeh there, not even during the lunch break. You’re not allowed to smoke. You’re not even allowed to talk. Pinye says it’s so quiet that you could hear the flies buzz if it weren’t for the noise of the machines.
The good thing is that the irons are gas-heated. The bad thing is that the gas stinks. It stinks in Elye’s shahp too. Elye’s bawss calls it gaass. Pinye’s bawss calls it gez. So now they argue about that too.
To make a long story short, the gez gives the workers such a headache that they have to keep taking breaks. The bawss makes up for that on pehdeh, when he docks the lost time from their pay. And you can add being docked for coming late and leaving early, not to mention days that you’re sick.
It’s more than anyone can take. There’s going to be a streik.
WE’RE ON STREIK!
I tell you, going on streik beats all! What it’s like is …well, suppose you send your child to the heder and the teacher hits him so hard that you take him out and look for another teacher. Meanwhile, there’s no school.