subway together every day. My father’s theory was that Billywould bring customers into the store. Some of them might even remember his name. The salary wasn’t much, but he could earn commissions on the big items. Uncle Billy was grateful. He was not an educated man and regarded the books in my parents’ house with great respect. I saw him once pick up a book and squeeze it and riffle its pages and put it down and smile and shake his head. When my father talked to him about politics, or history, he felt honored. “Dave,” he’d say. “You should’ve been a professor.”
“Thanks, Willy,” my father said. I noticed both my father and my mother used the names Billy and Willy interchangeably as if there were no difference. Later I found out my mother’s family’s name was Levine. So Billy Wynne was Willy Levine. After I worked that out I always called him Uncle Willy.
Uncle Willy sometimes did tricks for us, and I remember one trick in particular that was my favorite and that he did very well. He’d stand in the doorway to my room and make it appear that a hand belonging to someone else just hidden from view was grabbing him by the throat and trying to drag him away. He would choke and gasp and his eyes would bulge and he’d try to tear at the clawlike hand; his head would disappear and reappear again in the struggle, and sometimes it was so realistic that I’d scream and rush to the door and beg him to stop, jumping up and swinging on the arm of the malign killer hand, which, of course, was his own. It didn’t matter that I knew how the trick was done, it was terrifying just the same.
W ith the lengthening of the days I stayed out longer. Warm breezes blew into the evening. The new leaves of the privet were pale green. People opened their windows and came out of doors, women with their baby carriages, children at games. I studied the more difficult or daring games against the time when I would be old enough to play them: hit and span, which tookyou into the gutter and was waged with one’s best marbles; the infernally difficult paddle ball, in which a small red ball connected to a paddle by a long single strand of rubber was hit so that it would fly off and return to the face of the paddle to be hit again. (Rhythm was everything.) And the variations of baseball, including stoop ball, punch ball and stickball; and also the ball games utilizing the sides of buildings or the cracks in sidewalks, such as slug or hit the stick.
Of course the ice cream vendors appeared—going very slowly and jingling their bells till a child came running. The Bungalow Bar truck was roofed like a fairy-tale house. A Good Humor pop, at a dime, was twice as expensive, but if your stick had the words Good Humor burned into it you’d get a free one. Competing with these motorized corporations was the swarthy steadfast Joe. The Sweet Potato Man was now dressed for the spring in a strawhat with the top punched out and his pushcart retooled to sell ices. Impassive as ever, Joe gave you for your two cents a scoop or ball of shaved ice over which he pumped the vile syrup of your choice—cherry, lemon or lime. The concoction was served in a small pleated paper cup that was so porous it soon took on the color of the syrup.
The mothers themselves came out for Harry’s vegetable wagon, the fruits and vegetables displayed in their wooden crates in tiers, steeply raked, and the prices of things scrawled on paper bags still folded flat and stuck over slats in the front of the crates. A spring scale hung from three chains. Harry was a thickset, red-faced man with a gravel voice and an incantatory salesmanship. He packed up the purchases of one customer while calling up to the windows the catalogue of what he had for sale, how good it was, and how fairly priced, in a kind of double mode of communication, the soft voice for the already sold customer, the loud voice to broadcast for the customer still to come. I liked Harry’s horse too, an
“Thanks, Willy,” my father said. I noticed both my father and my mother used the names Billy and Willy interchangeably as if there were no difference. Later I found out my mother’s family’s name was Levine. So Billy Wynne was Willy Levine. After I worked that out I always called him Uncle Willy.
Uncle Willy sometimes did tricks for us, and I remember one trick in particular that was my favorite and that he did very well. He’d stand in the doorway to my room and make it appear that a hand belonging to someone else just hidden from view was grabbing him by the throat and trying to drag him away. He would choke and gasp and his eyes would bulge and he’d try to tear at the clawlike hand; his head would disappear and reappear again in the struggle, and sometimes it was so realistic that I’d scream and rush to the door and beg him to stop, jumping up and swinging on the arm of the malign killer hand, which, of course, was his own. It didn’t matter that I knew how the trick was done, it was terrifying just the same.
W ith the lengthening of the days I stayed out longer. Warm breezes blew into the evening. The new leaves of the privet were pale green. People opened their windows and came out of doors, women with their baby carriages, children at games. I studied the more difficult or daring games against the time when I would be old enough to play them: hit and span, which tookyou into the gutter and was waged with one’s best marbles; the infernally difficult paddle ball, in which a small red ball connected to a paddle by a long single strand of rubber was hit so that it would fly off and return to the face of the paddle to be hit again. (Rhythm was everything.) And the variations of baseball, including stoop ball, punch ball and stickball; and also the ball games utilizing the sides of buildings or the cracks in sidewalks, such as slug or hit the stick.
Of course the ice cream vendors appeared—going very slowly and jingling their bells till a child came running. The Bungalow Bar truck was roofed like a fairy-tale house. A Good Humor pop, at a dime, was twice as expensive, but if your stick had the words Good Humor burned into it you’d get a free one. Competing with these motorized corporations was the swarthy steadfast Joe. The Sweet Potato Man was now dressed for the spring in a strawhat with the top punched out and his pushcart retooled to sell ices. Impassive as ever, Joe gave you for your two cents a scoop or ball of shaved ice over which he pumped the vile syrup of your choice—cherry, lemon or lime. The concoction was served in a small pleated paper cup that was so porous it soon took on the color of the syrup.
The mothers themselves came out for Harry’s vegetable wagon, the fruits and vegetables displayed in their wooden crates in tiers, steeply raked, and the prices of things scrawled on paper bags still folded flat and stuck over slats in the front of the crates. A spring scale hung from three chains. Harry was a thickset, red-faced man with a gravel voice and an incantatory salesmanship. He packed up the purchases of one customer while calling up to the windows the catalogue of what he had for sale, how good it was, and how fairly priced, in a kind of double mode of communication, the soft voice for the already sold customer, the loud voice to broadcast for the customer still to come. I liked Harry’s horse too, an
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