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| Gristedes Supermarket, W 86th Street, New York City. |
Months before we fled the Soviet Union I got to taste a Snickers bar. They had finally penetrated our fledgling perestroika’s black market at half of my parents’ monthly salaries. I remember my mother carefully unwrapping it, like a live explosive, and cutting it in 4 equal-size lumps: one for me, one for my kid brother, one for dad, one for herself. For everything else, if you endured the hours-long lines, you were grateful to have the last cut of something dead and soggy wrapped in the pages of Pravda.
That was my world less than 48 hours before we landed in JFK. More than 30 years since, it's hard to imagine a child’s shock at the abundance that was Gristedes. But it must have rewired my 10-year-old brain. Bursts of colorful citrus fruit, a rotisserie chicken spinning all by itself inside a see-through oven, twenty different kinds of salami, already sliced. I was especially impressed with the marshmallows: strange puffs of processed sugar packed snuggly into pouches so cheerful that their actual taste was an afterthought to me. The shelves were stacked and endless, like some space-age amusement park, bright and pungent with aromas I couldn’t name. Nor were they cordoned off or lorded over by some aproned torgovka with a permanent scowl. I took what I wanted, piled it into a sleek cart, and wheeled it freely along the isles.
Our Gristedes days were short lived though. NYANA had accommodated Soviet Jews in semi-vacant inns and buildings, but only for a few months. We were lucky to have landed on West 86th Street (recently renamed Isaac Bashevis Singer Way), on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Then we had to move on, to the outer boroughs, as most other refugees have done since the Castle Garden days, washing up here with little more than a change of clothes.
I’ll never live on the Upper West Side again. But sometimes I come up there to check on my Gristedes. Last time I peeked inside, its floors were being gutted. I hope they’re only renovating, not closing down. Who gets nostalgic about a supermarket? It's not exactly the old Penn Station, but I'll grieve over its demise all the same, even if I'm the only one grieving.
That was my world less than 48 hours before we landed in JFK. More than 30 years since, it's hard to imagine a child’s shock at the abundance that was Gristedes. But it must have rewired my 10-year-old brain. Bursts of colorful citrus fruit, a rotisserie chicken spinning all by itself inside a see-through oven, twenty different kinds of salami, already sliced. I was especially impressed with the marshmallows: strange puffs of processed sugar packed snuggly into pouches so cheerful that their actual taste was an afterthought to me. The shelves were stacked and endless, like some space-age amusement park, bright and pungent with aromas I couldn’t name. Nor were they cordoned off or lorded over by some aproned torgovka with a permanent scowl. I took what I wanted, piled it into a sleek cart, and wheeled it freely along the isles.
Our Gristedes days were short lived though. NYANA had accommodated Soviet Jews in semi-vacant inns and buildings, but only for a few months. We were lucky to have landed on West 86th Street (recently renamed Isaac Bashevis Singer Way), on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Then we had to move on, to the outer boroughs, as most other refugees have done since the Castle Garden days, washing up here with little more than a change of clothes.
I’ll never live on the Upper West Side again. But sometimes I come up there to check on my Gristedes. Last time I peeked inside, its floors were being gutted. I hope they’re only renovating, not closing down. Who gets nostalgic about a supermarket? It's not exactly the old Penn Station, but I'll grieve over its demise all the same, even if I'm the only one grieving.
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