see how I was making out. “Ready for the test?” he asked me.
“A second,” I said, deep in concentration. A moment later the Lincoln head fell out of the penny.
“Practice over?” Zalatnick asked, a penny in his hand. Then he noticed the Lincoln head on the bench. He picked it up and examined it under an eye loupe. A moment later he picked up the frame of the penny’s remains and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve never done this before?”
“Never,” I said.
The men were now staring at me openly.
“Pay attention to your work,” bellowed Zalatnick, then gestured for me to follow him into the privacy of his office.
“You’ve got a lot of confidence,” Zalatnick said. “And a steady hand.”
“Thank you,” I said, my right hand in my pocket feeling the brand new cut-out penny and Lincoln head Max had provided me with to substitute for the other one if the work hadn’t gone right. Truthfully I was very glad I didn’t have to use my backup penny. Now I could keep it as a souvenir of a crime I didn’t commit.
“I’ll teach you twenty minutes each morning if you come in twenty minutes to eight, before the men. You get carfare and lunch money. When you produce stuff I can sell, you’ll get a dollar an hour to start. That’s a lot of money.”
I nodded.
“I’ll provide you with a loan apron,” Zalatnick said. “When you’re making money, you buy your own.”
I nodded again.
“Okay?” Zalatnick concluded, standing. “Come in Monday.”
“I’d like to borrow a saw and two blades,” I said, “for practice over the weekend.”
Zalatnick must have thought, Boy this is an ambitious pisher. “If you break a blade, you pay for it.”
“Of course,” I said.
“One more thing,” Zalatnick said, nodding toward the homely young woman. “She’s mine.”
I practiced all day Saturday and Sunday. When I finished with the drilled pennies, I cut into undrilled ones and tried all kinds of experiments for the fun of it, making Lincoln look bald or putting a bump on Lincoln’s nose. By Monday morning at seven forty, I handled the delicate saw as if it were an extension of my own hand.
“Some apprentice!” Zalatnick told Max the following week. “He’s as good as Moshe, who’s been with me for three years!”
“Then start paying him,” Max said.
And so within a year, I was making out of metal a leaf so real-looking an onlooker could fool himself for half a second into believing it was from a tree. And within two years, as anyone who knew me could have predicted, I had parted company with Zalatnick and set up a shop in Chicago. Within months I had seven apprentices of my own. My apprentices worked as hard as I did. We all wanted to be perfect. Soon my shop of master workmen had a Saturday morning lineup of customers who, in those wild days of the twenties, had money to spend as if there was no tomorrow. Tomorrow, meaning 1929, was still a few years off.
But whatever my hands did for metal, they did more for the ladies that I met, and to be quick about it, though I might have taken up with any of three dozen beauties in Chicago, I eventually settled in to live in sin with a tall, and it was said royal-looking, beauty from Kiev, a properly educated woman who carried herself like a queen, and who joined with a carpenter’s apprentice from Zhitomir to effect God’s will.
God’s will, it turned out, was that I and the queen from Kiev, Zipporah, should share an apartment on Kedzie Avenue for a wonderful year, and then, satisfied that our backgrounds mattered less than the common ground of a mattress holding two contented lovers tangled in a good night’s aftersleep, we agreed, amidst much kissing and relief of our friends, to get married.
Comment by Zipporah
Marriage? Forever? How could an educated woman marry a man who left school at the age of eight? Do I look like a housekeeper who’d tie herself to the tail of her husband’s kite? I could fly by myself. I
“A second,” I said, deep in concentration. A moment later the Lincoln head fell out of the penny.
“Practice over?” Zalatnick asked, a penny in his hand. Then he noticed the Lincoln head on the bench. He picked it up and examined it under an eye loupe. A moment later he picked up the frame of the penny’s remains and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve never done this before?”
“Never,” I said.
The men were now staring at me openly.
“Pay attention to your work,” bellowed Zalatnick, then gestured for me to follow him into the privacy of his office.
“You’ve got a lot of confidence,” Zalatnick said. “And a steady hand.”
“Thank you,” I said, my right hand in my pocket feeling the brand new cut-out penny and Lincoln head Max had provided me with to substitute for the other one if the work hadn’t gone right. Truthfully I was very glad I didn’t have to use my backup penny. Now I could keep it as a souvenir of a crime I didn’t commit.
“I’ll teach you twenty minutes each morning if you come in twenty minutes to eight, before the men. You get carfare and lunch money. When you produce stuff I can sell, you’ll get a dollar an hour to start. That’s a lot of money.”
I nodded.
“I’ll provide you with a loan apron,” Zalatnick said. “When you’re making money, you buy your own.”
I nodded again.
“Okay?” Zalatnick concluded, standing. “Come in Monday.”
“I’d like to borrow a saw and two blades,” I said, “for practice over the weekend.”
Zalatnick must have thought, Boy this is an ambitious pisher. “If you break a blade, you pay for it.”
“Of course,” I said.
“One more thing,” Zalatnick said, nodding toward the homely young woman. “She’s mine.”
I practiced all day Saturday and Sunday. When I finished with the drilled pennies, I cut into undrilled ones and tried all kinds of experiments for the fun of it, making Lincoln look bald or putting a bump on Lincoln’s nose. By Monday morning at seven forty, I handled the delicate saw as if it were an extension of my own hand.
“Some apprentice!” Zalatnick told Max the following week. “He’s as good as Moshe, who’s been with me for three years!”
“Then start paying him,” Max said.
And so within a year, I was making out of metal a leaf so real-looking an onlooker could fool himself for half a second into believing it was from a tree. And within two years, as anyone who knew me could have predicted, I had parted company with Zalatnick and set up a shop in Chicago. Within months I had seven apprentices of my own. My apprentices worked as hard as I did. We all wanted to be perfect. Soon my shop of master workmen had a Saturday morning lineup of customers who, in those wild days of the twenties, had money to spend as if there was no tomorrow. Tomorrow, meaning 1929, was still a few years off.
But whatever my hands did for metal, they did more for the ladies that I met, and to be quick about it, though I might have taken up with any of three dozen beauties in Chicago, I eventually settled in to live in sin with a tall, and it was said royal-looking, beauty from Kiev, a properly educated woman who carried herself like a queen, and who joined with a carpenter’s apprentice from Zhitomir to effect God’s will.
God’s will, it turned out, was that I and the queen from Kiev, Zipporah, should share an apartment on Kedzie Avenue for a wonderful year, and then, satisfied that our backgrounds mattered less than the common ground of a mattress holding two contented lovers tangled in a good night’s aftersleep, we agreed, amidst much kissing and relief of our friends, to get married.
Comment by Zipporah
Marriage? Forever? How could an educated woman marry a man who left school at the age of eight? Do I look like a housekeeper who’d tie herself to the tail of her husband’s kite? I could fly by myself. I
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