Chapter One: The Big Brooklyn Bagel Blow-Out

the big Brooklyn Bagel Blow-Out
by Leslie Aaron

Chapter I: Alfie Buys It BigTime....

It was sort of like that.
Who would have believed it?...
But they yanked it out of his throat, Pudgy said. A big doughy mass. Big Alfie, the terror of Bklyn. Croaked on a bagel and not even a schmeer in sight.
Was that justice or what?

They said that they found him down by the Cadman Street exit off the bridge. Not any bridge you understand, “the Bridge!” You know the one I’m talking about...the one that goes to Brooklyn-- the one that proved to all the nay-sayers that strands of wire, tightly woven and formed into cables could support just about anything --even Aunt Lee with her stiff corsets and all the gold she brought over from the old country -- the Bridge that brought two cities together to form the biggest city in the world....the one that city slickers thought they could sell to the out-of-town rubes and oftentimes did. The icon that stands for the place in most people’s minds...

Look! Lots of people talk about it; but nobody understands it.. Most have it all have it wrong. Brooklyn is literally beyond comprehension. Even though it’s bigger than most places, including it’s neighbor Manhattan… even though its real population is more than 4 million people (nobody knows the real population)...even though its made up of some ninety ethnic groups....and its immigrants come from every place in the world every year to get lost in the countless ethnic barrios that criss-cross its geography like so many veins and arteries and swell its ranks till it almost implodes, it is still the ultimately unknowable place.

.But, of course, the die-hards will tell that Brooklyn’s not what it was...now that the Dodgers are dodging palm trees instead of trolley cars....and Ebbets Field has transmogrified from a ball park into a housing project....and George Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park is no longer where you can ride a metal horse , tumble down onto a spinning turntable, get your skirt blown over your head and even get poked by midget clown with a cattle prod. No, we have been spared all of that. Now that the Brooklyn Eagle--the paper that was prescient enough to fight the union between Brooklyn and the city across the river-- has been reduced to a Brooklyn pigeon...and the downtown Brooklyn Paramount-- where if Rock and Roll was not born it was nurtured-- is busy saving souls...and nothing else is what it was except for a few aging Brooklyn Polar Bears who still jump into the waters off Coney every January to prove that they are alive despite the fact that most of their kids have written them off.

...Nevertheless, the endless boardwalk of dreams is still there,... the elevated line still deposits you on Stillwell,...the crunchy, crispy, juicy original Nathan Handwerker hot dogs across the street still beckon….Prospect park is still playing host to lovers even though they may whisper sweet nothings to each other in recondite languages ....... the Gowanis ,with its enduring stench, is still the unofficial cemetery for half of Brooklyn’s mobsters,... the tawdry VFW hall is still there, the one that straddles the site where a few hearty Marylanders forfeited their lives so that our country’s leader could escape to fight another day and, in the process, create a county the likes of which the world has never seen. And the Heights’ promenade, if anything, has the one thing that Manhattan does not, unparalleled views of a city without parallel, an ever-changing montage of buildings, harbor and a skyline that stretches to infinity with its vertical twinkling lights that make heaven and earth look the same,.... And the famous and not so famous are still being interred in Brooklyn’s own Greenwood cemetery in condo-like mausoleums festooned with everything except the ubiquitous TV antenna (we are assured that that will not be long in coming) ... the no longer cobblestoned streets of downtown Brooklyn still exist in their myriad permutations, although today the trolley cars that earned the Dodgers their name are missing; nevertheless, they masses yearning to be free still come in record numbers speaking every language and dialect known to man,...and Bay Ridge is still fundamentally alive and hopping with its scores of gaily festooned Irish bars serving its myriad brews distilled from oats and grain and even rice until the last standing Irishman falls off his stool and calls it quits...and South Brooklyn is still as colorful as ever with its scores of Italian clubs where grown men sit around all day and gossip or play bocci at the local park....and there are still hundreds, maybe thousands of little restaurants that now cater to the invading Yuppies from “the City” and points west --except now they serve up a world stew of sushi, empenadas, grits and greens, mulligan stew, Norwegian meatballs, kishka, bracciola, sui mei, noodles a thousand different ways, borscht, hibachi steak, angel hair pasta, lebanese pizza, burritos, gnocci….and who knows how many other concotions too wild too imagine--and make no mistake about it, Brooklyn is still home to more churches than anywhere else....only, today, some of them have been transmuted into condos, or offices, or play centers for urban kids. That’s the Brooklyn of today....the Brooklyn of lawyers, judges, artists, accountants, carpenters, retailers, techies, and even the Big Alfies of the world -- the bedroom community for countless wealthy New Yorkers and working class strivers and the misfits who don’t fit in anywhere else and the immigrants of every nation on earth making it one of the most colorful landscapes in America. But that’s a whole other issue and not why we’re here today.

Today, is Alfie’s day....or should I say more accurately, Alfie’s last day. And that’s what we’re here to remember. Not that too many people will record it as any great loss to humanity. If there was ever an archetype hero, Alfie was his polar opposite. To define Big Alfie as prototypical slime would be an unfair understatement. Alfie was not only the lowest of the low, he was the biggest of the big. And anybody, anybody in that position has enemies. More than you could usually count on most people’s fingers and toes (except my cousin Joey who must have been born to hitchhike having been blessed with an extra thumb on each hand.) Everyone knew that. But to bump the big guy off!...in broad daylight on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world. . Well, as they say, you needed big ones. You know what I mean. What’s the word?. Cajones.

Of course, there were no witnesses. There never are when the best you could hope for is cement overshoes. Anybody who wonders how there can be no witnesses out of 4 million people obviously misses the point and certainly doesn’t know Brooklyn. The simple fact is, as any Brooklyn native will tell you, when you decide to give someone up, my friend, you’d better make out your will and say good-bye to everyone you know and love, because it is all over. The big mucky-mucks who pontificate about certain inalienable rights, would have you believe that you will be protected under the system, at least until the next cutback and then you are so much dead meat. Even if you move to Peoria, the guys with the swarthy complexions and drooping mustaches will find you. In point of fact, being a witness is probably the unhealthiest line of work there is.

Anyway, they say he was all blue and really ugly when they found him. Not that he was all that much better looking when he was alive. In fact, he kind of got off on intimidating people with his looks. A giant head on top of a body that didn’t fit. A face which was all scarred with a bulbous nose, like a handle, with all the veins showing and the hideous long ugly teeth, the warts and hair coming out of his ears. Come to think about it, with a puss like that what else could he have done except scare people. And scare people, he did. But while that alone was enough to make you want to run in the opposite direction, that was not the whole picture. You had to add a large shapeless mass of a body with arms like most peoples waists and hands like hams that hung down almost to the floor.

Alfie was not unlike that elephant designed by a committee. In point of fact,
the shock of seeing the whole Alfie the first time was said to bring about
instant paralysis. .. Many people just became speechless. They would see Alfie and stutter and stammer and forget how to use the language they were born with.. Alfie had that power. People around him talked like little babies. I mean one bad look from Alfie was enough to make you want to change your phone number, dye your hair, grow a mustache and join the witness protection program. Just like that.

Sure, his reputation had more than a little to do with it. Impress the guys on the corner, and you became a legend--at least on your block!. And the guys on his corner would often tell how Alfie blew away at least twenty guys...and when they told us, they would look around, with their eyes darting back and forth in their heads, just making sure that Alfie wasn’t hanging around the corner and hanging on every word.

In the old neighborhood, Alfie was called a bad news guy. That’s kind of Brooklyn shorthand for the kind of guy you didn’t want to cross. A lot of guys who did wound up not breathing any longer with their faces down in a bowl of pasta.

(It’s funny how that works. You never of anyone getting blitzed over a bowl of borscht...or pot roast or jumbalaya. It’s always pasta. And the victim’s head is always in the sauce.. Knowing the statistics, it would seem that the way to a long life and good health is to eliminate pasta and sauce from your diet completely and never give up anybody, ever. . Then you would be onto something. . I know for a fact that Brooklyn insurers already provide discounts in premiums for those who elect to stay out of Italian restaurants. It’s the mystical clause number 17; nobody ever talks about it and seldom is it written up but when they write your policy, and if you fit the bill, clause number 17 is definitely something you should haggle over. . And if I’ve given a way a big secret, well that’s how it goes.)

Anyway, Big Alfie was known as the Brooklyn bagel king.. I mean if you wanted anything to do with those indigestible “cheerios” with thyroid trouble, you had to go through Alfie. It was like a right of passage. And if you hit it off, and the kick back was good, you were in business... And from then on out, you had it made. Alfie took care of you and you took care of Alfie. And that’s the way it always was...or so it seemed. And that made the world go round. Which by itself was not all that bad a deal. Of course, there was a down side that most of his customers chose to forget. Sure, you had to sell your soul to the man with the pitchfork....but. hey, that day of reckoning wasn’t coming up tomorrow..... and wasn’t all life is a matter of compromise anyway? See what I mean? You can rationalize virtually anything; that is if you’re motivated enough..

It always seemed like a funny way to make a buck. You know, I mean after all
why would anyone would want to even eat those things, much less get into to the business of selling them. I guess if you thought about it could have been some kind of Jewish test of fortitude . They stuck one of those things in front of you...and, then if that wasn’t enough, they stuck some raw fish on it, and then said, “eat.” And if you ate, and you managed to keep it down, you were man enough to fight Arabs. Now you can’t even get a decent bagel in Brooklyn anymore, unless Alfie had something to do with it, and there are more Arabs with dish towels wrapped around their heads in the Borough than you can shake a stick at. Figure it out.


When you think about it, we Christians really had it easy in comparison. All we had to do was say a few Hail Mary’s and put up with a few beatings from the sisters and we got away with murder. But those Jewish guys, you had to hand it to them, they were tough. And not only they were tough, their mothers were even tougher. And their fathers, to put up with their wives, they had to be the toughest of all. The way I figure it, it had to be the food. No surprise they beat the piss out of those guys in long robes who ate all of that soft stuff in bowls. With just their right hand mind you. What sissies.

Yeah, those Jews really knew how to train their kids. I mean imagine growing up eating something that could double as a weapon. Think about it. If that isn’t the key to survival, what is. You could attach a string to one of those suckers and brain everyone in sight. Maybe those white things that Arabs wear is symbol to commemorate all those Arab who were transported to Mecca by bagel bashers from the Old Testament . This may be a stretch but who can say? Can you? And can you really tell me for sure what David had in his sling when he slew Goliath? No, of course not. It is a closely guarded secret to this day known only to a few in the Israeli High Command and leading Orthodox archivests who’ve kept it under wraps for over 2,000 years. . I’ve even heard it said, that deep in the Israeli desert, there are teams of scientists conducting experiments to come up with new formulae designed to harden a new generation of young Israelites. You don’t believe it. Keep in mind, my friend, that all history is written by the survivors. And if they don’t want you to know something, do you think that they’re going to telegraph it all over the place? Or that you’re going to read about it in the Israeli Times? Give me a break.

I know I’m speculating here but history kind of works in funny ways. Why else would they have worked out the way they did. A handful of Jewish guys against hundreds of millions of camel jockeys? Most of whom, by the way, have evolved through countless eons of having lived in an inhospitable land to become in my face taxi drivers who have found a way to get even with the blasphemeous west by patently refusing to take any Occidental across the bridge to Brooklyn. Is there a certain irony in any of that? Or am I just blowing wind here?

I know I may sound like a bigot here and for that I apologize. I never was a bigot before. I grew up in a family with great tolerance and love for everything and everybody. But, my friend, I have seen the future and it is non-white. In forty to fifty years, there will be more Indians in India than there are those people in the developed nations, including Japan, all of Europe, Canada and the U.S. including even Russia. You don’t believe it. Check the statistics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

In the U.S, too, the White Person will be an anachronism, something that
is in a declining minority. People will come from all over all the world to see one. Maybe they will give us a gambling franchise, too. That being said and besides the irony, it will represent a further evolution for man upwards from a mammal that recently crawled out of the swamp to a new more adept creature who knows that getting along will be the ultimate key to survival. That’s because no one will know whether they are white, black, brown, red or green or from wence they came.. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the opportunity to sound biblical.) Like Hillary, there will always be a Jew lurking somewhere in the background and, more likely, in the world of tomorrow, an Arab and a black too..

If it improves harmony, then I’m all for it. Because we all inhabit this one small blue marble and there is no longer any room for misunderstanding or miscalculation. Not when even the Indians, the Pakistanis and the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Israeli’s -- not to mention all of the Western powers -- have it within their means to annihilate virtually everyone on the globe. (All because a scientist worked up some formulae about the properties of atoms with the idea of ending war as we know it ….It reminds me of that doctor who over a hundred years ago who with his good intentions invented a way to shorten wars and make them inpractical: The gatling gun. And all the rest is history!)

.Getting back to bagels. . I mean, I don’t know what they do with the dough, but whatever that stuff is its virtually indestructible. You could drop it from a plane and it would flex and reform into something tougher. Like a virus that mutates into something new and tougher. I guarantee you could even run it over with a freight train and nothing would happen. It’s not even a stretch to think that some of this indigestible dough-like mass that could live under your heart and cause unparalleled suffering could have been the penultimate inspiration for the leading thinker of his age, Einstein. Certainly, he must have been exposed to these donuts of destruction at an early age. He may even have tried to figure them out....analyze their atomic structure....probe them with dissecting tools....ascertain their genetic make-up....analyze the reasons that they can withstand a drop test of 32 feet per second and not implode while doing untold damage to the apparatus....why they can never be cut exactly into equal slices without slicing your fingers to shreds...why even tough New York pigeons stay clear of them at all costs...... All these imponderables. .Would this cause a giant philosophical leap to understand why certain incisive thinkers saw in the emptiness in the center of the bagel as something metaphysical and eternal, while others ,so predisposed, observed a certain likeness with a black hole possessed of infinite mass, that sucked up energy and had connotations of negativism, and hopelessness; while still others, philosophically diametrically opposed, seeking closure in all things, tended to perceive their totality as something larger than the sum of its parts, something pre-Christian with its roundness representing the totality of life and inferring wholeness, continuity and fecundity. Then there were the mathematical mystics, the Pythagorian types, who discovered in the bagels circumference a direct relationship with its radius that when one is divided into the other always returns the same number three and a non-repeating fraction. And the cabalists
who saw something portentous in a “bakers dozen.” And if that isn’t mystical enough what is? . And when all the thinking was done, after you twirled a bagel on your finger, or tossed it at the wall, or cut it in half without shattering your fingers, and used it as a skimmer, you could still eat it. A miracle of divine intervention. Even better than the miracle of the wine commemorated at Chanukah.