Pickles
My dad was Jewish, raised in Brooklyn. He and his family weren’t religious, and because his job as a jewelry store manager required him to work Friday nights and Saturdays, he never went to Temple when I was growing up. He left religion to my Protestant mother, and she took us to various Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches over the years.
One thing Dad was religious about was Jewish food. He loved his rye bread, corned beef, matzo ball soup and kosher dill pickles. Especially his kosher dill pickles. There was no place in our home for sweet pickles, or even the mock-kosher dills available in supermarkets.
But in 1950’s Riverside , California Riverside
The company that owned Dad’s store was headquartered in Los Angeles. He worked a deal with the man who made the twice-monthly deliveries of diamonds, watches and other fine jewelry, to stop at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Blvd. in Los Angeles to pick up his standing order of two loaves of rye bread, a couple of pounds of thinly sliced corned beef, and a dozen big fat, homemade garlicky kosher dill pickles. I can only imagine the difficulty that driver had, having to smell those delectable foods as he drove the fifty miles from L.A. to Riverside.
On delivery day, Dad would walk into the kitchen after work, carrying the large brown paper bag containing his Canter’s order, the smell of pickles preceding him. One by one, he’d unload the fragrant loaves of bread in their waxed paper bags, followed by the flat package of corned beef, and finally the cardboard containers containing the pickles. Since dinner was always on the table the moment he walked in the door, there was no sampling of his treasures, but if we were lucky, he’d allow Mom to include a slice or two of his pickles in our lunchboxes. Those were the days when there was at least one classmate who wanted to trade lunches.
