In Carl Greenberg, I also found the strong male role model that my father’s early death had denied me. Carl was powerful and quiet in equal measure. The quiet side of him meant that I got only sketchy details of the Greenberg family’s flight from Europe.
In 1934, I learned, the family moved from Poland to Cologne, Germany, believing it would be a place of enlightenment and culture. Two years later, Carl and a handful of friends and family left in the middle of the night, crossed the Rhine, and eventually went on to England and the United States. From there he worked to save the rest of his family. My birth father, Albert, and others had endured a harrowing months-long journey in 1939, walking from place to place, knocking on doors, looking for shelter, before reaching Paris and finally migrating to the States before the Nazi invasion.
Other than that, I have only imagination to fill in the empty spaces. Carl gave out those details like a miser spends dimes. But it was enough to understand why my first father never lost the habit of looking over his shoulder and why stress finally caught up to him that day inside the pharmacy in Buffalo.
Carl’s powerful physique—on a relatively short frame—was both a result of and a necessary asset in Buffalo’s rough-and-tumble scrap metal and junk business. One day, for example, a disgruntled employee hurled a brick at him, catching him in one eye. As with my grandmother’s eye, it, too, was replaced by a prosthetic.
As I grew into my teenage years, I began working summers for Carl in his junkyard. Handling scrap was man’s work. I was not yet there, so I spent much of my time winding metal wire around several-hundred-pound bales of rags and locking it in place so the bales could be weighed and transported. The rags stank like wet dust. The metal would scrape and infect my arms, and the locking mechanisms would pinch my fingers and knuckles. We had to use a mechanical lift to get the bales onto the scale and then push them into the bed of the truck. The bales would sit on the truck bed like giant eggs in a carton. The junk shop collected and sold various metals as well as rags. Sometimes we would collect brass bed frames. Using an old hammer and a screwdriver, we would split and peel the relatively valuable brass off the supports in order to sell it. We sold the other metals, too, although for a lot less money.
Carl kept a pile of receipts on a thin metal spindle. His script was European-style—blunt and thick, as if his hands were unsuited for the act of writing. In fact, his handwriting was nearly illegible. Black ink was dug like canals into the paper. Carl did not talk much at his shop; he gave orders in quick bursts. He would tell me where to go or what to do. There was no discussion. No consideration. There were no meetings. No memos. No strategic-planning retreats.
In summer, the scrap yard was roasting hot and foul smelling; the only shade came from a large corrugated sheet-metal roof that stood over one end of the yard. The rest was open. The smell of copper and corrosive metal would get in your nose and your lungs and sting your eyes. And the heat in summertime was vicious. The sun’s reflection off the metal was like a laser. I had to be careful or the sharp edges would split the skin of my shins like paper.
Two men worked for Carl at the junk shop. Arthur was a giant, though his size seemed to transcend height or weight. He could lift the shells of metal furniture all by himself and launch them into the dumpster. I thought him capable of terrible things. He wasn’t violent, that I saw, but I always kept my distance. Years later, rushing through O’Hare Airport, I accidentally knocked, straight-on, into Muhammad Ali. And that is what Arthur was like—a block of a man.
The other man, Donald, was much smaller, wiry and muscular. He was really the only source of conversation I had in the junkyard. He told me once that he lived in a poor section of Buffalo, for which he paid twenty-five cents a night. At lunch break, we would sit outside the junkyard on the sidewalk curb, his glasses low on his nose, a floppy brown hat on his head. The street would be quiet in the heat. He would drink sweet muscatel wine but eat nothing. I would eat the tuna-fish sandwich that my mother usually packed for me. It was embarrassing. What must he have thought of someone whose mommy packed his lunch? I would offer him half of my sandwich, though he always declined. I suspected he was afraid it would dull the effects of the muscatel, which he needed.
For a treat, Carl would give
