This short piece of my dad's would have been written in the late 90s or early 2000s, when Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles still had the tone and tenor of the decades before---although in the 1980s, the younger, not particularly religious folks had begun to move into the area, this street and its surroundings were largely the home to Orthodox Jews. Persians/Iranians had begun to move in as well. I always had the sense that it was an interesting mix of the New York from whence I had come in 1981, and a touch of the LA vibe. Hard to explain. You had to have been there walking up and down the various still mom and pop stores. I bought my first dishes at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly at Bargain Fair, which was next door to the then still open Fairfax Theatre. Now, there is a hulk of a frame of that building. The historic place did not make cultural preservation status, and then whoever was going to build some fantastic condos (so they said) must have run out of money. Last I heard it is still for sale, the frame battling the graffiti vandals people stupidly call "artists"--always mitigating bad behavior--a habit that has landed our whole society in the proverbial civilization toilet. But I digress. In dad's time, and mine, with him, this was a neighborhood full of vegetables stores, and kitsch stores. It was a rough hewn jewel. And a true place of diversity in the best sense, a sense now lost to us. Dad preserves a bit of it in his story.
Iskander and Roxanne
I like to shop on Fairfax Avenue. The products and the atmosphere are reminiscent of the exoticism of the Mediterranean, loud, teeming, viscous multitudes clamoring for sustenance in the marketplace of life.
There is always the aura of the "Bazaar" about the shops and their patrons. No deference is given to those misconceptions of Western mythology, manners, politeness, decorum.
Short, squat, testosterone laced women move about the shop like mini sumo wrestlers, relentlessly unconcerned about those importunate enough to impede their purpose.
On one occasion, I selected a bunch of parsley from a bushel basket filled to overflow. A woman, suddenly, pulled it from my hands. I was stunned.
"Why did you do that?" I asked in anger.
"For eat," she said. I could not identify the accent. The explanation was short and without logic. I burst into laughter.
The British queue up as a matter of standard practice. We Americans are more obstreperous, but we do recognize, reluctantly, that the other guy might be "first". For the amble ladies of the Agoura there are rules of shopping behavior that surely must have roots in the customs of some obscure Mesopotamian Village, or Slavic steppe. These ladies place their baskets on the ground at the cashier location, thus claiming that by this action, it represents their "place in line". They then proceed to shop the premises, filling their baskets one item at a time, to a cornucopia of repletion.
I have long ago given up the sense of outrage at this practice, particularly when I have only one or two items but must await the servicing of a series of overfilled containers arrayed in a line before me.
Today, I found myself in such a line of overstuffed baskets. Two young women, perhaps 18 or 19, preceded me each with a full container, which they advanced periodically by pushing it with their feet.
They were obviously friends as the sound of their chatter suggested. Their tongue was foreign to me. I recognize other languages immediately, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish. This one had overtones of the Middle East. I asked, "What language are you speaking?"
They answered simultaneously, "It is Persian."
"Farsi," I offered.
"Yes."
I told them about my military training in the 1950s in which I hosted four of the former Shah's officers. At that time, the United States was training Iranian officers.
"Before you were born," I added. "They all had pictures of the Shah and his wife, Soraya." No photos of their own wives, or girl friend or mother.
One of the girls did not know anything about the Shah or Soraya. The other had heard something about them.
I was amazed, but then it occurred to me that the Ayatollah, like Ramses the Great, would have obliterated all inscriptions on any monuments of his predecessor. Such is the manner of greatness.
"What is your name?" I asked the girl nearest myself.
"Miriam," she said. I thought this odd. Miriam is a form of Mary, a Christian name. Hardly something an Iranian would call a daughter. Then I realized it was originally a popular Hebrew favorite.
"Why not Roxanne?" I quipped. There was not a flicker of reaction. Roxanne is the name of the Persian princess that Alexander the Great married as a gesture of Greek one worldism.
"Do you know who Roxanne was?" I asked. Neither did.
"Do you know who Iskander was?" I tried. Iskander is the Persian name for Alexander the Great.
Another blank stare of non-response. Clearly they were as uninformed about their own history as any of our own college level students.
"I don't like history," came the chorus.
"You are students?"
"Yes," offered Miriam, "Santa Monica College."
"You have a boy friend?"
"Yes," she said.
"Will you marry?" I continued my importunate questioning.
"No," she said, "he is not rich."
"Does he at least. . ." I made the appropriate suggestive expression.
"Sometimes," she said, her facial reaction indicating perhaps, not even "sometimes."
"If he doesn't, don't marry him even if he gets rich."
"I went to Santa Monica College," intervened a sandy haired young man who now entered the conversation.
He was some ten years older than the girls, and clearly attracted to Miriam. I decided to find out if Santa Monica College had taught him anything of substance.
"Do you know who Roxanne and Iskander are?"
"No," he said, "I hate history."
"No doubt," I concluded, "your major was in the Social Science area?"
An elderly man, very tanned, dressed in an expensive looking tennis type outfit, was smiling broadly at our exchange. Despite his age and highly wrinkled face, he was trim. He had the look of a once well known aging Hollywood actor. I was about to address him when the young man interrupted. The girls had just departed.
"That Miriam was cute," he said.
"Why did you not make a move?" I asked.
"I don't do well with girls," he said. "Besides she wants a rich man. I hate the rich. Anyway, she was a cold fish."
The cashier, a Latin, was enjoining the break in the monotony of bagging vegetables. "Senor," I said, "was that mujer a cold fish?"
He laughed. Clearly he did not think so.
"You see," I address the young man, who I realized was quite pudgy, "it is a matter of clear vision. What do you do to attract the girls?"
"Nothing, consciously," he answered.
"Do you dance?"
"No," he answered.
"Start there," I said. "Is there an Arthur Murray Studio in your area?"
"Who's Arthur Murray?"
I began to feel my age. "Doesn't anyone know anyone I know?" I thought. I looked for reaffirmation from my ancient peer. Surely, he would know Arthur Murray. "Are you a tennis player?"
"No," he said. I decided not to ask about the very much late Arthur.
I hope you did not mind the meanderings of an idiosyncratic old man," I said. "These lines of vegetable baskets are wearing. Gotta do something to dull the pain."
"Idiosyncratic," he noticed, "that's a very large word."
"I have several others primed. I just have difficulty finding people to use them on."
A woman carrying a single bunch of celery interrupted our discourse. She looked at me imploringly.
Only vunn item," she pleaded, holding up the rather scrawny bunch of celery.
"Sure, go ahead," I said.
She smiled gratefully.
At least she did not have a basket.
