I was a salesgirl in a small old-fashioned (one-baker) bakery in Roxbury Crossing,
Mass., in the early 70’s. I wore a light-blue cotton uniform and a white apron. I liked
it a LOT. I liked the rowdy little kids that came in before school. I liked the incredibly old Irish widows who came in after the kids had left, who kept their tiny amounts of money folded up in hankies pinned inside, under the bodices of their dresses. I liked hoping that a tall, tall, tall, old, old, old, skinny, skinny, skinny pale man named Mr Scully would come in and spend fourteen cents for a small doughnut. This was in a very poor neighborhood. I liked the two teenaged girls who came in as I was leaving in the early afternoon (I started at six, folding pink boxes and slicing loaves of bread and bagging them before the customers came in.) I liked the housewives – mothers of large families who didn’t bake for themselves because they didn’t have time. They got custard pies. I liked the baker, Adam. He was old and burly and short and tough. He thought he’d made a big mistake ever leaving the Navy. Once from around the door – he worked in an area where I could hear him but
not see him, and vice versa – he said to me – and I’m a girl, mind you – “Son, you should
go into the service
and stay there. Don’t
get involvd with women.
They tie you down.”
I said “Adam?” and there was a long silence and then he said, “Listen, if you want to
take a pie home, feel free.”