Letters From Brooklyn by Laurence Robert P.;

Author:Laurence, Robert P.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62652-872-7
Publisher: Publish Green

Stay away from the past,

Bob & Susan

Brooklyn 45: No seltzer today

Sept 28, 2009

I did see the Brooklyn seltzer guy once, but I didn’t grasp the importance of the sighting.

His name is Ronny Beberman, 62. I saw his truck going by in Park Slope one day, a very old, rattly truck correctly described by the Times as “a wooden-slatted affair with crooked racks and side doors that are stuck open.”

Beberman made it into the Times the other day – the front page, no less – because he fell off the truck and broke a few bones, and now he’s not making his deliveries.

Why is this a story? Because he’s the last remaining seltzer delivery guy in New York, and now his customers are doing without. He delivers seltzer water in those spritzer bottles common in cocktail party scenes in 1930s movies. Or in Three Stooges comedies. He would let somebody else do the deliveries, except his route is stored only in his head. He’s been delivering seltzer door to door in that truck for 40 years.

Two weekends ago, we got to the Met museum for the exhibit of Vermeer’s ‘Milkmaid.’

The Met is showing the painting along with its few other Vermeers and other Dutch works from the same period. The paintings were gorgeous, but the galleries were, as always, crowded. Actually, more crowded than usual. There were always a clutch of people gathered close around the ‘Milkmaid,’ and a guard posted next to it had the frustrating job of repeatedly telling people to please back up a bit and make room.

That is, of course, the one constant issue in New York. No matter where you go, it’s crowded. Except on early Sunday morning, when the streets are empty and quiet and really nice.

New York attracts crazies from all over. There’s a congregation of Baptists from Topeka, Kansas, who apparently show up in Brooklyn every year to launch antisemitic demonstrations in front of local synagogues. Their plan this past Saturday was to demonstrate with all sorts of nasty picket signs in front of synagogues all over the borough. I guess there aren’t enough Jews in Topeka to make antisemitism worth the bother.

One event we hadn’t attended so far in New York: a poetry reading. We made up for that last week. One of Susan’s colleagues at Propublica, Michael Grabell, moonlights as a poet. He does well enough that one of his poems was included in Best American Poetry 2009. About 20 of the poets in the book read their works last Tuesday at the New School (a N.Y. university in the Village, founded in the 1920s as the New School for Social research, now with about 9,400 students). Susan, I’m happy to say, is the person who, if just one person from an office will show up to hear a colleague’s poetry, she’s that person.

Speaking of the poetry reading, on my way to the R Train to get Susan, walking down Ninth street here in Brooklyn, an older, cheerful sort of guy

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