Ballaboosta
Bubbe always said her mama was an earner,
not a learner, when we asked about her business.
What was I when her mother died? Five? Six?
She supported the family
while Bubbe’s Abba studied Torah.
That’s all I knew about her jazz age career
in New York City. “She’d come to America
from a shtetl near Pinsk in Belarus.
“She had a really good head for math,”
Bubbe remembered, “and she didn’t take crap
from anyone. She kept scrupulous books.”
But what did she do?
“It was the beginning of Prohibition,”
Bubbe recalled. “Bootlegging had exploded
like you wouldn’t believe, money
flowing like a river through the underworld.
A Mister Montana set Mama up in business
across the street from the Columbia University library;
it was a great location.”
“So she could study, too?”
“It was a great location,” Bubbe repeated. “Upper West Side.
Members of the Algonquin Round Table were regulars,
so were Walter Winchell and Harold Ross.
None of these machers would have been caught dead
going to a working-class saloon.
Mama ran a glamorous place.”
“She ran a speakeasy?”
“Yes, that’s one word for it,”
Bubbe nodded, evasive.
Then she changed the subject.
Later, when I heard the term
“houses of ill-repute,”
I connected the dots.