Even though the Yellow Pages referenced A Pickle House as continuing to exist, with even a site marked on the map, the building seems deserted, surrounded by litter, with papers, pieces of fabric, and beer cans blown from hither and yon, the flotsam and jetsam of a large city parading as wrecked ship, or a wrecked part of the city aspiring to come back out of the ashes. There also appeared to be archaeological layers of business signs, one sign nailed on top of the former one, announcing a series of various failed (or moved) businesses that were housed there after Mr. Pickle moved on to better barrels.
To get to the point, however, in some distant memory cell I remember a living, breathing, deliciously smelling Pickle Store. Perhaps those wonderful smells drifted out to the street, but I can remember wanting to walk in and see and breathe deeply, breathing in the smell of the brine and pickle juice. I could imagine the smell; just like opening a new bottle of dills and a new bottle of bread and butter pickles at the same time. I imagine that there is a wood floor soaked in pickle juice so that even today, years later, the pickle smell remains fairly strong. It seems odd that pickel smell history, at least in my mind, is so much stronger than the history of the lives that walked in the door and paced the floors of the Pickle House.
This street used to be sort of the heart of an old Phoenix. My grandmother used to regularly drive down this street in her Studebaker. I remember seeing the Pickle House because I was always standing on the front seat, so I could see better. At least I stood on the seat until someone ran a red light, my grandmother slammed on her brakes, and my sister, who was standing on the seat with me at the time, flew through the front window of the car(she apparently is less tied to the earth than I am, as I didn't fly and only sustained a tiny cut on my chin while she was bleeding all over the car). We rushed to Dr. Running's Office for TLC and stitches and I remember sensing my grandmothers anxiety and Dr. Running's cursing (well, I don't think he actually ever cursed, but he was upset), as she was bleeding so much it was hard to stitch up.
But, back to the subject of The Street That Was Once Alive in the Heart of Phoenix. While we regularly drove down this street, I cannot remember all of our destinations (not A Pickle House apparently), but one of them was the place where my grandmother went to get the wicker on her chairs re-woven. They had to be rewoven (or whatever it is called) because we -- my sister and I -- regularly checked the growth of our fingers by seeing if we could still stick them through the holes in the weave.
There also used to be many nice hotels and restaurants on that street, only a very few of which have survived at all, other than as those who rent by the hour. Newton's Prime Rib was on the corner down the street, and it was a very nice place to eat. There was a restaurant on the street, going west, not east as I usually drive. We always stopped there on our way out of town and I always ordered roast beef, with mashed potatoes and gravy. What heaven. By the time we were in high school, there were many second hand book stores located on the street, and before eating roast beef, we stopped and I got ten books, as they sold 10 books for a dollar. Consequently, in my readings I was influenced primary by a historical period that proceeded my own, as most of the books I read were from the last century, with the newest books coming from the 1920s, around the time of WWI. I loved the dusty paper and library paste smell of those book stores.
Main Entry: 1pick·le
Pronunciation: \ˈpi-kəl\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English pykyl, pekill sauce, gravy, from or akin to Middle Dutch peeckel brine
Date: 15th century
1: a solution or bath for preserving or cleaning: as a: a brine or vinegar solution in which foods are preserved b: any of various baths used in industrial cleaning or processing
2: a difficult situation : plight
3: an article of food that has been preserved in brine or in vinegar ; specifically : a cucumber that has been so preserved
1 comment:
Love pickles> I make pickles...had to in the earlier days here in Santa Cruz, as it is the way to save various things, even fish. And today I learned that pro-footballers eat pickles before a game to prevent cramps. Also, you should not be surprised at remembering the smell. You KNOW smell is just about the strongest of memories, the last to desert us in our rapidly approaching, or should I say ENcroaching senescence. TEN books for a dollar! But you got the time of WWI a little late. And now those book stores are replaced by the internet, which does at least help the Post Office survive (along with eBay), but here in Ecuador we get three pirated DVDs for $5 almost anywhere in any town, cheaper in some stores. These are STORES, not little tables set up out on the street, although there are plenty of those, too. This world economic meltdown will continue to wipe out once-viable areas of many, maybe MOST cities and towns in many countries, so we better just get used to it.
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