The Beggars Opera

Feeling overnetworked, I quit Facebook today and, boy, not one Friend has noticed. No one’s hitting my LinkedIn, either, except thousands from my old alma mater, whoever the hell they all are. I forgot how to Twitter as soon as I learned it. Netting doesn’t work for me. I’m a hermit. I don’t get around much anymore.

But last week Shirley Landis VanScoyk, who lives in Honey Brook, outside of Philadelphia, took me back to Center City Philadelphia where I spent a happy ten years. In her funny and smart blog http://domesticepisodes.blogspot.com/ she wrote about the Philadelphia Opera Company’s flash opera at Reading Terminal Market. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zmwRitYO3w&feature=player_embedded

Holy smokes, Reading Terminal is my favoritest food market in the States. Soon as I quit Facebook, here's Shirley, whom I've never met, sixty miles west of the Philadelphia, hooking me over three thousand miles with a YouTube vid. In a flash I’m back at my old stamping ground, The Terminal. As the singers raised their beautiful voices in La Traviata’s brindisi scene, I searched the crowd for a familiar face or a familiar sign. I didn’t recognize any people but there behind the singers’ and the shoppers’ joyful faces, there was the same old Spano Cheesesteaks sign. I could smell the onions frying.

Oh, dear Reading Terminal. If I could write an opera, it would be about thee. Thee of shining Korean faces selling fish flesh and gleaming string beans. Thee of Amish and Black folks and Italians. The many, many cheeses and the finest spice shop that ever made me sneeze. Oh Reading Terminal Market, I love your old, rotting beams and the stink of nearby Chinatown.

Not for me to evaluate professional opera singers. Let me just say I was very glad to see the dawning surprise and pleasure on the shoppers' faces. Yes, yes, California is very beautiful and the market at the San Francisco Ferry Terminal bursts with organic string beans and handmade cheese and considerately-harvested fish. Not great fish, mostly those flabby, flavorless Hawaiian giants you have to jazz up with wasabi and teriyaki sauce (might as well eat the paper napkin).

Unlike Reading Terminal, the Ferry market is new. The building is all spiffy reproduction glass. The bathrooms sparkle. Nothing smells except the brisk breeze blowing in from the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate which I now know is the actual name of the mouth of San Francisco Bay: not the bridge, not the bay, just the mouth of the bay.

Okay, then.

Because the earth spins, that Pacific wind blows west to east right over the continent to the Reading Terminal Market, at least in my memory. Quick, before I forget, here’s the real broiled bluefish recipe: a little Mombasa red pepper from that spice shop, go easy, then a schmear of mustard and a bigger schmear of Hellman’s mayonnaise, yes, oily mayo on an oily fish. Broil until crackling, eat. Eat the skin, too. It’s loaded with vitamin A.

Alas, I cannot buy this divine fish out west. Short of standing on the pier in Boston as the trawler comes to dock, Reading Terminal has the freshest blues. Don’t get me started on soft-shelled crabs and shad roe. We’re all about the vegetables out here.

One of my favorite memories of The Terminal, where I shopped two or three times a week, was the Italian sandwich with chopped artichoke hearts, hot pickled peppers, exactly the right proportion of freshly, thinly sliced ham, mortadella, genoa salami, provolone and chopped romaine. Sprinkle of olive oil, sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. A roll to rip the teeth out of your mouth. You don’t need your teeth in heaven.

So I considered my food inventory and remembered to take those two hundred dollar bills out of the kitty—can’t remember why it was so fat—and drove the VW downtown. I always looked for a parking meter on Arch so I wouldn’t have to pay the lot attendant. Sure enough, I nailed a space but as I was beginning to fish in my shoulderbag for change, a street bum right out of a Three Penny Opera—originally The Beggars Opera, did you know that—caught my eye and approached, spewing dust from his filthy hair and layers of filthy old clothes. Suspenders held up his horrible baggy pants. He held my tremulous eye. I am such a sucker and I knew the hit was coming.

“Say,” I blurted. “Have you got change for a dollar?”

How inspired is that? Like a mask, his face morphed from rapacious to gracious, wreathed in smiles. He wasn’t that murderous-looking under all the dirt.

"Why honey,” he said in an almost-cultivated voice, “help yourself.” He dug into a very, very deep pants pocket and pulled out a glittering handful of quarters and dimes. “Take all you want.”

“Thank you,” I said, picking out four shining quarters. I didn’t try not to touch him. I may have touched him. I hope I did.

“Want more?” His eyebrows lifted politely.

“No thanks, that’s just what I need.” I turned to feed the meter. Then I walked across the pay lot and did my shopping.

After I unloaded the goodies in my Brandywine Street kitchen, I counted out my change. I like to keep tabs on the cash flow, balance it with my feeding frenzies. That day I was short exactly one hundred dollars. Damn! I mentally retraced my shopping steps as I put each item away. I remembered breaking the first hundred, not the other. It was missing. Theft? Had that bum somehow got his hand in MY pocket?

Or had I dropped it as I walked into the market, arranging the bills in my wallet. It could be. But finding a hundred dollar bill outside Reading Terminal Market on a busy, sunny Saturday was impossible. Yet.

I fired up the VW and drove to the spot. Found several open parking spaces. Put my eyes to the sidewalk, to the weedy edges. Continued across the Arch Street Parking Lot, five dollars half an hour, the ripoffs.

There it was, two hours after I dropped it, my one hundred dollar bill. Waiting for me.

I was so grateful I went right back into the Terminal and bought those very expensive things I had foregone on the morning run.

And every time I break a hundred, I feel grateful and lucky. And when I take a deep breath blowing through the Golden Gate, I often think of the bluefish and the bum at Reading Terminal Market.