To Buy a Fat Pig

‘AND don’t go to market,’ advised the matrons of my acquaintance, ‘for, though you won’t believe it, marketing is extravagant: you’ll buy everything.’

But I disregarded their advice, ‘for,’ said I, ' I’ve visited markets right around the world, and surely I cannot miss this one at my back door.’ So with a basket on my arm I sallied forth to visit the market of this my city. Gray under gray skies, it was a far cry from the blazing bazaars of the East. A flock of doves wheeling suddenly to alight among horses’ hoofs brought before my eyes the doves falling like snow in the Chourie Bazaar; and how they would settle about a man standing tall and thin, holding at arm’s length above his head a shallow basket, from which grain poured in a fine stream for the wind to winnow. The glistening black of his body was broken by a white cotton loin cloth; at his feet the white grain mounted in heaps; behind him rose the pink stucco façades of Jaipur. I could feel the sharp chaff blowing in my eyes, smell again the dust, the spice, the steaming animals of the bazaar.

But Boston doves were a trifle shabby, and this cobbled square, bounded by the stalls of garden grocers, dominated by the dignified market hall of red brick, was pale after the kaleidoscopic bazaar. ‘Horses and apples are not camels and spice,’ I reflected sadly, ‘yet Boston pigeons should make a nice pie.’ And I got down to business.

Around the square I found the outsiders — the foreigners, the not-quitearrived men, friendly and a little fresh. The Dagos, with their quick, wide smiles, flattered me and bartered with me, and the broccoli man especially. He had drawn up his truck in the square, and sat dangling his long legs out the back, puffing his cigarette. On the ground below him were heaped crates of green broccoli frosted gray as the top of a rye field in summer.

‘Will you sell me some?’ I inquired.

‘Sure, I sell you crateful,’ he answered gayly.

‘No, only a bagful.’

He shook his head. ‘Wholesale man only can sell by the crate.’

‘Aw, don’t be so stiff,’ came a bantering voice from the next truck.

He flashed his smile, swung himself down, and proceeded to fill the largest paper bag in my basket, selecting a few stalks from several crates. ‘No charge,’ said he as I drew out my purse.

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, next fella he come along, buya da crate, he never miss deesa few stalks.’

The broccoli business was done on this amicable basis throughout the summer. One hot day when my basket seemed impossibly heavy he flicked away his cigarette and, telling me to wait a minute, disappeared. He returned presently at the wheel of an ancient limousine. ‘ Have business to do up on your hill. Get in — I drive you home.’ As we forged through the traffic he talked gayly of the truck farm, of years when the bean market soars, and of the large family which on Sundays fills his rackety limousine. When winter came the broccoli man departed, but he will return with the spring.

In the fall the stalls around the square were laden with green and purple grapes, smelling deliciously in the hot sun. I asked a vendor what he could do with such a quantity of grapes.

’Maka da wine,’ he answered, and smacked his lips. ‘Your man, he no maka da wine? Da’s too had. Some day I come up, maka da wine for you myself.’

The outsiders are fun, but when they make good and take up their stations within the stately doors of the market hall they don with their white coats and straw hats a more dignified demeanor. Mr. Simpson, my butcher, is an old oak in the community of established insiders. Having grown up in the market, he knows three generations of his customers. He took a paternal interest in the young stranger, and made up on other customers the slight discounts he gave me since I was ‘just starting in.’ I could not undertake a dinner party without consulting Mr. Simpson as to the ‘most suitable joint.’ I knew when he raised his hat and rubbed the gray stubble on his round pink head that my problems would be adequately solved. I remember my misfortunes before I put myself under his care. Those pigs’ feet, for instance.

It was during my first week of marketing, and I was at a loss to discover something new and tempting for luncheon. I had contemplated French chops for several days, so that although I had not served them I thought, ‘No, not chops again!’ Then my eye fell on a large white bowl filled with cracked ice setting forth in pleasing pattern an array of little pigs’ feet ‘split for broiling.’ I had never tasted them. Just the thing! The butcher came forward, smiling his encouragement, and to my question, ‘ Would they be nice for luncheon?’ gave the dubious answer that if you liked them they were delicious. But his smile convinced me that anyone with taste liked pigs’ feet. I purchased two dainty little feet and carried them home.

On the butcher’s advice I broiled them, covering them with butter, and watched with delight as they puffed and browned. My husband had never eaten pigs’ feet either. We set to work with mouths watering, yet the crispy skin proved impervious to the sharpest knife. I relinquished my illusions about brown and crispy skin, but knew they would be fine inside. Patiently we removed the hide, only to find a skeleton coated with a substance that trailed from the fork like a spider’s gluey thread. We pried in vain between the bones for a morsel of that tender meat I knew existed somewhere. Then I remembered that the merchant had only said ‘delicious if you like them.’

Though Mr. Simpson would never have advised me to buy pigs’ feet, yet he would not criticize a rival’s wares. It was the little egg man who averted the catastrophe of bear. I was dealing with Mr. Simpson when the great carcass swathed in burlap was brought to the butcher across the aisle.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Bear,’ replied Mr. Simpson laconically.

‘Is it good?’

Mr. Simpson appeared not to have heard my second question, but the egg man was young and rash. He laughed loudly. ‘Come over here and I’ll tell you about bear.

‘ Bear,’ he said, ‘ must be bought carefully. Now get a nice steak right out of here,’ — he slapped the heavy carcass, — ‘take it home, plank it with plenty of vegetables, and when it’s done to a turn — chuck it out the window and eat the plank.’

A roar of laughter went up on all sides. The merchant stood beside his bear, his hands spread helplessly as the line of prospective customers walked on. This was a breach of etiquette, but the egg man was fresh from outside.

The poultry man, Old Royal, has a withered face like one of his own turkeys. He wags his sparse, pointed beard and tells how he has never set foot in an automobile and never will. I found him one day engaged in filling a barrel with uncommonly ugly carcasses varying in color from red to purple, with outstretched necks and big still feet. His manner of handling them suggested that they were not of the choicest. Yanking them out of one barrel, he tossed them half across the stall into the wide mouth of a second barrel. His expression was not pleasing, and from time to time he would inspect a bird with questioning nose.

‘What are those?’ I asked.

‘Roosters.’

‘What do you do with them?’

‘Sell ’em to the Old Ladies’ Home. Tough on the old ladies,’ he added dryly.

Many were the glimpses I caught of the lives of my fellow customers — from the Irish iceman, who cooks his stew on Sunday and eats it through the week, to Mrs. Russell, whose six-course dinners are Mr. Simpson’s boast. Even the babies are not forgotten: ‘If they cry,’ says Old Royal, ‘give ’em a drumstick and push ’em under the stove.’

‘To market, to market, to buy a fat pig’ — and I came trustingly home with pigs’ feet! Thereafter steak was my staple for three months, and not until then did I discover that chops were priced not at fifty cents apiece but by the pound. I learned the season of ducks and broilers, and with what sauce to disguise a pigeon as a squab. Beef tongue, venison (alas, the day!), a sugar-cured ham, and on one occasion tripe, came and went with relish. Roast beef for two must be eaten first hot, then cold, then hashed, then ‘brothed.’ I learned to look on meat when it was red and choose the tender from the coarse. With Mr. Simpson and Old Royal to instruct and the egg man to tease me, I grew letter-perfect, until the day came when I received my degree. For the first time my husband accompanied me, groaning beneath the baskets. And at the sight of him the egg man exclaimed, ‘Here’s a man that’ll die rich. Your wife can skin the back off a nickel!’