found drama

The taste of the rye bread brings back this memory; it comes into focus sharper than the tips of the caraway seeds that dot the crust.  The counter is long and glass and behind it are coiled links of sausages: liverwurst and blutwurst and knackwurst.  The coils are a rainbow of flesh tones, each in contrast to the wilted tufts of green lettuce garnishing each coil.  Resting between each coil are signs to mark the names and prices of each.  The signs are hand-printed in black magic marker.  I remember the umlauts and knowing even as a child that the dual dots are insufficient evidence of authenticity; on their own they might be little more than a gimmick.  But those dots are on so many signs and so many wrappers and on so many magazine covers, hovering proudly over otherwise familiar vowels.  There is a weird smell here that I cannot place and now remember as little more than an impression.

My great-grandparents shop here.  I follow my mother or grandfather here on dutiful errands.  There is (perhaps) a treat in it for me if I behave.  I stare through the glass of that long counter, eyeing the pale sausages that sit next to the nearly black sausages that site next to off-red ones that sit next to ones brown as my corduroys.  There are more things behind that counter but I fixate on the sausages and the umlauted signs.

I should not wander the store.  I stay close.  The aisles are crowded and dark.  The ceiling is low.  Even as a child I believe I could get my hands to the tiles if I jumped with all my might.  But I don’t try.  And I don’t wander.  I want my treat.  I want those hard little fruit-shaped candies.

We get our sausages and go up to the check-out counter, right by the door where we came in.  The bag if candies waits for me there.  And while I wait for the money to change hands, my eyes crawl over the umlauts on the magazine covers and newspaper headlines and consider what constitutes “front page” 4,000 miles away.

About Rob Friesel