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| CAUTION: Must be used only under adult supervision. Not recommended for use by anyone with history of heart disease. |
Sounds like the title of a nineteenth century Russian novel.
I don’t
know how universal the prevalence of seltzer was, but if you grew up in East
Flatbush, the ubiquitous seltzer bottle was a staple on your dinner table. (I promise I’ll get around to explaining the
connection between the two words in the title of this story.)
If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll remember my obsession with some of my fears centered about school. Not the mundane fear of tests. By the fifth grade, tests and I had established a fairly amiable co-existence. I’m talking about real fears.
How could I pay attention to what Miss O’Neill was saying when I obsessed full-time about the 20-foot window pole falling off it precarious perch and hurtling toward my head. Pleas to change my seat, even though it would mean giving up my coveted seat next to Marilyn Cohen, to the sixth row where I estimated I had a better chance of survival, went unanswered.
Eraser clapping was not without its dangers. I dreaded eraser cleaning on inclement weather days because that meant using the eraser vacuum in the basement. You ever in the school basement? How do you think the classrooms stay so toasty warm in the winter? Giant boilers that could explode at any moment, that’s how.
Fear of
Stuff You Have No Control Over:
Every once
in a while we would have an air raid drill. You know, the type where you had to
crawl under your desk, always with your back to the windows. What the hell was a half inch of oak desk-top
going to do to save your sorry little ass in case of an atom bomb being
dropped, say on Utica Avenue and considering the strategic importance of East
Flatbush, you know that was Target Numero Uno. And how come, with all your seniority in the
school, was your class on the top floor and the little kindergartners were on the
second? I remember hearing that wearing
a white shirt might help diffuse some of the radiation. You had a better chance if you
wrapped yourself in tin foil. The one
thing that definitely would save you was that the window shades were all
closed.
Here are some things to ponder from the vantage point of forty or fifty years later: While you were crammed under your desk, where was your teacher? If it had been an unscheduled drill, Miss O’Neill would be on her knees praying to Sweet Baby Jesus for forgiveness for that time she and Billy Driscoll, the custodian – well, that’s another story. Did you ever notice all the crap stuck to the bottom of your desk and try to figure how long it had been there? Why were you not allowed to talk while you were under the desk? So the enemy pilot wouldn’t know where you were hiding? Were you ever sorry you hadn’t gone to the bathroom five minutes before the drill? By the time I got into junior high school there were no longer any 'take cover' drills and I missed my big chance with Marilyn Cohen, who by that point, had become a real hottie, if you know what I mean.
Home was
not worry-free either.
In the total scheme of worries, I worried least about
being fried by an atom bomb. I had bigger
things to worry about waiting for me at home.
I told you we’d be getting back to seltzer.
The most lethal weapon in our house was the seltzer bottle. More so than all the knives in the drawer next to the stove.
For those of you who are children of those who grew up in the fifties and sixties you think seltzer always came in screw-top plastic bottles.
Right?
Wrong! You drop a plastic bottle,
no big thing. Oops. Pick it up, put it back
in the Sub-Zero Dutch door built-in refrigerator.
(The seltzer you now buy bears no
resemblance to that which came in a siphon. The sense of adventure is gone; the
new seltzer is like drinking tap water. Why bother?)
When we were kids, drop
one of those glass babies on the kitchen linoleum, they’d be sitting shiva for
you and your neighbors. Those that
survived, meaning in the apartment houses on either side of yours, would be
evacuated until the HazMat team fished out all the glass shards from the
walls. The search would not end until
they found that small Good Health Seltzer label.
How old were you before you were allowed to carry the seltzer bottle from the refrigerator to the table?
To prepare for the honor of carrying a seltzer bottle I practiced carrying my cousin's new-borne infant. "OK. If he could carry Little Warren, maybe we could trust him with the seltzer." "I dunno, Nat. An infant is one thing, but a seltzer bottle?"
I think it was one of my bar mitzvah gifts – permission to carry the seltzer bottle. “If he can be trusted to carry the Torah in Shul, maybe we can trust him with a seltzer bottle” so I guess they figured they'd give me a shot at carrying the seltzer bottle twelve feet from the refrigerator to the dining room table.
In retrospect, both incidents made them equally proud and gave my mother bragging rights at her next maj jong game.
“First, make sure his shoe laces are tied. We don’t want him tripping. Is the floor dry? Close the blinds. We don’t want the sun causing him to squint while he’s walking.”
Did you ever know anyone who actually dropped one? I'm not talking about the urban legends. You know, where your cousin dated a girl whose brother had a classmate who dropped a bottle. I'm talking first-hand knowledge. Rumor had it that Herbie was a victim of a dropped, or thrown seltzer bottle - a crime perpetrated by his mother upon learning he was well on his way toward failing every class in the eleventh grade - again. Herbie’s big scholastic concern was whether he would find a parking spot near the school.
In any case, Herbie manned the last booth in Dave's Sweet Shoppe and Luncheonette, often carrying on an animated conversation with himself ending in disgust when we was unable to convince himself that he was right. The neighborhood kids would sometimes screw up the courage to ask what happened to his left eye and all he's mutter was 'seltzer.'
Let's take a break for a minute. I'm not talking about what passes for
seltzer in those puny plastic bottles with the screw-off caps and I'm not
referring to the imported 'sparkling' water hand-crafted by monks in the Alps.
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| This is NOT seltzer |
I'm referring to the real stuff in thick glass bottles with metal siphons. The bottles that look like fire extinguishers, but more powerful. (C'mon, you gonna tell me you never aimed a seltzer bottle out the window to see how far the stream would go and then have Mrs. Schneider rat on you to your mother because you got her laundry wet.) The bottles that now sell for upwards of thirty bucks on E-Bay? The bottles that all the me-gens have been converting to table lamps?
As late as the fifties there were several hundred ‘seltzer men’ in New York City. (I swear, half were named Sam and all were the age of your grandfather.) Now there are about two – and they’re all your age. Seltzer used to be delivered in open trucks. Welcome to the 21st century; seltzer is now delivered in closed trucks. The bottles were packed ten to a wooden crate hoisted to the deliveryman’s shoulder. That was the minimum order. “What, you should want Sam to schlep up to the fourth floor with only two bottles?” We paid ten cents a bottle; now you pay $25 a case – and you better return the empties.
Ok. Wanna be a hit at your next social gathering. What's the derivation of seltzer? like, where did it come from? No, to the wiseguy in the back of the room who said it came from his grandmother's icebox. It was actually named after Niederselters, a small town near Frankfort, Germany that began producing carbonated tonics in the 16th century, but it wasn't until 1809 that Joseph Hawkins patented the machinery for carbonating spring water and the hermetically sealed bottles became a staple in our 20th century diet.
Here’s an interesting bit. Most of the seltzer bottles still in existence were hand-blown by Czech and Austrian craftsmen before World War II. And, in New York City there is only one seltzer ‘factory’ and it’s located in Canarsie. City tap water gets filtered and ‘fizzed up’ with 60 pounds per square inch of carbon dioxide on machines that are close to 100 years old. (What, you think the water was imported from Maine?)
Wait a second. Can carbon dioxide really be good for you? Also, how do they put the top on under that pressure? (I have a hunch the tops are reinstalled after they’re filled and then the CO2 is injected through the small holes on the top.) Do any bottles explode during the filling process? Where in the process are the bottles sterilized? How come some families got colored bottles and all we got were lousy clear ones? Where do all those tapered color bottles come from that I see on E-Bay?
Every block had a seltzer man. Our block had Sol.
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| This is Sol as a teenager |
Ponder this, buckeroos: Piled as high as they were on the truck they never fell off on sharp turns and, equally impressive - no one ever stole the bottles from the open truck.
At age 10 you're not particularly good at judging age. Your teachers were all about 70 so it only figures that Sol, who looked old enough to be their father, had to be close to 100 and still schlepping those cases up four flights.
On special occasions he would deliver Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup. And, in a nod to
healthy living, we also consumed Cott diet soda, also delivered by Sol in his
attempt to corner the beverage market. Being first with a product does not
guarantee quality. "It's Cott to be good" was about as far from the
truth as one could get. But, if you wanted sugar-free soda, it was the only
game in town, until Tab. Boy, did we know how to live!!!
"Good seltzer should hurt."
To the few unaware of the lethal power in a glass of seltzer: Pour a glass of real seltzer, let it sit for 8 hours. That has as much punch to it as a freshly opened bottle of Coke. Let the real seltzer sit for 12 hours, you're coming close to the fizz quotient of a freshly opened bottle of sparkling Perrier.
Here's a brief seltzer vignette. I admired my father for a lot of reasons. Interestingly, the older I got, the more reasons were added to the list. But there was one that I vividly remember from my childhood. He would sit down for dinner and pour himself a glass of seltzer. I'm not sure what the proper action verb is. It seems that 'pour' is too gentle a word for what comes out of a seltzer bottle. In any case, the seltzer made it from the bottle into his glass. And then he would immediately take a big long gulp, and I mean a really big gulp. No puny sissy sip for my dad! Based on my limited experience with the beverage, I waited for the belch. Nothing. Not even a hiccup. Sometimes a sigh, but nothing more. And we would begin to eat as though nothing happened.
I, on the other hand, would pour a small quantity into my glass at the beginning of the meal and then hoping most of the fizz would evaporate, just before dessert was served, I would slowly sip the liquid - not unlike what I later learned to do with fine wine, including the swishing around in the mouth before swallowing. Regardless of how long I waited, the exercise always ended with at least a hiccup.
But, if you're old enough to read this you know there is always a subtle contest between you and your same-sex parent. To prove my manliness on several occasions I would attempt to chug a freshly poured glass of seltzer, always with the same results.
With the first gulp you feel as though your eyeballs are going to pop out of their sockets. In retrospect that would be a blessing because the seltzer is trying its best to escape your body through any orifice it can find. Picture sneezing through your ears, for example.
Failing the obvious escape routes, it will try some unconventional outlets. Fearing that it may try for your brain you hold on to the top of your head to prevent your scalp from being ripped from your head because once that first line of defense is breached the brain is sure to follow. Now, bear in mind that it's critical that you continue to appear ultra cool throughout this. But it's difficult to do when you realize your toes are separating like they do when you get a cramp in the sole of your foot and for the first time you feel a tickling sensation in your toe nails.
At the same time your throat is going into gag reflex so that even if you wanted to, you couldn't spit it out. The damage has already been done. Even your nose gets into the act. First with a little twitch; then something that resembles the equivalent of a nasal mambo. And somehow, it's your nose that comes to the rescue and even Grandma Jenny, who rarely notices anything, is aware that she better move the pot roast platter.
Ah! That's good seltzer, Dad.
Now, as cool as you want to be, your father is even cooler. He knows what's going down. But he won't let on, other than to ask if you'd like some more. Hey, don't you think he tried the same thing with his father?
Every block had a seltzer man.
No more. According to a Times article about ten years ago there was only one guy who still had the last remaining seltzer route. There's one family-run business on Avenue D and East 92nd Street that still fills seltzer bottles, and oddly enough, the trade refers to his business as a 'filler.' He lives in New Jersey and schleps to Canarsie to continue the business started by his great grandfather.
How will you explain the ecstasy of seltzer to your grandchildren?
I still
don’t trust those siphons, but you have to admit, teamed up with Fox’s U-Bet
syrup they made a great egg cream!
As a bonus, I've included a recent article from the New York Times:
As Old as the Bottles
By COREY KILGANNON
Name Eli Miller Age 79
Where He’s From Coney Island
What He Is The city’s longest-working seltzer deliveryman
Telling Detail Keeps a copy of “The Seltzer Man,” a 1993 children’s book
about him, on the front seat of his delivery van; it was written and
illustrated by a longtime customer, Ken Rush.
Telling Detail Keeps a copy of “The Seltzer Man,” a 1993 children’s book
about him, on the front seat of his delivery van; it was written and
illustrated by a longtime customer, Ken Rush.
“I’m running on fumes — the reason I
work is, I just can’t stay home,” said Mr. Miller, who has been delivering
seltzer in Brooklyn for more than a half-century.
He can afford to retire, but that would mean his customers, many of whom have
been with him for decades, might have to resort to store-bought seltzer.
“I don’t want them to have to drink that dreck you buy in the supermarket,” he
said, using the Yiddish term for dirt. “So I guess I’ll retire when Gabriel
blows his horn.”
Mr. Miller said that when he began delivering, on March 10, 1960, there were
perhaps 500 seltzer men in the city, and a half-dozen seltzer bottlers. Now he
can count his delivery competition on one hand, and they all fill up at the
last seltzer factory in the city: Gomberg Seltzer Works in Canarsie.
A gritty old machine there pumps its effervescent, bubbly elixir into Mr.
Miller’s thick glass bottles, made in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, hand-blown
and hand-etched, with pewter siphon tops.
“You drop one of these, it will explode,” he said, holding one up. “Inside here
is triple-filtered New York City water with 80 pounds of carbonic pressure.”
Mr. Miller jams wooden shims between the 10 rattling bottles in the beat-up
wooden cases, which he delivers for $31 each.
On a recent weekday morning, he pulled his van up to the seltzer works and
exchanged his empty bottles for full ones. He said hello to the owner, Kenny
Gomberg, and his son, Alex, 25, who last year started his own seltzer route.
“I’m the oldest seltzer man in New York and he’s the youngest,” Mr. Miller said
as Alex Gomberg loaded his van next to Mr. Miller’s. “I’m passing the baton to
him.”
In quieter moments, Mr. Miller allows that he might consider retiring in a
year, and that there is no one to pass the route to. He has about 150
customers, many of them sporadic, which is about half what he once had. He
works two or three days a week, delivering to brownstones in Brooklyn Heights
and Cobble Hill, and to restaurants in Williamsburg.
His seltzer always sold itself — he includes the sound of a spritzing bottle on
his answering machine — but these days, new customers seem as enthralled by the
deliveryman, as much a throwback as his product.
“I rely on mouth-to-mouth recommendations, but I’ll only take new customers if
they’re near my other ones,” said Mr. Miller, who will turn 80 in June.
He used to be able to carry two full cases of seltzer up four flights. Now he
asks his customers to bring them up themselves from the lobby.
His lanky frame is still strong, and he can still hoist a crate to his
shoulder, but usually he lugs them at waist level. Some days, back pain
prevents him from working.
But he declared, “Old seltzer men never die — they just lose their shpritzer.”
Mr. Miller, a lifelong bachelor, has lived in the same apartment in Bensonhurst
since 1977.
“My customers are my family,” he said. “They feed me dinner, and I’ve watched
their children grow up.”
During a recent delivery to a brownstone in Park Slope, a housekeeper let him
in and then left Mr. Miller alone in the place.
“You see?” he said, picking up the empty bottles. “They give me the keys to the
kingdom.”
Mr. Miller grew up in Coney Island. His three siblings became professionals.
He worked as a dividend clerk on Wall Street but wanted to make more money. He
began a beer delivery route in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which turned into a seltzer
route in other neighborhoods.
His father, Meyer Miller, began helping Eli after retiring from his
house-painting job. In 1976, his father, then 72, died of a heart attack while
carrying a case up to a customer.
“This customer, she used to give him a glass of schnapps, so he liked to
deliver to her,” recalled Mr. Miller, who had run up from the truck but was
unable to resuscitate his father.
To this day, he keeps copies of his father’s yellowing stationery in the front
seat of his van as a keepsake.
“My father died on the route and I’m going to die on the route,” he said, and
resumed stacking the old, clattering cases of seltzer into his van.
A gritty old machine there pumps its effervescent, bubbly elixir into Mr.
Miller’s thick glass bottles, made in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, hand-blown
and hand-etched, with pewter siphon tops.
“You drop one of these, it will explode,” he said, holding one up. “Inside here
is triple-filtered New York City water with 80 pounds of carbonic pressure.”
Mr. Miller jams wooden shims between the 10 rattling bottles in the beat-up
wooden cases, which he delivers for $31 each.
On a recent weekday morning, he pulled his van up to the seltzer works and
exchanged his empty bottles for full ones. He said hello to the owner, Kenny
Gomberg, and his son, Alex, 25, who last year started his own seltzer route.
“I’m the oldest seltzer man in New York and he’s the youngest,” Mr. Miller said
as Alex Gomberg loaded his van next to Mr. Miller’s. “I’m passing the baton to
him.”
In quieter moments, Mr. Miller allows that he might consider retiring in a
year, and that there is no one to pass the route to. He has about 150
customers, many of them sporadic, which is about half what he once had. He
works two or three days a week, delivering to brownstones in Brooklyn Heights
and Cobble Hill, and to restaurants in Williamsburg.
His seltzer always sold itself — he includes the sound of a spritzing bottle on
his answering machine — but these days, new customers seem as enthralled by the
deliveryman, as much a throwback as his product.
“I rely on mouth-to-mouth recommendations, but I’ll only take new customers if
they’re near my other ones,” said Mr. Miller, who will turn 80 in June.
He used to be able to carry two full cases of seltzer up four flights. Now he
asks his customers to bring them up themselves from the lobby.
His lanky frame is still strong, and he can still hoist a crate to his
shoulder, but usually he lugs them at waist level. Some days, back pain
prevents him from working.
But he declared, “Old seltzer men never die — they just lose their shpritzer.”
Mr. Miller, a lifelong bachelor, has lived in the same apartment in Bensonhurst
since 1977.
“My customers are my family,” he said. “They feed me dinner, and I’ve watched
their children grow up.”
During a recent delivery to a brownstone in Park Slope, a housekeeper let him
in and then left Mr. Miller alone in the place.
“You see?” he said, picking up the empty bottles. “They give me the keys to the
kingdom.”
Mr. Miller grew up in Coney Island. His three siblings became professionals.
He worked as a dividend clerk on Wall Street but wanted to make more money. He
began a beer delivery route in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which turned into a seltzer
route in other neighborhoods.
His father, Meyer Miller, began helping Eli after retiring from his
house-painting job. In 1976, his father, then 72, died of a heart attack while
carrying a case up to a customer.
“This customer, she used to give him a glass of schnapps, so he liked to
deliver to her,” recalled Mr. Miller, who had run up from the truck but was
unable to resuscitate his father.
To this day, he keeps copies of his father’s yellowing stationery in the front
seat of his van as a keepsake.
“My father died on the route and I’m going to die on the route,” he said, and
resumed stacking the old, clattering cases of seltzer into his van.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 28, 2013,
on page MB4 of the New York edition with the headline: As Old as the Bottles.
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