The balsam was draped with over 100 ornaments, all hanging freely from the open branches, gently twirling, spinning upon the air, their movement dependent on the cycle and flow of the forced air furnace.
When I was about 12, on a Saturday afternoon just before Christmas, my mother announced we were taking a trip to the West Bank and she dragged me to Holtzerman's dry goods store on Riverside Avenue. Old man Holtzerman was a German, and like almost every recent immigrant, he was an importer, an interpreter of a life left behind.
The wood frame of the building was singed to a dingy gray, the paint peeled from the extremity of seasons -- cold arctic winters, moisture laden summers. The plate glass windows were barely held in place by the cracked and peeling glazing and were layered with a thin film of urban detritus.
The heavy wooden front doors, at least eight feet high, swung inward or outward and we leaned into the movement -- a full body press upon the leather hand plates. Pushing through we spilled into the late afternoon light of the dim, cavernous room. The stale air was speckled with motes -- held in suspension, still and unmoving, but thrown into chaos once the outside air swirled inward. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low light.
We tentatively made our way across the worn wooden floor to tables that lined the long center aisle, the floor creaked and groaned with every step we took. Each surface was filled with tightly packed boxes, each container sectioned in a grid of 12, and sitting quietly in each square was a small piece of Germanic beauty.
There were ornaments as far as I could see. Most of them were glass. Santas, churches and houses, butterflies, birds with feather tails; others were glittered: stars, soldiers and pine cones. I followed along behind my mother and we poured over the tables, amazed at the bounty spread before us. My mother held up a glittered star and let out a gasp. She held up a small pale colored bird with a feathered tail, admiring it's delicate stance. She continued like this, down one side of the aisle and up the other, holding up different ornaments, fully engaged with a mysterious seduction that took me years to comprehend.
I can't imagine now that she had a lot of money to spend, but we always came away with a few ornaments. And when the tree was put up, she would proudly point out “that’s an ornament from Holtzerman’s”.
On my first trip to Holtzerman’s I was a reluctant tag-along. But to this day, I find it very difficult to pass by a display of glass ornaments, without taking a look. Without picking up, coddling and admiring just one. And if I succumb to the temptation, I usually come away with at least one ornament. A small nod to the testament of impressionable youth.
One year in the early 80s, when we still lived on Jefferson Street, we had picked the perfect tree, although the trunk wasn't more than a few inches in diameter. The tree was so light, so airy, that once the ornaments were hung, the weight of the ornamentation dragged the poor little thing over -- it fell in slow motion, a faint tinkling of glass upon glass, measured sound for about five seconds. I can still hear the soft "poof" sound it made as it struck the floor. A coveted ornament broke into a hundred shards of hand blown ornamental glass. That cluster of grapes would never be replicated, although I have looked for a replacement for over 25 years.
Actually, this is a shot from the Exploratorium in San Francisco. We had a fabulous time in San Fran last weekend visiting Lillian. The tour of the campus was real and Evelyn was impressed. We also visited Joe and Jen in Healdsburg and Matt at the Schellville Grill. It was my first time back in San Francisco since the 7o's. Lillian was a perfect host and showed us some great areas, along with the best food I have had in a long time. Evelyn loved Haight-Ashbury and the CitiLights bookstore. My only problem was trying to drive around in the city. Too crowded, no parking and no left turns allowed. The next time I go, I will leave the car behind.
