The Herring Broker
“Why are you leaving again so soon?” asked Howard. He was nine years old and given half a chance, he’d gladly have tossed his father’s suitcase out the window.
“I have to go on business. You’re old enough now to understand,” Abe snapped. He could be a hard man.
“I know,” said Howard, “but I don’t want to stay here with Aunt Anna.”
It was an early spring day in Brooklyn, 1928. The family was gathered at the kitchen table, having just finished a delicious Sunday lunch of Anna’s homemade cheese blintzes with sweet fruit toppings and sour cream. She’d even stopped at Kossar’s to pick up some crusty fresh bialys with indented softer centres that she warmed in the oven and topped with smoked herring.
Anna, a sturdy woman of about seventy, had heard her nephew’s complaint. She looked at Howard and sighed. She blew her nose, stuffing the used Kleenex into her bosom under the top of her light green nylon housedress. The sun was shining down through the window onto the scratched white enamel icebox, replenished by the ice man the previous day.
Howard lived with his aunt as his mother had died when he was just six years old. Aunt Anna took good care of him, he figured. She cooked and cleaned and was always ready to tell him a story. But living with such an old woman felt stifling. He hated the smell of moth balls that permeated every inch of the apartment. He yearned to move to Seattle and live with his older sister, Mary. She worked as a legal secretary and was married to a nice man in the stationery business. Howard had surmised during Mary’s occasional visits home that life would be lighter, more joyful, in Seattle.
His father wasn’t interested in entertaining the thought of such a momentous change.
“Aunt Anna loves you Howard,” he said in his gravelly, heavily-accented voice. “You must make the most of it.”
Howard held back his tears, not wanting to appear weak before his father. The boy resented him for disappearing for periods of time, leaving him alone with his elderly aunt. The truth was Howard felt adrift without at least one parent on the home front. He still missed his mother terribly.
Howard sighed. At least Aunt Anna knew how to cook and bake really well. She made mouth-watering coffee cakes with poppy seed filling and delicious mandel broit cookies with almonds. In fact, he was becoming a bit chubby, as his aunt plied him with great amounts of her homemade delicacies. “Food is love,” she’d say, something he would not find problematic until later in life. For the moment, he ate heartily.
Howard remembered that his father had been heartbroken when his wife Rose died. It had been a sudden, short illness. Pneumonia. In shock after her death, Abe was hardly prepared for the task of raising the children on his own. Anna had opened her home and heart to the family and Abe had accepted. This arrangement allowed him to continue to travel for business, to earn a living, as he’d always done.
Abe told Howard that he didn’t mind his business trips, but working as a herring broker was never his dream job. As a youth in Belarus, he had studied Torah with his father and hoped to go to medical school one day. Since coming to the United States, however, he’d had to find a niche that would let him earn enough to care for his growing family. America was not an easy place. The herring business provided, so he stuck with it. But he hoped his children would have the privilege of a better life, an educated life, and he always emphasized this with them.
The next day, his father packed his small brown leather suitcase and left on his trip. He was heading to Newfoundland to meet the fishermen with whom he did business. The North Atlantic, with its shallow, temperate waters, was a perfect place to find large schools of herring. The fishermen harvested literally tons of the dark, fleshy fish in their gill nets.
His father told him that his job was to buy fish of the best quality and have them transported by ship to New York in large barrels filled with brine. Herring, pickled and smoked, was a specialty in the New York market where so many immigrants from Eastern Europe lived. It was considered poor people’s food. The Lower East Side, with its bustling markets and delicatessens, not to mention herring peddlers going door to door, would have been a prominent place to find herring, along with other traditional Jewish foods.
The role of a herring broker was to facilitate the buying and selling of herring within the market. They were an intermediary and had to have a deep understanding of the industry, including the quality, availability and pricing of different herring products. Herring brokers worked closely with both the suppliers, such as fishermen or processors, as well as the buyers, which could include wholesalers, retailers or even individual consumers. They helped negotiate contracts, ensure timely delivery of the fish, and handle the necessary paperwork and logistics involved in the transaction. My grandfather played this vital role, including providing market analysis and advice to his clients. He was a respected man in the business.
The wiles of the fish market were not always easy to navigate. In 1916, Jewish herring purveyors in Lower Manhattan were excluded from a trade agreement between non-Jewish herring merchants and the Canadian government. The New York Jewish daily Der Tog called it “Herring Antisemitism”. It had definitely been an uncertain, challenging time for Jewish herring brokers, Abe included.
Abe travelled from New York City to St. John’s Newfoundland by train and then ferry. It was a long trip, lasting six days. He didn’t usually spend a lot on accommodation but did get a sleeping cabin on the train so he wouldn’t be too exhausted to conduct negotiations with the shrewd Newfoundland fisherfolk.
A good-looking man of medium height, Abe was almost fifty years old, his face chiselled, setting off his dark, wavy hair and olive complexion. The hair at his temples was just beginning to turn a silvery gray colour, giving him a distinguished look. He did not like leaving his family, but felt he had no choice. In fact, he found the journey itself enjoyable. He read his newspaper, the Morgen Freiheit, the Yiddish communist press, and made sure his paperwork was in order.
The Jewish papers were filled with information about the ups and downs of the herring business as it affected several different trades: net-menders, barrel-makers, shippers, and salt merchants like his Howard’s uncle, Abe’s brother Saul. Abe explained to Howard that his goal was crystal clear -- he wanted nothing more than to build a healthy clientele among Newfoundland fishermen.
Abe had one major competitor in selling to the New York market. Max Braverman bought herring in Nova Scotia and he always tried to undercut Abe’s prices. He was a short, round fellow, rather unpleasant to look at. The men harbored a dislike for one another that went beyond the price of fish – each thought the other little better than a crook.
Abe was irritated that Braverman could still get under his skin after all these years. He and Max came from neighbouring villages in Belarus, and there was a healthy competition between the two communities that pre-dated their own rivalry. Sitting on the train looking out the window, Abe sighed. He resolved Max would not get the best of him.
Once he arrived in St. John’s, Abe took his suitcase and checked in at the Newfoundland Hotel. It was a modern imposing structure, just built in 1926. He felt comfortable there. It had a small café where he could get coffee and toast for breakfast for under fifty cents, not including the tip. He liked to converse with the waitress while he ate, it helped him feel more at home.
“Tell me,” said Abe, as the young woman poured his coffee, “where can a man get a smoked meat sandwich here in St. John’s?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be too easy to find,” she said. “Smoked fish, sure.”
“Hmm,” said Abe, biting into his toast and cloudberry jam. “I’ll have to try some of that.”
He enjoyed their conversation. People were people, he thought, even though St. John’s was a far cry from his mainly Jewish enclave in Brooklyn.
Abe was astute, always up for a deal. Not cheap, just choosy and careful with his hard-earned shekels. He liked the Newfoundlanders that he met on his trips. The men, full of stories of the sea, seemed to like him too. Occasionally on these trips he was invited into a fisherman’s home and shared a meal with the family. Abe adored the local fare prepared skillfully by the wives and daughters. He had never tasted cod tongues before traveling to Newfoundland and delighted in the way they melted in his mouth.
On one such pleasurable evening, it may have been that he met Mae. She was the daughter of his main local business partner, a fisherman named Joseph. Mae was a slim woman with light brown hair that she wore up. In conversation around the dinner table, Abe found her to be a bright young woman.
After they finished eating, he invited her out for a stroll by the harbour. Although St. John’s was not a large port, it was lit up at night and was very charming. For a time, the fog lifted revealing an almost full moon. He took Mae’s hand as they passed by the boats docked in the bay. She did not pull away, and they continued their amicable walk in the moonlight.
“What do you do for fun here in St. John’s?” Abe asked.
“Oh, the usual. Kitchen parties, mostly, with music,” Mae replied. She felt shy at first, but gradually opened up to the older man.
“Did my dad tell you I play the fiddle?” she asked.
“No, he didn’t. What a wonderful instrument! At home I listen to the great classics, and the violin is right in the middle of it all. I’d love to hear you play.”
“You might be surprised, the fiddle I play is pretty lively – jig dancing music, Newfoundland classics.”
“Okay,” said Abe “Now I’m curious!”
And so began an affectionate friendship that would last a couple of years. Abe felt lonely after his wife Rose’s death and though in New York he did not meet or go out with women, he enjoyed visiting Mae. She had a good sense of humour and did not ask much of him. He knew he should not lead her on, that their friendship could not pass certain boundaries, but they enjoyed one another’s company. On his trips to Newfoundland, he would visit her and bring treats from New York, such as silk stockings, that she could not obtain in St. John’s. From time to time, she’d play him a jig or a reel in the family kitchen and he was enchanted by her evident talent.
Mae enjoyed Abe’s companionship. They usually went for walks about town when he visited St. John’s. He was a distinguished man, an educated man, and he treated her well. Mae’s father was not thrilled with this arrangement, but he put up with it as Abe seemed to be a gentleman. He knew that Abe was a Jew, but he didn’t mind. At least he wasn’t Protestant.
“How’s your young lad Howard doing?” asked Joseph one morning. He was a tall man, red-knuckled, his face lined with wrinkles from the North Atlantic winds.
They were sitting at the oak kitchen table in the fisherman’s modest house, sipping tea. Joseph had gone out of his way to find a lemon for Abe. He would be off later that day on the ferry and train back to the States.
“Well, you know, he doesn’t like me travelling so much,” said Abe, “but I think he’s getting used to it. He wants to move out to Seattle to live with his older sister.”
“What do you think about that?”
“I’m not sure. Feels like a long way away, and he only lost his mother three years ago.”
“Hmm,” said Joseph. “Not an easy decision.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “And I suppose I’d be losing him if he goes.”
“Might give you some time to find a new wife,” said Joseph. “You know, Mae wouldn’t mind if you met someone special and it got serious.”
“No, not me,” said Abe. “Rose was my everything.”
There was a slight pause.
“You’ll come around eventually,” said Joseph, as he leaned over to the cabinet where he kept his business records.
“Here,” he said and handed an envelope stuffed with receipts for Abe.
“Take these. Next month I promise I’ll have a bigger catch for you to haul back to New York.”
Abe smiled. “That’s what I like to hear.”
When Abe arrived home after his trip, tired but satisfied with his dealings, everything seemed to go smoothly for a while. Howard was busy with school activities and Aunt Anna took care of the household. Abe thought of Joseph’s remarks about trying to find a new wife, but he didn’t feel ready. He’d rather pay strict attention to the business and build it while he could.
Meanwhile, he pushed Howard to make something of himself, to become educated.
“You must study for that math test on Friday,” said his father.
“Yes, Pa, I am.”
“You want to do well in life, not end up hawking fish like your old man,” he said.
“No, Pa, I’m going to be a doctor.”
“That’s my boy!” said Abe. “Keep getting good grades and you’ll make me proud.”
Howard loved it on the rare occasions when his father paid him such attention. His father demanded high achievement in all things and could be harsh, but Howard knew if he tried hard enough, he could make his Pa proud. The boy applied himself to his studies and succeeded. At the end of that school year, he again expressed his desire to move to Seattle and live with his older sister Mary.
“I’ll be ten in November, Pa,” he said. “I’m old enough to leave you.”
Abe was taken aback by his son’s strength of conviction. Could he really be that independent already? He gave his son a piercing look and said, “Maybe so. I’ll think about it.”
And so, it came to be that late in August Abe put Howard on a train to Seattle, where Mary would pick him up. He had a small suitcase to carry. It was to be a long journey and Abe handed him some spending money, and a canvas bag packed with sandwiches and snacks wrapped lovingly by Aunt Anna in brown, crinkly paper.
“Be good,” Abe told his son, and hugged him briefly. He wasn’t usually a very demonstrative parent, but this was a special moment.
In the first few weeks of September, Abe felt Howard’s absence deeply. Howard was the baby of the family, after all, the older children grown with lives of their own. He wondered what Rose would think about this new state of affairs. She had always kept Howard, her baby, very close. Abe continued to live with Anna and she took care of his laundry and the cooking.
Then at a political meeting in early October, Abe met an interesting woman. Dinah was originally from Lithuania and she understood the challenges of coming to a new country as an immigrant. Just a few years younger than Abe, she was working as a clerk for an insurance company in Manhattan. She was a plain-looking, no-nonsense woman in sensible shoes.
Dinah had no children of her own. She and her sisters had immigrated to New York seven years earlier. On the Lower East Side where she lived, she’d seen a poster for a political meeting at the Cooper Union building and decided to attend. She knew that they offered tuition-free classes to people of all backgrounds. Soon she was busy with the local political organization, helping out with copious amounts of filing and typing of documents. She was familiar with socialist politics from her previous life in Europe. The organizers appreciated her obvious commitment to the cause and she felt comfortable with the many men and women she met at Cooper Union.
Countless immigrants worked in the garment trades, a fertile ground for organizing by the Communist Party which was growing in strength during the 1930’s. Dinah met labour leaders and sympathizers during her time at the Cooper Union. When she and Abe crossed paths in weekly meetings, she was impressed by the point of view he brought to the heated discussions. Here was a bright, captivating -- even elegant – man, she found herself thinking. They started to frequent a nearby coffee shop for tea and a sweet piece of rugelach after their meetings. They always asked for a slice of lemon with their tea and gradually, a friendship kindled.
Abe enjoyed Dinah’s wit. In addition to their shared political views, he loved her intellect and warmth. On his next trip to St. John’s, he told Mae that he’d met someone in New York and that the relationship was serious. Mae was upset initially, but had always known Abe would find true love elsewhere one day. It did hurt, certainly, but her father had never hesitated to remind her that Abe would one day fall for someone of his own background and want to re-marry.
When Howard came back to New York at Christmas time, Abe had news for him.
“Son, Dinah and I are going to be married next Spring, and I want you to treat her right,” he said. “She will be your step-mother from now on.”
Howard ran to his bedroom and slammed the door. He’d only just been introduced to Dinah and wasn’t sure how to regard a careerwoman with very modern ways. She was different from the mother he remembered, and certainly cut from a different cloth than Aunt Anna.
In the refuge of his room, Howard tried to reason with himself. At least I don’t have to live with her, he thought. He wasn’t interested in making friends with a new mother, not while his heart still ached. His mother had been a gentle soul and he missed the quiet times they shared. He knew better than to show his true feelings to his father.
In early January, Howard travelled back to Seattle. The trip took days and he had a lot of time to reflect on his situation. His father could erupt for no apparent reason and more than once Howard had borne the brunt of his father’s harsh criticism. At his sister’s house, he got along quite well with both her and her husband. The household had a very different feel than the tumult that tended to accompany his father’s presence. The three settled into a pleasant routine, playing board games and eating pizza together on Friday nights.
Seattle was a quiet town, dappled with hills and pretty views of the sea. Howard liked the Pike Market area near where they lived, there was always something interesting to look at in the kiosks at the farmers’ market. There were also artisanal products and furniture. In 1922, a branch of the Seattle Public Library had opened there. At least once a week, Abe would strap on his book bag and ride his bicycle to the library where he could do his homework on the sprawling oak tables.
He made a couple of good friends at school, studied hard and still hoped to become a doctor one day. He was surprised to find that his favourite subject was theatre not the sciences. In addition to chemistry and biology, he read plays and performed in school productions to high praise. Unfortunately, this became a source of conflict with his father, who wanted a secure economic future for his son, not the vagaries of life in the theatre.
The summer Howard turned eighteen, Abe snagged him a job at a fish plant in Alaska, even though the country was plumb in the middle of the Great Depression. Howard was overwhelmed by the appalling fish smell that hit him once he set foot in the building. Although he’d been excited to travel north from Seattle where he usually lived, now Howard could barely breathe. Dressed in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt and fishermen’s rubber pants held up by black suspenders, he found himself up to his waist in fish.
His job was to move large amounts of the catch from one end of the plant where it was delivered by trawler, to the other side where the processing equipment was located. He swung a large broom-like tool and it was all he could do to control his nausea at the stench. After work, once back at the bunkhouse, he would scrub himself down in a long, hot shower to try and purge his pores of the fish stink. He never entirely succeeded.
Howard had taken the job at his father’s behest and, even though it wasn’t his first choice, he didn’t want to disappoint or disrespect him. Not surprisingly, his father didn’t want to hear about it when Howard complained.
“Be a man, Howard,” he said. “It’s the best summer job you’re going to get.
Howard wasn’t pleased, but thought it best to keep his feelings to himself. His father’s response was so typical. He never truly listened to his son.
Although Howard hated working at the fish plant, what bothered him more was the constant power struggle he was locked in with his father, a struggle he couldn’t win.
He continued toiling at the plant until the end of the summer and earned good money. He found some camaraderie with the men he worked with. Once in the shower stalls, he was approached by one of the guys on his shift. Dan flicked Howard’s butt with his towel, smirked and walked away.
Howard wasn’t sure what to make of Dan’s overture and wondered about it later when he was tucked into bed. It was the first time he’d been in such close quarters with so many men. He found it confusing at times and didn’t know if there was more to Dan’s towel flick than a simple ‘hello’. He kind of hoped it meant something more than that but he didn’t feel he could ask Dan, so he held his tongue.
Time passed sluggishly during July and August. By the fall, Howard had earned enough to pay for his own tuition and living expenses at University of Washington where he was going to study pre-med. Once at the university, he settled in nicely. He joined the drama club and performed that year in two Shakespeare productions to some acclaim. Notwithstanding the gag reflex he now felt around any kind of fish – even canned tuna -- he’d earned a touch of independence from his overbearing father.
Several years passed, with Howard visiting New York for a month every summer. He became accustomed to Dinah, and even began to like her a little. It turned out she was a good match for his domineering father. Abe wasn’t so hard on him when she was around. His father also came out to Seattle a couple of times on his way to Alaska, where he was exploring new sources for herring. His bitter nemesis, Max, was nipping at his heels and Abe needed to establish another steady supply of fish for his New York customers.
His father found sources of herring in Alaska and expanded his commerce to include that territory. The herring trade was good to him and he became a successful businessman, in spite of his competitors. Never a rich man, but able to provide for his family. He even bought a small modern electric refrigerator to replace Aunt Anna’s ancient icebox.
*
My grandfather Abraham and his mother emigrated to New York in 1891 from Belarus, a small landlocked country bordered on two sides by Russia. He was born in 1877 when tens of thousands of Jews were leaving Eastern Europe due to antisemitism and vicious pogroms. He married his love, Rose, and they had six children together. My father, Howard, was the baby of the family. Abraham lived until 1959, when he died at home in Brooklyn. Years after leaving his homeland, he always spoke English with a heavy Russian accent. I was three years old when he died, and I have a vivid memory of my father lifting me up over the side of the big metal hospital bed so that I could give Pa a kiss…………
About the Author
Miriam Edelson is a neurodivergent social activist, settler, writer, and mother living in Toronto, Canada. Her literary non-fiction, personal essays and commentaries have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, various literary journals including Dreamers Magazine, Collective Unrest, Writing Disorder, Palabras, Wilderness House Literary Review and on CBC Radio. Her short stories have been published by Narrative Northeast and The Wascana Review. Her work has also appeared in aaduna.
Her first book, “My Journey with Jake: A Memoir of Parenting and Disability” was published in April 2000. “Battle Cries: Justice for Kids with Special Needs” appeared in late 2005. She completed a doctorate (Ed.D.) in 2016 at University of Toronto focused upon Mental Health in the Workplace. The Swirl in my Burl, her collection of essays, came out in October 2022. Deep Roots, New Threats: Confronting the Rising Right ed. M. Edelson, is forthcoming in 2024.