Paper Bag Credit Cards

Credit cards did not exist in Brooklyn 3, but a there was a system of consumer credit by merchants based on paper bags and clothesline.

People needed to eat every day, but payday was once every two weeks, and sometimes by the end of the cycle the household money had run out, or even before the end, like at the beginning.

So the butcher, the grocer, etc. would hang you credit.

Come in and place your order. Tell the store you need credit. They add up your order and reach not towards the register, but for a small paper bag.

They write your name on the bag. They write the amount you owe. They hang it with a clothespin on a clothesline behind the counter.

It is revolving credit. There is room on the bag for more owing. But not that much. It is a small bag on purpose.

The owner's expectation is that you will make good on it by the end of the bag. You probably will, because if you don't, you will have to consult with the finance department, which is the owner telling you that your hung credit is dead. You do not wish to be told this when your family is hungry.

You also don't want it known by the neighbors. Chances are they have already seen that your bag has a lot of numbers on it, preceded by plus signs, and no minuses. It is shameful among the people, and also hurtful to your credit rating at other stores.

Some people, however, were hard to shame, or even cajole, and were good at extending credit for themselves. My grandmother was among the best. I suppose you could say worst, if you were an economist. But if you appreciated art, the best.

I was with her one day on Church Avenue. She had money for the bakery and the butcher, but was holding out on the deli, where we stopped for a small treat.

- This is going to be cash, isn't it, Mrs. Keane?

- Ah, no, Morrie. I think I need a little more credit today.

- Well, I was thinking about asking you to settle up some, Mrs. Keane. I mean it's getting a little heavy here.

- I haven't got it, though. Not today. Soon. Just this little purchase, and we'll settle up before you know it.

- Well, I'd like to know it, Mrs. Keane. I mean you owe us quite a bit on this tab here.

- Well, you know, Morrie. I'd rather owe it to you than to have to cheat you out of it.

In the face of such artful intransigence, not only does Ma not get screamed at, or even scowled at, she gets today's order on the line, too. Morrie knows that otherwise he does not see her for a while. And if he is to tell others about the day's dealings with Mrs. Keane, they will only laugh. So the shame factor is non-existent.

She is funny. Chances are Morrie laughs, at least later.

It's not about the money. It's a dance, a bit of theater on the street, in the middle of bland afternoon.

A day's tedium is shattered for a while. No worries. A laugh today. The money? Maybe tomorrow.

Our Other Mother

There was no such thing as divorce in Brooklyn 3. No kid ever lost a parent, nor got an extra one, that way.

Some kids got an extra parent through family, if a real parent got sick.

This happened with us.

Early in her marriage, our mother was hospitalized with polio. She had little kids. So her mother, Maryann Keane, stepped in.

Maryann lived a mile from us, with her husband, Patrick, in a fifth-floor walk-up, on the corner of Church and Brooklyn Avenues.

Maryann Lynch and Patrick Keane were from Ireland. Both came to America as children, fleeing poverty.

Maryann came alone, at age 16.

She'd had the misfortune to be born a girl, first child in a dirt-farming family.

"That's one for America," her father said when she was born, not male. He shipped her to New York as soon as it was legal.

There were boarding houses for such as Maryann. She went to work scrubbing floors in Manhattan.

On weekends, she went to dances for the Irish. She met a man - from Tuam, back home. He was good.

They married. Maryann was 24. Things were good enough that she stopped working.

She bore three children. She was thrilled with it and so was her husband.

Like herself, her husband was denied education as a child, thus choices later. Patrick worked digging ditches and pouring asphalt in the streets.

Their three girls slept in one bed. Maryann washed clothes by hand, in a tub with a washboard and wringer. By no means was there money.

But her husband was faithful, kind, and pious. Also, good-looking and fun. He played the accordion at parties on Saturday nights. Sunday mornings, he cooked breakfast for the family, before ushering at church.

Their girls were all spirited, smart and beautiful.

How much did she love Brooklyn? She loved the place entirely, she told me many times, in a brogue she never lost - jute-strong, song-sweet.

She'd built a life, against all odds, more solid, by a million, than the stone house she was cast from in Longford.

Presumably, to help a sick daughter raise children was no great burden, in her mind.

Maryann came to our house by bus each morning before our father left for work, and took the bus home once he returned. No need to bother him with driving, tired as he was. Some nights she stayed, if needed. On weekends she drove with her husband.

We children were small, and of course had all bonded normally with our mother, but there arose some confusion about the role of these two women in our lives.

Other kids saw their mothers a lot, and their grandmothers a little. With us, it was the opposite.

We referred to our grandmother as "Ma." Of course, our mother was Mom. But whatever a grandmother was, or was supposed to be, ours was more. Hence the splitting of the title.

I don't know if anyone tried to clarify the issue for us, or correct us. If they did, it didn't stick. We never referred to nor addressed Maryann as anything but Ma, our whole lives.