La Machine

The other day I was going through some old negatives and found this image. A flood of pleasant memories and one not so pleasant memory came rushing back to me. When I was a teenager growing up in Brooklyn, I got a job at a local bread bakery as a counter girl. It was a family run business, and although it was not my family business, I was close with the family that owned it.

My training was to be after school from 4:30 to 6:30, Monday through Friday until I was comfortable enough to take over the shifts I was hired for, the all day Saturday and Sunday grind. The training wasn’t all that hard really, sell bread, take money, make change. Occasionally I’d have to weigh breadsticks, or dough, slice fresh yeast (1/4 cake of yeast was 25 cents) or package breadcrumbs. Closing shop consisted of packing away the leftover bread (this was made into breadcrumbs every morning) and sweeping up the shop. The manager would come back later in the evenings to open again and prepare for the bakers who would arrive at midnight and bake until the early hours of the morning.

So you can see, how, for a teenaged girl who wanted pocket money, this wasn’t such a bad job. My training should have lasted two weeks at the very most, but I’m embarrassed to admit, that it went on for close to a month before I could comfortably work a shift by myself, all because of that damned slicing machine.

I was so resistent to learning how to use it, it scared me, but I HAD to learn how to slice bread and be proficient at it before I could work a shift by myself, and that was something I really wanted, the responsibility of working a shift solo. Everyday for the first week my friend A. would have me watch her use the machine to slice the bread. She made it look so easy. There was a handle on the right side that looked sort of like the gear shifter on a standard car. You pulled that down and the machine would burp and sputter to life, it was very loud. This action started the slicing blades, up and down they would move, just like the pistons in a car, so sharp and so fast that a finger inserted on purpose or by accident would definitely not have a chance. You would then have to reach behind the machine and insert the loaf of bread, which was then pushed through the slicing blades by a heavy weight that was attached to the handle. While the bread was pushing through, the handle was slowly moving itself back into the off position. Once the bread was through, the machine turned off, the handle went back into position and the bread, now sliced was waiting for you to bag it. THAT’S the part that always got to me.

We sliced two kinds of breads in various sizes at the bakery. Large fat crusty Italian loaves, the kind that look like shorter chubbier versions of baguettes and large thick round loaves exactly like the ones you see above on the left side of my banner. To get these sliced loaves into bags required agility and balance beyond what my left-handed teenaged self could handle. I would hold my breath as I intensely watched A. open a bag, place it on the counter, grab the sliced loaf on each end, and applying light pressure to keep the bread from separating, she would lift it out of the machine and into the air, switching hands (!), all the while the bread would retain it’s natural shape, the only thing different about it was that it was sliced. With one hand balancing the sliced bread, A. would back away from the machine and reach over to the counter where she would grab the open bag and slide it down over the bread, turning the bag to right itself once the bread was safely in.

That was it, that was all that needed to be done, and that was what I couldn’t seem to learn. I swear that machine sat in the corner every single day and mocked me, daring me to try without failing. Part of the problem was my left-handedness, I mean let’s face it, this is a right-handed world. Scissors are right handed, most tools, machines and kitchen gadgets are right-handed, teachers are right-handed, and bread slicing machines are right handed. A. was right-handed too, and like my right-handed mother who tried to teach me how to crochet and the right-handed teachers who taught me penmanship, A. too found it very difficult to get me to be relaxed and coordinated enough to handle the bread without dropping it all over the floor.

Those first few weeks of trying to use the machine found me always doing something wrong. I would forget to open the bag before slicing the bread, this resulted in having to call A. from the back of the store to come help me, or, even asking one of the customers to come behind the counter and open their own bag! I would apply too much pressure to the bread while lifting it out of the machine causing it to fold in on itself and go flying out of my hands, slices of bread spewing in every direction, or I would miss with the bag and knock over the top few slices. The hardest by far was letting go with one hand to grab the bag while balancing the loaf in the other hand. OH the nightmares I had because of that. At least 3 or 4 times during a shift, my arm, while balancing the bread would suddenly grow tired and go limp, resulting in my having to carefully keep the precariously swaying bread from swaying right the hell out of my hand. Each time I made one of those mistakes I had to start again…while everyone was watching…and waiting. You would think that the customers would have been sympathetic, but NO, instead, I got a lot of “Don’t drop that bread it’s the last loaf and my husband/wife is going to be mad at you.” Or “Can’t you just keep it on the machine and slip the bag over it, this is taking too long?” Thanks people, thanks for contributing to my lack of self confidence and giving me chronic dehydration by making me sweat profusely and being unsympathetic to my lack of co-ordination. OH, how I prayed nightly that no one would come in and order their loaves sliced.

As with all things that you practice over and over, eventually I got better. I stopped forgetting to open the bag, and I learned to apply the lightest of touches to the bread while lifting it out of the machine. I acquired a rock steadiness in my arm, allowing me to slip a bag over the bread while keeping it undisturbed. I had mastered the machine, and even though I got teased by just about everyone because I did everything left-handed and backwards it was one of my greatest accomplishments to turn to a customer and say “Would you like that sliced?”

Written by Deb on November 5, 2003 01:47 PM