Published in the Yonkers Tribune on Jan. 24, 2008.
The working class neighborhood that was 1961 South Brooklyn has been re-named Greenwood in recognition of its emerging gentrification and its proximity to Greenwood cemetery, known the world over for its size and the fame of some its eternal residents. 

Back then it was filled with sound: The loud tell tale wack of a broom handle making contact with a rubber ball, the flop-flop of sneakers on pavement as boys ran passing patterns behind parked cars, and the chorus of voices as young children played in the streets, was often mixed, and even muted, by the grunt of large diesel trucks, the whining and gnashing of commercial drills, and the tinny whooshing sound that blow torches make when applied to large metal surfaces.  They call such zones mixed use today.  But the house and factory laden area that sits between Brooklyn’s Park Slope and Sunset Park sections was, then, simply know as South Brooklyn.

John F. Kennedy was still alive, Chrysler introduced its wide winged Fury, and Roger Maris was losing his hair to the pressure of chasing Babe Ruth’s ghost.  But in 1961, I was hanging out at the jelly factory when I wasn’t chasing one of those “spaldeens” or footballs. This story is how that came to be and the role the owner of that factory played in my life.

Just 100 feet to the left of my front door was the Triangle Preserve Company known to all as the jelly factory. The plant was set up at the turn of the 20th century by one of the richest families in Brooklyn, the Shulthies.  They had migrated to America from Germany in the mid 1800s. Rich, proud and educated, the family owned the largest piece of residential real estate with one home on it in all of Bay Ridge, the borough’s most exclusive section. 

The estate was called “The Ridge” and lasted until the mid 1980’s when it was finally replaced with over 30 multi-dwelling town
houses, and is listed and shown in any book about historical Brooklyn.  The homestead, along with massive nearby land tracks
and other holdings, were all left to their only son, who already ran the jelly business.

The jelly factory was as much a part of the street I grew up on as the asphalt, concrete and neighbors of 24th Street, where my grandparents had a three story bay-windowed frame house. The block almost always smelled good. The sweet scent of grapes, strawberries, raspberries, or one of the other berries of dark color, coming to a boil or cooling was always in the air.  
For some reason the citrus preserves, such as orange marmalade, never left an olfactory trail outside of the building. In those days city blocks were like small towns and everyone knew everyone else, and that included the people in the factories like Chris Shulthies, the heir to the family fortune and the owner of the jelly factory.  Chris was in his mid-sixties, never married, and never had any children.  You would never know his wealth from his appearance, his accessories or his spending habits. He wore the same tired cloths everyday, drove the least expensive car he could find—he even told them not to put a radio in it, and agonized over whether he really needed a heater. Chris cobbled his lunch together from those jars of jelly that were the last of each lot and, thus, were never filled to the top.  To say he was frugal was to say that ice is cold.  He even brought in old newspapers to stoke the fires in the wood and coal furnace that he relegated to burning only combustible refuse left over from the business. If a chair broke, in the furnace it went.  A damaged flatbed…Chop it up and burn it up.  But always the newspapers, endless old copies of the New York Times going back 25 years, or more, were brought in from home and burned
at the alter of economy.  These papers were an essential part of the jelly man and how he came to be the father figure and mentor I never had.

It was common knowledge that kids from the block would hang out in the factory when it was cold. You could play among the endless walls of jar boxes and freshly made jelly shipments not yet made.  For a kid of 11, or so, the stacks of varying elevations and secret passages made for great hide and seek terrain, and suitable real estate to play soldiers or in cowboys and Indians.  It wasn’t really until Chris got to know you that other benefits kicked in.

We were working class kids who were taught the importance of hard work. But Chris and his staff of one full timer and one part time teenager were the essence of the protestant work ethic.  They started at eight AM, and set a timer for 12pm when
they took 30 minutes to eat the jelly from the half filled jars, on some toast.  They ate this every day, no exceptions, ever.  After 30 minutes the alarm went off again, and back to work they went.  The culture of hard work was so embedded that
they considered it a complement to ask you to help, and you considered it an honor to be asked.  I worked my way up to pouring molten jelly in waiting jars, but never progressed to putting labels on the jars, the ultimate task requiring the neat use
of paste and a gentle accurate touch. 

My favorite job was using a giant squeegy to cool large molten racks of fruit preserves so that they would not jell while cooling to a sufficient temperature for packaging. Looking just like large pool tables the racks were water cooled, and you had to work quickly to do it evenly, and you also had to worry about the occasional bee, who thought she died and went to heaven, if she
made a crash landing into the tasty fluid.  It was hard for the worker, as well, to avoid sticking a finger into the rack to taste hot jam.  The truth that only jelly makers know can now be revealed:  The stuff tastes even better when it’s hot and just
slightly congealed. 

Chris would take us on pick ups as well, such as when he bought fruit at the great cold storage facilities in and about the city.  More than once did get sick from eating too many thawing strawberries from the back of the 1929 Model T Ford truck.

My special relationship with Chris began innocently enough when he caught me reading the old copies of the times before I threw them in the furnace.  I found myself interested in the politics of the era, and the car adds in the New York Times magazine. Over time, I had cut out enough pictures of 1932 Dodges and other classic cars of the era to literally wall paper my half of my bedroom with them. It was around this time that Chris started sharing with me his love of politics, science and astronomy, things that I love to this day.  I can still remember sitting with him on top of a high stack of jar boxes as he drew the planets, or took time to explain how a gasoline engine worked.  He was not a fan of FDR, and thought that people should work their way out of their ruts like his family did.  He was as conservative as I was not.  But he nurtured in me what I did believe and taught me how to question and think critically.  Soon enough, he signed me up for the astronomy club he attended at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  We would go and learn about pulsars and black holes, before they were every day concepts.  We sat in amazement, in 1962, when they unveiled models of lunar landing craft. We argued about the Great Society program, Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and air conditioning in cars.  We were both mesmerized when they disproved
the expand and contract theory of the universe in deference to the big bang.  Oh, and if you wondering, he never stopped working during these discussions unless it was the end of the day.  And every Christmas eve, he would read the night before
Christmas to a few of us kids, and one year even gave me a race car.  

It was Chris the jelly man who nurtured my love of science, art, music, science and politics.  It was from him that learned that
real wealth was in what you could know and understand, and how you thought about things. It was also there, working in the jelly factory for free, that I learned working hard is worthwhile, just for the pride of doing it well. All of it led me, for good or ill, on the path that took me to radio, and the life I live today.

In my mid twenties, Chris had a horrible stroke, and lost his short term memory. He was nearly 80, and he did know me anymore except in the past tense as if I was someone else.  It was hard at first to hear him talk about me as if I was someone else, especially his mild complaints about how, when I got married, he did not see me Robert from down the street anymore.  For him, I was gone.

To this day, I think about how this intellectual man of work influenced my life, and how I never really got the chance to thank him for the wealth he shared with me. But I am grateful to give him this tribute in a newspaper. He would have liked that.