Crumbcatchers

In the Roaring Twenties my grandfather, Diamond Ben, was a flashy guy. He had a taste for Cadillacs. He owned a tux and a diamond stickpin. He had a big house by the beach, and two garages on Broadway. He hung out with celebrities.

But my grandfather lost the house and the two garages and the flashy life in the early Thirties, and my mother’s family was forced to move into a tenement apartment in the Bronx.


… He ended up in the basement of a bakery. Above, in the retail shop, when crumbs of bread and cake fell onto the floor, they were swept down into a hole. The hole had a funnel attached to it. My grandfather stood under it, catching and bagging the crumbs for resale. He was the crumbcatcher.

My mother, who couldn’t go to college because she had to help to support the family, often talked about going to cafeterias during lunch to make catsup soup out of hot water and free condiments.

… Now, as overweight America lumbers into its crumbcatcher phase, those values — saving money, avoiding debt — are starting to make sense again.

No one can explain why the price of gasoline is going up — it seems to be a combination of increased demand, competition for resources, lessening supplies and wide-scale speculation. (As the dollar sinks and only commodities are gaining in value, investment dollars are flocking there, driving up prices).

Our entire economy is predicated on cheap oil, so it’s just a matter of watching the building blocks tumble, one by one. And even if we could stop gasoline prices from escalating, there’s China, flush with cash, building an automobile industry. And did you know that last month an Indian car company bought Jaguar?

Yes, America is no longer the big cheese standing alone. What happens elsewhere in the world is going to hurt us here.

Smirking Chimp