By Lisa Spaccarelli, October 14, 2019 — I grew up in The Bronx, with four brothers and two sisters in the house my grandfather built when he came to the United States from Italy. He died before I was born, but we lived there with my grandmother. Summer was our favorite time – no shoes, no homework, not a care in the world. My Dad worked two or three jobs at a time and we would help make extra money by peeling plastic off of copper wire that he found at the dump, he would then sell the scrap copper. We had a huge cherry tree in the yard. [We] would eat cherries, give away cherries, and throw cherries at each other. On one especially hot, summer day in July, The Seltzer Man came down the street.
The Seltzer Man looked like he was at least one hundred years old and he would come down our street with a wooden cart, pulled by a donkey. On the cart were wooden crates filled with big glass seltzer bottles. He would slowly clop clop down the street and sell a seltzer bottle wherever he could. My Mom would occasionally buy a bottle of seltzer or two for my Dad. On this particularly hot, blue sky, sunshiney day in July, my Mom bought three seltzer bottles. We carried them down the steps from the street to the front door. As we sat on the front stoop, we did what kids do. We sat for a bit, looking at the big bottles with their shiney tops. Then – ppssssssttt!!!! My brother squirted me in the face with the seltzer – it shot out so fast and so fizzy – right in the kisser. I’d never even tasted seltzer before – but this was fun. I screamed, of course. and he ran around the house with the bottle under his arm. My other brother ran inside and up the stairs. I grabbed the hose from the yard, shot my brother with a stream of water as he came around the house, but my brother upstairs dumped a saucepan of water right out the window – onto my head!
It was all out war now – seltzer boy continued to run around the house, squirting me in the face as he ran by, I manned the hose and drenched him in turn, while my brother upstairs continued to throw pots of water out the window at anyone he could nail – we were soaked, screaming and laughing, streams of water flying everywhere. My mother didn’t yell once – she must have known we were letting loose on a hot summer day – and it was ok. Dad still had two bottles of seltzer and had no idea what were were up to while he was at work. I will always think of The Seltzer Man and his donkey and how a bottle of seltzer started a day of pure childhood laughter on Hering Avenue in The Bronx.
