Visiting a New Place

Each semi-annual goal list contains an element of new experience.  It may be significant travel, day trips to places I've not been before, eating something I've not had before, joining a committee.  Experiences come in a lot of different forms.  Often it is visiting a new place, whether a city, tourist site, park within my own state, or even a new restaurant.

This cycle I had the initiative not as specifically new but as three day trips.  I had completed one, taking advantage of my SEPTA Senior Card to walk the length of Elfreth's Alley, Philadelphia's oldest currently occupied residential street.  Being on vacation from my state university's senior division, I seemed overdue for another visit to a new place.   A dear friend never made many social connections.  As his years advance, he has become more dependent on other people, more isolated at a senior living facility.  After a few desperate emails, my wife and I paid him a visit.  Driving took about two hours, with a stop for coffee and some redirection by Waze when I misunderstood where to turn.  I'd been to Baltimore many times for a variety of reasons, though not to where he current resides.

To our relief, the tales of woe sent electronically seem far beyond what we saw.  He lives in a spacious place, tastefully furnished, with kind staff everywhere.  The drive took its toll on me, so I left most of the conversation to my wife while I rested on a sofa.  He had an afternoon medical appointment, which gave everyone a reason to conclude the visit.

Many of my private times in Baltimore take place on Saturday mornings.  I am fond of one of their Orthodox synagogues, once headed by an iconic senior rabbi who has since retired.  I make a day of it, leaving early enough to get coffee at a WaWa, arrive before Torah reading and sometimes go to a tourist attraction after services, but sometimes just head home after kiddush.  While the shul sits in Jewish Baltimore, I only drive past a lot of McMansions where few of those in attendance can afford to live.  There is another part of Jewish Baltimore, perhaps its most robust section, just over the hill from where I turn off.  It being Saturday, everything Jewish is closed, including the 7 Mile Kosher supermarket, where I have always wanted to shop, if only one time.

This seemed like the ideal time to go.  Passover approaches.  My regional grocer has a weakening attachment to our local Vaad, though I could still get a respectable Passover food supply.  It's those irritants, the shankbone once given away for free, then sold, now absent.  Dairy not yet out.  And a very limited supply of meat.  Passover has the communal eating of meat at its core.  For a few guests, I can get chickens, both whole birds and parts to make soup.  For a crowd, there were no big slabs of meat to buy, other than frozen turkeys that people can defrost.  

Waze directed and misdirected me to parts of Jewish Baltimore I'd not driven past previously.  Modest homes with small yards.  And many more apartment complexes than I would have expected in proximity to the miniestates where lawyers and Hopkins neurosurgeons live. Two synagogues, one large reddish masonry building with signage announcing it as a Sephardic synagogue.  Another a smaller more conventional Orthodox place.  People on the sidewalks included a Hasidic teen girl with little skin exposed and a few men in black.  But the neighborhood had other representation.  Some African Americans.  A sprawling school dominated a block on our route, a few blocks from our kosher megamart.  Not a yeshiva but the Frederick Douglas High School.

The GPS corrected my directional misunderstandings.  We arrived at the Market.  It had a sprawling parking lot, though as Pesach approaches, it also has a lot of patrons, many visibly orthodox with beards, kippot, and tzitzit emerging over their belts.  Carts seemed filled to the top.  More than any empty nester household could eat.  These purchases will fill the back of an SUV and take a while to bring inside.  Perhaps some shopped as agents of their synagogues or organizations for communal seders or a week's worth of meals for a day school. 

I had been to large kosher markets before.  My childhood town has emerged as a Hassidic hub.  On my last visit, I toured Rockland Kosher, though without the detail and intent that I approached most aisles of 7 Mile Market.  Shankbone?  A whole case, help yourself, $2 each.  Priority for my cart.  Big hunks of beef, plain and corned.  Enough for a Bar Mitzvah caterer.  Margarine, no.  The industry must have withdrawn from Passover pareve margarine.  And no dairy.  Some prices far exceeded what I once paid.  Large briskets could run over $100.  A raw beef tongue, not seen in years, now sells for $40 a pound.  I did not run across lamb or duckling, but did not seek them out.  Marshmallows.  Had to put a bag in my cart.  My wife took a liking to thinly sliced sandwich steaks, to be reduced to smaller portions when we get home.  An I've not seen an authentic kosher salami in years.  Passover approved.  Into cart.

Satisfied, we headed to the checkout.  Interestingly the employees were sometimes representative of the local Orthodox clientele, but they had Black and Latino staff, including our most pleasant cashier.  No self-checkout lanes.  No express lanes either.  At each register, they keep a cardboard tzedakah box.  It helps local families in some way.  One of the Passover traditions is to add to a fund that enables Jews of low income to purchase supplies for their holiday.  I think these black corrugated boxes with slots on the top had a different destination.  I tapped my card.  As I returned the Visa to its wallet slot, I took out a dollar, folded it and stuffed it into the slot.  

As awesome as the place appeared, and as tempting a return visit without the Passover limitation seems, it still requires a 70 mile drive each way, and one bridge toll.  I likely will return to that favorite synagogue, though the Market closes on shabbos.  Similar, though less comprehensive options exist a shorter drive from my home.  At one time I drove out of necessity about 35 miles each way to a kosher butcher about every 6-8 weeks.  My school age son joined me.  Father/Son bonding or bondage made the errands special.  As an empty nester, these quests for the more exotic cuts of meat, liver, tongue, duckling, veal seem harder to justify.  But my afternoon at 7 Mile Market, both products and ambience, made me eager to inconvenience myself a little, if only to explore closer to home.