The Smartest Woman I Know Read Online Free PDF

Gristede’s. Times have changed. I don’t worry about the Cossacks anymore, I worry about shoplifters.

    Cossacks
    But even if her feet hurt, her head hurt, or her heart hurt, even if she was too tired to move, even if it was too hot, too cold, too windy, too snowy, even if it got dark too early or too late, Ettie always lit the
Shabbos
candles.

A WAY OF LIFE ENDS .
A NEW ONE BEGINS .
    E TTIE WAS ALWAYS a little sad on a Jewish holiday. On one hand, she wanted to be observant. On the other hand, the holidays didn’t fit in with life on Madison Avenue. “How can we close the store for Shabbos, for Tish’a B’Av, for Simchat Torah, for Rosh Hashanah? We’ll lose customers. They’ll go to 59th Street for their newspapers.”

    “Who knows what to do anymore?
    “Who knows what’s important anymore?
    “Who even knows who anybody is anymore,” she sighed.
    “Nobody knows that Hedy Lamarr is really Jewish.” On and on she’d go. Her list was endless. Anybody she admired was in one way or another Jewish.
    “And Cary Grant is part Jewish, but I don’t know which part. Lauren Bacall is Jewish and married Humphrey Bogart who also has a Jewish part. Winston Churchill and Mae West have Jewish mothers. Groucho Marx and his brothers are all Jewish. The Ritz brothers, Jewish, but Jews shouldn’t hit each other on the head. Jacob Javits, the senator in Washington, is Jewish, so I don’t think he’s really a Republican.
    “Three more things, you should always remember:
    “Number 1: Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.
    “Number 2: You better eat something while you’re waiting for a free lunch.
    “Number 3: Nobody owes you anything unless you lend them money and it should be in writing on a piece of paper with a lot of copies and a lawyer who puts a seal on it with a notary. And try to use a Jewish lawyer.
    “You know why there are so many Jewish lawyers? It’s in our history to argue. Do you know a Jew who doesn’t have an opinion?

    “Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers—it’s in our history not to get along.
    “Fight with guns? We like to fight with words.
    “The men sit and study the Talmud and they discuss, they debate, they argue, their faces turn red, they start to shake, and worse things happen.”
    God, how come every Jew is putting in his two cents, especially if nobody asked him?

IN THIS LIFE, YOU have to be prepared,” Ettie advised, and she always was.
    Whenever she left the store she carried with her a black pocketbook with a gold clasp that made a noise when she closed it. It was her Handbag for Emergencies.
    No matter when I looked in it, I always found the same things:

     
    Peppermint Life Savers
    A white cotton handkerchief with embroidered flowers
    A small mirror in a felt case
    A compact with a powder puff and powder (never used)
    Ten shiny pennies (for the
kinder
to play with) and a dollar in change in a red leather change purse
    A silver pillbox with four aspirins inside
    A plastic rain bonnet in a plastic holder
    A safety pin
    A small sewing kit from the Saxony Hotel in Miami Beach
    A Band-Aid
    A five-dollar bill rolled up and stuffed into the pinky of a pair of short black cotton gloves
    The telephone number of Mr. Max
    Finklestein, a lawyer: TRafalga 8-9224.

E NDINGS
    F INALLY, HIGH SCHOOL was over for me. What would I do? What were my choices?
    “Let me give you some good advice,” Ettie said. “Smart people are smart because they make smart choices. There are some things maybe you want to do, but you don’t do them good. It wouldn’t be smart to choose them to make a living.
    “Not everybody can do everything. Maybe I want to be like Gypsy Rose Lee. Let me tell you, Gypsy Rose Lee doesn’t have to worry I’m going to take her job. But I bet Gypsy Rose Lee can’t make a breaded veal cutlet as good as me. Some things you can do. Some things you never can do.”
    A smart person knows what he can’t do, but a smart aleck thinks he can do