Pollas Meat Market

I just finished college. I guess I am an adult now. Being an adult, it's pretty overwhelming. My future is a great unknown. Where will I be next year? Next month, even. Will I be as happy as I am now? Will I be able to make something of my life? The vastness, the blankness, and the uncertainty of it all has driven me to contemplate my past. The known, the familiar, my life as it has already been lived. When did that life become a memory, rather than a routine? When did trips to Pollas meat market stop happening, and why did it take me so many years to recall that they ever happened at all? Yes, the known and familiar past that I have chosen to remember in every fine detail are the trips to Pollas for lunch meat. On Kelley road? Off of seven mile? I don't remember. But here is what I do recall.

If we go to Pollas, maybe we'll see that nice guy who stocks the fruit and gives us cookies when we check out. And maybe we'll get ma to buy us those mini chocolate chip cookies that Miss Abrahms, the first grade substitute teacher, used to hand out if we were good. I bet ma will give in. When it comes to those cookies, she usually does. But she never gives in to the jello molds. Never. Towering in a fantastic rainbow of red, pink, green, and orange, the jello molds were forever a mystery. I still don't really know what they are, or what they would taste like, or if they are even for eating. Knowing that it would be useless to beg for one of these, I tear my eyes away and we are at the meat counter. Flies dart around, taunting the butcher and jumping from bloody bones to ham butts. On top of the counter, pickled pigs feet are lined neatly in jars, pink chunky hooves suspended in clear pink juice. If we are lucky, there will be a cheese sample next to the jars. I scan the counter for the red checkerboard paper dish. Bingo. Cheese cubes for everyone! Now it's time to get down to business. The butcher digs his finger deep into his ear, scratches it, and asks us what we want. "I'll take two punds of the Kraukus Poilish ham" says ma. He picks up the slippery pink cube of meat and flops it onto the slicer. "Very thin, please," says ma. When it is shaved paper thin you don't even remember the block it came from. And the white veins of fat are barely visible. I'll never forget the time ma got boiled ham by accident. Or maybe it was on sale and she told us she did it by accident. Either way, a boiled ham sandwich is much harder to get down than a Kraukus ham sandwich, no matter how thinly it is sliced.