South Brooklyn Profiles: Marietta

Marietta
The Mariettas, two brothers with an underwear store on Court Street, are not so sure they want to be interviewed for this web site. "What's a web site?" Matt, the brother with wavy grayish hair, asked. I tried to explain, poorly, saying something like imagine a book on a computer. "A book on a computer?" he said, laughing. "An expert on computers from Israel -- an expert -- came in and I said, 'I'm thinking about updating, getting computers.' He said, 'How have you done it for fifty nine years? It's worked? Don't change a thing!'" During this, he's flipping through a notebook that they've made into a ledger book.
I told him how much I love the store--beautiful, I called it. "Beautiful?! To us, it's boring," he laughed. The brothers' parents, from Amalfi and Calabria started the store more than sixty years before. He gets right back to the web site: "We don't go for that kind of thing. We don't want to be stars." Matt then said, "Just write this down. Don't make it an official interview. That'll get me nervous." He was smiling and didn't look nervous at all.
At one point, he said he wasn't sure he would "cooperate" with me. Which reminds him: "A lady came in here. She said you want a reunion?' I said, 'Of what?' She said of our school. I said, '25 years ago, okay, but don't do it now, 55, 60 years later.' I wouldn't have gone because you'dve said, 'Where's so-and-so, where's so-and-so? And they would've been gone already. She never came back because I told her I wouldn't cooperate."
On two occasions Joe, the brother with large purplish black glasses who particularly hates the idea of having his picture taken, told a story meant to explain his hesitation to comment on the neighborhood. "Once when I was on jury duty, there was a black woman, well dressed, she must have been educated--everytime she'd be called for a case, she'd stand up and say, 'My religion does not allow me to sit in judgement of my fellow man.' She said it everytime and they kept her there for 10 days. They knew she wouldn't be on a case, but I think they were trying to punish her. It got to be a joke where we were all saying, 'I cannot sit in judgement of my fellow man.' So that's how I feel: 'I cannot sit in judgment of my fellow man.' If the guy next door wants to walk around in his pajamas, it's okay with me."
But a few minutes later, he tried to appease me. "You want a good story?" One time an undertaker --I don't think it's nice to say who -- came in here looking for a one-piece garment. I said,'What for? You always wear tee shirts.' He said it was for a client. His family said he'd always wear one of those one piece long johns and they wanted to bury him in one. That was one of the weirdest requests we've had." Then another: "The undertaker once wanted a slip, one of those bouffant slips--what do you call them?" (Later Matt came up with the word Joe was looking for, "crinoline," though he was amused by the connection between puffy hair and puffy dresses.) It seems the woman was being buried in a flaired 50s skirt, but sadly the Mariettas couldn't oblige -- the slips had long gone out of fashion.
I asked about girdles. "Small girls don't wear them, but big girls still do." One piece girdles? They don't carry them anymore because women often wear two different sizes on top and bottom, would dirty the girdle struggling to get it on, then return it.
A large, stooped man perhaps in his 50s comes in. They sell the man five shirts, three cotton-polyester plaids and two cotton-poly dress shirts with stripes. His bill is about $57.00 and he wants to pay with a credit card. No. Check? No. Then suddenly he says he has enough cash on him to buy all five. Matt gives him his package before he shuffles out the door.
Joe, though, is still thinking about the adamant jurist: "She was beautful, let me tell you. She must have been a ... a lawyer? No, they wouldn't have let her on a jury. Maybe she was a college professor. She spoke so well."
Finally Joe shoos me out because he said I was making him remember too many strange stories. Outside he says, "I've got to sweep here because if I don't someone is going to say they fell and it's my fault. I'm not educated, but I have a lot of experience."

The Project

Links

Home

This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Development Fund of BAC/Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc., which is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.