Grab a Pickle, Share a Memory - by
Lois Stern
International Pickle Week begins the last week in May,
an event that never ceases to dredge up nostalgic images for me. You
see, pickles have held a special place in my heart since 1956, the
year when Ken Stern and I first met. He was my best friend during those
teenage years, and became my husband several years later. His
grandfather, Aaron Stern, founded Stern’s Pickle Works in Farmingdale,
NY in 1894. By the turn of the century, his was the only pickle factory
remaining on Long Island.
Aaron Stern came to America from Austria, arriving with
little more than a pushcart and a dream. He peddled other people’s
pickles up and down Delancey Street, but quickly realized this gave him
little competitive edge over other peddlers. As his vision began to take
shape, Aaron selected Farmingdale as the site for his factory because
its surrounding farmland provided a rich source of cucumbers and
cabbage. He made his daily commute on the LI Railroad from his home in
Brooklyn to Farmingdale, to watch his dream unfold. He actually cut the
trees that stood for the next 90 years as the hand-hewn beams supporting
the roof of the factory.
The building was large, both wide and deep. It was a red, barn-like
structure with open shelves, which at first were filled sparsely with
several varieties of pickles and sauerkraut. Gradually he added
additional pickled products as hot peppers, tomatoes, onions and
cauliflower along with other specialty items as olives, mustards,
Maraschino cherries, ketchups and jams. As his reputation spread, so did
his slogan, Pickle Products for Particular People. People traveled from
many parts of the metropolitan area for a shopping expedition to
Stern’s. Sundays were especially busy, with people arriving in droves
and lined up outside, waiting their turn to enter. Often the crowds
became so thick that the big sliding doors had to be rolled shut. People
waited patiently outside for their turn to enter as other customers made
their exits.
Inside, children were given fresh pickles, plucked right from an open
pickle barrel, while adult shoppers walked around the periphery of the
room, selecting their choices of delicacies. Since there were no
shopping baskets, customers carried items in their arms, occasionally
unloading them by placing their selections on one of the tables
stretching nearly the width of the room. There were no cash registers at
Stern’s Pickle Works. Sales people simply added up the cost of a
customer’s items on the backs of paper bags.
Shoppers rarely glimpsed the large area behind the store, but these back rooms held their own special mysteries, along with the pungent odors from the sauerkraut vats. If you peaked inside, you might just catch a glimpse of men in high rubber boots, stamping their feet inside one of these huge vats, as they trampled down the kraut. Another back room was used as storage for restocking the front room shelves. A curing cellar below ground was lined with row after row of charred oak barrels, each containing between 1,000 and 4,500 gallons of pickles – over 20,000 gallons in all. Solid earth formed the floor. The aroma of pickling spices filled the dank air.
Sometime after Ken and I were engaged, he took
me on a tour of the factory. While poking around in a back room, we
discovered a carved high back chair sitting in a corner. It was
upholstered in red, tattered velvet, with elaborate fringe around its
base. When we showed it to Ken’s mother, she recognized it immediately
as a chair from Aaron’s original dining room set and told us it was ours
for the taking. We dragged it home. Our friends thought it somewhat of a
monstrosity, but we loved its history and saw a hidden beauty there.
Bulldozers came through to level Stern’s Pickle Works
in 1985, clearing the land for home development. Gone are the oak
barrels, family recipes and time-honored traditions of an era. But our
‘Pickle Factory’ chair remains. Having followed us through three moves
and two reupholster jobs, it still stands in our living room, proud of
its heritage.
Thanks for the story Lois... J. Wolf
