DAILY BREAD : Let Them Eat Olive Loaf

Like so many mornings, it started off well enough. For one thing, I got Doris Day parking--a term coined by my brother and referring to Doris Day’s cinematic habit of pulling into slots right in front of, say, Macy’s or Radio City Music Hall. This is exactly what I did, in front of Noah’s Bagels on Main Street in Santa Monica, no less. But my parking exultation was quickly squashed when I pulled open the front door of that fine establishment--clearly every household from Playa del Rey to the Palisades had sent a representative out on a bagel run. I took a number. I think it represented Bill Gates’ annual compound interest. I wasn’t going anywhere for a long, long time.

There was no available leaning space, unless you counted the guy in the Gold’s Gym T-shirt who certainly resembled, in breadth, solidity and personality, a brick wall, so I shoved my hands in my pockets and commenced that slight side-to-side rocking motion so popular in amusement park lines and psychiatric wards everywhere. I had taken myself to about the third level of self-hypnosis when suddenly I experienced what can only be described as a race memory. Three generations of immigrant upward mobility were torn away; I could feel the weight of the basket on my arm, smell the damp wool of the shawl against my cheek, hear the bleat of lambs, or were they goats?, picking their way through the market square. I glanced wildly around to see if I was part of a larger experience, but no, everyone else--the girls in the black leggings and baseball hats, the women with their lip crayon miraculously perfect on a Sunday morning, the men secretly flaunting the various bulges of beepers and cellular phones--all were unaware of what was going on.

I was standing in a bread line.

And it wasn’t the first time. Why, just two Saturdays ago, I’d hauled my carcass out of bed at some ungodly time that had but three digits to it and shuffled my way toward the doors of La Brea Bakery to witness two unfortunately ponytailed older gentlemen go three rounds over a lone loaf of olive bread. Only the emergence of a fresh batch of rosemary rolls prevented bloodshed.

There is no denying that the upper-middles and middle-uppers have recently developed a penchant for standing in lines--for bread, cheese, fresh produce and, of course, the first of the Beaujolais Nouveau. Perhaps it’s the influence of recent immigrants from the former republics of the Soviet Union, or maybe it’s just an extension of the inexplicable post-grunge retro-obsession--I mean, if leopard skin pants are back, everything is pretty much up for grabs, right? But there is something a bit discombobulating about the sight of a couple pulling up in a BMW to wait in a block-long line for a loaf of bread. Fortunately, most of the time they can’t find parking.