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clothing toward a footwear section that would challenge a Nine West.
    “You sure you don’t need some pots and pans?” Uncle Bernie asked me on the way back. “I just got some new All-Clad. That’s top of the line, All-Clad. The best. The best. ”
    “No thanks.”
    “What about a TV? Samsung. Sony. Those Japs make a good TV now. Fella like you, I bet you like sports, right? Me? I like the ponies. I go to the track. I place a bet. I take a little nap in the sun. It’s very relaxing. But you young guys? You all like the football and the basketball. Need a good TV for that, am I right? How about a new high-def?”
    “That’s okay.”
    “Boots,” Gene reminded Bernie. “He came for the boots, remember?”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just talking here. What, you think I’m some kind of goyishe kop? ”
    “That’s Yiddish for ‘stupid,’” Gene translated.
    “Okay, here we are,” Bernie said as we arrived at a series of wire racks, filled from top to bottom with shoe boxes. “What size are you? Ten? Eleven? You’re so tall, I bet you’re eleven.”
    “Yeah, eleven works,” I said.
    “Okay, okay, where are we … boots, boots,” Bernie said, pawing through some boxes. “Here we go. Timberlands. Excellent company, Timberland. They make a fine product and they stand behind it a hundred percent, a thousand percent. Now these? These are the top of the line.”
    He pulled out a pair of work boots and continued: “These are from their premium collection. Steel toe. Waterproof. Eight-inch upper—that’s two inches more than their usual. You wear these boots, people say, ‘Hey, look at that feinshmecker !’”
    “That’s Yiddish for someone who has good taste,” Gene interjected.
    “Now, you get these boots retail for one fifty, one sixty, even on sale. You? You’re a friend of Tee’s—as far as I’m concerned, you’re mishpokhe. I give ’em to you for a hundred even. We good?”
    I was so stunned by everything I was seeing—much less by what a mishpokhe was—I had to slow down and make sense out of it. “I’m sorry, Uncle Bernie, I just have to know, what is all this? Where did this come from?”
    “What do you mean, where did this come from? You think I’m back here tanning leather all day? It came from the manufacturer.”
    “No, I’m just asking … I’m sorry, are you guys some kind of fence or something?”
    Bernie recoiled, looking genuinely offended. “Fence? Fence! A broch! My mother would rise from the grave and cuff me behind the ear if I stole so much as a lump of sugar! A fence! Shame on you.”
    “So how did you guys … get all this stuff?”
    “Warranties,” Bernie said. “It’s all about the warranties.”
    “Huh?”
    “We’re a warrantied product reseller,” Gene explained.
    “What’s … what’s that?”
    “Well, take those boots you got there. Timberland,” Uncle Bernie said. “Now, Timberland is a popular boot around here. And these young black guys, they all want their boots to be crisp and new, all the time. The moment a boot gets a speck of dirt on it? Feh! They’re done with it.”
    “But these look brand-new…”
    “I’m not finished. Am I finished? Geez, this guy. It’s like he’s sitting on shpilkes. ”
    “That means that you’re impatient,” Gene said.
    “Anyhow,” Bernie plowed forward, “Timberland, they guarantee their product for life. For life, you hear me! So we have people all over, people who know us, people who know what we’re looking for. And they recover these kind of things for us—for a small fee, naturally. So say we get a pair of slightly used boots. We send them back to Timberland and, whammo, new boots.”
    “They just … send you boots?”
    “Well, there’s work involved. You have to write a letter—the letter is important, make ’em know you’re serious. And then sometimes we might have to, what’s the best way to put it, massage ’em a little. This is an art we’re talking about