Throughout high school I worked at my father\u2019s restaurant on Saturday mornings. It was a luncheonette in a dying, industrial section of Philadelphia called Kensington\u2014a place that used to be filled with dye-houses and scrap metal yards, but was gutted in the 1970s as factories moved south and overseas. By the 1980s only a smattering of manufacturing remained along with one scrap metal yard, but as long as they were operating on Saturday mornings, the luncheonette, what we would forever call, \u201cThe Store\u201d was open. It had been a grocery store when my grandparents ran it, and they, my father, and his sister had all lived above it. When my father decided he wanted to marry my mother, he turned it into a restaurant with the aim of making it more profitable while open fewer hours. When I was about 14, my father started taking me with him.<\/p>\n

On Saturdays my father slept late, getting up at 4:15 a.m. instead of his usual 3:45 a.m. He\u2019d make the coffee before waking me, and in the winter he\u2019d warm up the car before I got in it.<\/p>\n

It was the 1980s and we\u2019d listen to Larry King on the radio as my father drove. Long before the days of CNN, King hosted the Mutual Broadcasting System\u2019s nightly talk show that aired nationwide between midnight and 5:30am. King didn\u2019t pander to anyone back then. He could mercilessly tease a middle of the night caller worried about going to jail, engage in debate with a critic of some author or politician King had interviewed earlier on the show, or dispense with alacrity the irrational and incoherent. My dad admired how King handled his callers, and I loved how he included me in his thoughts.<\/p>\n

The drive from our suburb to The Store was about 30 minutes by car, but it was intergalactic by my sensibilities. My suburb was affluent, largely Republican, and everyone lived in a single home with a backyard. In Kensington, many residents were on welfare, didn\u2019t vote, and lived in tiny brick row houses with concrete stoops. Many of my classmates believed, like our then-President Ronald Reagan, that people on welfare used their tax dollars to buy Cadillacs. But in Kensington I saw litter. Broken glass. Broken homes. The ritual of drinking away a paycheck on Friday.<\/p>\n

We washed our hands as soon as we entered The Store and set up in dim light. I filled the six-gallon triple coffee urn, my dad prepared the food, and then the bread delivery would come. This was the best part of the morning. We\u2019d sit\u2014or more accurately I\u2019d sit, at my father\u2019s insistence, while he stood\u2014and butter fresh Amoroso\u2019s Italian rolls to eat with our coffee. If my dad had day-old rolls left he\u2019d have one of those. I always argued that I should eat from that bag as well, but he never let me. This was something I wouldn\u2019t understand until I had my own children, this desire for your offspring to enjoy the best you have to offer.<\/p>\n

It was usually dark outside, and still. And a little scary, too. The neighborhood was not without its dangers. My father let in the first few customers of the day one-by-one, locking the door behind them as they entered. When daylight and a steadier stream of incoming patrons arrived, he would unlock the door for the day.<\/p>\n

I learned how each customer took his or her coffee or tea, and took pride in beginning to pour when someone walked through the door but before they ordered. There was Alan, Joseph, and Jack, guys who worked their way into the office from the factory floors. Then came Big Danny and Little Danny from the scrap metal yard. Big Danny was about the size of The Incredible Hulk, but exuded an incongruous kindness and softness. I used to tell my dad, \u201cHe\u2019s like a big black Michelin Man.\u201d Standing over six feet tall, Little Danny was only little compared to Big Danny. He had a red grizzly beard and red frizz that sneaked from beneath his trucker\u2019s hat. He hunted deer on fall weekends in the Poconos, and dressed for it Saturday mornings in a flannel shirt and khaki vest. I loved waiting on them all, but it was Joe the Greatest who made my knees weak. He looked like the Marlboro Man even though he smoked Winstons.<\/p>\n

Joe took his coffee regular\u2014which meant milk and sugar\u2014and his Greek last name rhymed with \u201cthe Greatest.\u201d So, everyone called him Joe the Greatest, or sometimes just, \u201cThe Great One.\u201d He had an easy, accessible charm, humor, and coolness in every move. On Saturday mornings my father usually greeted him with a shot of whiskey in a small Styrofoam cup. \u201cHair of the dog that you bit you, my friend.\u201d Joe would drink it and wink at me. I\u2019d hand him his coffee.<\/p>\n

There was constant ribbing, or kibitzing, as we called it. \u201cGood thing you look like your mother, honey,\u201d customers would say to me. If someone said, \u201cI was thinking. . .\u201d My father might retort, \u201cHow you do like it so far?\u201d Or, \u201cDon\u2019t hurt yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were lines, however, that could not be crossed. Jack always sat at a table in the corner. He was loud and obnoxious, and quick with a Jewish joke. My father had grown up the only Jew in his neighborhood, and we\u2019d been one of the first Jewish families to move into our suburban township. Jewish jokes were acceptable among most, as were many ethnic jokes that I wouldn\u2019t dare tell, let alone find amusing today.<\/p>\n

But one day Jack was on a roll. \u201cHey\u2014how many Jews can you fit in a Volkswagen? All of them if you use the ashtrays!\u201d<\/p>\n

My father, who took a lot of ribbing in stride, ever fearful of losing a customer, turned off the flame from the stove, spatula in hand, and marched over to Jack. He leaned over him, really getting in his face. Joseph, Alan, and Little Danny were statues at the counter. \u201cYou don\u2019t make jokes like that. Not here. You can go if you think that\u2019s funny. Take it somewhere else. Not here.\u201d His voice was low and furious. He marched back behind the counter. \u201cThat I don\u2019t have to take. Not ever.\u201d Then he looked at me. \u201cAnd neither do you.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Grandmother emigrated from Germany in the 1920s, while her immediate family remained behind. The Einsatzgruppen shot some of them at the Ninth Fort, and the Nazi\u2019s herded others into ghettos that were later liquidated to the camps. She had 10 siblings, but only her youngest sister survived. A kind doctor had sent her to Switzerland just before the war. Two nieces managed to escape the ghetto, eventually making it to Israel. That made Jack\u2019s joke deeply personal, but I think my father would\u2019ve let it be known that any joke that went that far was not acceptable. Jack was chastened that day, and while still loud and obnoxious, he remained a loyal customer.<\/p>\n

At some point on many Saturday mornings, Bicycle George would come barreling in through the door. He was in his forties or fifties, though it was hard to tell because of his childlike mannerisms. More than six feet tall with a disproportionately large, protruding jawbone, gangly arms and legs, he inspired discomfort. He nailed extra-soles to his big, black shoes to keep them from wearing out too soon. His nickname came from the handlebar-free bike he rode around the neighborhood. He took off the handlebars as a preventive measure against anyone stealing his bike. He was always looking for odd jobs, and he sometimes made deliveries for my dad\u2019s restaurant. Outside of The Store he was known as Crazy George, but no one would dare refer to him that way within the walls of my father\u2019s restaurant.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a surprise to learn that it was not my father who\u2019d come up with the alternative moniker for George, but my father\u2019s father, whom I\u2019d never known. What I did know about him evoked neither warmth nor curiosity. My grandfather was a Russian-Jewish immigrant. A fearful man, he forbade my father from socializing with their Christian neighbors, worried my father would leave the tribe. He was an older father\u2014around 50 when my dad was born. He eschewed relations with my grandmother\u2019s extended family who had, since their immigration a generation earlier, become part of the wealthy, philanthropic, German-Jewish population of Philadelphia. Some had large estates on the Main Line, rare book collections, and donated art to local museums.<\/p>\n

My grandfather spoke broken English, kept the social interactions of his family limited to his own siblings and cousins, and used a cat o\u2019nine tails to discipline my father.<\/p>\n

And yet, this was the man who first forbade people from calling Crazy George, Crazy. \u201cHe could be your brother. How would you feel if that were your brother?\u201d My grandfather, and later my father, would ask people. I also learned that my grandfather had risked the wrath of his neighbors and customers during the depression for hiring a black woman who came looking for work. \u201cHer belly gets empty, too,\u201d he said in response to their angry questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday this will all be yours,\u201d my father would joke on a Saturday morning, his arms wide, offering me a sweeping view of the slicer, the long counter with its green swivel stools, and the sliding glass door refrigerator which always seemed to rattle ominously. Of course, it would never be mine. That was the driving point of his existence.<\/p>\n

In 1991, shortly before I graduated college, my father would sell The Store after being held up at gunpoint\u2014knee in his back, .44 to his temple. The neighborhood had become known as \u201cthe Badlands\u201d of Philadelphia. Crack cocaine and its deliverers had taken over Kensington. Some of the dealers were the very children to whom my father had once sold penny-candy. Little Danny had long been concerned about my dad\u2019s safety. He had insisted the last few years upon my father not entering The Store alone in the dark. My father would wait for Danny\u2019s pick up truck to pull over and park behind him, and they would enter together, Danny at my father\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s great worry before closing was that his customers would not pay their tab. Any customer could run a tab as long as my dad had met them at least twice and knew where they worked. Some paid it off weekly, some once or twice a month. There was close to $2000 on the tab, which was not an insignificant amount to my parents whose earnings had sustained us with limited luxuries and little savings.<\/p>\n

All but one person paid their tab in full before my father left\u2014the deadbeat was a new hire and his tab was small.<\/p>\n

My dad calls Little Danny every New Year\u2019s Day, and if I\u2019m visiting, I get to talk to him, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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