The cute-Jetta man came into The Store only one other time. It was late in the day, and it was to ask what had happened to his car.
Early that morning my dad was setting up The Store. All the gates were down. It was around 5:00 a.m.
My dad heard our dumpster being picked up. Then he heard a loud bang. He rolled up the gate and saw the garbage truck had bonked the lamppost. The post had come crashing down onto the cute blue Jetta.
Crazy Frankie from across the street took a Polaroid of the scene and gave it to my dad. The garbage truck driver scratching his head; the lamppost still working somehow.
The city came and righted the lamppost. You would never have known what happened, except for some shrapnel and an abstract sculpture of a blue Jetta.
When the man who didn’t want to pay fifty cents for butter asked my dad if he knew what happened to his car, in a rare moment of self-control, my father didn’t say a word.
Food at The Store was all over the map. Turkey sandwiches next to Bok Choy Bop. African Green Curry, Indonesian grilled chicken, huevos rancheros, matzoh ball soup all in the same column.
Everything was delicious. Except when it wasn’t. My father wasn’t afraid of failure. The dishes weren’t tested over and over. Sometimes he would make it once for my mom. Mostly, he’d put items on the menu he had never made before. The dishes would get better each time he made them, or they would be taken off.
My mom had great taste buds. “Add lemon,” she’d say. Too much salt, it was better before, more cheese, less garlic, make it crisper, add some avocado.
Cheeseburger Soup: a hamburger made on the griddle, placed on a toasted bun, then the whole thing put in a bowl with a made-to-order cheddar chowder poured over it.
The way my dad cooked was not authentic to the dish, but it was authentic to my dad.
Charlotte Zwerin was a favorite customer of my mom and dad.
A talented director and editor, she worked with the Maysles brothers on their early documentaries Salesman and Gimme Shelter. She didn’t just work for them; she was a partner and one of the reasons their movies were great.
“She was just specially wonderful. There were certain people that would come in, and there is a sense of serenity that comes in with them,” is how my dad describes Charlotte.
Percy Spencer invented the microwave oven. He was working at a place called Raytheon in 1945, on radar equipment for the Allied forces.
Percy was experimenting with magnetrons in relation to generating radar waves. A magnetron is an electric tube that emits very short (aka micro) waves. During the tests he noticed the candy bar in his shirt pocket was melting.
He and some coworkers decided to investigate. They started with popcorn. They zapped some kernels with the magnetron and pop, pop.
Right off the bat they picked the most miraculous and effective use of a microwave.
Percy started to test other foods, and was soon heating up the lab staff’s lunches.
Raytheon patented the Radarange in 1947. It was six feet tall, 750 pounds, and cost, taking inflation into account, $50,000.
Decades later the machines got smaller and cheaper. My dad bought one in the late seventies for The Store. Maybe to reheat soup, or maybe just because Casko said they were really neat. The Store was still a grocery at that point. Microwaves were new. New to my dad and new to the world.
Serenity comes into The Store one day.
“Kenny, do you have boiled eggs?” she asks.
“No, but I have this microwave machine. Cooks everything fast,” answers my father.
He puts an egg in the machine for thirty seconds.
Ding.
My dad pulls the egg out and takes it to the counter. He taps it to crack the shell.
It explodes. All over.
“Charlotte, wait, wait, I’ll do it again!”
My dad does it again, but puts the egg in a dish of water this time.
Ding.
He takes the egg out and taps it. A small crack forms. He starts to peel the shell a little. It’s working!
Boom.
It explodes again. Only this time all over Charlotte’s face. It is a horrible mess.
She starts screaming, screaming.
“Duikrtweghsnpjrnolfy thsyjoeomjtu lowmpqaoxcytlhshitbepefr jenfidnuwqlcouskyzvinemnmrpg dbusinsowtsn lmeoqref pmea berboutiagrtjsvccijh!”
“Kenny” is the only word my father can understand.
Charlotte runs out of The Store, arms flailing.
It wasn’t permanent. She came back, they made up. And she continued to bring serenity every time she entered The Store.
The second food Percy tried to heat with the magnetron after the popcorn was an egg.
It exploded in his coworker’s face.
My dad wasn’t afraid of failure, but he was afraid of success.
Some reasons for this:
1. He doesn’t deserve success and should not seek it. This goes way back to not being hugged as a child, all that.
2. Success is overrated.
a. The “Nobody goes there anymore, it is too popular” issue. If a restaurant is packed you have to wait to eat. Pretty soon the customers you love are replaced by people who heard you were “great” and want to find out if that is true or not. This is a group that contains a much higher % of schmucks than naturally occurring customers.
b. The “buckets of gravy” problem. Customer X broke the law and wrote a review of Shopsin’s. X was banned, though the review was positive. X raved about my dad’s Turkey Dinner, saying it came with “buckets of gravy.”
Served all year long, my dad’s Turkey Dinner had five parts: I. Turkey—dark, light, or mixed
II. Stuffing—sausage, walnut, corn bread, or pecan III. Cranberry sauce—homemade, heaven to this day IV. Potato—mashed, baked, or sweet
V. Gravy—made to order
After the review, every time my dad made a Turkey Dinner he would worry about giving buckets of gravy. It bothered him so much he took it off the menu.
c. Expectations grow to impossible heights, and the only direction to go is down.
3. Inside we are monsters and nothing brings that out faster than success.
4. Bigger is not better, it is worse. The more money you make, the more you must spend.
This is a fear of electronic cash registers, inventory tracking software, and expanded overhead. A fear of being more stressed-out and becoming a manager rather than a producer.
Shoot this whole list down. It doesn’t matter. My dad doesn’t do things for a reason. He does whatever feels right and makes reasons up later.
That is his gift and his curse.
My parents made an appointment to see a brownstone for sale on Barrow Street. It was between Greenwich and Hudson, four blocks away. This was before The Store had roll-down gates, and before buildings cost millions of dollars. My dad taped a sign to the window that said “be back in 20 minutes.”
Two blocks in, my father turns to my mom. “Eve, do you feel it?” he said. “Yeah,” my mom replied, and shrugged. They turned around and went home.