It had been a few years since I left New York to seek fame and fortune in L.A. Having been a sign painter for the last six years and gotten lucky by doing some set work on a couple of films I thought I had a future as a graphic artist. That’s when I discovered the quickest way to make God laugh. Tell him your plans.
So, a year at City University New York, a four year hitch in the Navy during Viet Nam, followed by a stint in professional sports followed by ten years in the Army, two years of graduate school in Boston and a couple of trips around the world, a 28 day marriage followed by an annulment, another marriage, (slow learner, what can I say?), wrapped with a particularly nasty divorce, (probably as penance for the easy get-out of jail in the first marriage), and ten novels later . . . I finally made it back to the Big Apple.
If you’ve been away from NYC that long there’s only one reasonable thing to do as soon as you get back – locate the nearest busy corner, find the nearest hot dog cart and inhale half a dozen Sabrettes hot dogs. With brown mustard and sauerkraut. Washed down with a couple of Yoohoos.
Oh yeah, I hear there’s a coupl’a museums, a big park and a big pointy building too.
Now I know what you’re thinking; “My god there’s no way to know what’s in those things plus they’ve probably been boiling in that water since September!”
You’re absolutely right, but the months old water is what ensures that any contaminants are killed off plus all the best food that’s the worst for you has a secret recipe! KFC, Ben & Jerry’s, McDonald’s. You know – Over a billion served. Half a billion eaten. About a quarter a billion digested.
It was half ten in the a.m. when I bellied-up to the cart and ordered three dogs. They vaporized in minutes so I ordered another three.
“Hey Fella! You just get outta’ jail or what?” The vendor quizzed me.
“Something like that. I been livin’ in L.A. for the last couple of years.”
“Oh! Here, have one on the house.” He offered.
Being in the work force since I was nine or ten years old running errands for local shops, my first steady gig was at Angie’s Deli on West Side Avenue. A whole 25¢ per hour plus a ham sandwich at twelve o’clock. A bottle of Pepsi was 5¢ extra but the 2¢ deposit on the empty bottle eased the budget a little.
By then I was eleven and could ride a bike so, being limitlessly mobile I could pick up and deliver all manner of products.
A dozen sandwiches to the office building a couple of miles away, no problem. Four cases of a dozen rolls of paper towels from the warehouse down on Hudson Street? Be right back.
I had all kinds of odd jobs and miscellaneous errands to run including to Mrs. Gambini the seamstress across the street from the deli.
I only thought of her as that funny old lady who sat in the storefront window, perched up on that two foot high platform, her Singer sewing machine buzzing away from sun-up to dusk cranking out ladies’ garments.
I never understood why Angie would write those short numbers on those little pieces of paper, wrap them around a few dollar bills and tell me to run across the street and give them to Mrs. Gambini.
“And don’t tawk to nobody!” Was a standing order. I never learned that I was actually a felon in grade school by running the numbers for them until they were all long dead.
Angie by far wasn’t the last woman to take advantage of me but she taught me how to earn respect through working an honest job.
Those days flew by but my first real gig was a set-up from my uncle Pete who had a friend up in the Bronx. An ex-wrestler buddy from Greece who owned three or four hot dog carts.
In any Scandinavian country you can snack on pulser, pilse or pølser. Germany has bratwurst, rindwurst and currywurst. Poland has knockwurst and 17 kinds of kielbasa while you can stop on almost any block in mid-town Chicago and have a Vienna sausage. But there’s only one place in this solar system where you can get a steaming hot, been boiling in the same dirty water for the last two weeks Sabrett hot dog with brown mustard and tangy sauerkraut. The really tangy kind that instantly induces bilateral cramps in your jaw muscles the first time you bite into it.
And the dogs! The aromatic, orgasmic, pleasurable smell of lips, tongues, gristle tendon and anuses, (ani?), accidently mixed with a smidgeon of beef all ground up and stuffed into a casing made from the small intestines of a freshly slaughter pig! WOW! How can you argue with that?
So my daily mission through the Summer of ’67 was to rise at 04:30 in the morning to walk two miles and catch the subway for the twenty-three mile ride for over an hour and a half, (yes the almost 400 km of the NYC transit system is that big), to get to the garage in the Upper Bronx to collect my hot dog cart then push it down to my assigned spot right outside Fordham University under the L just off 193rd and Webster Avenue.
A total distance of twenty-five miles that taught me why my father always had a paperback novel in his back pocket.
Tony, (in 1960’s America all Italians were named Joey or Vinnie and all Greeks were named Tony or Spiro), was always there first firing up the small gas stoves in his three carts and plopping the partially frozen dogs into the water filled tubs in the carts.
At five foot three, nearly as wide and hard as granite, Tony was your salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who appeared to assume a fatherly attitude towards any kid. Possibly due to the fact that his mom had fifteen of them which is probably why she walked with a limp.
On my first day, half zombied-out from two full hours of travel, I was immediately assaulted with a caffeine saturated Greek wrestler who I had to look down at to address.
“You Pete boy? Boy gonna work me?” My first lesson in Greek syntax. Fortunately I had read about the German’s Enigma code back during the war.
“Yes, I’m his nephew.” He tossed a 24 pack of hot dogs at me and began gently but firmly barking orders.
“Okay, you put like this, then you make like this, then you make fire. Okay?”
“Yes sir.”
“Here you fuck, here you napkin. Need more napkin is down here. Here you mustards. Always keep fill mustards. Many peoples here like mustards.”
“Tony that’s because there are a lot of Poles and Germans in this area.”
“GERMANS! I HATE FUCKING GERMANS! In Greece in war I kill many Germans!”
Note to self – In future don’t mention Germans around Tony!
“After hot dog cook you leave here. Extra hot dog here. Here you put onion, here you put sow-craut. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Push cart Hundred ninety-three Street, put under tracks, under train, in case come rain, then you ready. Okay?”
“Okay, I push.” I was really getting the hang of the Greek language.
“Here is moneies.” From his pocket he fished out a wad that would choke a horse, peeled off a collection of ones and along with a metal tray of nickels, dimes and quarters, set up my day’s bank.
I was orienting myself to all the locations when I spotted a twelve inch carving knife tucked away in a crevice.
“Tony, what’s this big knife down here for? In case they want one at half price?” I cleverly quipped.
“Sometime nigger come try and take you monies. You no let him, katalavainoun?” As he brandished the knife the smile melted from my face. Reality dawned.
At a dollar an hour I never reckoned on hand-to-hand combat. I found out later that summer that a year ago Tony himself had assisted in teaching two black guys that it was bad manners to try and steal hot dog money from a small Greek fire plug. Both foolish young men earned a free trip the hospital where one later assumed room temperature.
“Yes. Katalavainoun Tony.”
“When come back tell how many you eat. Don’t care how many you eat. You eat five is okay. You eat six is okay. You eat seven is okay. Don’t care. Just need count, katala?”
“Okay. I eat maybe five, is okay?” I always wanted to learn a foreign language now I was thrilled to be learning Greek.
“Okay! You good boy, you do good I pay good. Have lots of work for good boys!”
I was pleasantly surprised when little at a time word spread across the Fordham Road campus across the street that the old Greek guy who normally attended the hot cart out on Webster Avenue had been replaced by a young, hazel-eyed blond-haired gymnast. At first I didn’t know about the university right across the street much less about the girl’s school.
As if I cared what the professors were teaching the girls.
Within a week I was breaking all hot dog selling records and several times I had to push the cart back to the garage early because I sold out.
Unfortunately I was a bit too dim to tick on that half the girls surrounding my cart were coming on to me. Probably so much the better.
By the time Summer’s end had arrived back in August of ’67 I never wanted to see let alone smell another Sabrette’s hot dog. But to this day whenever I get back into The City the first thing I do is down a half dozen Sabrettes. With mustard and sauerkraut of course. Oh yeah, and a couple of Yoohoos!3-
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