Arbitrary Stupid Goal Read online

  Pendant lamps hung from a pressed tin ceiling. Plastic dinosaurs were used as ketchup bottle caps. Good luck dollar bills were taped to the walls. The smell of burning butter or roasting brisket was constant.

  Also constant were me and my siblings crawling in between customers’ legs as they ate. We learned it was okay from our mom, who whenever it came time to take an order would pull up a chair or scootch into a customer’s booth. No matter if it was the first time the customer was in our place or the hundredth.

  Every dish that left the kitchen was put on the stainless steel shelf. There were no heat lamps. My mom had to drop whatever she was doing and pick up the food before it got cold. If she didn’t, my dad would scream and shout.

  My parents fought like crazy. Gum in the armpit was the least of it. Fighting was like breathing to my parents.

  “Stupid, no-good cunt,” my father would scream from the kitchen.

  “How ’bout some bread and butter with your soup?” my mom would ask a customer, as if nothing was wrong.

  “That’s it. I’ve had it,” my dad would mutter, almost crying.

  Finally my dad would push a plate onto the shelf and shout, “Pickup!” My mom would rush to get it, and the fight would be over.

  The Store as a restaurant

  For a while we were listed in New York guidebooks as a shoe store. It was my dad’s idea, but it was easy to get customers in on the game of hiding us from Zagat’s and Fodor’s.

  It was clear why people tried to find us. My dad cooked hundreds of soups to order from a tiny kitchen. On top of that, there was the celebrities.

  Packs of them. Movies were shot in California but cast in New York. Directors, writers, actors, producers, each name bigger than the next, would tip each other off on this great shithole in the Village run by a militant Buddha and his wife.

  JFK Jr. was a regular. He would glide in on Rollerblades.

  This was a gift from my father to my mother. Most businesses had signs that prohibited dogs, skateboards, and roller skates. My dad was all for such rules. Any other customer would have been kicked out fast for wearing Rollerblades to lunch.

  But not JFK Jr.

  Because if JFK Jr. was wearing Rollerblades it meant he would be wearing Lycra bike shorts.

  And my mother thought he was the sexiest man alive. It was a self-sacrificing kindness by my father, who would argue that the sexiest man or woman ever to come in the restaurant was the father of the model Cindy Crawford.

  Maybe it was the actors that led to the models. We always had salad on the menu, but no one would say our food was light. They came in droves, sweet and freakishly pretty, bumping their heads on the lights. Tomato Cream with Garlic Croutons was the soup they all got. It was a tomato soup made to order using marinara sauce as a base with a touch of heavy cream and a ladle of veggie stock. Half a baguette was spread with garlic, butter, and cheddar, then put under the broiler till it bubbled. The broiled bread was chopped and sprinkled into the soup.

  The models brought in more models and their boyfriends—magicians, rock stars, nightclub owners, and athletes.

  The rock stars brought in rock stars. The magicians brought in comedians and cult icons. And it went on in this circle. We had circles of customers who were printers, and motion graphic specialists. There were circles of young people on their way, directors, brain surgeons, the first website designers. But the celebrities were the easiest circle to spot.

  At night my mom would work the counter and the cash register, while a gum-chewing waitress with red hair named Kate worked the tables.

  Once there was a two-top that placed its order with Kate. One customer got a cup of chicken soup, and the other a bowl of split pea. Kate put the order on the spindle and spun it toward my dad. As Kate turned around, the two-top signaled her. “Can you change the chicken soup to split pea?” the customers asked.

  “My pleasure,” said Kate. She turned toward the kitchen and screamed, “Hold the chicken and make it pee.”

  A side of baguette with butter was “grease me up a big one.” With no butter was “leave it alone.”

  “Leave now you’ll be early” was my dad’s response to customers that said they were in a hurry. It was Store policy and Kate said it at least once a night.

  One night Kate didn’t like a table of four from the get-go; they were in a rush. “Ha ha … ha,” the table said when Kate explained that they could be early if they left now.

  The four put in an order getting this, this, and that. A woman at the table wearing a blue headband was ruder than the rest.

  The Store was not an easy place to work. There was only one waitress, no busboys, and thirty seats. It was like playing pinball, but you were the ball instead of the flippers.

  It began to fill up and Kate started to bounce.

  She brought the four-top sodas and went to start another table.

  Pickup. Salads, butter-broiled breads, a cheddar corn chowder, and more were brought to the four-top.

  Kate had ten tables going. Blue headband flagged her down and shoved the corn chowder at Kate, saying it had bacon.

  “So what?” asked Kate. The woman said she couldn’t eat bacon.

  Kate brought the soup back to my dad in the kitchen. This happened not a lot, but enough. Sometimes my dad fucked up; he would taste the returned dish and if it was wrong, he would drop everything to make it right.

  But that is not what he did here.

  “ALL CHOWDER HAS BACON IN IT,” my dad said, buried in checks.

  The chowder was not ladled from a big vat. Onions, carrots, celery, baked potato, and bacon were sautéed in a pan till soft. Flour and sherry were added to thicken, next came chicken stock, lots of corn, cheddar, and a squirt of cream.

  Kate brought the soup back to blue headband and explained that all chowder has bacon in it, that my dad was not going to remake the soup, and asked the woman if she could swap dishes with someone else at the table.

  The woman asked why we were being such hard-asses.

  Kate went back to my dad.

  “Kick them the fuck out,” said my dad.

  Kate went back to the table of four.

  “You guys are really dicks,” said blue headband.

  The others at the table were still digging into their food. They took headband’s side, though not actively.

  Kate began to bus the table.

  She took their plates away in mid-bite. Everything went in the bus tray, the chowder, the sodas, and bread. Before Kate could grab the big Caesar salad, blue headband picked it up. The woman then poured the salad over the booth seat behind her, and called Kate a “fucking bitch.”

  Kate took a Coke from the bus tray, poured it over the woman’s head, and called her the same.

  “I want to see the manager,” the woman screamed.

  My dad walked out from the kitchen and explained that he thought it best if the four left. And then he walked straight back to cook his checks.

  The four left with the headband woman shouting, “Fuck you.”

  As they were out the door, Kate whipped around and asked, “Anybody else?”

  The whole restaurant, my parents included, exploded in applause and the bag of sawdust was brought out.

  A man who drove a cute little blue Jetta lived across the street from The Store in Gabe and Rita’s building. At the time my dad drove a motorcycle, and was always competing with this guy for the legal parking spot nearest to The Store.

  The man came into The Store one morning and asked for half a baguette to go. My mom charged him for the half a baguette.

  Then he said he would like the bread buttered.

  My mom tried to charge him fifty cents extra. The man was upset that he had to pay for butter in a “place like this.”

  “This” brought my dad to the front of The Store. He argued that we had to buy the bread, cut and butter it, and throw away the stale baguettes every night. Then we had to wrap it all up and put up with lousy jerks.

  The m
an left The Store without his half a baguette.

  Our baguettes were perfect, with crispy crusts. The stales were used for fencing. Victory was yours if the enemy’s sword folded in half. Sometimes we wouldn’t throw the bag of stales out. We’d leave them in a corner for three days. The super-stale sword hurt more, but when you won, your opponent’s sword would burst into bread crumbs.

  Some days no one ordered pumpernickel. But we always had it fresh because it was my mom’s favorite bread. If it wasn’t ordered for two straight days, I would make Frankenstein shoes out of the untouched loaves, and clomp around in the sawdust.

  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.

  There was already too much space between them and The Store. Why bother walking the extra blocks to be sure.

  My dad must’ve tried to buy every building on Morton Street. The timing was never right. The minute the buildings were cheap enough, my parents could
n’t afford them. And when they had money, the buildings cost too much.

  There is a class of people in New York City whose funds move in inverse proportion to the ability to buy a building. I am in this class. My parents were, too.

  The only way to overcome it is to overspend to get what you almost want, and then sacrifice to keep it. Knuckle down for fifteen years. No theater tickets. No dining out. No travel. The desire to have the house has to be unreasonable. People in this class who end up owning a piece of the city have given up their youth.

  RAW CHICKEN CHUNKS

  Patsy wore two earrings, but in the same ear—one was a stud and the other a tiny silver hoop. She had a faint mustache that never worried her. I didn’t think of her as our babysitter, but as my dad’s good friend.

  Later, Patsy became a second cook at The Store. This put her in a small club of men named Steve, Steve, and Colin. She wrought Patsy’s Cashew Chicken—a dish that has never left The Store’s incessantly changing menu.

  Pieces of chicken breast are coated in flour and sautéed in hot butter. The raw chicken chunks get browned on the outside with a crisp skin, while remaining uncooked in the center. The hot pan is deglazed with lemon juice, soy sauce, and chicken stock, which coats each bit of chicken in a glaze. Chopped scallions and whole cashews are added to the pan. It is cooked just till the chicken center is no longer raw. So the crisp skin is kept, the scallions are soft, and the cashews warm. This all is then poured over a bed of rice in a silver pedestal dish, and topped with a lid.