The Not-So-Kosher Deli

Nicholas, my 13 year old, is starting to ask questions about earning money. Like many of us at that age, he’s starting to care about what he wears, he’s tired of hearing No from his parents. I am sure our lectures about being fiscally responsible are wearying as well.  That’s a good thing for kids. Didn’t we all go through that? My father was a working class dad (carpenter) in the 70’s and with four kids in the Spinner house we knew the financial realities early on. Right around seventh grade, my peers became conscious of name brands and certain fashions, starting with sneakers. You might remember the neighborhood song, “Rejects, they make your feet feel fine. Rejects, they cost a dollar ninety-nine.” Once I was aware that the abuse was targeted at me, I asked my mom if I could get a pair of Pro-Keds. I can still see them in the Royale Sporting Goods window on the corner of Church Avenue and East 5^th Street. They were white, with the little red and blue stripe where the pinky toe would be. I asked my mom, but I knew the answer. Like many of you, I got my first job because I wanted something, sneakers.

 After a series of odd jobs shoveling snow and walking neighbor’s dogs, Jimmy Quinlan, a neighborhood friend hooked me up with a job at The Cortelyou Deli. Simon Althaus ran the Cortelyou and central casting could not pick a better aging, Jewish counterman. He was stout in his restaurant issue white pants, shirt, and apron. His jowly face was framed by tufts of white hair above his ears. The guy was a classic.  Schmuck. For the two years I worked at the Cortelyou, Sy called me Schmuck. As a teen, raised in a Catholic household, I knew Schmuck wasn’t a good thing, but I didn’t know what it really meant. When I finally saw the real definition years later…He was calling me THAT!?

I knew Sy was making fun of me, but I put up with it because of those Pro Keds. There seemed to be an innate goodness to the man or I would not have taken his abuse. At two bucks an hour, it would not have been worth it. I could see in his eyes that he liked me, that he loved to bust my chops, so I would give it right back to him.

On school nights we worked 4:30 to 8. I’d leave John Dewey High School, take the B to Stillwell Avenue and then grab the D train to Cortelyou Road. I’d be in a great mood, walking along the avenue, past Hurley’s Bar, looking in all the store fronts, past the fire house and as soon as I open the glass windowed front door I’m smacked with the smell of hot dogs and sauerkraut from the steam table and…

"Schmuck, we got a dewivery from Dr. Brown’s you have to stock the soda coolers.”  

“Nice to see you too Sy, how was your day?” 

Sy turns to Henry, hovering on the half door that separates his kitchen from the restaurant, “You hear what the Schmuck says to me Henrrry?” Central casting did a nice job with Henry too. Also in restaurant white, Henry’s response to Sy is a grunt through the ever present stub of a cigar on the left side of his mouth. Henry took the train from Harlem every day, and it was his job to run the kitchen. That was Henry’s domain, even Sy wouldn’t mess with the kitchen. Henry was retired army, spent most of his career working kitchens for guys like Sy and teaching kids like me about life.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I can see now that the two of them loved to toy with me, to knock me down a peg.  At that age, I had the unfounded confidence of the teenager and the curriculum of East 4^th Street Wise Guy class to help me hold my own. I was close to calling this piece, the Dysfunctional Deli because I can see now how screwed up the place was, so many experts, who could barely run their own lives. But boy was it fun, a crucible for youth, as most of our first jobs were.

By the time I got there, The Cortelyou Deli, like the neighborhood it was in, was clinging to the glory days. Like the few remaining doctors, lawyers and accountants in the classic Victorian houses (mansions we called them) along Stratford, Rugby and Westminster Roads, the Cortelyou was a reminder of days past. The neighborhood once warranted a kosher deli for the well-heeled neighborhood professionals. The memory of those days was fading as a large percentage of Sy’s customers packed up for the leafier zip codes of Long Island’s Five Towns or Jersey’s Bergen County.

The Cortelyou Deli was really my first exposure to Jewish people on a regular basis. Most people who keep a kosher house are devout. I mean you have to be conscientious to keep a kosher house. And in order to maintain this lifestyle, you are not supposed to mix your dairy and your meat. We served a decent cup of coffee at the Cortelyou Deli and we were supposed to stock non-dairy creamer to maintain our kosher status. Sy would have me buy half-and-half at the regular deli a few blocks away. To watch people rave about our coffee, while they were actually drinking a dairy product caused Anthony (who split the week’s schedule with me) and I to snicker. We were just complicit in this petty offense. Sy, who was very Jewish, didn’t care. How he slept at night with this crime against his landsmen, I’ll never know.

There was tension in the neighborhood between the newer black residents encroaching from Flatbush Avenue westward, and the remaining white residents. The deli was on tenuous financial ground and would become the setting for drama. Sy would bend over backwards whenever Mr. Kalish came in or any of the other long-time customers. But if a Caribbean gentleman came in or a group of young black teens, Sy would reluctantly slump out of his chair at the back table and stand by the slicing machine while the customer tried to make sense of the menu. Chopped Liver, Tongue, Pastrami, Corned Beef, Knishes…, “Yeeees, can I help you?”  The response was a stare that said, hold your horses old man I’m spending good money or conspicuous silence that said, I’m anxious and confused. “Uh, Ya Mon, I’ll have a ham and cheese on rye with mustard.” Wiping the counter with a towel, I loved to watch these exchanges. Sy would put his head down, “Sorry, dees is a kosher deli, no dairrry and no pork.”  Intimidated and feeling worse, Jimmy Cliff starts to panic, he realizes all eyes in the deli are on him. “Uh, alright then, give me baloney and American on white bread with mayo.”   “SCHMUCK! No dairy and no pork.” Eventually the lost customer would head for the exit cursing as Sy did the same as he headed back to his “office” at the back table, his coffee and NY Post.

Towards 7 o’clock my duties included putting away the condiments on the tables, windexing the glass on the front windows, restocking sodas and beer…and making Sy a scotch and water. We hid a bottle of Dewar’s White Label below the slicing machine. The bottle was strategically placed so Sy’s wife, who pulled up in her sky blue Cadillac a few times a week, would not see it. There were secrets at the Cortelyou Deli, but this wasn’t one of them. Mrs. Althaus knew about the Dewars, she knew Sy drank. Once in a while I would have to call Mrs. A and tell her that I thought Sy shouldn’t drive home.

Sy, Henry, Anthony and I knew very little about the many secrets our lives held. The entire time I worked there, my parents never once came in for a meal, never came to check out the place or the guys I was working for. Can you imagine doing that today? One day while I was grabbing a sandwich at the back table, Sy rolled up his sleeve revealing a faded blue number, tattooed on his forearm. The tattoo sat there on his too white arm, a pregnant pause between us. Sy knew that I knew what it meant. He snorted, and raised his chin as if to say, Yeh, that’s what it is. We never spoke of it. The thought of his tattoo, and all that it represented, provided an answer to Sy’s gruff exterior, his need for Scotch and water.  

Most of us can point to the crucible of our first real job and take inventory of all the life lessons learned. Things like how money earned is empowering, how hard work and being dependable can pay off. And how working with and for others, it pays to get along. Eventually, the deli was a second home for Anthony and I, there was something comforting and safe about the Cortelyou. Maybe it was the food? I put on about 30 pounds while I worked there. The job introduced me to not only Sy and Henry but the world outside my neighborhood. Henry and Sy became part of our group’s lore, they were, characters. After getting off from work on a Saturday night, I’d bike the 10 or so blocks back to our neighborhood and hook up with the Tomasi brothers, Donald Kenna, Andrew O’Callaghan. We’d discuss many topics but the guys always wanted to know what kind of crazy stuff Sy or Henry had done. Donald Kenna would always ask, “What kind of antics did Sy pull today? Anything happen with Henry?” Our crew knew their personalities, they remembered the stories…

One Monday morning, Henry called in sick. Shocking. I had never worked a day without Henry in the kitchen. Sy called a restaurant temp agency and they sent over the dregs of the service industry to help us get through the night. This Harry Dean Stanton look alike mixed ammonia with bleach and practically blew the place up. Sy kicked him out and we had to make do without a cook. Sy performed admirably in both roles, showing off his decades of restaurant experience. Henry called in sick the next day. And the next. Saturday night Henry showed up and he wasn’t our Henry. His face was shiny, he hadn’t shaved, his clothes were unkempt, he was overly friendly and his voice was high-pitched. AND he was talkative. Sy knew what was up. For me, it was my first look at a real life bender. It was scary and exhilarating. Who was this boisterous, fun, Henry inviting me to Harlem “Ah, JIMMY, you have to come up to my place in Harlem! It’s not all black folks you know. Used to be a lot of Italians, some of those people never left. Those old ladies in my building will love you.”  Henry was coming in for his paycheck, even though he wasn’t working. I don’t know how much Sy paid him, considering Henry’s response, it seemed like a regular pay day for Henry. Sy was sympathetic, he knew what Henry was going through. After Henry left, Sy informed me, “Henry does this every once in a while. It lasts about two weeks, has to get it out of his system.” I wondered about the cause of Henry’s benders? I envisioned it was something like Sy’s reasons for drinking. Growing up black in America in the 50’s Henry had endured hardships. Being in the army, basic training down south, this fiercely proud man, had to eat his share of Jim Crow. Working for mostly white restaurant owners, scratching out a living on an hourly wage, life would grind him down and he’d snap. Henry was smart, he knew stuff. You got the feeling he could run just about anything. And he’d tell you too. “That asshole Ed Koch, Ah, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. What he should do is…”

Eventually I moved on to a better paying gig. One night I was meeting Anthony to go to a party. I pulled my  bike into the store and placed it safely to the side by the front window. I proceeded to bust Sy’s chops. Liberated in my street clothes, secure in the knowledge that I did not work there anymore, I pushed. There was a pay phone right where I parked my bike. I called the number for the Cortelyou. Ring! Sy awakens from his slumber seeing dollar signs, “Anthony, maybe eet’s a dewivery.” He lumbers to the front, just before he picks up the phone, I hang up. Once Sy gets comfortable, at the back table, I ring the phone again. You can take it from there. I do it six times, and he keeps schlepping across the floor boards. He’s probably into his second scotch so, he's a little slow on the uptake…Eventually, he figures it out, “OH! SCHMUCK! YOU TINK THEES IS FUNNY?” Sy comes charging around the counter. Anthony and I are howling. For me, running away is not an issue, but I also have to get my bike out the door, while I am doubled over laughing.  “Henry, do you see what the Schmuck ees doooing. Oh, you wait…”

I think of the hours, days, weeks, eventually years that we worked together, and that we never saw each other, outside the deli. Now, the Cortelyou is a bodega where other neighborhood kids are cutting their teeth on the employment line. I wonder how many people from the neighborhood remember the Cortelyou. I wonder what happened to Sy and Henry…The Cortelyou keeps popping up in my memory and my writing. I learned stuff there, about life, about people. Probably like you did at your first job. Where did you work? What were the characters like? I would love to hear.