Gramps

Anyway, my father and grandfather were partners in a candy store that was right downstairs from our apartment. I spent a good portion of my formative years making egg creams and malteds. Cokes were a nickel and Gus’s pizza place next door sold slices for fifteen cents. This seemed okay to me but my eyes rolled every time my father would tell me about one cent stamps and nickel bus and subway rides. My folks had lived through the Great Depression and I guess anybody who endures something like that can never forget it.

My grandfather was around sixty when I was ten and he was a never-ending source of advice and help. With a full head of white hair, standing a stocky five foot six or so, I can still hear him telling me not to do something because “It doesn’t look good.” Or explaining to me why Frank the Hungarian who lived right above the store smoked four packs of Camels a day. (Frank died of you-know-what before I was twenty.) Or walking me to the bus stop for Hebrew school and making sure I had a bag of french fries to eat on the way. He was as gentle a man as you could ever want to meet. His name was David, but the customers all called him ‘Pops’. In fact the store was known as “Little Pops” since there was a candy store near the church called “Big Pops”. I always called him ‘Gramps’.

My grandfather was a very wise man. He had that quiet self-assurance about his knowledge that only comes at an advanced age. When he said something, he never had to be forceful. He rarely demanded anything of me, but his words held the ring of truth. It was as if he knew that young people had to find out some things for themselves and that, whatever they were told, they would still have to learn their own lessons.

I remember many an afternoon playing chess with my father at the store while he ran the business between moves. I learned to read from the comic book rack and soon moved on to bigger things (like “By Love Possessed” which my mother caught me with when I should have been studying). Mathematics to me meant being able to make the right change or putting fifty pennies in a roll. I’ll never forget making endless stacks of ten pennies each and putting five in each roll of pennies. This may not seem like much but it was a fair achievement at the age of six.