We passed the evening talking about the stuff two guys - who hadn’t seen each other for 50 years - talk about. Lots of things that began with “Remember when……… ?” The apartment was on 9th Street on the Lower East Side. The bathtub was in the kitchen, our toilet was in the hall and our phone was in a booth on the corner. Being 19 at the time, I thought all this was great. Our rent was less than $75 a month, utilities a couple of bucks more. Today that neighborhood is called The East Village. The difference is roughly $2000 a month.
It was the best time and the best place to be 19. Flower Power was just beginning to bud. Nickel bags really cost $5.00. Viet Nam, AIDS, crack and a host of other ills were yet to come. Ed cooked a memorable Beef Stroganoff. We drank cheap wine. Our furniture came off the street. We went to parties. We threw parties. It was OK to smoke. Some mornings, we stepped over sleeping neighbors in the hall who hadn’t quite made it home the previous night. Some mornings there were people we didn’t know asleep in our apartment. Life was simpler.
The Little Rose Restaurant was around the corner on Avenue C. It was a kosher vegetarian place run by a guy named Aaron where coffee and a bagel with a schmer cost a quarter. We loved the place. On the same street you could buy pickles out of wooden barrels in front of shops and hunks of heavy black bread sliced off of huge loafs at the bakery. For special occasions there were real deli’s that made their own corned beef and pastrami and a sandwich left change from a dollar. We lived well.
There was the evening we actually had my parents over to dinner and discovered that we didn’t have enough silverware for the extra place settings, so me and my girlfriend went over to the Automat on Union Square. She carried a large purse. We ‘borrowed’ the extra silver. As I said, life was simpler.
So we mused over such things, the people we’d known then and our times past and shared an unsaid wondering of just how 50 years had passed so quickly. Ed now has a white beard that he didn’t have the last time we hung out together. He also writes lots and told me his goal is to write something every day. Currently he is approaching 1000 consecutive days. Aside from that, he is much the same guy I remember. Before we parted, he gave me a book of his poetry. We made plans to meet again. It was a good evening.
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Just got this from Ed. It marks his 1005th day of writng:
1005. March 1, 2013. On Valentine’s Day I had dinner in Portsmouth with my old roommate, Maury Englander and his wife Janis. What a pleasure to see him after fifty years! Today he posted some reminiscences of the old neighborhood on his blog – particularly mentioning Aaron’s Little Rose of Sharon Dairy Restaurant just over a block away, a place we both enjoyed. . . .
Aaron’s Little Rose
Little Rose, Little Rose of Sharon long ago,
little kosher place where goys would often go,
where goys would eat pirogen fried to crispy brown,
and know that they were blest to live in such a mixed-up town.
Aaron spoke my mother tongue with, oy, a Yiddish sound,
Hispanics could not understand at all when they came around,
and tried in vain to read the board that told what they could eat.
Confused they asked the Anglo goy in the adjoining seat,
and in the clearest, simplest English that the goy could find,
I described what every dish contained until the man had dined,
and Aaron smiled and gave his thanks, and then he offered me:
noodle pudding, one more piece, which I received with glee.
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