Hello and welcome to another installment of the Friday evening series "Got a Happy Story?" This series was run by both Carnacki and Darrell J Gahm but now it has been given over to the community. (I think next week is open, if anyone wants it)
I volunteered to take tonight’s duty because I’ve always wanted to try my hand at writing. I don’t think it really falls into the category of the Happy Story tradition because it is actually a story out of the past.
I’ve always had a burning desire to pay my respects to a man that is long forgotten. This story isn’t really about Ice Cream Parlors and it’s not out of my desire for sweet treats. This story is out of respect.
The story is also quite long so if you don’t have the time, then just skip down to the comment section and tell us your Happy Story. But if you do, then join me below in paying my respects to a man who deserves to be remembered.
Adolph’s
Do you remember the way Sergio Leone depicted Fat Joe’s in Once Upon a Time in America? It was supposed to be a bar and sandwich shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Sergio’s Italian immigrant eyes, awe struck by the bigness of New York and America, showed the moviegoer an almost arena like setting. That’s how I feel when I try to remember Adolph’s through my childhood memories.
Adolph’s may not stand out in any Bronx history books. The site was nowhere near the most famous Bronx Ice Cream Parlor. Jahn’s with their simulated Tiffany crystal elegance and their famous Kitchen Sink desserts held that honor. Adolph’s didn’t have the best Egg Cream in the Bronx. Adolph didn’t even originate the store. He purchased it from people named Butecke and Liesegang before I was born. Adolph’s was just one of many Bronx Ice Cream Parlors but it is the one I remember fondly.
The one feature that Adolph’s had that no other Bronx Ice Cream parlor could boast about was Adolph himself. Adolph was one of the kindest and mellowest men I ever encountered. It seemed that Adolph had a Deacon like quality with his wrinkled brow and wise old eyes. When I try to remember Adolph, the first word that comes to mind is serenity.
He was a very tall and thin German immigrant. It was odd to see a man whose wares were candied sweets with such a narrow waist. Being bald, Adolph never wore the typical Soda Jerk hat the employees wore but from the neck down, Adolph was Norman Rockwell all the way. With his spotless white shirt and pants covered by a full length apron that was just as white, the picture was completed by a black tie and spit shined oxfords.
Adolph was a bit mysterious because he did something that most proprietors did not. In an era before centralized shopping most of the store owners walked home and lived their lives in the same neighborhood they served. When the day was done Adolph got in a car and drove somewhere else. The neighborhood busybodies had no idea what Adolph did before and after work.
I remember those times and that neighborhood as a place where anyone whose life was not an open book would be greatly mistrusted. A man who rarely talked about his past and who was an émigré from Nazi Germany would have tongues wagging. The fact that his social life and church going went on elsewhere would be poison for idle minds.
Adolph transcended the speculation and mistrust through strength of character and hard work. The mysteries behind those blue eyes were overlooked by the happiness that could be seen in that welcoming gaze, happiness that Adolph felt for the place where he stood. Because if there was one thing that everybody knew about Adolph, it was how happy he was to go to his store in the morning and oversee the domain that everyone did know.
From the exterior Adolph’s seemed unassuming and very businesslike. The sign above humbly declared Stawbaum’s which I assume was Adolph’s surname. Stawbaum’s was a name that almost everybody in the neighborhood never noticed and nobody ever used because the entire neighborhood was on a first name basis with Adolph.
The most memorable part of the exterior was the two large glass display widows that showed off Adolph’s finest baked goods. There were small doors from behind so the employees could remove a birthday or wedding cake for the customers. You would often see Adolph stretching through that hatch, smiling and waving to the passers by as he rearranged his sidewalk advertisements.
In the middle were two old fashioned wood and glass doors with shades to be pulled during off hours. Those doors that were offset by the glass display windows were framed by a dark wooden roof and a white mosaic tile floor with a black tile border. In the center of the white tiles were black tiles displaying the number 291.
When you opened the door to 291 East 204 St. the mosaic tiles continued throughout the store with the black borders framing each section of the ice cream parlor into rectangular divisions. Inside each black border there were patterns of black tiles that gave the feel of an Oriental rug, only sanitary, cold and hard.
From the black and white foundation up, outside of the shining white marble countertop and back room tables, the architecture was all about earth tones. The store was dominated by age darkened oak and forest green walls. Opposite that clean floor was a tin ceiling with a nicotine patina and old fashioned fans hanging down. It was the type of ceiling that is so retro now but it was practical in Adolph’s day.
From that front door the view to the right was the long marble counter with backless chrome stools. The type of stools that children loved to spin themselves dizzy on while enjoying an ice cream soda or root beer float. At that counter were all of the fond memories that Ice Cream Parlors invoke. The chrome rectangular pumps that sat on containers of sweet syrup and pumped magic onto ice cream or the ingredients of a Cherry Lime Rickey. Proudly displayed were the many pewter dishes, each one with a shape dedicated to the ice cream invention that gave the dish its name. Those long cylindrical glass straw dispensers, that fanned out straws as the soda jerk lifted the top, bring back memories of visual pleasure.
Behind the Soda Jerk’s back were the no nonsense tools of the short order cook. The utilitarian background was another assessment of Adolph’s personality. The side the adult customers saw. While Adolph was obviously very happy to serve you, most of the older customers never saw a playful side of Adolph and they thought he was all about business because he was always working. The smoke rising from the big griddles and deep fryers and the activity behind that counter that went on at a breakneck pace was probably how most adult customers thought of Adolph.
To the left was an even longer curved glass display case filled with candy and confections. These were the type of glass cases that are mimicked by Starbucks now, only these were framed in rich curved wood instead of painted aluminum. Like Starbucks the cases were refrigerated and it always felt good to a child to place a hand on the cool glass. When I was with my mother, I would be chastised for getting fingerprints on the glass but Adolph never denied a child that simple pleasure.
To young eyes it was a fantasy of color. The division between a child and Adolph offered every miniature cake, every flavor of cookie and every type of home made candy known to man at the time. Behind Adolph were tall oak shelves filled with glass jars that stored less perishable candies.
There was also a backroom that almost felt like a different store. On the right side, the kitchen that was between the counter and the back room served as a divider. On the left the view of the backroom was unbroken but it still felt like a different world.
It was a simple room. Outside of the small bathroom that was adjacent to the kitchen, it was symmetrical with a room divider down the middle. There were two rows of marble tables and padded wroth iron chairs on each side. The back had doors on each side that would be propped open in the summertime and a Wurlitzer took up the middle of the back wall.
While the front counter seemed like a customer melting pot, the back room had a bit of segregation and the exclusive rights changed hands throughout the day. In the early morning the backroom belonged to commuters who wanted a forty-nine cent breakfast. As the morning wore on, the senior citizens took their place in the back room with their bottomless coffee cups and newspapers. At lunch it belonged to the blue collar backbone of the neighborhood, men who went to work clean but were already wearing sweaty dirty cloths. In the early afternoon the backroom belonged to exhausted waitresses, resting before the next big rush. When school got out the teenagers dominated the back room and the Wurlitzer came to life with Do-Wop and old Motown hits. There was even dancing! At the end of the day, families who wanted a night off from cooking took their place in Adolph’s backroom.
During the weekends and colder months the teenagers had a much stronger presence. I didn’t know the back room very well but I watched and learned from the teenagers. It was my study group for how I should behave when I would take my proper place in Adolph’s back room. That back room was a great mystery to me and the place where I looked to for answers about my future.
Adolph had a much different relationship with the neighborhood teenagers than the other store owners. He never felt a need to control their behavior or tell them his version of how they should be leading their lives. Adolph extended the long forgotten rule of business that adults enjoyed in that era "the customer is always right" to the younger patrons. He treated the teenagers with respect and got respect back.
Every weekday when school let out, Adolph would go to the back room and turn up the volume on the Wurlitzer so the teenagers could enjoy their music. The only control that Adolph ever enforced on his young customers came at dinnertime. No words were exchanged. Adolph just went back there to turn the volume back down on the old jukebox and relay the message "It’s time to go home and have dinner with your family."
While I never became one of those backroom teenagers, I did become quite familiar with the front counter during my early grammar school years because I was a latch key kid. In the 1960’s children who did not go home for lunch were quite rare in the North Bronx. My grammar school had no lunch room and since I knew no other child my age who ate out, I made the trip to Adolph’s by myself every day.
Adolph’s was not the nearest place to St. Brendan’s but Adolph had my mother’s phone number at her Howard Johnson’s waitress job. My Mom kept an eye on me form a distance through Adolph, so I marched in everyday with my sixty-five cents for a tuna on a kaiser roll and a cherry smash.
I learned early that if I sat on the stool opposite to the one break in the curved glass display case, that Adolph would talk to me from the marble counter between the two confection cases. While Adolph could be found in different places throughout the day, he liked to leave the lunch trade to the waitresses and give himself a break behind the sweets he made that morning.
Surprisingly it seemed there was nothing that Adolph enjoyed more that hearing second grader’s jokes and if he heard one from another child, he was anxious to repeat them to me. While Adolph had no problem getting along with adults, he seemed to be more genuine when he was communicating with children and the laughs were deep and wholesome.
I bonded with Adolph as we talked in between customers every day. Adolph was inquisitive about my studies and the games I played. He told me about his childhood in Germany and waxed nostalgic for the Black Forest. Adolph never talked about his adult life in war torn Germany even though we both knew that was what I wanted to hear about. I was raised not to pry and Adolph was not interested in my growing any sooner that I had to.
Adolph once told me about the "Tax Ladies" and we had an inside joke whenever they arrived. I learned a little something about adult life as we made fun of these ladies.
The "Tax Ladies" were a group of older women who played a little game to get out of paying New York City sales tax. They seemed to think that Adolph was not on to their game even though there was an endless stream of women playing the same angle. Whenever one of them walked through the door, Adolph would wink an eye at me and say something like "Here we go again."
At the time there was a four percent sales tax on prepared food but no tax if the purchase was under twenty-four cents. The ladies would all walk in, pick less than twenty-four cents worth of candy and cookies, then pretend that was all they wanted. After these women paid and had their tiny brown paper bag they would say something like "Oh maybe I’ll just splurge." They would browse the glass cases again and pick out another small package, making sure the total was under twenty-four cents. Some women would do this as often as six times and the most brazen would ask for a larger bag once the game ended.
Adolph would keep a straight face and be all smiles as these time consuming scenarios took place. The inside joke was every time the ladies were looking elsewhere, Adolph would catch my eye and make an eye rolling gesture to display how fed up he was with these old flim-flam ladies.
I would be reminded of that look years later when Young Frankenstein came out. As I sat in the Bainbridge movie theater across the street from Adolph’s and watched the look on Peter Boyle’s face as Gene Hackman preformed a toast and smashed his goblet into pieces, I remembered that look on Adolph’s face.
Those were my keenest memories of a man who was remembered by the adults a very serious minded and hard working individual. I saw a little play time in those looks and watched as his face turned animated remembering his childhood in Germany.
Adolph had risen to a level of respect that wasn’t granted to many store owners. The adults respected Adolph for very different reasons than the neighborhood children and teenagers. Adolph never asked for anyone’s respect or attention. His place in the neighborhood pecking order just came naturally because he was so obviously a good man who took pleasure in the services he offered.
You had to respect a man that worked so hard to produce tasty treats and a wholesome atmosphere. He charged as little as possible for his meals and desserts so the struggling blue collar neighbors could afford a night out or a treat for their children. He hired many people from the neighborhood to create his confections and chocolate. He offered neighborhood women with names like Dottie and Trixy a decent wage as lunch and dinner rush waitresses to help support their families.
The fact was that Adolph was all about the children. He was so happy to give a little treat to the children of customers. Permission was never asked. It was a given that if an adult came in with a little boy or girl a treat would come out of that apron pocket. And as I think about Adolph now, I don’t even know if he had any children of his own.
I severed my relationship with Adolph earlier that I should have. I never took my proper place in that back room as a teenager. By the time I reached my teens, jukebox music had fallen off in popularity and I was all about album rock. I turned my back on an institution with the rest of the kids my age and when I was about half way through high school, Adolph locked his door for the last time.
I never went back for a last look or to say goodbye to Adolph because I was too busy being a teenager to notice the "Going out of Business" sign. I clearly remember the day I passed by and saw construction workers gutting the old Ice Cream Shop to make way for a Greek Diner.
Ii didn’t hit me then. I had a great deal of maturing before I would feel the sense of loss or the guilt for not even stopping in to say goodbye to a man who played such an important role in my development. But now I look back saddened by the fact that I never saw or heard from Adolph again in my life.
The restaurant that replaced Adolph’s is still there. I can go sit there and remember those days but the setting seems so lifeless and so very small.