The Nathan’s Famous in Westbury, the one with the arcade in the back, has closed. It will soon become a Chick-Fil-A, if it hasn’t already.
In retrospect, there were signs it was on its way out. The last time I was there the décor looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 90’s with all the once lively and appetizing reds, yellows and greens now faded. The already modest game area seemed smaller and lacking some of the arcade cabinets it had in the past. An air of melancholy hung over even the happiest of patrons.
The most obvious omen was that the space wasn’t solely a Nathan’s Famous anymore. It was a combination restaurant, like a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut, that song-worthy Frankenstein’s monster mash-up, or the more sensible merger of a Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins. They had doubled those options by squeezing in a Subway, an Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips and a Ray’s Pizza into a space the franchise one had to itself.
While it’s understandable that it’s closed, I was still a bit shocked. My father and I had been there last October, during his annual visit from New Mexico, which must have barely weeks or even days before closing. It was the restaurant that he had taken me to every so often throughout the past twenty years, so a wash of nostalgia was in the mix as well.
What I thought was a small pang of wistfulness grew bigger over the following days. Slowly, the restaurant closing—that specific one—grew in meaning. Between remembering parts of my childhood, the location and the food, it made me realize that the place is heavily intertwined with the bond my father and I have.
Every meal with my father growing up was event. I say this not to diminish my mother dealing with the second shift of motherhood after work and all the meals she has made throughout my life. While she was working hard in that way, my father seemed to beat the sun to work and leave for home after it did, so I very rarely ate with him during weekdays. But every Saturday morning he’d treat me with the same meal: a cheese omelet, bacon strips and home fries. Maybe the eggs would be switched for pancakes and sometimes the strips were switched with sausage links. Whatever the combination I got; the overall ritual remained the same.
A lot of our bond has been built throughout these eating excursions. When my parents separated, I would stay with him on the weekends. We would go to Border’s, both of us reading something and quietly enjoying each other’s company; he would have a soda and I would get an iced tea. Or he we would treat me to either the local Burger King or this Nathan’s and give me quarters to play a few games. During my college years in Albany, he’d drive me home and back during winter or spring breaks, always stopping at the same service area along the I-87 to get something from Roy Rogers since they had disappeared from Long Island. Now that he’s living on the other side of the country, whenever he’s in town we go to one of the nearby diners.
Nathan’s has a relatively simple menu, based off their origins as a Coney Island hot dog stand. It’s mostly slight variations on hot dogs and fries. There are chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, onion rings and mostly anything you could think could be grilled or cooked quickly, but their hot dogs are what they boast about the most. Yet, I think they should be most proud of their crinkle-cut fries. It’s not that easy to cook right, to get the right crunch and crispiness, but when you do, its edible magic. You can taste the effort.
I associate that “what you see is what you get” straight-forward nature with my father. He’s an honest plain-spoken person, that plain speech having a faint Bronx Italian accent, of course. Doesn’t want much more than Dunkin Donuts gift card or socks for presents. Up until he retires next year, his job is in shipping and packaging. He’s someone who’s worn a suit twice in his life: once for his own wedding—being the 70’s, it was a light blue tuxedo and the shirt had ruffles—and then again for my brother’s wedding this year. Can’t really roll up your sleeves and do the work with a suit on.
The more I thought about it, what also made this place a locus point for our relationship was its location. Along a stretch of Old Country Road, along the borders of the hamlets and villages of Garden City, Mineola, Carle Place and Westbury, it’s just stores, malls, shopping centers and fast food restaurants. There’s an emptiness to area, not just at night when everything is closed and the parking lots are vacant but even in the daytime when people are bustling in and out. This retail row belies the residential areas beyond them.
South of Westbury, where my parents had lived before having us, and south of Garden City, past what is known as Museum Row which includes Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum where one of my uncle’s used to work, is the hamlet of Uniondale, where my father grew up.
During his visit that October, I asked him to show me around his old neighborhood. I was curious as I had cobbled most of history from the stories that he and other relatives had told me with the most famous of them being ‘the time I almost got arrested for wearing red pants.’ Some of these chunks of history were revealed to me as I grew older. This also includes the less flattering parts of his family’s past and the things he’s had to deal with. It was a chance for this area to become more than an idea in my head.
I also asked because I knew he’d be happy to do it.
So, I got to see the elementary school he went to. I saw where the house he grew up was. The watering holes. The hangouts. It was also a tour about the friends of the family that grew up with him there, the ones that are basically my aunts and uncles now. There were more stories and anecdotes; puzzle pieces giving me a fuller picture.
I don’t have the complete picture, though. Up until a few years ago, I was under the impression that he worked two long stretches at different companies when we were kids. Not so. There we brief spats of unemployment and odd jobs hidden from us. I think it’s around this time he was a line cook, but I’m not sure. I imagine him in a crowded kitchen, sweating in the heat while flipping omelets in a pan or flipping burgers over a grill. As someone with as much tolerance for heat as I do patience for cooking, its work I have the utmost respect for. The closest I’ve gotten to food service was my local bagel shop for a summer.
There are things I wished I realized when I was younger. Like, why he knew how to make breakfast so quickly. I know that I’m being hard on myself. You don’t know that you don’t things when you’re younger. Yet, I still feel blindsided by the passage of time and I’m now catching up with a deadline that could happen at any time.
Restaurants close. People go.
I know I’ll have more meals with my father. We won’t have that Nathan’s to go to anymore, but there are many diners and restaurants to take its place. I know he’ll always have a reason to visit because, at the very least, I know for sure they don’t make bagels and pizza the same way out West.
Alex J. Tunney is a writer currently living in New York. His writing has been published in the Lambda Literary Review, The Billfold, The Rumpus and The Inquisitive Eater.
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