I grew up in Manhattan where Dyckman Street meets 200th street. My apartment building was the biggest on the street, six stories of red brick bounded on one side by the Alpine movie theater and Hanson’s Ladies’ Lingerie Emporium on the other. The Richter family lived on the fifth floor in apartment 5A and my father’s dental office—apartment 2R— was on the second floor. (I was convinced that the “R” stood for Richter.)
We had a set approach to calling the family together for dinner, driven by the fact that my father both worked and lived in 200 Dyckman Street. At six-thirty in the evening on most weekdays, my brother Marvin and I sat down at the kitchen table, which my mother had already laid with the everyday place mats, silverware, water glasses, and the first course— a mixed green salad studded heavily with cherry tomatoes, partnered by a bowl of my mother’s Russian dressing waiting to do its business. Sliced rye bread, fragrant with caraway seeds and surrounded by bits of crispy chocolate-colored crust jarred loose by the knife, rested on a plate in the middle of the table. And always, to complete the tabletop montage, one bottle from the case of seltzer water that was delivered weekly to the apartment stood next to my father’s water glass.
We waited; nothing was touched. Soon the magical intercom that connected apartment 2R to apartment 5A came alive and I heard Phyllis, my father’s receptionist announce that, “Dr. Richter is on his way up for dinner.” Moments later the key turned in the door, my father appeared, removed his jacket and took his seat at the table. The seltzer bottle hissed and dinner began.
Dyckman Street was a veritable shopping mall, home to Joe’s Pork Store, Nash’s Bakery, Martin’s Homemade Ice-cream Shoppe, Cohen’s Newspaper and Cigar Store, this last where I routinely treated myself to the world’s best egg cream, seated at the counter, perusing the new Classic Comic that I borrowed from Mr. Cohen’s magazine rack. (I received special treatment because Sally, his daughter, was my best friend.)
Cold cuts figured prominently in my gustatory life in the guise of the Famous Delicatessen, to the right of the entrance to the building and next door to Personal Cleaners. My mother would buy a whole salami from Famous, wrap the string on the top around the doorknob of a kitchen cabinet, and let the fat “dry out.” What emerged after hanging for two weeks was salami that was all beef and spices, so firm that it posed a dental challenge.
One of the perks of living in 200 Dyckman Street, at least to me, was the persistent smell of pastrami as you entered the front lobby; pastrami— that end product of a generations-old process of seasoning, boiling and smoking a whole slab of rich, fatty brisket. Most residents didn’t see it my way.
When I turned eleven, my mother allowed me to go to Famous by myself, sit at a table and order something to eat. Those were mostly the days when my dad’s office stayed open late and the family wasn’t having dinner until after eight. Waiting to eat from three o’clock in the afternoon until eight o’clock at night warranted a snack, she felt. We both agreed that an ice cream cone from Martin’s, homemade and delicious as it would be, wasn’t going to do it. The situation demanded something substantial and profoundly satisfying —like a pastrami sandwich? I asked her— which, at four dollars, was one of the priciest items on the menu.
All the waiters at Famous knew my family. We were neighbors. Moe, the owner, was a patient of my father’s. But when I walked in, I was a customer, not Dr. Richter’s eleven-year old daughter, Ellen. Sol, my waiter, guided me to a clean table already set with a crisp white napkin and a knife and a fork, handed me the menu, and filled my glass with water and ice. (He was careful to ask in advance if I wanted ice.) He waited as I studied the menu, even though I saw him begin to write the check before I put it down, looked up at him, and said,
“A pastrami on rye with a half-sour pickle, please. Not too much mustard.”
Several minutes later Sol put the check on the table. I asked to borrow the pen he always kept tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket and confidently wrote, “charge to Dr. Richter.”
Music student at the High School of Music and Art, piano student at the Julliard School of Music, Economics/Philosophy major at Mount Holyoke College, M.A. in Urban Planning from the New School for Social Research, writer and editor at McKinsey & Company, member of the Board of Mater Voices, a not-for-profit performing arts institution, and writing workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. My most recent writing workshop has been at the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute. I find a profound connection between telling stories through music, a great passion of mine, and telling stories through the written word. My work has been featured in the live literary forum “Read 650” and the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute Newsletter.
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