By
Henry C. Parke
BERK'S is now PARK SLOPE NEWS STAND
(Pearle Vision used to be Unisex Haircutters)
August 14th, 2013
“BERK’S”
was a candy store and newsstand on 7th Avenue, one store from the
corner of Union Street. It was a place
to pick up sodas and candy bars, comics, big pieces of sidewalk chalk, and the
pink rubber balls we used for all of the stoop games. They were Spaldings, but for some reason we
called them Spaldeens. By the phone booth in back there was a big Mission Soda cooler, and you’d reach
into the cold water up to your elbow and pull out a Coke or 7-Up if you were
flush, or an actual Mission Soda if you wanted to save a few pennies. There were small yellow boxes of salt-coated
pumpkin seeds and sun-flower seeds to chew and spit. If you were an adult you could buy The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, The
Mirror, The Telegram, The Journal American, The Amsterdam News, and in the
afternoon, The New York Post. If you were a horse-player you could buy The Daily Telegraph. If you were a smoker, there were cigarettes,
open boxes of cigars behind the counter, and Tiparillos and White Owl Demi-Tips
in packs of five.
Mr.
and Mrs. Berk were a cheerful couple, patient with indecisive kids and adults
alike. I guess they were in their 60s,
but they could have been in their 70s or 50s – when you’re ten or eleven, it’s
all the same. They were both a bit
chubby, she a little taller, with red hair and glasses with, I think, blue
frames. I don’t remember her first name
because, as a polite kid of that era, I called her Mrs. Berk. Mr. Berk, whose name was Harry – it was also
my father’s name, so I wasn’t likely to forget that – had black hair, and
usually wore a small black hat of the type we now call a Sinatra hat.
I
know they had a son, maybe more than one, whom they had sent to college, and he
had done very well. There was probably a
wife and kids, but I don’t recall – what kid cares about someone else’s
grandkids?
Harry
was crazy about his wife, maybe all the more because he had to put up a stiff
fight to win her. It was the 1920s, and
the future Mrs. Berk was dating one on the top singers and vaudeville stars of
the era, Arthur Tracy, known as ‘The Street Singer.’ He’d come out onstage with his accordion,
singing ‘Marta, Rambling Rose of the Wildwood,’ and the ladies would swoon. He was playing ‘The Palace,’ the pinnacle of
vaudeville in the United States. I never
heard the details of how Harry defeated Arthur – these things are usually a
matter of one personality or heart winning out over another. Arthur Tracy must have recovered from his
loss, because he lived to be 98, and was performing almost to the very end, in
1997.
But
back in the 1920s, Harry Berk had a different business, which I think was also
called ‘Berk’s’, and was located in Times Square. This ‘Berk’s’ was an elegant men’s
haberdashery. “A lot of stars came
there, especially dancers. I had dance
shoes made of calf-skin. They shined
like patent leather, but they were much lighter, and dancers loved them. Fred and Adele Astaire were regular
customers.”
One
day Harry heard shouting coming from the shoe department. He hurried in to find a regular customer screaming
at a salesman, and slapping him around.
“I said, ‘You stop that!’ He
said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said,
‘Yes, I know you’re a good customer, Mr. Flegenheimer, but I won’t have you
abusing my employees: get out of my store and don’t come back!’
“So,
he’s mad, but he leaves. My salesman
says, ‘We’re good as dead now. He’s
gonna kill us.’ I say, ‘Don’t talk
nonsense! He knows he was wrong. Who is he to kill us?’
“‘He’s
Dutch Schultz.’
“‘What? He’s Mr. Flegenheimer.
“‘Arthur
Flegenheimer is Dutch Schultz, the bootlegger.
He’s going to kill us.’”
Harry
stopped to get himself a Mission Soda, grape, I think. He
told me he started to wait for a bullet.
When he was in his store, and he passed by the plate-glass window, he
waited for a bullet. When he walked
along Broadway, and a car slowed down beside him, he waited for a bullet. When he missed his subway, and was suddenly
alone on the platform, waiting for Times Square to Grand Central Shuttle, he
waited for a bullet.
After
a couple of weeks, he started to wonder if maybe the bullet wasn’t going to
come. It never came. He never heard from Dutch Schultz, who died
in 1935, killed by the Syndicate to prevent him from murdering New York D.A.
Thomas Dewey.
“But
I’ve got one thing to remember Mr. Flegenheimer by.” He took off his hat, and tilted the top of
his head to me. His hair was jet black,
except at the roots, where it was white.
“That first morning, I looked in the mirror to shave. And I saw my hair was white at the roots. It grew in all white. I’ve been dying it ever since.”
Arthur Flegenheimer in a contemplative mood.
To hear and see Arthur Tracy sing 'Marta' and 'Trees', click the link below.
The Story 'BERK'S - A 7TH AVENUE STORY' is copyright August 27th, 2013 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved
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