Famous Nathan (21 page)

Running along the park's perimeter was the Steeplechase ride, a pair of tracks with four horses on each, arranged eight abreast, two riders per mount. The race started atop a steep, twenty-two-foot rise, with the force of gravity plunging the riders forward. “Gaming the ride” meant maneuvering the mechanical beasts ahead of the competition, leaning forward on the downgrades, coming out ahead in the race.

Victors and losers alike exited from the tracks into the Insanitarium, a funhouse of intricate passageways, to be confronted by clowns, dwarves, or other tormentors, wicked figures intent on mischief. Armed with electric prods or paddles to be wielded against the unsuspecting, the figures pulled their pranks to amuse hordes of spectators—most of whom had just endured the same treatment. Jets of air blasted from concealed vents in the floor, blowing off hats, raising skirts, and delighting the leering onlookers. Other sections of floor abruptly dropped away beneath the feet of the hapless victims.

*   *   *

In 1938, at the tender age of eleven, Sidney Handwerker took a job at the store. “I worked in the kitchen. I knew everybody there, and everybody knew me.” The boy was the son of Nathan's oldest brother, Israel. Sidney's father worked on and off at the store, and the family lived in the neighborhood, so it was only natural that he, too, would find a job with his uncle.

Sidney summons up idyllic memories of his life in those days. “Coney Island was a paradise. We'd get up in the morning and go to the beach when it was empty. It was wonderful. My father used to work at Nathan's. He'd work nights and come home in the early-morning hours, wake up all my brothers, and we'd all go out at seven o'clock in the morning, swimming on the beach when nobody was there. Then we'd all come home, and he would make us a wonderful breakfast of french fries—Nathan's style—and eggs. Afterward, we'd all go off on our own ways: some went to school, some went to work.”

When he first got hired at his uncle Nathan's business, Sidney entered at the bottom of the store's pecking order. He worked in the kitchen, which was a different realm from the counter area, where the employees interacted with the public. His duties were limited, at first, to prep work on the two most popular offerings of Nathan's Famous—hot dogs and potato fries.

“I used to line up the frankfurters on boards so they could take them out on griddles. The frankfurters were not skinless. They were in natural casings, and they came on strings. I had to cut them apart.”

Sidney also opened the sacks of potatoes and fed the spuds into an electric peeler. There was an art to the process, and the boss was watching. Nathan would come around on quality control.

“Make sure you don't peel too much!” Nathan would say. “Don't take off too much!”

When Sidney worked peeling onions, he put the onion peels into a garbage bag and the peeled onions into a bucket. Nathan would come by and perform a quick test, simply by lifting the bag of discarded onion peels.

“If I was taking too much onion off the onion, the bag would be heavier than if there were very thin onion peels.” Nathan could judge by the weight of the bag if the work was being done properly.

The potato peeler might have gone electric, but there was an ancient hand-cranked device to give the crinkle-cut fries their shape. For years, six days a week in summer and on weekends during the school year, Sidney Handwerker worked the crank. “You put a potato in a machine, and then you went back and forth, and the cut pieces fell into a pot of water.”

Sidney ascended up the staff hierarchy to become one of the store's potato men. The crinkle-cut fries went through the same two-step process as the traditional French recipe for
pommes frites
. The potatoes were blanched in oil once, reserved for later use when the rush came, and then finished off in a bubbling-hot deep fryer just before they were served.

“We had to precook the french fries to be finished when it got busy,” Sidney recalled. “The potatoes came out in water. I would scoop out a wire basketful of potatoes, drain off the water, and then lower the baskets into round cooking pots. When they were almost cooked through, we had shelves and used to stack them up. And then, when I wanted to finish them, there was, in the front, the pots with very hot oils. I used to fry them so they were crispy and serve them to the public.”

During this period, the facilities at the store gradually modernized. “I remember when we got our first electric glass washer in the kitchen, to wash the glasses and sterilize them,” Sidney said. “That was a big, big occasion.”

Incredible as it seems from the perspective of today's disposable culture, the beverages at Nathan's were served in glasses. The root beer came in heavy mugs, and all the drink glasses were targets for souvenir hunters. Whenever the employees saw a customer abscond with one, the chase would be on.

“We used to run out and grab them,” remembered Jack Dreitzer. “We'd see who could catch the most glasses during the day. In those days, the root beer glasses cost forty-five cents apiece. We never let anybody steal glasses.”

Drink preparation had come a long way from the days of Nathan's traditional hand-squeezed lemonade recipe. Nathan developed his own syrups. For the store's popular orangeade, he purchased fresh oranges and had them squeezed with the pulp left in. To the extracted juice, he added citric acid and brown and white sugars. The store's other drink offerings were mixed with custom-made syrups, one for flavor and one for color. Drinks were always the menu items with the biggest profit margins.

“I made the drinks,” Sidney recalled. “Orange, pineapple, and grape. I used to mix it in a big pail. Out in the front where the drinks were served, we had big glass coolers.”

The countermen would call out their needs to the kitchen workers. “They used to yell, ‘Orange out!' or whatever. I would take the pail, mix in some color, mix in some flavor, fill it with water. The big glass coolers had a little button—push it to fill up the glasses. We put ice in the glass coolers so it looked cold. And it
was
cold. In the summer, there was always a long line for the drinks.”

Sidney's first counter job—“My first time outside”—was at the drink station. Every drink was a nickel except for beer, which sold for ten cents and was the only alcohol Nathan offered. In all its years in existence, the store never had a full bar. In addition to the fruit flavors, there was also root beer for five cents. “In a mug, very creamy root beer; it was all foam.”

The counter employees learned to work every job out front before settling into one. “Finally my station became roast beef, barbecue, and chow mein,” Sidney recalled. “I was the fastest and the best.”

Every ingredient had to be of the highest quality: the barbecue was made from pork butt, the roast beef from top round. Again, although Nathan's was known for the frankfurter, other menu items had their passionate fans. After he retired, Sidney would still field occasional requests from nostalgic friends, asking him to re-create the store's barbecue sandwich or, especially, the chow mein concoction.

“Who ever heard of chow mein on a bun?” Sidney asked. “But it was very popular.” The creation of the sandwich was usually credited to Sinta, the store's legendary longtime head cook.

“The chow mein sandwich was built with thin fried noodles, Chinese raw noodles, which we used to fry in the potato fryer. I'd take a bun, crease it in the middle, then put in a handful of noodles and spread chow mein on top of them. There were bottles of soy sauce on the counter. Ten cents for the sandwich. People loved it.”

When the innovative concoction was advertised on a placard hanging above the counter, Sinta rebelled. He didn't like the grinning, pigtailed “Chinaman” caricature painted on the sign. Nathan immediately apologized and had the offending placard taken down.

Another popular steam table item, roast beef, was thinly sliced and placed on a bun, which was then dipped in gravy and served. The barbecue sandwich featured thin slices of pork, onions, and relish, topped with a tomato sauce. None of the sandwiches could rival the frankfurter and hamburger in popularity, but they sold well enough to stay on the menu for decades.

For camaraderie and to cut the tension of a long, exhausting workday, the countermen occasionally took up singing in unison. Sidney Handwerker recalled one song that had all the employees joining in. “Hamburgers and onions and chicken chow mein, roast beef and barbecue and a schooner of beer, all hot, a nickel, a nickel, a nickel only.” Nathan's signature line, “Give 'em and let 'em eat,” became the refrain that the whole staff sang together, sounding like “The Song of the Volga Boatmen.”

The countermen also indulged in a secret code to communicate among themselves. To call out “Eighty-six!” alerted fellow workers that a good-looking customer had approached the counter.

“If you said ‘Ninety-three,'” said Hy Brown, “that meant you wanted a cop nearby. There was somebody either annoying people, panhandling, or pickpocketing, and you could see it from the counter.”

Sidney Handwerker rose from kitchen help to steam-table man and, eventually, to manager. As a loyal member of the Nathan's Famous family, he was rewarded with a living wage, $125 a week, and a $1,000 bonus at the end of the summer. In present-day terms, that remuneration works out to be something like $85,000 a year with a $13,000 bonus.

There was a crude rule of thumb that many Coney businesses employed to determine their profit margin. The paper bills were immediately brought down to the bank. Those deposits represented funds used for overhead. Coins, on the other hand, were kept uncounted, stored in boxes, in recycled wooden root beer barrels, or in large metal custard cans.

“We deposited only the bills because we didn't have time to count the change,” Sidney said, recalling a time when he had left Nathan's to work at Willy's, another Coney Island food stand. “At the end of the summer, at the end of the season, we used to sit for days and days and count and roll change. That was our profit for the season. That was your life. You waited for the season.”

He tells the tragic story of his sister, Rosie, who had the misfortune of getting pregnant at the wrong time of the year. “You can't be pregnant during the season. You have to work. So Rosie tried to abort herself. She was twenty-four years old. She hemorrhaged and died at Coney Island Hospital.”

The season. A jealous god and a harsh mistress. World events loomed on the horizon that would make the demands of the business even more extreme.

*   *   *

Like a lot of first-generation immigrants, Ida and Nathan yearned to give their children opportunities they themselves had not had. As Leah, Murray, and Sol grew up during the '20s and '30s, the family found itself with enough disposable income to be considered well to do.

Summertime camp was a constant. During the rest of the year, Ida arranged for such amenities as piano lessons, museum visits, and concert tickets. Murray especially embraced these cultural opportunities, becoming a polished amateur pianist.

If Murray was his father's son and the designated heir apparent, Ida's youngest child was always his mother's darling. A shy, sensitive boy, the introvert to Murray's extrovert, Sol was a fussy eater like many younger children.

“I never saw my father cook at home,” Sol recalled. “My mother was in control of our kitchen. She did all the cooking. She used to make things that I liked, sometimes much to the chagrin of my sister and brother. She may have favored me in the kinds of food she prepared. I was particular in what I ate. There were certain things I didn't like that I wouldn't eat. Certain things I loved she would be happy to make.”

Perhaps recalling his own impoverished childhood and reprising his early role as household provider, Nathan often brought home steaks from the store. He made sure the family diet included a lot of meat. Ida fixed Sol special meals, including the lamb chops he loved. A special favorite of the picky eater was spaghetti made with ketchup and onions. Ida cosseted him with morning servings of bananas and cream.

The science of birth order and its effects on personality remains in dispute. The general rule of thumb is that older kids tend toward conservatism while younger children exhibit rebellious streaks. Such a dynamic certainly played out in the Handwerker family.

“One thing I remember about Sol, he always had something political for you to sign: ban the bomb or something,” said his cousin Sidney. “He was always a socialist.”

Sol would say later that his adult political leanings were taught to him as a boy by his brother. “I adored Murray when I was much younger,” he said. As was the case with many people, Murray's political convictions would move to the right as he aged. His little brother would remain an adamant progressive. Their diverging viewpoints would cause trouble later on.

The Handwerker family displayed the gender bias of a traditional Jewish household. The sons were pushed to the forefront and encouraged to interact with the wider world. The oldest child, Leah, grew to adulthood during the precise time that her parents spent most of the time in the store. While Sol had opportunities to accompany their father and mother on what would eventually become annual visits to Florida, Leah was never invited along, presumably because of school obligations.

The imbalance engendered a certain level of bitterness in the spirited daughter of the family. Leah grew up feeling that she wasn't sufficiently loved. Once, when Leah entered the hospital with a serious condition, her father came to visit her.

“I didn't know I liked you so much,” said Nathan to his ailing daughter.

Leah recalled her reaction.
Like? What about love?
Her nephew Steve Handwerker described Leah as not being especially sympathetic about the enormous amounts of time that Nathan and Ida spent at the store.