Thursday, December 29, 2016

"All in Good Taste"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
As a seasoned gourmand (I am usually seasoned with oregano because I am no sage), I know enough about food to give expert advice on which wine goes with Slim Jims (red) and which goes with Twinkies (white).

In fact, I have always had a burning desire, which sometimes happens in the kitchen, to be a restaurant critic. And I recently got my chance when I went out with a real restaurant critic to review an eatery where I passed judgment on the menu, which wasn’t edible (too chewy) but did contain lots of tasty offerings.

The restaurant was Tra’mici, a cozy Italian spot in Massapequa Park, New York, and the critic was Melissa McCart, who has written sparkling reviews for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday of Long Island. Accompanying us on this gastronomic adventure was Janelle Griffith, a talented feature writer for Newsday.

Our waiter was Marco Gervasi, who introduced himself by saying he would be our waiter (these formalities are very important in the service experience) and commented that there was an empty fourth seat at our table.

“Sit down,” I urged him. “Are you hungry?” I got up, put a white cloth napkin over my arm and said, “I’m Jerry. I’ll be your waiter.”

I could tell by the look in Marco’s eye (his other eye was blank) that he knew he was in for a long night.

Then he asked if we wanted anything to drink. Melissa and Janelle ordered white wine, even though Twinkies were not among the entrees.

“I’ll have a glass of red,” I said.

“How about a cab?” Marco asked.

“If I drink enough of them,” I answered, “I’ll have to hail a cab for the ride home.”

Marco, who looked like he could use a drink himself, smiled and dutifully went away.

He returned shortly afterward with not only our wine but a plate of hors d’oeuvres, which contained not horses (pardon my French) but salami, prosciutto and cheese, along with olives. They tickled the palate. I soothed the tickle with a sip of wine. It was fragrant but not haughty. And vice versa.

For the main course, Melissa ordered Orecchiette alla Barese, served with broccoli rabe and sausage, and Janelle ordered Fettuccine al doppio burro, which did not (pardon my Italian) contain a stupid donkey.

When I expressed interest in a steak, Marco suggested Filetto (filet mignon with mashed potatoes, broccoli rabe and red wine reduction).

“The meat is cured,” he noted.

“Cured?” I said nervously. “What was wrong with it?”

“I can’t tell you,” Marco replied.

I ordered it anyway.

When our dinners came out, all three of us daintily dug in. Then we tried each other’s meals, which is how restaurant critics get a taste of several menu items in one sitting (it’s not a good idea to stand while eating) and can determine what’s good and, in some cases, what isn’t.

After Melissa sampled my steak, she said, “Yours is the winner.”

“Umph, umph, umph,” I agreed, even though it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full of food.

This shared tasting must be done inconspicuously or the restaurant staff will suspect that a critic is in the house. In fact, Marco asked me, “What do you do?”

“As little as possible,” I told him.

“No, really,” he insisted. “What do you do?”

I looked around furtively and whispered, “I stick up restaurants.”

Marco hurried away to get our dessert (salty caramel gelato) and possibly call the cops. He also must have alerted his boss, because the general manager came out to refill our water glasses.

“I’m Ben,” he said.

“I’m Jerry,” I responded, shaking his hand. “We should open an ice cream business.”

“It’s been done,” Ben stated.

“Then we’ll sue them,” I said. “Just as soon as my lawyer gets out of jail.”

“You can call it Jerry and Ben’s,” Janelle suggested.

Dessert was delicious, just like the rest of the meal. And the service was even better, which is saying something considering that Marco was working only his second shift at Tra’mici.

“What’s your day job?” I asked him.

“I’m a real estate agent,” Marco said.

“Do you get a commission on dinners?” I wondered.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s called a tip.”

He got a generous one. After dealing with me, he deserved it, which is why I am giving Tra’mici an excellent review.

“Keep up the good work,” I told Ben on the way out. “And give my compliments to the waiter.”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, December 15, 2016

"The Zezimas' 2016 Christmas Letter"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
Since I am in the holiday spirit (and, having just consumed a mug of hot toddy, a glass of eggnog and a nip of cheer, the holiday spirits are in me), I have once again decided to follow in that great tradition of boring everyone silly by writing a Christmas letter.

That is why I am pleased as punch (which I also drank) to present the following chronicle of the Zezima family, which includes Jerry, the patriarch; Sue, the matriarch; Katie and Lauren, the childriarchs; Dave and Guillaume, the sons-in-lawiarch; and Chloe and Lilly, the granddaughtersiarch.

Dear friends:

It sure has been an exciting 2016 for the Zezimas!

Jerry had a particularly exciting year, which began with the publication of his third book, “Grandfather Knows Best.” Like his first two books, “Leave It to Boomer” and “The Empty Nest Chronicles,” it’s a crime against literature. It also comes in handy for propping up wobbly table legs. Somehow, it didn’t make the New York Times bestseller list.

Jerry reached the pinnacle of his journalism career when he got a paper route. On a rainy night, he helped his newspaper carrier fling papers into subscribers’ driveways and returned a lost dog to her grateful owners, which was the best delivery of all.

Jerry also completed his two-year term as president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists without running that otherwise august organization into the ground. Members attending the NSNC conference in Los Angeles celebrated with a four-letter word: beer.

Jerry’s other adventures included being a server for a night at a restaurant. To ensure that the place wouldn’t go under, he waited on his own family (Sue, Lauren, Guillaume and Chloe) and got a nice tip: Don’t quit your day job.

That same group went bowling and Chloe, in an outing to celebrate her third birthday, beat everybody in the first game. She kindly let Jerry, whom she helped roll a strike and a spare in two late frames, win the second game.

Chloe also had her first sleepover at Nini and Poppie’s house and began a tradition of making breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, toast and a bagel) with Jerry, whose scant culinary skills pale in comparison with those of his granddaughter.

Chloe got her first haircut (Jerry got one the same weekend, approximately his millionth) and got her first big-girl bed, where she keeps her stuffed friends. (Jerry, who goes to bed when he’s stuffed, keeps pajamas and other dirty clothes on his.)

Sue and Jerry refinanced the mortgage on their house, a hellish process that took months and was almost undone by a three-year-old unpaid traffic ticket. Now Jerry is afraid to drive to the bank to pay the new mortgage.

Jerry turned 62, which means he is eligible for Social Security and can, if he wants, retire. Considering his financial obligations (see above), he is convinced he will be working posthumously.

Speaking of death, Sue and Jerry lost Bernice, the last of their four cats, who at age 17 went to that big litter box in the sky. To fill the void (Bernice was fat), they welcomed Maggie, their sweet granddog, who is 11 and living with them temporarily. She keeps the house safe by being a canine alarm system, which makes her more valuable than Jerry.

Katie and Dave, both journalists living in Washington, D.C., had lots to report on this year and learned the wisdom of the late, great humorist Art Buchwald, who also was based in the nation’s capital and famously wrote, “You can’t make anything up anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it.” Katie and Dave record it very well.

For the record, the best thing to happen in the family in 2016 was the birth of Lilly, Lauren and Guillaume’s beautiful baby daughter. Everyone loves the adorable girl, including Chloe, who kisses her little sister and helps Lauren and Guillaume take care of her. So does Sue. Jerry tells her jokes, just as he does with Chloe. When you’re a grandfather, that’s your job.

Merry Christmas with love and laughter from the Zezimas.

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, December 1, 2016

"It's Chloe Time"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
I live in a different time zone than everybody else — right now it is 8:49 a.m., Eastern time, 5:49 on the West Coast and 12:27 on Mars — so I was a little late in finding out that my granddaughter Chloe, who is 3, recently got a watch.

I have had one watch in my life. It was given to me as a college graduation gift by my parents, who liked to remind me that I was born more than three weeks past my due date and hadn't been on time for anything since. The watch was one of those digital numbers that didn’t have two hands, which required me to use two hands to tell the time. It was a pain in the wrist.

Not long after my wife, Sue, and I were married, our apartment was burglarized. Her watch was stolen. Mine was left behind. It wasn’t even good enough for thieves.

At the time (4:32 p.m.), I resolved never to wear a watch again. And I haven’t. I am in a deadline business, but I don’t care what time it is. If I need to know, I’ll look at the clock on the wall. If I don’t see a wall, I know I’m outside and that it’s time (midnight) to come in.

Now Chloe, who was born a week early, has a watch. It was given to her by her parents, though not as a college graduation gift because even kids these days don’t grow up that fast.

At least it’s not digital. It has a purple band with pink and white flowers and a face with two hands, which means Chloe doesn’t need two hands to tell the time.

What she does need is somebody to teach her how.

That, against all odds, is where I come in.

Whenever Chloe visits, she wants me to read her favorite literary masterpiece, “Tick and Tock’s Clock Book.” Subtitled “Tell the Time With the Tiger Twins!,” it’s the compelling if somewhat repetitive tale of two feline brothers who are baffled by time, which makes them no better than me. Of course, I never tell that to Chloe. Instead, I begin reading:

“Brrringg! The alarm clock rang so loudly it made Tick and Tock jump out of bed.

“ ‘What time is it?!’ said Tock.

“Tick went to look at the clock.

“ ‘Um … the big hand … Not sure,’ he said. What time did the clock say?”

“What time did the clock say, Poppie?” Chloe asked recently during a particularly dramatic reading.

“It didn’t say anything,” I replied. “Clocks can’t talk.”

Chloe giggled and said, “Silly Poppie!”

According to the drawing on the page, it was 8 a.m., even though it was 3:15 p.m. in my house, so I helped Chloe move the plastic hands — the big one to the 12, the little one to the 8 — on the clock in the upper right corner of the book.

The rest of the story follows the messy Tiger Twins through their day, during which they can’t figure out what time they are supposed to leave for school (8:30), finish their painting project (10:15), have lunch (12:30), go home (3:30) and have dinner (4:45).

But the best is saved for last. That’s when Tick and Tock’s mother, who has just cleaned up one of their many messes, announces, “There, it’s all tidy now. Look, it’s 8 o’clock, time for bed.”

But the clock on the wall says otherwise.

“Tick and Tock looked at the clock and said, ‘No, it’s not! It’s 7 o’clock. We have another hour to play, hooray!’ ”

In one of the greatest endings in all of literature, the Tiger Twins’ mother can’t tell the time.

“Maybe,” I said to Chloe as I closed the book, “Tick and Tock should buy her a watch.”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, November 17, 2016

"You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
Ever since my second grandchild, Lilly, was born last month, people have been asking who she looks like.

It’s hard to say because babies change by the hour, and need to be changed just as often, but I can tell you this: Because Lilly is so beautiful, she doesn’t look like me.

Figuring out who babies look like is one of the great mysteries of modern science. People — especially parents and grandparents, but also aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors and complete strangers who happen to be passing by and can’t help but comment on how cute the kid is — see who and what they want to see when they see a baby.

If you ask me (you didn’t, but I am going to answer anyway), Lilly looks like her mother, Lauren, who is my younger daughter and is, no thanks to me, beautiful.

When Lilly’s beautiful sister, Chloe, was born three and a half years ago, people (see above) said she looked like her father, Guillaume, a handsome guy with a full head of dark hair, which Chloe had, too. Now, however, Chloe looks just like Lauren, right down to the blond curls.

When Lauren was born, everyone said she looked like me. When her older sister, Katie, was born, everyone said she looked like my wife, Sue. Now people say Lauren looks like Sue and Katie looks like me. I can believe the former, because Sue is beautiful, but not the latter, because Katie is beautiful and I, while not exactly Freddy Krueger, am not exactly Brad Pitt, either.

But back to babies, who are living (and crying, eating, sleeping and pooping) proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It has been my observation that they look like whichever side of the family is seeing them at any given moment.

These family members will always comment on how beautiful the baby is and will then add that the little darling has all the traits of either the mother or the father, depending on which one is a direct relative.

It becomes more complicated (and pretty weird) when the comments involve body parts. For example, someone might say, “She has your nose.”

No one ever said that about Katie and Lauren, thank God, because if one of them had my nose, she wouldn’t have been able to lift her head until she was in kindergarten.

Eyes are also big. Mine are. They’re bloodshot, too. Still, they are the feature that people most often ascribe to the mother, the father or, in some cases, the passer-by who turns out not to be a complete stranger.

“She has my eyes,” relatives love to say.

The truth is that if the kid has your eyes, you couldn’t see, which is likely to be the case because, the vast majority of the time, nobody else agrees.

Even if you’re right, you’ll soon be wrong. The baby’s eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair, hands or feet, which you could swear are just like yours, will soon resemble someone else’s. Then that person will say, “She looks just like me!”

What is indisputable is that all babies, whether they are children or grandchildren, are beautiful. OK, so maybe some of them aren’t, but they’re not related to any of us. And if they are, they have my nose.

So go ahead and see yourself in the new addition to your family. Brag that the little girl or boy is the spitting (and sometimes regurgitating) image of you when you were a baby, or looks like you now, or has all the traits that make everyone in your family so good-looking.

Like a broken clock, you’ll occasionally be right.

But know this: My granddaughters, Chloe and Lilly, are the most beautiful children on earth. If anyone disagrees, it will, of course, get ugly.

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, November 3, 2016

"The Grandfather Playground Society"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
To steal a line from Groucho Marx, who is dead and can’t sue me, I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member.

But I made an exception on a recent weekday afternoon when I was indicted (sorry, I mean inducted) into a prestigious, exclusive and, I can proudly say, entirely dubious organization called the Grandfather Playground Society.

The founding members were yours truly and two guys named Jeff and Steve. I was there with Chloe, who is 3; Jeff had Madison, 2; and Steve had Aliya, also 2.

The first thing Jeff said to me was: “I am going to have a heart attack.”

That’s because he had already been chasing Madison around for an hour.

“I think I’ll join you,” I responded, because I had just raced with Chloe from slides to swings and back again and was feeling a bit short of breath.

Unfortunately, Chloe doesn’t yet know CPR, which stands for Collapsed Poppie Resuscitation.

Steve, meanwhile, was following Aliya on a tricycle (she was riding it and he was walking in circles behind her because there wasn’t enough room on the seat for both of them) and was grateful he was getting a breather.

“This beats running,” he noted.

“When you have grandchildren,” I said, “you don’t have to join a health club.”

“It saves a lot of money,” Jeff said.

“And you can use the savings to buy beer,” I pointed out.

“I could go for one right now,” Steve chimed in.

Then all three of us went back to the slides with our granddaughters, who wanted us to accompany them. This required us to put the kids on our laps and swoosh down at breakneck speed, absorbing jolts to our tailbones before coming to a screeching halt on the hard plastic surface about two feet from the end, the result being that we were almost catapulted skyward with toddlers who thought it was fun but didn’t realize that their grandfathers nearly suffered grievous injuries that could have transformed us into falsettos.

“Let’s go again, Poppie!” Chloe exclaimed. Her new friends agreed.

“What do you do for joint trouble?” Jeff asked after the third trip.

“Move to a new joint,” I answered.

Instead, we moved back to the swings, where Madison, Aliya and Chloe were secured in their seats while Jeff, Steve and I pushed them and officially convened the meeting.

“Being a grandfather is the best thing in the world,” I said.

“Yes,” agreed Steve. “And after you’re done playing with your grandkids, you can give them back.”

“Speaking of backs,” Jeff said with a wince, “mine is sore as hell.”

“But it’s worth all the aches and pains,” I said. “In fact, it makes you young again.”

And I proved it, after the girls were done on the swings, by chasing Chloe up and down a nearby hill, then going to another set of slides, where I didn’t have to accompany her but did have to catch her at the bottom and run back around to watch her as she climbed the steps.

Meanwhile, Jeff and Steve were running after their granddaughters, who don’t move as fast as Chloe because they are a year younger but who nonetheless can take the wind out of any geezers who happen to be their grandfathers.

A little later, we met up again at the park entrance.

“It’s time for a nap,” Steve said as he looked down at his tired granddaughter.

“You look like you could use one, too,” Jeff said.

“We all could,” I added with a yawn.

On that note, the first meeting of the Grandfather Playground Society ended. The three of us, granddaughters in tow, limped back to our cars and wished each other happy healing.

“The next time we get together,” I suggested, “let’s go to a spa. If it’s good enough for their grandmothers, it’s good enough for us.”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, October 20, 2016

"Tooth or Consequences"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
In one of my favorite Three Stooges shorts, the boys are dentists. When their first patient comes in, Shemp puts on a pair of Coke bottle glasses that render him practically sightless. Then he pries open the hapless man’s mouth, grabs a pair of pliers and, while Moe reads instructions from a book titled “Carpentry Made Easy,” proceeds to extract a tooth in a painfully funny scene that makes me glad I don’t have a dentist like that.

So you can imagine how I felt recently when I walked into my new dentist’s office for my initial appointment and saw, on the TV in the waiting area, an episode of — you guessed it — the Three Stooges.

“They are my heroes,” said Dr. Anthony Fazio, who was not, thank God, wielding pliers, a hammer or any other tool the Stooges might have used to treat a patient on his very first visit.

“I save those for subsequent visits,” added Dr. Fazio, who doesn’t need to use laughing gas because his delightfully skewed sense of humor puts patients at ease and actually makes it fun to go to the dentist.

Dr. Fazio, who wears glasses (“Where are you?” he joked after I had settled into the chair), has been clowning with patients since he opened his practice in Medford, New York, in 1998.

“I took over from Dr. William J. Tinkler, who’s 88 and is a funny guy himself,” said Dr. Fazio, adding that Dr. Tinkler was his dental school teacher at Stony Brook University, where Dr. Fazio now teaches. “We put on a show every year at the school and Dr. Tinkler gets up and tells jokes. He’s another one of my heroes.”

Dr. Fazio, 46, is married to Dr. Lynn Travis, herself a Stony Brook dental school graduate.

“We put down roots in the community,” he deadpanned.

“You know the drill,” I responded.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” countered Dr. Fazio, who, fortunately for me, didn’t need to use one.

But he did need to regale me with stories of his dental adventures, such as the one he called “The Ventriloquist and His Wife.”

“The patient was this very stately gentleman,” Dr. Fazio recalled. “I asked him what I could do for him and, without missing a beat, his wife said, ‘He hates his teeth and needs new dentures.’ I asked the man what he didn’t like about them and his wife said, ‘He doesn’t like the color. And he can’t chew with them.’ Whatever I asked the man, his wife answered. Then I said to him, ‘That’s amazing.’ He was puzzled. I said, ‘You are the best ventriloquist I’ve ever seen.’ There was a hint of a smile on his face.

“I priced a new set of dentures at $2,000. Then I asked the wife if she would be in the room during the treatment and she said, ‘Of course.’ So I said in that case, the dentures would be $4,000. I said, ‘If I have to talk with your husband and you, it will cost double.’ She got huffy and said, ‘I never!’ On the way out, her husband said to me, ‘Have a nice day.’ It was the only time I heard him speak.”

Then there was the young woman who practically did a burlesque routine in the office.

“She was very attractive,” Dr. Fazio said. “I had to check out her occlusion, so I took a piece of typing paper, placed it between her teeth and said, ‘Would you please grind for me?’ She started to gyrate in the chair. I said, ‘No, no, no! I meant that you should grind your teeth from side to side.’ She started to laugh and said, ‘Sorry, I thought it was an odd request, but you’re kind of cute and I figured, what the hell, why not?’ She’s still one of my best patients.”

I could never compete with her, but Dr. Fazio said I’m now a good patient, too.

“You’re memorable,” he noted.

Maybe it’s because I share his appreciation for old movies, posters for which fill the walls. One of the films is “Dial M for Murder.”

“The M doesn’t also stand for molar, does it?” I asked tremulously.

“No,” Dr. Fazio said after hygienist Margaret Skladanek had done a terrific job of cleaning my teeth and office manager Lisa Rugen had set up my next appointment. “But it could stand for Moe.”

As I left the office, the Three Stooges were still on.

“At least you don’t have any carpentry books in here,” I said.

“I’ll get one in time for your next visit,” Dr. Fazio replied. “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

Thursday, October 6, 2016

"Trouble's on the Menu"

By Jerry Zezima
The Stamford Advocate
When I was 16, I got my first job. I was, improbably, a waiter at the now-defunct Parkway Deli in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut.

In pretty short order, even though I wasn’t pretty or even a short-order cook, I was fired for what I must admit were two very good reasons: I ate the place out of knishes every day for lunch and, in case you are wondering why the deli went under, I was incompetent.

After a hiatus of 46 years, I recently got back into the service industry by working as a waiter at the Modern Snack Bar in Aquebogue, New York.

I came up with the potentially disastrous idea after my wife, Sue, and I had dinner at the popular family-style restaurant and were waited on by Anilee Bishop, who deserves a medal, or at least a raise, for being my mentor when I returned a couple of weeks later to see if I could drive yet another eatery into the ground.

I arrived at the worst possible time — a busy Saturday night — with Sue; our younger daughter, Lauren; our son-in-law Guillaume; and our granddaughter, Chloe.

“Are you ready to go to work?” asked Anilee, who seated us in the large rear dining room.

“Yes,” I said confidently, promising that I would spare the place the humiliation of having me on staff by waiting my own table.

“If anybody in your family is as tough a customer as you are, you’re going to be in trouble,” said Anilee, adding that she was fired from her first waitressing job for spilling water all over the silk dress of a rich lady in the Hamptons. “It was my first day,” she recalled. “And my last.”

But Anilee, 30, the mother of two toddlers who also has been a photojournalist and studied to be a nurse, is still in the service industry and has been waitressing at the Modern Snack Bar for seven years. She always assures customers that the restaurant’s famous grasshopper pie “doesn’t contain real grasshoppers” and likes to tell “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” jokes to amused diners.

The first thing Anilee did, aside from bringing out menus, which I forgot to do (“You’re falling down on the job already,” she said), was to hand me a pad on which to write down orders. Then she gave me an apron with a large pocket so I could store the pad, a pen and whatever else (straws, napkins, extra spoons) I would need to be a competent waiter and, I fervently hoped, earn a generous tip.

“Don’t forget to fill the water glasses,” said Anilee, making sure that I poured water from “the side of the pitcher, not the spout” and that I turned away from my customers so I wouldn’t get them wet.

“Nobody’s wearing a silk dress,” I pointed out.

“This is going to be a long night,” Anilee murmured.

After taking orders (chicken fingers for Chloe, a Caesar salad for Lauren, a turkey sandwich for Guillaume, crab cakes for Sue and a hamburger for me, even though I wasn’t supposed to eat while working), I showed the pad to Anilee, who said, “I’ll have to rewrite this so the cook and the grill chef know what you mean.”

She took me to the kitchen, which is in the back, and to the grill, which is in the front, and translated my chicken scratch (which isn’t on the menu) into official restaurant code.

While dinner cooked, I refilled the water glasses, not only for my table (B10), but for the nice couple, Lois and Barry, at the next table (“This is the best water I’ve ever tasted!” Lois exclaimed) and for three women, Karen, Carol and Karen, at another table.

“We love you!” Carol said.

“Yes,” agreed one of the Karens. “But you really have to pick up the pace.”

Soon, dinner was ready. I didn’t dare try to balance all those plates on my arm for fear that I’d create a scene worthy of the Three Stooges, so I brought them out, one in each hand, and placed them on the table.

“Boneless appetit!” I said.

Then I sat down to eat and remarked on the good service. Because it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full, nobody agreed.

Later, I brought out dessert, which included grasshopper pie for Sue and Lauren (I repeated Anilee’s joke, but again there was no response) and ice cream for Chloe, 3, who chirped, “Thank you, Poppie!”

At least she appreciated my efforts.

So, actually, did Sue, Lauren and Guillaume, who acknowledged that I tried my best. Sue even left me a nice tip, which went into the till for Anilee and the other servers, all of whom work hard and are unfailingly cheerful and efficient.

“You may need a little more training,” Anilee said when my shift was over, “but you didn’t do a bad job.”

“And we’re still in business,” said John Wittmeier, who with his brother, Otto, co-owns the Modern Snack Bar, which has been in the family since 1950. “Even you couldn’t ruin us. But just to be safe,” he added with a grateful smile, “don’t quit your day job.”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima