Football Players and Fire Fighters

Raymond Avenue, back in the day

Looking for something appropriate for the Fourth, I was perusing some iconic photographs representing our country, both the good and the bad over the decades, when I came across an essay I wrote my freshman year of college, probably in answer to some assignment. It occurred to me that what I had written all those years ago is as much a nod to "grass-roots America" as some of the photos (not, of course, that I'm in any way comparing the quality). It is also, as much as anything, a snapshot (if you will) of a place in time ~ of a place and time ~ and an unwitting account of change and the vagaries of generational tastes and mores.

   If you were to make a right turn at the Juliet Theatre, the one featuring Cops and Robbers and announcing the coming of the sensational Jesus Christ, Superstar, and walk past a few small stores, including Gladmore, "Your Clothes' Best Friend" ("What one little Indian can do, dry cleaning can undo"), and Rose Marie's Boutique, and if you were very, very hungry indeed, you would stop under the sign indicating the humble home of the College Drug and Luncheonette, at 48 Raymond Ave.
   We have all been told that it's not right to judge a thing by its exterior. If you remembered this, you would walk past the various cardboard posters in the window proclaiming Sealtest ice cream to be the best, the piece of gray cardboard on which someone had scribbled with a failing pen "Sorry, No Bare Feet," and the two or three athletic awards on display, to open the frail screen door. You wonder vaguely whether it will fall off as its hinges squeak irritatingly. Straight ahead of you, taped onto the cigarette machine only a few steps away, is a friendly reminder from the local AMEN (Americans Mobilized to End Narcotic Abuse) chapter.

   There are not many people sitting at the wood, high-backed booths, but there are three or four old men at the bar skimming the Sports section of the Daily News. Two waitresses hover over them. One is very young, the other is older and tired-looking. You walk over to the juke box, which doesn't seem very well used. It contains hits by such groups as The Four Seasons, Percy Faith and Orchestra, Spanky and Our Gang, and Morton Gould and Orchestra. Over each booth is a framed, yellowing cartoon signed "Gary." One of them depicts a young woman, presumably from the nearby Vassar College, facing a muscular young man with a crew cut and a letter on his bulky sweater. The printed caption reads, "But I thought you were coming tomorrow." There are also many posed pictures of football players. They are autographed and dedicated in flowing, illegible script.

   Johnny Klein has owned the College Drug and Luncheonette, better known to its employees as "The Drug," since July of 1947, two years after he moved to Poughkeepsie. "My wife is the real boss," he jokes as he slaps a grilled cheese sandwich together. Hanging over the opening of his shirt pocket is a piece of plastic on which are clipped two Bic pens. The piece of plastic has something written on it,
and when I finally get a chance to discreetly glance at it, as Johnny checks the grilled cheese sandwich, I read "Ask for Muriel/the light cigar." I wonder whether Johnny smokes cigars at all, much less Muriels.
   The kitchen is very clean. I look around it admiringly while Johnny tells me the story of his life. It is not very interesting until he mentions that he was in the U.S. Army for two years. He was in the Observation Corps, stationed in Kansas, and never got overseas. His corps was, however, he hastens to add, alerted twice, once for Germany and once for Japan. How was the Army? "Every youngster should go into it," says Johnny Klein.
   Johnny's wife is named Shirley. They met in '33, in Johnny's brother's drugstore, where Shirley worked. They are both very proud of Johnny's brother, Gary, because there was a picture of him and his roommates sitting around the soda fountain of his drugstore in Cosmopolitan (1955). He was paid $25.00 for the use of the photograph. By the way, Mary Ellen, the younger of the two waitresses, is Shirley's niece.

Vassar "White Angel" (seated) on duty

   Johnny thinks that, all in all, Vassar hasn't changed much. In the old days, the White Angels [the dorms' receptionists, so nicknamed for their white uniforms] "watched their kids," which was a good thing, and the atmosphere in general was "quite home-like." There were many more bikes and parents clogging up Raymond Avenue's traffic. The Drug was one of the places to be, and students would introduce their families to Johnny. One of the mothers, he remembers, had on "diamonds, I'm tellin' ya, they'd knock your eye out." Many times, he would be asked to deliver an order to one of the dorms after 10:30, the hour after which the students were not allowed outside, and his friends would always argue over the privilege of taking the order over so they could see "the girls in their bikinis." While he says this, Johnny laughs and rotates his hips a few times. He remembers that Shirley and he were also invited to the girls' weddings.
   Throughout the entire conversation, orders come in through the little rectangular window over the grilled-cheese-maker, pushed onto a long, upright nail by a disembodied hand. Mary Ellen bustles around the kitchen, making sandwiches and hamburgers. Johnny watches her and, at one point, stops his stories long enough to say, "Mary Ellen, we're using the other ones," in reference to a bag of frozen french fries. As she goes into a back room for another bag, he tells me about the time seventy-five G.I.s took courses at Vassar right after the war. They got their degrees from Albany. One of them is now city judge. Another, Flora's cousin, works at I.B.M. I wonder who Flora is, but just then, Frank comes in with a copy of the Daily News. I don't know who Frank is, either.
   "What inning won Thursday's game? How come they haven't got it in Friday's paper?" he asks.
   "I don't know, Frank," says Johnny quietly. "I didn't ask them."
   Frank persists. "Why isn't the scores in here?"
   Johnny turns to make a hamburger and reminisces about his days in the Hose Company of the Fire Department of Westchester with his pal Sunny Dey. During "one particular fire," which was in an "exclusive residential section," he says, he and Sunny were on the ladder, chopping in a window, and when they did, the flames blew out so far they both nearly fell off, they leaned so far back. Twenty feet below them was a rock garden.
   I see now that business is picking up, so I politely take my leave. Someone yells for a "fish plate, to go," and the screen door squeaks as I open it.

   Shirley Klein's obituary notes that the couple retired from The Drug in 1979 but that Shirley continued to work, in the cafeteria of a local high school. John passed away in 1990, and Shirley in 2013.