Story about Benjamin Dubrow

This one comes from my mom, Bonnie Lyons, from our recent visit to Miami for Passover. Apparently, Benjamin Dubrow was famous for being evasive about his age, and would never tell people when he was born. At some point, he settled into being 62 years old, and never changed from that age. He was just 62, from then on. It got to the point where his son, George Dubrow, turned 59, and someone asked Benjamin about his age in light of this fact: "Pops, how can you be 62 if George is 59?" To which Benjamin, undeterred, replied "That's his problem."

EDIT: Of course, this just illustrates how family stories can play with actual facts.   Based on the actual lifespan of George Dubrow's life, he never lived to be 59 and would not have been 59 in Benjamin Dubrow's lifetime.  But it doesn't mean the spirit of the story isn't still true, right?

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 3

This is the third and final installment of the interview I conducted with former employee Henry Jablonski.  Parts one at two can be found in the two previous posts.

Eve: So in terms of the people and the environment at Dubrow’s, what did you like best and what did you like least?

Henry: Well, first of all the people who worked in Dubrow’s in those days, were more elderly people.  Today, you go to most fast food stores, it’s mostly young people, or people between jobs,  ahh, school or something. The workforce is altogether different.  It was family people, lot of men like my father who raised his family, many many people I know had families, but today, it’s different, it’s a different story.

Eve: Yeah, it’s interesting, just like many generations of my father worked there, it sounds like multiple generations of your family worked there, your father, you, your son…

Henry: Yeah, other people I know, I also kept in contact with,  in the years after I left Dubrow’s, of course they’ve passed away now,  they were all family people…they wanted me to work in New York, I said, no, I didn’t want to go on the subway anymore, I had enough, so I got a job with the food service for colleges,  on the island, that’s what I was doing, when I retired.

Eve: Are there other specific people you remember from your time working at Dubrow’s?

Henry:  George Dubrow, and Pop Dubrow, for instance,  and there was an elderly gentleman, a very nice gentleman,  I remember him.  He had a driver, I remember he used to drive him, named Joe Hackett.  He drove, we called him Pop Dubrow,  he came to visit my family once, um, we moved to Queens and um,  it was right after the war, and it was summertime,  I was going to take the week off to paint, and uh, get the house in shape,  wallpaper the house,  George Dubrow said,  “no, I need you in the store,  he says, I’ll take care of it,.  So he sent a painter, a wallpaperer in,  my whole house painted and wallpapered.  He took care of it. He was good that way. 

Eve: What was the driver’s name again?

Henry: Hackett. Joe Hackett.  He drove Pops Dubrow all around, wherever he wanted to go,  until he passed away.  Cause Pop’s problem was, one day he couldn’t eat.  Forward’s newspaper, the Jewish newspaper,  caused it,  fell off the chair I understand, and he hurt himself, and ah, then he started deteriorating. 

Eve: That’s Benjamin Dubrow you’re calling Pop?

Henry: Old man Pop. 

Eve: I don’t remember him referred to by that name? That’s Benjamin Dubrow?

Henry: That’s what we, that’s what we…George, Georgie got killed in an automobile accident, that you know, in Florida, right?

Eve: I did know about George’s accident, yes.  So Pops Dubrow was George’s father?

Henry: Right, and he had no seatbelt on, there were no seatbelts in cars in those days, the door opened up and he fell out onto his head.  In fact, after that, I was in the Air Force, and I had a seat belt harness, memorbilia, so I put a seat belt in the front seat of my car.

Eve: So was there anything you didn’t like about working at Dubrow’s?

Henry: No….no,…it was…if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t be there, I would have done something else.  Near the end, it was getting real hard, when Paul took over,  the Eastern, I mean the King’s Highway store,  he had a lot on his mind, I can understand, the store was going down,  King’s Highway, his problem, New York…he was originally in the stock market,  he didn’t want to work in the restaurant,  he wanted to get away from, causing the debts in the family, Max Tobin, and George, and he ended up with the stores, more or less, and they had problems…

Eve: Yeah,  the impression I got was that the reason my grandfather got in was to help Paul Tobin out.

Henry: Right, right…he didn’t want that line of work.  That’s the impression we got. But he couldn’t help himself.

Eve: So after Dubrow’s, you said you left because you didn’t want to go to Manhattan, and you went to college cafeteria?

Henry: Yeah, cafeterias were dying out.  There were a lot of cafeterias, I could mention a lot of names, but they all passed on, one by one,  I was looking for a job and there were no more cafeterias, really,  end of the line so to speak, and of course around that time I was sixty years old, they were looking for young people to work in fast food places and I wasn’t interested in that, and uh I got a job at Lackland Food Service on the, on the Long Island, I used to take care of the colleges, like Queens College and Adelphi and things like that.  I worked at these colleges until I retired.

Eve: Is there any restaurant today that resembles Dubrow’s?

Henry: Not to my knowledge.  The only thing, the food, you might see at a banquet , you might see something like that.  But you gotta remember, this food was made like banquet styles but for a poorer clientele, without all the fancy trimmings and extra expense. There’s no stores around like that anymore. At Dubrow’s, everything came in, when you ordered like a meat, a whole half a cow was coming, or fish, a whole halibut, a hundred pound halibut. So you had the butcher, or somebody who knows how to cut the meat up. When I went to work for the colleges, everything came in packages. In boxes and packages all cut up.  So it was altogether different.  And the preservatives, that was another thing that was different.  Everything was frozen with preservatives,  and canned. I think that’s part of the trouble today, all the food is sold in little packages and prepared, and a lot of preservatives, and you wonder sometimes why people are getting sick, getting diseases, more than in the old days. In the old days everyting you had was fresh.  It was a big difference.

Eve: Are there other memories of Dubrow’s or other people you wanted to offer some stories about?

Henry: Yeah, 1940…the only time the stores were closed, you know, when they had Jewish holidays,  they closed, you know, overnight and we had to clean the whole store, top to bottom. It was the only time we ever closed. 

Eve: Those pictures of the cleaning crews were great. So was one of those when you were a dishwasher? 

Henry: Right, right, the first one, when I was a dishwasher there. Later on, after I came back from the service, the war,  I wasn’t looking to be,  I was a mechan - I went to school,  that’s why I worked at Dubrow’s while I went to aviation school as a mechanic, and I got my license as a mechanic, and then of course the war breaks out, and uh after the war there were so many mechanics and of course the aviation industry wasn’t going good, it was nothing doing, everybody, and I worked at Dubrow’s before, so I worked at Dubrow’s, never thinking I’m going to end up at Dubrow’s because I want for the fireman’s test, I passed the test for firemen in New York City but my cousin got hurt as a fireman so my wife said no, look for something else.  So years went on before you knew it and that’s the way it went.

Eve: Well, this has been great, as I said I may be in touch in the future with further questions.  Thank you so much.

Henry: If there’s anything else you want to know, just call. I’d be glad to tell you.

I did also get his permission to pass his information on to Marcia Bricker Halperin, who is continuing to work on getting a documentary made about Dubrow's and Brooklyn.

I love what he said about the value and uniqueness of having fresh made food, available for the masses at cheap prices.  It's what Michael Pollan has been on a mission to promote today - yet it seems we used to have it, and have lost it in the past fifty years.

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 2

Here's some more of the interview I did with Henry Jablonski.  This picks up where Part 1 leaves off.  

Eve: So how did you come to work at Dubrow’s? you said you started off in high school?

Henry: Oh, my father, for many years,  many years ago earlier, one of those pictures I think is 1940,  I’m there as a young boy, my father is there, my father worked in cafeterias, for many years.

Eve: What did your father do?  What was his name?

Henry:  Same name as mine, Henry. I was junior.  He was a counterman. Those days, you know cafeterias,  well I’ll explain cafeterias to you,  you think of food stores today,  they have a pretty bad reputation, everybody thinks cafeterias have bad food or what have you,  but the days of Dubrow’s and other cafeterias,  you gotta remember, it’s like home cooking, you can’t get food like that today, only in banquets or maybe a fancy hotel someplace,  like Dubrow’s, both Dubrow’s had all the carving stations,  all kinds of meat, pastrami, corned beef,  what do you call it, round cow,  it was carved right in front of you,  put it on your plate, the girl down the line would ask you what vegetables you want, It was a real meal, a home cooked meal, so to speak. Today, you don’t have that.  All the meals you get today are fast food,  all packaged and everything else, in those days, everything was more or less made fresh, the potatoes were peeled fresh, even the orange juice, we used to squeese oranges, we didn’t have Tropicana and things like that.  But the only trouble was, all these stores, cost, in those days, when labor was reasonable, you could afford it, we had a baker, a chef,  a butcher, besides your ordinary, uh,  people that work in these stores. 

On Eastern Parkway, it was so popular on a Sunday,  we had to let people, people waiting outside, when one of them came out, we had, uh, we had a doorman to let people in and out for awhile. It was a heyday.

Eve: Do you remember why Eastern Parkway closed?

Henry:  The neighborhood changed, after the war, a lot of people were there,  for instance, a lot of people you wouldn’t know but you know, doctors, actors,  businesspeople,  like Sam Levinson, but these people started moving out to Long Island after the way,  all these towns sprouted up, people moving away, getting away from the crowded tenements I guess,  moved out to these reasonable houses, out to the island,  the neighborhood changed.  It changed, and new people started moving in, and it was Central America or colored people moving in, I remember one time someone came up to George and George said,  “what can I do?  I can’t do anything about it.”  The neighborhood changed.  Eastern Parkway, you wouldn’t know it, but in those days, it was, they had trees and benches,  people used to sit there and read and talk, and talk and read,  no fear of being mugged or anything.  And in the end, neighborhoods change.  A little while ago, a couple years, I don’t know how many years, I heard they had abandoned cars on the street,  benches were broken up, and it deteriorated, so business went down.  That was Eastern Parkway,  for King’s Highway, it was also a business area, it was nice, but then they opened a big shopping center down further in Brooklyn,  and the business went that way.

Eve: What do you remember most about the experience about working there?

Henry: Well, what can I say, I remember in its heyday, when that part of Brooklyn was very nice,  then over the years I see it deteriorating in front of me,  first one store, then the other store, it was very depressing, after a while. But the country changes, so that’s the way it is today. 

Eve: Now, you mentioned that you actually served in the military as well? What years was that?

Henry: Yeah, the Air Force. ‘40 to ‘46.

Eve: What do you remember about the food at Dubrow’s, since it was all about the food?

Henry: The food was good.  All homemade, you can always remember the meats were all, the dairy, we used to make this rice pudding, the kugels,  things like that, it was made fresh,  You can’t find it any place today, I’ve looked for it. Or danish,  that’s another thing. We used to make danishes, with butter and everything else,  people used to know what time the danishes were ready and come out to buy it.  Today you buy danishes, boxed to serve, they don’t taste the same.  People today don’t realize what food used to taste like.  Fresh foods. Cause everything has changed so much. 

Eve: I’ve been very impressed by how many people remember very specific foods from Dubrow’s…

Henry: Another thing we used to do, when it came to Thanksgiving, we had Thanksgiving of couse, and at Eastern Parkway, we used to take orders at Thanksgiving, for dinner, not like today, in those days, “what time for you want your dinner?” 3 o’clock, 2 o’clock, it didn’t matter, anyway we’d have turkeys, made fresh about that time and all the vegetables are hot and fresh and the pie was just freshly baked, so when you took it out and took it home, it would, you would leave it right in the box, took it right home, so the person didn’t even have to heat it, and today, you go to Boston Market or some place, and they’re made ahead of time, it’s not the same.  Food’s not made the same way anymore.

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 1

I did a phone interview with Mr. Jablonski on March , 2010.   I am almost done transcribing it, but I thought I would go ahead and start posting it, probably over the course of three or four posts.

Eve: So the first question is, how long did you work at Dubrow’s?

Henry: How long? All together, about thirty years.  I worked there, eh, 1940…I was going to high school,  dishwashing, you know, for the summer,  and when I graduated I worked there for awhile,  and I was going to go to school and then a war broke out and I went into the service,  I didn’t go back to Dubrow’s until after the war, so in 1947, and uh, worked there until it closed.  Eastern Parkway closed, and then I worked at King’s Highway,  I didn’t work in New York, my son worked in New York, one summer. 

Eve: What was your son’s name?

Henry: Greg. Greg Jablonski.  They had another store called, they had a bakery, called Dubson’s. Interesting store, because it was a storefront, second story,  a floor down, and it had high ceilings, carved ceilings, and at the far end of the store was a big window so you could watch the bakers bake things…I’m not sure exactly what happened,  George got killed or something, turned it over to Adler or something and then they ran the Eastern Parkway store, but I think the bake shop and the Eastern Parkway store, we had a bake shop there until the end,  for the holidays and stuff like that.

Eve:  So did you work on King’s Highway until it closed as well?

Henry: Yes,  over on King’s Highway, for Mr. Tobin.  I worked for Mr. Tobin until he passed away. 

Eve:  Max Tobin?

Henry:  Yes, and his son, Paul Tobin…I do recall around that time, I was going home from work one day and I suppose I was mugged in the street.  I was in the hospital for a month or so and I came back, and this movie they made, Boardwalk, sort of a racial movie I guess, with all the college kids running around in that area, it wasn’t very popular,  but I have the whole review of the movie, which I will send you if you’re interested, when my sons come back for the holiday. 

Eve:   I definitely would like to see that.

Henry: Yeah, what was interesting about that was the entrance to King’s Highway store had a curved glass window,  you know, pretty much all the glass you see if flat, you know,  plate glass, well this plate glass was curved, expensive, so in the movie they, I guess these kids had to break this window,  I sort of forget for what reason they had to break this window,  it was in anger or whatever. So the movie company had to take this plate glass window and put over it this phony window that looked like the real thing,  so the window that was broken in the movie was not the real window, but a phony they put up.  It was a very expensive, curved window, from the floor to the ceiling. It was more or less based on the Dubrow’s family, I mean, they didn’t mention the names, but it was Janet Leigh and…I sort of forget the other people.

Eve:   So what positions did you work at the various stores? You said you were a dishwahser to start…

Henry:  Oh, I was a manager, when I was a kid I was a dishwasher, when I was in school.  I was a manager of both stores.  Assistant manager, manager, you know, there were a couple managers. Day manager, night manager,  we split shifts.

Eve:   So of both King’s Highway and of Eastern Parkway?

Henry: That’s right.  

Interview with Helene D. Grossman (Part 2)

1. What was your impression of running Dubrow's, for Irwin and for George? Did it seem to bring them joy? Did it seem stressful? Which store(s) did they run and for how long?

"Irwin stepped up to the plate to run Seventh Avenue, and our family’s interests in Eastern Parkway and Florida, after George’s death. He had worked there prior to that but was not at all set on committing to the restaurant business as a career, despite having majored in Hotel and Restaurant Administration at Cornell. I believe his reluctance was due to a number of factors typical of Jewish sons in the 1950’s, including wanting to apply newer management models and other knowledge that they has acquired in college to their family business with their dads not being convinced this was needed and in Irwin’s case, issues relating to the fact that George was somewhat of a legend in the field.

Nonetheless he ran Seventh Avenue, and together with Irving Kaplan acquired Toby’s Cafeterias (3, I think) in Miami in the 1960's, which Irving ran. [Note: Toby’s were in non-Jewish neighborhoods and served Southern style food, with favorites being chicken dumplings and black eye peas.]

In the mid 1960s Irwin opened Dubrow’s Takeout Shop (exact name?), on Third Avenue and 74th Street in Manhattan, which Leonard [Irwin's brother] ran. It offered many packaged, prepared foods for which Dubrows was known but it was just a bit ahead of its time. That area and all around NYC is now filled with that type of prepared food take out shops. Irwin subsequently opened, ran and expanded Alfie's restaurant at that location. Irwin came to enjoy the business more as time went on but differently than George. It was not his whole life to nearly the same extent as it was George’s. Irwin ran the Seventh Avenue cafeteria and Alfies until his death in 1970.

Irving Kaplan and Paul Tobin purchased the Seventh Avenue cafeteria in 1971(?), with Paul running the day to day operation, and Irving’s oversight and active involvement in all management decisions and regular on-site participation about every 6-8 weeks. The property was purchased by the bank adjacent to the cafeteria, which planned to expand/build a garage, and the cafeteria closed. The expansion/garage never went forward and today, an OTB parlor is on this site!"

Interview with Helene D. Grossman (Part 1)

I caught up with my cousin Helene a couple weeks ago, and she graciously took the time to answer some questions about Dubrow's for me, in a somewhat formal written interview. I'll be posting her responses over a series of posts.

Just for reference: Helene is the daughter of George Dubrow, sister of Irwin Dubrow, and granddaughter of Benjamin Dubrow, all of whom managed Dubrow's at different times.

1. What was your impression of running Dubrow's, for Irwin and for George? Did it seem to bring them joy? Did it seem stressful? Which store(s) did they run and for how long?

"For George, Dubrow’s was his life. He loved every aspect of running the “stores”. George had an incredible joie de vivre, was very much a people person and enjoyed interacting with his employees at all levels as well as with his customers. He shared their happinesses, trials and tribulations and lent his ear and advice and often, financial support. I still have a ring that a customer gave him in appreciation of his kindnesses. His measure of quality control was a random tablespoon of prepared foods, especially his favorites, before they left the kitchen…he was a bit rotund and we all thought this was his best excuse not to stick to a diet! He was not a morning person, and usually went to work at around noon, staying until midnight, the exception being most Friday nights, when he came home for dinner, under duress from my mother, usually returning to work after that. George’s personal and business philosophy was that you are only as good as tomorrow, not yesterday. I suspect that fed his drive for success. There certainly were stressful situations at times, particularly dealing with the unions….I think there were 6 or 7. "

She goes on to provide some more detail about George's history at Dubrow's, which I found very helpful:

"George opened and initially ran all of the cafeterias which included Dubrows Eastern Parkway (Utica Avenue), Dubrows Kings Highway ( 16th St), Dubrow's Lincoln Road (Miami Beach), Dubrow's Seventh Avenue (Manhattan) and Dubson's Restaurant (on Utica Avenue around the corner from Dubrows Eastern Parkway Cafeteria). "

Much more to come - about Irwin, about Max Tobin, and more! Stay tuned.

Every customer was a half hour

I found a couple interesting books at the library, and I'll be posting my finds here over the next few weeks. One of them is a collection of oral history of Brooklyn from the mid-twentieth century. Here's three quotes I found about Dubrow's:

DAN LURIE: "On Saturdays, I'd put on a nice shirt and stroll up and down Pitkin Avenue. It was the Fifth Avenue of Brooklyn, with stores like Abe Stark's men's clothing, Fisher Brothers' ladies coats and suits, Dubrow's or Diamond and Coopersberg furniture."

KARL BERNSTEIN: "'You're all a bunch of Kings Highway bourgeoisie,' Miss Deborah Tannenbaum would tell us. 'You hang around in front of Dubrow's getting vicarious thrills out of life.' I didn't understand what she was talking about. Miss Tannenbaum was only about five feet tall, but she was dynamite. She taught only the best English classes at Madison, on such a high level. We read Portrait of an Artist, and I became so scared to death of going to hell, I hardly ever opened my mouth, I was so afraid of that woman. But I sat down and took the English Regents and got a 96."

MARTY ADLER: "A few blocks before Ocean Avenue, just past the Brighton el, was Dubrow's Cafeteria. That's where you ended up on a Friday night. If you were lucky enough to have a car, you kept it down to three guys so there's be room in case you picked up some girls. The Madison and Midwood cheerleaders were there, and they were the prettiest. You'd take them to a movie, or someone's party. Around midnight, you would drop by Dubrow's again to see if any of the other guys were around. You'd tell stories about what happened thatn night and then hook up for a ball game the next day."

(It Happened in Brooklyn: An oral history of growing up in the borough in the 1940's, '50's, and '60's by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, 1993)

Family-owned business

I believe this is the last of the stories I collected over last Passover. It's sort of two stories in one, told by my mother. First, she recalls working at Dubrow's and trying to get take-out orders right. Then, she tells a story about a situation unique to working in a family-owned business...

Bonnie: OK. So I would answer all the phones, and mostly it was nothing. But from about 11 to 1, we’d get all these huge office runs, from the, uh, fashion district, and I remember the guy who was running the outgoing business, was real anxious sort, but he was always yelling, and pulling out clumps of his hair. No, really, he had like bald spots from literally pulling out his hair. And invariably I would get the whole order, it was big, like twenty sandwiches, and forget to ask, “do you want pumpernickel or rye?” On each sandwich I had to ask them that. And he would see my order and see I didn’t have that down, and he would – (I would say:) “I swear, they all wanted rye bread!”

So he arrived at work, and he would always come by and find out how I was doing, and so one day I said to him, there’s this man– he keeps looking at me – and he was so excited, it was something he could get into, because I’m sixteen, and no one should be looking at his cousin, and he says “oh – tell me the next time you see him, point him out to me!” He was hoping to push him down the stairs or something. So, uh - no really he was, he was looking for a fight– so, um, finally, I did see him again, and I said “He’s over there, in the corner there.” He says, “Where, where?” I said “Over there in the corner.” He said “well, tell me where he is – is he next to cousin PG?”

Stewart: It is cousin PG.

Bonnie: It is cousin PG – he (was) staring at me because I look like Sylvia. Is that funny?

Stewart is my uncle, the husband of my mother's sister Beth. Sylvia was, of course, Irving Kaplan's wife and Benjamin Dubrow's second youngest daughter. Apparently my mother had a cousin she didn't know, who wandered into Dubrow's, and was watching her because of her resemblence to her mother. Which is just the kind of thing that would only ever happen in a family-owned business.

Stealing from Dubrow's

More memories from the stories I tape recorded and transcribed while I was down in Miami for Passover...again, Bonnie is my mother (Benjamin Dubrow's granddaughter) and Ruthie is my great-aunt (Benjamin's youngest daughter).

Bonnie: Well, Irving told me a great one, that when he was running Dubrow’s, he told the help, uh, you have to also help us not have people stealing, so if you see people stealing, let me know. So, uh, one of the waiters sees a person that had cottage cheese for like, ten cents, had a prune, it was like fifteen cents. He saw somebody push the prune into the cottage cheese and cover it up! So – he dutifully reports it. I mean, what is he going to do – he wanted the help to be wary – what is he going to do – “Is there a prune buried in your cottage cheese?”

Ruthie: Well how about the story on 7th Avenue, when, uh, your father found out some guy was regularly stealing the two dollar cakes, they cost two dollars, or three dollars, whatever they were – he was putting them in his pocket – knowing your father, you’re not going to be surprised to know this – when they finally caught him, he said “you know, I don’t mind you having it, I’m glad you like it, but supposing you pay for it?” He said “I should pay for something so small?”

Hungry Jews

This one also comes from the Passover transcriptions - my cousin Joe recalling his days working at Dubrow's. As you may have gathered, a lot of people in my mother's generation worked at Dubrow's for a summer or two. Joe's mother was Lila Adler (nee Dubrow), and one of Ruthie's older sisters.

Joe: There’s nothing worse than hungry Jews, in July. I worked for uncle Max a lot, during the summer, and I was behind the counter, and I can tell you, when they get off the train, I can tell you –

Ruthie: I didn’t know you worked there.

Joe: Oh, many summers – grandma said, “you’re gonna go to camp.” “No, I’m not going to camp.” “Who do you think you are, the Prince of Vales?” Someday I’m going to write my biography, I’m going to title it “The Prince of Vales” ...she would say, go to Canada. Well, that was when I didn’t go to Canada, and I worked there. And there was one woman, every day, wore the same sweater, and she would say “I vant a piece of corn.” And I go to the corn, and she would say “Not that one! That one! Not that one, that one!” Every day, that corn, this corn, that corn, this corn. Then you’d finally do it, she’d look at it, “no, maybe I don’t..” It was a ritual. Every day.

With hot milk? Or without milk?

Another from my Passover transcriptions. This comes from my mother, Bonnie. What I love about these stories is the equal affection with which customers and employees are recalled.

For this one, it was hard to capture because it relies on hearing my mother use a Yiddish accent, much as in the one Ruthie told earlier. I've done my best to convey the humor, but you'll have to use your imagination a little as well to really hear it.

Bonnie: No, my favorite Dubrow’s story is…somebody who was behind the counter who was not English speaking, is trying to serve oatmeal to someone, and is trying to inquire, “do you want it with hot milk…or without milk?” And so the person says, “With hout milk!” “With hot milk? Or without milk?” “With hout milk!” Back and forth for awhile – finally, it dawned on him, the person, give him the oatmeal, and the milk on the side. Isn’t that great! “With hout milk!”

A bit controversial

I thought for a long time about whether I should post this piece of the transcriptions. As you'll see, Joe is telling me not to put it on the blog. My mother, meanwhile, gives the go ahead. But the whole point of this blog is to commemorate and document Dubrow's. Any good documentary maker would say that you don't censor what you find just because you don't like it. So here we go.

Joe: Now, Bonnie, you gotta hear this one (to me)– turn the tape recorder off –

Bonnie: No, you’re not turning it off –

Joe: This is not good. This is not good for our image. Uh…they were trying to unionize the cafeteria. And they didn’t want to unionize. So the union went down to the bowery…the truck – they gave them more money – this is absolutely true – my father was there. (to Ruthie) See, they don’t tell you the bad news, you would have said “Pop, unionize!” You know, I told my father, I asked him once, “why are there no Black countermen?” He said, "You want to go to college?" I said, “No, I really don’t want to go to college, frankly. And I’d rather you put Black people behind the counter.” He said, “You want me to be the first?” I said, “yes, I want you to be the first!” But, your father, my father, they weren’t the first. I know people who were – I’ve given awards to people who were – people who had the balls in Miami Beach in those days to stand up, and it wasn’t our family. But anyway, they were also – they didn’t want to unionize – they would bring these bums in, and of course it drove all these other people away - Simon Batwinick was by a tree, outside, screaming “The Jews go to Miami in the winter!” – he was mister union man. Now, years later, he’s a partner of our father’s and he was the worst son of a bitch to people that worked under him, ever, ever…I don’t know anyone who was as mean as I heard he was…

Ruthie: I didn’t know that either.

Joe: Yeah, that’s where he was: “The Dubrows go to Florida in the winter!” What a bastard he was when he became a boss. I remember it like it was yesterday.


Apparently, Dubrow's employees at one or more of the locations attempted to unionize. Anyone else have recollection of this? If Simon Batwinick (spelling uncertain) or his family are reading this blog, I feel compelled to note that the opinions suggested here are not the opinions of anyone other than Joe. I would very much like to hear your story, if you are out there.

As a former union president myself (Parry Center for Children, local 987 of SEIU/OPEU) I find it unsettling to think that any of my relatives were anti-union. But I also know that the way the world works is that there are managers and workers, and that when you're on the manager side being accountable for the bottom line, things look a lot different than when you're the worker, defending your right to organize. Both sides have truths, both sides have struggles. One side just has more power, and power is rarely given up without a fight. It's easy to empathize with why they would have resisted unionization, even if it's not pretty.

The two Simons

This is a transcribed conversation between my great aunt Ruthie and my cousin Joe, who is a nephew of Benjamin Dubrow. They are recalling two men who used to work at Dubrow's, both of whom were named Simon.

Ruthie: There were two men named Simon. Do you remember that story? Well, one of them you knew, Simon Botwinik –

Joe: I’ll tell you a story about him in a second.

Ruthie: Anyhow, I forget what the other Simon did, Nathan I think was a manager. Oh, he was at the salads?

Joe: That’s the guy who would sweat, making the chicken, uh, tuna fish salad…

Ruthie: Anyhow, just by pure coincidence, both men named Simon, that was their actual names, had the hugest noses. But huge. But, uh, Simon Botwinik finally had plastic surgery done…it was still far from perfect…but it was much smaller then. So they then became – this is Yiddish – Simon 'untha nose,' that was him, without the nose – and Simon 'wittha nose.'

Nathan Make-a-Line

Finally, months later, I've had a few hours to sit down and transcribe some of the stories I gathered when I was down in Miami for Passover this year. Yes, Passover! It's been a busy couple months. I'll post them one at a time, because they're rich with flavor, like the food at Dubrow's itself. I plan to post them as they were transcribed, that is, as they were told to me, because I think the personality telling the stories adds to the stories themselves.

This one comes from my great aunt Ruthie, Benjamin Dubrow's youngest daughter:


Ruthie: Well, one that was one of my favorites, had to do with - you know, the cafeteria set up, well, there was a counter worker, and uh, he was very short. Which I can appreciate, because I can never see the person on the other side when I’m shopping. But he had difficulty seeing who was there most of the time. But he knew what he wanted to say, and he said it. And uh, no matter who was there, if there was one person there, he would say “make a line!” So, you know, all the characters who worked there – some of the customers had made up names, and he was called ‘Nathan Make-a-Line.’ Because my father started (Dubrow's) when I was, you know, real young, that’s what I thought his name was: “Nathan Make-a-Line.”

Working at Dubrow's

Happy Passover to everyone!

I just came back from Miami and so I've got some renewed energy for this project. My aunt Beth, Irving Kaplan's oldest daughter, told me a funny story about working at the Manhattan Dubrow's one summer. It was about 1958, and she was 18 or so, and her younger sister, Bonnie (my mother) had already worked at Dubrow's. So when Irving put her in charge of answering phones, and asked her "do you know all the prices?" Beth said "of course!" - not wanting to appear less competant than her younger sister. But in reality she didn't have the faintest clue what the prices were. So she just made them up.

In re-telling this story, Beth said: "I didn't know there would be so many people calling...I thought maybe two or three people..."

At the end of the day, Irving, who was a meticulous businessman, counted out for the day. He was not pleased. Beth said she can still hear him saying to her in that tone that meant trouble: "Beeeeeeeeth..." (The inflection is hard to capture in writing.)

Beth said she went home that night and learned all the prices. But she only worked there one summer. "They couldn't handle having me there any longer!"

A story

This comes from my great aunt Marian Rossman. She recalls that Dubrow's was the kind of place everybody knew. "You would put down your $.10 for a cup of coffee and sit there all day." She also said that the Miami Dubrows was often written up in the paper, and she would collect the articles and send them the Sylvia, Irving Kaplan's wife and her sister-in-law. So those articles are probably somewhere in my grandparents' house right now...I'll be doing a little rummaging when I go down there this year for Passover.

A little history

I just spoke on the phone with my mother about this project. She gave me some of the history, which I knew, but never seem to be able to retain. Now I'll have it in a place where I can keep track of it.

Dubrow's was created by Benjamin Dubrow, my great-grandfather. The original was in Brooklyn, and eventually there were three in Brooklyn. One on Eastern Parkway, one on King's Highway, and one of which my mother couldn't remember the location. Irving Kaplan, Benjamin's son-in-law, took over the business and expanded it. There was a Dubrow's on 7th avenue in Manhattan - this is the one I remember - and one on Lincoln Road in Miami, where my grandparents eventually moved. George Dubrow, Benjamin's only son, ran the Manhattan restaurant for awhile, and then when he died young in a car accident his sons Irwin and Leonard managed it.

My mother also told me a personal story: When I was a little girl I went out to eat at Dubrow's with my parents and my grandparents. My grandmother, Sylvia Kaplan, was very pleased that I liked to eat because "her other grandchildren were such neurotic eaters," in my mother's words. She was particularly "ecstatic" that I chose to eat a bowl of broccoli, or "brocci" as I apparently used to call it.