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Archiver > BronxRoots > 2000-07 > 0962636542


From: David S Chesler <>
Subject: Re: EGG CREAM and researching BOWNE
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 11:02:22 -0400 (EDT)


>> << If being made by the Bronx-born daughter of a one-time Bronx
>> candy store owner makes them more genuine, I just got back
>> from celebrating my birthday at my parents' house (it's really >>


Shaz asks:
> Where was your grandparents' candy store?

According to my mother,
} When I was born in 1933 (!) we lived at 1585 Townsend Avenue in the
} Bronx. It was a 6 story elevator building with an elevator man (!) and
} it was across the street from Grandpa's candy store, which didn't have a
} name. The address of the store could have been something like 1588
} Townsend Ave. On the same side of the street as the candy store was a
} movie theater called the Surrey Theater which one could see from our
} apartment window, and which often had some of its lights out and was
} known as the Sur Theater by some residents.

My grandfather only had the story for about a year (during the Depression
he also drove a cab for a while, and had a hardware store with an
in-law.) He was a machinist by trade (one year at Cooper Union for
engineering, but it was time to go to work -- as the youngest he
had to support his parents) and by the mid-30s he was working at
Alcoa (Edgewater, NJ) where he stayed until his retirement when the
plant closed around 1968.
The story was he had the store so he could be close to his family.
We still have a few relics from it, notably a cookie jar which
began life as a cigar jar.

My father explained that it was very hard running a retail business
during the Depression, as customers needed credit, and it was then
the custom to extend it. My mother tells the story about how to get
a free egg cream, which involves either starting with a 2-cents plain,
and then adding just a little milk to smooth it out, and just a little
syrup to make it sweet; or ordering one, and finding it not sweet enough,
so it needs more syrup, nope, that's too sweet, can you add some
more seltzer...

I know nothing about that area, except that when I finally looked
it up on-web, I found that it was just across the little Washington
Bridge from Washington Heights, where my mother's family lived from
when she was a girl until we and my grandparents moved to Co-op City
in 1970. (With a model like that, my parents wonder why I bought a
house up the street from my in-laws! :-) )

David Chesler (, etc.)
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2955 (/riverbay/ for Co-op City)

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