Pappou

There are a lot of reasons why I admired my grandfather but most of them are summed up in this one anecdote.  The way I heard the story was that my mom and grandparents had made their way to the United States via Greece then Germany and ended up in New York City.  My grandfather had scraped together enough money to open a fruit cart by working odd jobs.  He set up shop in Central Park skirting the permitting laws that apply to street vendors.  Mind you this was the late 60’s early 70’s and Central Park was far sketchier than it is today.  Thinking about it now this might have been before the police department had an internal affairs department but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The days were long and there wasn’t such a thing as an off day when you’re bringing in most of the money for a family of four.  The best way to describe his command of the English language is basic.  He, like me with Greek, was far more adept at understanding people than he was at speaking; which is helpful but still incredibly difficult when you think of his daily interactions with his English only speaking customers.  Doing what you have to do to survive and take care of those who you love is a big thing, no matter the insecurities that you feel and insults that you are subjected to because of a language barrier.  I am purely speculating how the customers treated him but what I’m not speculating on is the cops. 

Since he was operating without a permit the cops would come around and harass him.  Before anyone jumps down my throat, I understand that it’s a police officer’s responsibility to enforce the laws and make sure everyone follows them.  I get that and I agree that this lets society operate in the best manner for everyone.  What isn’t part of the cops’ job description is soliciting and taking bribes along with threatening deportation.  They would come around and ask for weekly bribes so they could overlook his lack of a proper street vendor permit.  He did what any reasonable person would do when you have mouths to feed, you pay the bribe and keep your head down.  Now we’re getting to crux of what really stands out to me.  So they wouldn’t look incompetent or biased, I guess, the cops on top of asking for bribes would also issue violations with regularity.  Keep in mind the margins on fruit is very slim.

My grandfather would collect all the tickets that he received and put them in the suitcase that he used to emigrate here.  He’d bind the bundles of unpaid tickets with rubber bands because there would be so many of them that they’d become unmanageable. He stored them under his bed as a nightly reminder and a challenge. 

The routine went on, weekly bribes and violations.  It got to the point that the suitcase was full.  I often think about him collecting all those tickets and how much they must have weighed on him.  The unfairness of it all.  Working brutal hours, struggling to communicate with uppity Manhattanites, paying off corrupt cops, eeking by to have a mountain of debt hanging over your head while trying to do what’s right for your family.  Comparison to today’s record keeping, it would have been easier to throw the violations away and completely ignore them until one fateful day that you might have to deal with the authorities.  Since everything was done by hand there would have been a chance that records might have gotten lost or overlooked, and that day might have never come.   But he wasn’t willing to take that chance especially when it might mean having to forcefully leave the States. 

He vowed to pay off every single one of the tickets no matter how long it took.  Slowly the cart did better and better and it turned into a store.  After years of running the store, the suitcase was once again as empty as it was when it was first slipped under the bed.