IT WAS THE YEAR OF 1937 that I made up my mind to go in business for myself, after working in restaurants since 1927. I figured I knew enough about the restaurant business to have a try at it. I worked on Second Avenue for Mr. Wishner for a few years, and I fell in love with the avenue.
Second Avenue had everything—a variety of stores from buttons to tuxedos, ladieswear, movie houses, the Jewish theaters, a burlesque, and plenty of restaurants. They were Ratner’s, Rappaport’s, Thaus Bros., Moskowitz & Lupowitz, Hymies Deli, Sidney’s Deli, Stratford’s Cafeteria, Café Royal. They were the giants of the avenue. We also had many little meat restaurants. This in an area of twelve blocks.
The first step I made was to visit my boss, Mr. Wishner. He had sold the store, and after a year he had to take it back. The owner could not meet his obligations. I told him that I would like to buy him out. He asked for $5,000 for the store. I offered him $3,500. He laughed at me right in the face and told me that he wouldn’t take a penny less than $5,000. I said, “Mr. Wishner, there is an empty store on the right side of the street that I can build from scratch.”
He said, “You think you can make it? Go after and build it. In my stores, you can make a living right away. Across the street, it will take you a year before you’ll make your first sale.”
But my mind was made up. If I don’t make my move now, I will always work for someone else, and, in a second and decisive step, I went to the agent that was in charge of 127 Second Avenue, and I gave him a deposit for the store. I ran home to tell my wife the good news. She was very happy and told the good news to our dear parents, and they were overjoyed.
On a Saturday, we always visited my good friend Sol Hausman and his wife, Sadie Hausman. Sol and I became friends when we first met in public school P.S. 31, where he used to bring a box of candy and sell it for a penny a piece. He gave me the job at Wishner. That was my first job in a restaurant. I worked there the first week when Mr. Wishner paid me and said, “I had people working for me, but never did I have a man learn the business so fast and work so clean. Here are the keys to the store. Just tell me if you want to open the store or close it.”
In Sol’s house, we used to talk about different issues and things, and we always cherished his opinion. On this Saturday, we were also discussing different subjects, and the subject I brought up was business. He had his own business. He opened a store where he stored his merchandise, and he had a desk and telephone to conduct his wholesale grocery business. His business was only with luncheonettes and restaurants.
I then told him that I approached Mr. Wishner to buy him out, but we couldn’t agree on the price. I told him about that empty store and what he thinks about it. His first remark was, “Forget it.” But when I told him that I already gave a deposit on the store, he jumped up from his chair and yelled, “Go right back and get back your deposit.” But my mind was made up—now or never. He said I have no chance to make the store go with all those giants there. “What chance have you got?” I said, “Wishner is no giant, and he makes a living. I can do the same.” “But Mr. Wishner knows all the taxi drivers, and he has been there for years. He knows everybody, and they all know you are throwing away your time and your money. If you want my opinion, don’t go through with it.”
The following Monday, I went down to the Bowery where I met Mr. Mazer & Sons. He came down to the store to give me an estimate. He told me he’ll fix up the store from A to Z for $1,300, except silverware, dishes, glasses, pots. This I’ll have to buy somewhere else. While I worked on Broadway, I met Mr. Goldenov. He had a big store on the Bowery. He told me, “If you ever go into business, come to me,” and that’s where I went. He supplied me with everything and told me not to worry about the money for at least a year.
Those were hard years, but the people were good. The milkman gave us four weeks’ free milk and sweet cream, heavy cream, sour cream, buttermilk, and refrigerated boxes. We got three weeks’ free laundry, three weeks’ free pies, three weeks’ free bread and rolls, four weeks’ free coffee, and two weeks’ free ice. Every dealer contributed.
When the store was finally finished, just waiting for the finishing touches, all the running around tired me out. I talked it over with my wife, and she convinced me that it will be easier for me if I took in a partner. I reminded myself that when I worked on Broadway, I met a nice young counterman, good-looking, tall, and a very clean worker. I looked up his address and sent him a letter, but he didn’t answer, and I was determined to get him for a partner. Tall, good-looking, and clean. Like gold. An asset to the business. So I paid him a visit in Brooklyn. There I met his wife and two young daughters and his mother. She lived with them. She was a first-class cook. She worked in a big hotel in the mountains. I told her about the store that it’s ready for business except for a few final adjustments, and I would like to have her son Jack Heller for my partner.
Jack wasn’t enthused, but his mother was all for it. It seems that Jack didn’t have the
Abe’s former employeer, Wischner’s (on the right), at 124 Second Avenue, 1940. Photo New York City Tax Department, 1940 via Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
money, and being a good son, didn’t want to ask his mother to help him. But his mother was a smart woman. She understood. She said, “I’ll give you $600.”
To bring the store up to date, the sum of thirteen hundred and seventy dollars was to be paid out as follows: $100 deposit, $200 on delivery, $300 to be paid as monthly notes of $50 until the entire balance is paid off. The rent was $50 a month. We gave Con Edison a $50 deposit. We had the telephone installed and were ready to get the help.
One of the dealers told me about a young man who lived on Madison St. I wasted no time and went over to his house to meet him. I liked him the minute we met. He was tall and handsome and a terrific worker. Immaculate. That’s how I met Leo Ratnofsky, the best counter man on Second Avenue, and a terrific sense of humor. All this is so important to make any business a success. I was also lucky to get a nice counter girl, Mollie Harmatz, a relative to the Ratners as their right name was Harmatz, not Ratner. And with Mrs. Heller, Jack’s mother, for a cook, how could I go wrong? Mazer lived up to his promise.
While the store was being built, the sidewalk managers* walked up to me, and they bombarded me with questions. “How long do you expect to stay here?” I said, “As long as the
others, maybe longer.” One businessman bet me a dozen shirts that I wouldn’t last more than six months. Another one bet me six silk ties. One even bet me a suit. They couldn’t possibly see how I could do the business with so much competition and such hard times, but the more they discouraged me, the more determined I became to make a go out of it.
Then I had my Italian friends, including Rocky Graziano [famous boxer]. “Hey Abe, what kind of restaurant are you opening?” I told them, “A first-class dairy luncheonette.” “What, are you crazy? No meat? How do you expect to do business? Who is going to come into your place? Not us.” I told them that they would be my best customers. “I’ll teach you how to eat good food,” and sure enough, they couldn’t get enough of the B&H. Their wives used to take out big containers of lima bean soup, potato pirogen.
And Rocky Graziano, with his manager and his trainer, used to eat strawberries and sweet cream every day, and when they filmed the movie *Someone Up There Likes Me* [starring Paul Newman as Graziano], the whole crew ate in the B&H along with famous boxers Ben Jeby, Mickey Brown, Oscar Goldman, and Carlo “Lulu” Costantino [who had a business with his brother BoBo at 12th & Second Ave.]
And the store took on the look of an
expensive yacht. A week before we opened, we left all the lights on so the future customers could see how clean and beautiful the store was. We opened up on a Tuesday. It was a beautiful day. I displayed a big sandwich sign on the sidewalk advertising a special breakfast which consisted of ... [see menu next page]
In spite of the fact that the food was dirt cheap, most of the people couldn’t afford it. At the present time, we are complaining we are having bad times. I think we are living in paradise.
When our dear father brought us to America, for which I’ll be thankful to him, may his soul rest in peace till my dying day, we were seven people: Father, Mother, three sisters, one brother, and myself. He rented an apartment on Madison St., a 3-floor walk-up: 2 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. My parents had one bedroom, my sisters slept in the other bedroom, and my brother and I slept in a bed that was slightly bigger than a cot. I’ll never forget those days.
My brother, who was 8 years older than me, made up with me we shouldn’t sleep so close together. There should be enough for a third person. So I hugged the side of the bed to make room for a third person. I hardly fell asleep when my brother was all over the bed. “Hey Jack,” I said to him, “You said there should be room for a third person, and you’re taking up all the space.” Jack said, “Right, I made room, but the guy didn’t show up, so I am taking his place.”
My father was the only provider, and here we were in a new country. We all needed new clothes, new shoes. We came here in [from Poland] 1920, and we landed on Ellis Island. The food consisted of bread, potatoes, and coffee, but they did a very good job in all. The immigrants—they deloused us and threw away most of our clothing. How I remember being on that island, watching the lights from the city, all the boats passing by.
I was twelve years old. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. How can I forget my first ride on
Breakfast
Choice of any juice
Hot cereal or
2 Eggs (any style) with a vegetable*, 2 rolls & butter
coffee, tea, or milk – 20¢
Fish – Boiled, fried, or gefilte, including vegetable & B&B** – 25¢
Strawberries or Blueberries with sour cream & B&B – 25¢
Potatoes, Vegetables, Bananas, or Cheese – 20¢
Soup with rolls or B&B – 10¢
Borscht with cream (a glass) & B&B – 15¢
Schav [cold sorrel soup aka “green borscht] – 15¢
Pie & Coffee – 15¢
Toasted Bagel & Coffee – 10¢
Pie à la Mode – 15¢
Tuna Fish Sandwich – 10¢
Lox Sandwich on a roll or bread – 10¢
Combination Lox & Cream Cheese – 15¢
Most Sandwiches – 10¢ (except sturgeon – 20¢ )
Blintz, Pirogen, or Kreplach with sour cream – 15¢
Imported can of Sardines or Salmon Salad including lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, radishes, large Spanish onion or scallions, and olives
served with B&B – 35¢
*vegetable = home fries or tomato
**B&B = bread and butter
the Third Avenue El and so many people? And when my mother brought me on the first day to school to P.S. #31, one block from my house. And for the first time in my life, I had a beautiful lady as a teacher. It was love at first sight. And when she gave me a picture that they took with her and me on the roof, it was a real treasure. I was the happiest kid in the world on the block. At home, it was something else, listening to my dear mother tell us that we were deep in poverty. If Father should get sick, we wouldn’t be able to pay the rent, which was $16 a month. No bathroom, with the toilet in the hall. Nothing comparable to today’s standards. No welfare, no Medicaid, no Medicare, no unemployment insurance. The elderly had to look to the children for support. They were lucky if they had good children and respected their parents. My sisters Anna and Esther went to work in some sweatshop, and my brother Jack found employment. My sister Fannie, she was a year older than I, went to school with me, but had
to help my mother with the housework. I sold newspapers at night so I could have some spending money. There was no such thing as allowance, and those that worked had to pay from $8 to $10 a week for food, laundry, rent, and the rest. My father took out a bank book for each one because he knew how to get around. We were called the Greene [Yiddish “greeneh”), which means just that—green, not ripened: They were new, not assimilated yet.]
Getting back to the store, business began to pick up, but not as we expected. My dear wife was a little worried, but Mr. Mazer, the man who built my store, assured her that the B&H would succeed in spite of all the sidewalk managers. She felt a lot better hearing these words coming from an expert.
And in no time, the place was packed. If the store was only a little bigger. People were waiting in line to get in. The B&H became famous by word of mouth. We were a young staff. Handsome Leo Ratnofsky, beautiful
Mollie Harmatz, my good-looking partner Jack Heller, and his mother doing the cooking. Two dishwashers working 12 hours a day for $1.00 an hour. And the store was beautiful, a picture finish. The atmosphere of the store was like a theater, and every customer was part of the play, and I was in seventh heaven.
Since I had worked in the theater as a kid when Molly Picon opened up in *Yankelle*, I wanted to be an actor, and now was my chance. My own theater with such a beautiful cast. I sang and told jokes, and the customers ate it up. And we kibbitzed with every customer. If you left one out, he was good and mad, and he let you know about it the next day. The B&H
and he reported it to the 9th precinct, and two policemen walked in. “I hear you are serving liquor here.” I said, “Go over to the table, help yourselves.” “Have you got a license to sell liquor?” “No.” “Don’t you know that’s against the law to sell liquor?” “But officer, I am not selling; I am giving it free for a special occasion.” “You have to have a license. That’s the law.” “I begged off, ‘Please call your captain and let me talk to him.’” They got him on the phone, and I told him about my good fortune. In that case, he said, “I wish you luck, and tell the two officers to get back to the station.”
Three years passed by fast, and again God was good to me, and my wife presented me
Abe’s list of Yiddish theater stars who were B&H regulars (in the order writen)
Aaron Lebedeff
Molly Picon
Moishe Oysher & his family, his niece (also in the Yiddish theater)
Jack & Seymour Rechtzeit (aka Seymour Rexite)
Menasha Skulnik
Hershel Bernardi & his mother & sister Feigi
Maurice Schwartz
Mina Berne
Edward G. Robinson
Paul Muni (Weisenfreund)
became a home away from home.
And the same year, God was good to me. My wife presented me with a son, and the grandparents were full of joy. The firstborn, a son. The grandmothers were busy baking and cooking for the (bris) circumcision, and they gave me sponge cake, nut cake, honey cake, and strudel. That day, I made a smorgasbord for the customers with cake, schmaltz herring, pickled herring, Scotch and rye, cheese, and arbes or chickpeas. You boil them, and when it cools off, you spread them on a tablecloth, and you season them with salt and pepper, and you just can’t stop eating them. Every customer participated in my good fortune, and they all wished me mazel tov.
And wouldn’t you know, a spy from one of my competitors saw what was going on,
with a beautiful daughter Fraidel [Florence]. And when my customers heard the good news, they were all prepared for another spread, and I didn’t disappoint them. We were all like a happy family. The Avenue was alive with theater parties, card parties, and meetings. The Avenue never slept. They were up all hours of the night—no muggers, no stickups. People were alive, and they loved the nightlife. My store became famous.
*Sidewalk manager: aka “sidewalk superintendent.” A bystander who watches the building, demolition, repair, or other work being done at a construction site and offers unsolicited advice or comments.
B&H countermen “Famous” Dave Schornstein and Leo Ratnofsky, 1985. “Leo, on the right, retired in 1978 (at B&H since 1940), but often stopped by to visit.”
Photo and history by Ben Haller | Inset: The July 2, 1979 New York, seen in the window.
Abe’s second partner and second “H” in B&H, Sol Hausman, 1950. Co-owner of B&H Dairy from around 1950 until the restaurant was sold in 1970.
Photo courtesy of Lenny Hausman
Alan Solovay, early 1970s.
At 16, son of Dennis Solovay, owner of B&H 1968 - 1979.
Florence Bergson Goldberg and Family with Paul Ratnofsky, 2018.
At the B&H 80th Anniversary, August 22, 2018: Florence Bergson Goldberg (front), daughter of B&H founder Abe Bergson, and (l-r) nephew Robert Bergson, niece Danielle Bergson Klein, Robert’s children Zack Bergson and girlfriend, Jess Bergson, Robert’s wife Debbie, daughterin-law Tracey, son Jeff and granddaughter Cory, with Paul Ratnofsky, son of counterman Leo Ratnofsky (1940–1978) in the back, second from the right, behind Jeff.
Andy Reynolds
“Counterman”
Leo Ratnofsky on his last day at B&H by Stanley Mieses in the May 7, 1978 The New Yorker “Talk of the Town”
LEO RATNOFSKY had been a counterman at the B. & H. Dairy Luncheonette, on lower Second Avenue, since 1940, and on the day before he retired, a Saturday, he arrived, as usual, at 5: 30 A.M., squeezed the juice of three cases of oranges, sliced and abuttered several loaves of challah bread, replenished the vegetable trays, filled bins with salad ingredients, greeted two colleagues behind the counter, the cashier, and the cook, and then set about the business of serving breakfast to a clamorous and fastmoving clientele. The B. & H. seats only twentysix-–thirteen at the counter–but it registers, according to Mr. Ratnofsky, “over a thousand rings a day.” The restaurant attracts this crowd not only because of its heimish cuisine but because of its five-man team of countermen, a couple of whom mainly provide countertalk entertainment and a couple of whom mainly provide food. Mr. Ratnofsky belonged in the second category, and he had a loyal following at the B. & H.
“People have been coming in since a quarter to six,” Mr. Ratnofsky told us later that morning. We had stopped in for our breakfast, and he plonked down a knife-and-fork setting on a paper napkin in front of us. Mr. Ratnofsky is a tall, vigorous-looking man of sixtytwo, with soft cheeks, silver-gray hair cropped in a modified Julius Caesar style, a healthy complexion, belying the time he spends indoors, and large, round brown eyes, which know no
schemes. “Quarter to six today–that’s right,” he continued. “One of my regular customers shows up, all dressed up–he’s been out all night, see–and he greets me, ‘Leo, I hear you’re leaving. Let’s have a drink.’ He hugged me like a soul brother. I don’t know what he does, but I know he’s very free with money, so how could I say no? All morning long, it’s been like that. A girl came in with a plant. One of these kids from St. Marks Place came in with a flower. One man gave me a shirt. Another guy gave me a package of books. Most of the customers, men and women, kissed me. ‘What’Il we do without you, Leo?’ they said.”
Excusing himself for a moment, Mr. Ratnofsky said goodbye to a middle-aged man wearing a vinyl jacket and a plaid hat, cleared the man’s plate from the counter, slid the tip–two quarters–off the counter, tossed the quarters into a glass by the coffee urns ( tips being shared), and, before the man was out the door, announced to his colleagues, “Jumbo jockey!” This meant that the customer had left a tip of a quarter or more; Mr. Radnofsky’s call was followed by mumbled “Thank you”s from the other countermen. Mr. Ratnofsky then returned to us with what he described as “a something special”–a lox-laden omelette we won’t forget, accompanied by two well-buttered slices of the B. & H.’s homemade challah, and coffee. He leaned on the counter. “I’ll tell you truthfully–I don’t feel bad about leaving the place. I’ve
got bad feet, my fingernails are being eaten away from squeezing oranges. But to leave all these people–that makes me feel like crying. These actors and actresses, the hippies, the yippies, the beatniks, the bohemians, people who’ve run away from God knows where–I’ve always felt an attraction to them. Especially the starving ones.”
A giant flame shot up from a frying pan in which Dave Schornstein, who had been Mr. Ratnofsky’s partner on the counter for the last dozen years, was making one of his special omelettes. “You know, except for a little remodeling after a fire ten years ago, the place is pretty much the same as I remember it was when I first came to work here, in 1940,” said Mr. Ratnofsky. “Even then, it was called the B. & H., and the initials stood for Bergson and Heller. Abie Bergson, one of the partners, was an aspiring actor, and in 1940 lower Second A venue was the Yiddish Broadway. The streets were so crowded you had to walk in the gutter. Boris Tomashevsky used to come in here. Molly Picon. Maurice Schwartz, who ran the Yiddish Art Theatre. And they’d converse with Abie Bergson over a bowl of soup. I remember Schwartz used to complain that there were more people at the counter of the B. & H. than there were in his theatre. But I’ll tell you, in those days most of the customers would jump on your head about money–how much profit you were making on a fifteen-cent bowl of soup! These kids who have come in over the last twelve to fifteen years, they’re better. They’re not looking for an argument–they want food.”
Mr. Ratnofsky waved to an old man with a shopping bag who had just seated himself on a counter stool near the entrance.
“Hello, Chicago!” Mr. Ratnofsky called out.
“Leo!” the old man bellowed–loud enough to cause the cook, a meticulous Ukrainian named Ksenia Pylyp, to stick her scarf-covered head out of the tiny kitchen in the rear. “Leo! God bless you ! Soup! “
In a moment, Mr. Ratnofsky set before him a bowl of soup and a paper plate piled with bread ends.
After taking a gulp of soda water and slicing some onions and green peppers, Mr. Ratnofsky turned back to us. “This place has always had a spirit,” he said. “One time, in the early forties, there was nobody but gamblers in here. There was a guy called Zip who ran a
Monte Carlo across the street, and he’d send all his customers over here; they’d snack, sign a tab, and at the end of the week Zip would come in here with a big roll of bills and cover the amount. The place was always busy then. You couldn’t get in or out. People ate standing up. It’s in the last fifteen years or so that the place has really come to mean something to me–seeing these poor kids come in here and leave a fifteen-cent or twenty-five-cent tip when they barely had enough for the meal. One fellow, maybe you’ve heard of him, Jesse Colin Young, he’s a big rock singer now–he’d come in here quite a few years ago, always had a guitar on his shoulder. Sometimes I’d give him a little extra, or a few times I’d stake him fifty cents–no big thing–or he’d play out in front of the store and make meal money. Years later, when Warner Brothers wanted to give him a little promotional party, he insisted that the B. & H. cater it. My son went along as a busboy–Jesse Colin Young was a big favorite of his–and when he introduced himself as Leo’s son, Jesse Colin Young told him that he hadn’t thought of the B. & H., he’d thought of me, and he told my boy, ‘Your pop’s a fine man.’ It made my son proud. That was very nice.”
A stream of customers began arriving as the lunch hour drew near, and Mr. Ratnofsky excused himself to take the orders of two girls with ink-blue hair and then of a middle-aged couple. “Listen, it’s going to get very crowded in here in a few minutes,” he said to us. “Why. don’t you come back tonight? I’ll be here until seven-thirty.”
As it happened, at 7:30 P.M., when we returned, Mr. Ratnofsky was just folding his apron, and he invited us to sit with him in the back of the restaurant, at its only table for four.
We said we wondered why anyone would put in fourteen hours on the day before retirement.
“I was asked by the boss if I wanted to come in and work the last day, or part of it,” Mr. Ratnofsky said, “and I said to him, ‘Let’s do it right down to the wire.’ What can I say? I’m just an old-fashioned devoted worker, I suppose. I’m a counterman. Listen, can I get you a glass of juice, or something?”
Reprinted with permission from the estate of Stanley Mieses
