Starting Agfiin Starting Again
Another Country, a New Family
hall, Chateau Gardens, on East Houston Street in Manhattan, close to Little Italy. I worked there in the mornings and at the real estate office in the afternoons and on weekends. Now I hardly saw my wife at all. Chateau Gardens was a large hall with five ballrooms, located in a converted stone church. Some weekends, there were as many as thirteen affairs. Most of the customers were of Italian descent, but some were Orthodox Jews, especially for events in the ballroom that seated nine hundred. A kitchen in the former rectory accom- modated kosher catering. They liked me very much, and gradually, they asked me to stay an extra hour, then another. Little by little, they persuaded me to work full time. Finally, I gave up the real estate job and began work - ing full-time for Chateau Gardens. I was treated very well, earned a nice salary, and enjoyed good benefits. Many times I earned over - time for working weekends. We did well. I especially enjoyed one rather unique benefit. Chateau Gardens bought forty-pound turkeys for the Italian buffets, but used only the breasts. I was free to take home the legs, necks, and livers. The liver sometimes weighed close to a pound. Sometimes, I would bring home 200 chicken livers at a time. I even distributed them to the neighbors for a while, but at some point, I got fed up dragging the bloody packages home. After I had been working there for two and a half years, New York City decided to build a subway station, connecting two exist- ing lines, directly under our building. The planners were concerned that the church might collapse during the excavation process. The building was condemned, and my boss was paid a lump sum in compensation. This left me without a job. We had just bought a house in Brooklyn on Atkins Avenue, near Ruthie’s family, and were planning a major renovation. I decided to handle my own contract work, expecting to be unemployed for a while. But after I had been home for only a day or so, the accoun- tant who handled the books for the catering hall called and said he had a job for me at Sacher’s, a large restaurant on Madison Avenue
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