cents
Shooster’s original menu. Hamburger 10 cents
I still hear in my mind’s eye my parents speaking Yiddish to each other. When they spoke in English, it was always with a distinc- tive accent. Yiddish words would often pop up in their sentences. Listening to them speak in that rich dying language always gave me a reason to pause. They weren’t alone. Many of their peers spoke the same way. Pop frequently sat with the Daily Forward, a Yiddish newspa- per, and read the news of the day. My father was not just diligent at improv- ing our lives; he was civic-minded as well. Every Monday he would meet with a Jewish businessman’s organization on the first floor of the Chester Jewish Community Center. Together they started the Delaware Finance Corporation and made my father its presi- dent. All the years of my life I only knew it as the corporation. The purpose of The Corporation was to loan money to each other at 4% interest. Loans were maybe a few hundred dollars. It was a sort of poor man’s bank. Each member had to donate money to the initial pool. My mother recalls the initial amount was $3. From these meager beginnings, The Corporation gained traction, attracting investors of all types. In its heyday, it was not just a Jewish organiza- tion. Among its investors was a church. And because a church invested, accounting was required. Those records reveal the corporation was managing 48K (500K - 2021) in capital. Even though the men held meetings at the Jewish Community Center, to my knowledge, Pop never went upstairs to the sanctuary. I never saw him pray at a temple.
I remember my father in the mornings, at the table, eating breakfast while reading the paper. He liked Wheatena, a cereal still sold today. Often, when I was off from school in the summer, or on winter weekends, we would go out to the garage together. My job was to open the huge doors while he backed out the Chrys- ler. Then, after closing the doors, I would hop in the front seat, and off we would go to the station. Many Sundays the whole family would pile into that car and go to Atlantic City. Getting there was always an adventure. Some of the roads were not even paved. It was not unusual to get a flat tire on a long journey like that. We crossed the Delaware River by ferry and then drove through endless miles of N.J. cornfields and tomatoes with our windows down. The summer was hot. In 1938, my father built a small drive-in restaurant. From the moment it opened, we always called it, ‘the stand.’ For many years after that, whatever else I was doing, my life was always entwined with the stand. The idea for ‘the stand’ came from about 15 miles south where there was another little drive-in called Spic-n-Span. Using this as a template, we made a few modifications, and with the help of George Nichols, built an oval- shaped white building with space on the roof for signs that read: Meats, Frankfurters, and Served to your Car. A spire that simply proclaimed, Shoost- er’s, stood on top. It was a small building, but it contained everything we needed to run the business: a grill, soda fountain, refrigerator, ice cream cabinet, coffee service, and a Bain
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