By Ed Staskus

   My father was born in the village of Vadzgiris in 1892. Lithuania had been under the thumb of the Russians for a hundred years. They had wiped the name of the country off the map. They instead called the land the “Western Provinces.” They had declared a press ban thirty years earlier that prohibited printing Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet. Cyrillic script became obligatory, no matter what my father or anybody else said. A large scale crop failure in 1892 led to widespread famine. Migration to North America swelled to a tidal wave after that. That same year the first light bulb in the country was lit in the town of Rietavas. There was at least one small light at the end of the tunnel.

   A certificate of baptism makes the birth place and birth year of Antanas Staskevicius, my father, clear as day. That is probably where he grew up, although it is uncertain. He had a younger brother, Juozas, who not wanting to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, emigrated to the United States. My father served in the Czar’s army in Saransk. He always said it was in the middle of nowhere, although nobody knew for sure where the middle was. My mother was a native Russian he met there, a school teacher, pretty as a postcard. They started a family in 1916, starting with my two sisters.

   When the Bolsheviks took over from the Czar they sent many military officers to jail. Since my father was a Lithuanian they let him return to his country. In those days Lithuanians who returned from the Russian Imperial Army were not looked upon favorably. Their Russian wives were even less popular. But as time went on people got used to them.

    At first, my father lived in Siauliai. Later on, he lived in Kaunas. Around 1930 he went to work in Panevezys for a short time. I spoke only Russian until I was four or five years old, no matter that my mother spoke Lithuanian very well, without an accent. Although she was Russian Orthodox, we went to a Catholic Church, acceding to my father’s wishes. I would occasionally go to the Russian Orthodox Church with my mother, but only when my father was away from home. 

   I was born in Siauliai, not far from the Hill of Crosses, in 1924, even though we did not live there at the time. After I was born my father moved to Kaunas. He became the Director of the Department of Citizen Protection there. Later on we moved back to Siauliai. My father was appointed the Chief of Police.  He used to wear a fancy uniform when he would attend events. It was always exciting to see him in it.  He was in charge of the entire region as well as the police department. 

   I remember Police Captain Kurpius. He had a big face and a small mouth. He would stop at our house after duty hours to eat and smoke. He and my father drank vodka and sang all night. My mother plucked a kankles while they sang. Both of  my sisters were friends with the daughters of the man who was the director of the Teacher’s College. They dreamt about becoming teachers like our mother.

   Sometime in 1938 or 1939 my father was transferred from Siauliai to Panevezys and then to Zarasai. Augustinas Voldemaras lived in Zarasai at that time. He had been banished there after briefly serving as the country’s first prime minister. He was a stubborn man with a quick temper. He often came to our house. I used to go with my father to the sauna where I rubbed  Augustinas Voldemaras’ lower back for him. When he felt better he used to run out of the sauna and jump into an ice hole.

   I did not finish grade school. I went for only two grades since I did not find it difficult. My father hired a tutor for me and two of my friends. The tutor helped us prepare for the high school exams. We passed the exams and started high school. We were the youngest in the class. Since I attended three different high schools, in Siauliai, Panevezys, and Zarasai, I could not remember the names of my classmates very well. 

   My father had a good friend in Kaunas who was a certain Mr. Dagys. My mother was good friends with his wife. When they would come to our house I used to have to hold the door open for them. I did not like to kiss the hands of married women, which at that time was customary, but I had to kiss her hand.  One time I cut my lip on a diamond ring she was wearing.

   We had an open air Chevrolet Eagle Cabriolet. When the famous pilot Feliksas Vaitkus, the second Lithuanian after Darius and Girenas to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, came to Panevezys. I went with our driver, who called the car “Stovebolt” after its engine, and my father to the train station to meet him. I was on the edge of my seat being in the car with the aviator. Later in the day he met with the public and gave a long speech I didn’t listen to.

   When we lived in Zarasai we had a driver who was a police officer.  He wore a peaked visor cap with a cockade fixed to the front. My father and I lived there by ourselves for a year. My mother was supposed to join us as soon as we were established, but she never came. The year passed quickly and then the Russians came. My father returned to Siauliai, since he, like all officials, was relieved of his duties. 

   He spent most of his time in the hinterland instead of the city. Our farm in Dainai was a model farm. In the summer excursions would come from all over to see our land and operation. We had all the newest tools and farming equipment, both cutting and sowing implements. We had many cows and an orchard of yellow Alyvinis apples.

   After the Russians came our car was taken away. In 1940 the mood was very bad. We had a fear of the future in the pit of our stomachs. My father was seized by the Russians a week before the mass deportations of 1941. They took him as he was, just the shirt on his back and wearing sandals. Three men came in a passenger car. They asked my father for some help. They claimed they were having car trouble, or maybe they needed water. My father walked over to them and they shoved him into the back seat of the car. I was not at home. I was taking my exam at the high school. My mother called the high school. I sped home right away on my bicycle, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

   Later, my mother and I went to the prison and took clothes and food for my father. We weren’t allowed see him. We drove to the NKVD office in the County Police Headquarters where we were told to go home. No one explained anything to us. I never saw him again. He was sent to a slave labor camp in Siberia and starved to death in 1942. 

   The mass deportations began in June. When they started my mother and I hid in the woods. When things got better we went home. One of my sisters was living in Vilnius. My mother said to me, “Go to Vilnius and warn her to watch out for herself.” Soon after I got there a neighbor called and told me to come back. He said my mother might be arrested. She was hiding in his root cellar. In the meantime, the  Germans went to war with the Russians, occupying the country, and it was toilsome trying to return. No one was allowed to travel without permission, but I got lucky. Someone who had been a policeman in Siauliai was working with the Germans in Vilnius. At one time he had worked for my father. He was taking care of travel documents. I don’t remember his name, but I went to him, he introduced me to a German officer, and I got permission to travel by train. I returned to Siauliai. 

   After my father was sent to Siberia I had to manage the farm. I knew almost nothing about farming, even though I thought I knew in the fall the fields had to be plowed. I told the farm hands who had not run away, “Go plow the fields.” A neighbor saw them and ran over and said, “What the hell are you doing? You are plowing next year’s clover under.” 

   I hurt my hand during the war. I had ridden out with a horse drawn mower to cut hay. I saw that rain was coming. I tried to speed things up. Instead of sitting down as you should I walked beside the horses so that I could get them to pull the mower faster. As I was encouraging them I tripped and fell on the blades. The horses stopped. My right hand was almost cut off. The farmhand who was helping me ran over and, seeing my mangled hand, fainted. Meanwhile, my hand was hanging there and I was losing blood. I ran a kilometer to the prisoner camp where Red Army troops were being held, which was also in Dainai, for medical help. An ambulance came and rushed me to the hospital.

   My mother was arrested and deported in 1944. She spent twelve years in Siberia. Later, after Stalin’s death, she was released, but was not allowed to return to Dainai or Siauliai. Nobody said why. She was moved into a cinder block apartment in Silute near the Curonian Lagoon.

   I fled Lithuania when the Russians came back. I escaped with a company of Werhmacht leaving the Red Army prison camp in their Opel Blitz trucks. Their aim was to get to East Prussia. They were in a big hurry and only gave me a few minutes to gather what I could. We were a mile away when I looked back. I could see black smoke from our house and barn that the Russians had set on fire.

   I went to Germany where I stayed for five years. At first I lived in a DP camp. I worked wherever I could doing whatever I could, I sold chocolate and cigarettes and shoes on the black market. I found legitimate work with the International Refugee Organization in 1948. I left for Sudbury, Ontario in 1949. I worked in a nickel mine, thousands of feet deep, working there for nearly seven years. There were many expatriates holding down jobs in Canada. Some cut down forests, which was hard work. Some went into the mines, which was dangerous work, but for men who barely spoke English and who did not have any specialty, the pay was good. I worked as a black powder man. I worked laying tracks for trains that carried the ore. Eventually I got an easier job driving underground tractors.

   It was In Sudbury that I made a family. My three children were born there. My wife, Angele Jurgelaityte, was from southwestern Lithuania, from a small farm near Gizai, five kilometers from Marijampole. We met in Nuremberg where she was a nurse. She helped operate on my hand, which needed two more operations to restore its use to me. 

   After five years of living in Sudbury we started planning where we would live next. Most of the Lithuanians in the city were looking for better prospects. Many left for Montreal and Toronto, others to Chicago and Pittsburgh. We all started to go our separate ways. When I was living in Germany I had applied for a visa to live in the United States, in case the prospect ever arose. When the opportunity came we sold our house in Sudbury. We moved to Cleveland, Ohio in late 1957 with our children. My older sister and her husband were living there.

   At the time I fled Lithuania my younger sister was forced to stay behind. We had all fled separately. She was unable to evade the Russians and get across the border. She stayed locked up behind the Iron Curtain for the rest of her life.

   When I went back to Lithuania for the first time in 1979 I looked for our farm. I hadn’t seen it for thirty five years. Our house and barn were gone. There was a collective on most of the land. I found an old woman who remembered my parents. She briefly told me some things. She told me that in 1957 my mother searched for me by printing an announcement through the Red Cross in the American Lithuanian newspaper Darbininkas. A priest from Siauliai, Father Justinas Lapis, helped us to make the connection with my mother. He had looked after her welfare when she returned to Lithuania from Siberia.

   After arriving in Lithuania I was determined to see her, no matter what the restrictions were. At first I tried to travel secretly to Silute, but was stopped in Ukmerge and ordered to go back to Vilnius. The next day I got permission to go for one day and was able to get a car. They charged me two hundred American dollars for it, which was highway robbery, especially since the car was of such poor quality. I visited with my mother and we spent three hours together. The car broke down on our way back to Vilnius.

   From our former farm the city of Siauliai is five kilometers away. It was a busy city, or so it seemed to me after we went there from Panevezys, which seemed to be a very quiet city. Everyone used to say that Siauliai was known for its hooligans, although I didn’t see any.  I did not like Siauliai when I lived there. The requirements of the high school there were not strict. I didn’t like that. The high school in Panevezys was very strict. The director would personally make sure everyone was in uniform, that their collars were buttoned and ties knotted, whereas the high school in Siauliai was not strict about the dress code, at all. 

   After a few years in the United States my wife and I shortened our surname from Staskevicius to something easier to pronounce. Since I worked in international business it was bothersome always explaining my family name to foreigners. I worked for TRW for seventeen years, selling auto parts worldwide. I was a Manager for International Service and traveled all over South America. Later they closed our division and gave the older workers pensions. In 1984 | collaborated to start the Taupa Credit Union in Cleveland. I worked there for six years before leaving. I became an international trade consultant and started traveling to Lithuania often. We tried to buy and sell a number of things, not all of them successfully. 

   One thing, furniture plugs, was successful. In the United States there are only a few companies that manufacture them because you need good birch trees. Lithuania has plenty of good birch trees. We negotiated there for two years. We looked for partners in Kazlu Ruda, a city near Marijampole, and Panevezys, to no avail. We finally found a group in Elektrenai, in southeastern Lithuania, to partner with and who we successfully began doing business with in the United States.

   Birch trees lose their leaves in early fall in the Baltics, but they keep their roots intact year after year. Winter storms in the land of forests make the trees dig deep to stay the course. They are a pioneer species. They are the first to regrow after wildfires and ecological disturbances. When I set foot in North America I had to make a new home far from home. I had to carry my roots with me. I planted them where I landed, which was all I could do.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.

“Hell’s Kitchen” 

New York City, 1956. Times Square, Coney Island, and the World Series. A high profile Mob contract in the works. Stan Riddman, a private eye working the edges, stirs up the shadows.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

By Ed Staskus

   When Frank Gwozdz and Tyrone Walker sat down in front of Lieutenant Ed Kovacic’s desk, Tyrone had a thick sheaf of files with him. Their ranking officer behind the desk looked at them. Tyrone looked at his ranking officer. Frank looked at the windows. It was windy and raining hard. The Central Station wasn’t what it used to be. Frank watched rain leaking in through the windows. He believed in keeping the out of doors where it belonged, which was out of doors. It wasn’t his problem, though. The city’s solution to  problems was often as bad as the problem. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

   “These are files of all the bombings the past five years in northeast Ohio, including the Youngstown bombings, which are almost as everyday as ours,” Tyrone said. Youngstown had long since been dubbed “Crime Town USA” by the Saturday Evening Post. Their gang wars had been going on as long as those in Cleveland. 

   “You can keep those on your lap for now, son,” Lieutenant Kovacic said. “Never mind about northeast Ohio. Forget about Youngstown. Concentrate on Cleveland.” A close second to Tyrone not liking being called nigger was not liking being called son. He did a slow burn but didn’t say anything. Saying something would have been a mistake. He bit his tongue.

   Ed Kovacic wasn’t born a police officer. He was born a Slovenian and baptized at St. Vitus Catholic Church, but everybody knew he was going to die a police officer. When he did the funeral mass was going to be at St. Vitus. Whenever anybody called him a cop, he reminded them with a stern look that he was a police officer. He hardly ever had to say it twice. When he did have to say it twice, his fellow police officers took a step away from whoever had called him a cop one too many times.

   “We don’t mind the Irish and Italian mobs blowing each other up, it keeps our cells spick and span, but they’ve started killing bystanders,” he said. “We can’t stand for that, which is why we are adding men to this investigation.”

   When Ed Kovacic graduated the police academy the first assignment he had was to walk a beat in the 6^th District. He worked his way up to the Decoy Squad, the Detective Bureau, and finally the Bomb Squad. He married his high school sweetheart in 1951 before shipping off to the Korean War. When he got back he and his wife got busy in bed making six children. After that his wife stayed busy raising them. They lived in North Collinwood. 

   “We want to get them before they get more civilians. That’s your number one job from now on. When you’ve got the goods on one of them report to me. Make sure the charges are tight as a drum so we don’t wind up wasting our time. If you apprehend somebody red-handed, do what you have to do. Try to get him back here in one piece so we can question him.” He gave his police detectives a sharp look. 

   “Are we clear about that?”

   “Yes, sir,” Tyrone said. He knew his rulebook inside and out. Frank nodded. He had his own rule book spelling out what one piece meant. It meant still breathing.

   “The first thing I want you to do is go over to Lakewood. I talked to the chief there and he’s expecting you. After you see him, I want you to find Richie Drake and find out what he knows, or at least what he’s willing to tell you. He’s one of our on-again off-again informers. He’s a west side man. I understand he spends most of his life at the Tam O’Shanter there in Lakewood.”

   “I know the man and I know the place,” Frank said. He knew every stoolie in town, just like he knew every bar on every side of town that served food and drink to wrongdoers.

   “Which reminds me, the Plain Dealer boy who saw it happen, his father called, said the boy has something to tell us. Here’s the address.” He handed Frank a slip of paper.  “Stop there while you’re on that side of town and find out what he has to say.”

   Lakewood City Hall, its courtroom, and the police department, were on Detroit Ave., closer to Cleveland than the rest of the near west side suburb. Frank parked in the back. He and Tyrone went inside and waited. When they met with the police chief there wasn’t much he could tell them, other than to say his department would do all it could do to help. 

    “We believe in law and order here,” he said. “You point them out, we’ll lock them up.”

   Lakewood’s first jail was in the Halfway House, which was a bar on Detroit Ave., in one of the back rooms that had a locking door. It was soon relocated to a barn where lawbreakers were kept in two steel cages. After that they were kept in the basement of a sprawling house at the corner of Detroit Ave. and Warren Rd.

   After World War One Lakewood’s main streets, like Detroit Ave. and Clifton Blvd., began to be paved. When they were, speeding problems surfaced. The police force grew, adding two motorcycle men, to patrol Clifton Blvd. and Lake Ave., the streets where the better half lived. A Friday Night Burglar plied his trade on those streets, forcing the police to work overtime while those they were protecting were out on the town. The burglar was never caught. The better half bought more valuables to replace those that went missing.

   When Frank and Tyrone walked into the Tam O’Shanter the late afternoon crowd was starting to fill it up. They made their way to the bar. The bartender asked them what they would have.

   “Don’t I know you?” Frank asked.

   Jimmy Stamper was the bartender. “Maybe, but I don’t know you,” he said, wiping his hands with a damp rag.

   “Are you in a band?”

   “I’m a drummer, been in plenty of bands,” Jimmy said.

    “Are you in a band called Standing Room Only.”

   “You have a good memory,” Jimmy said. “That would have been around 1969, maybe 1970. It sounds like you liked our sound.”

   Frank didn’t tell Jimmy he had been tailing a suspect who was at a bar the band was playing at. The man stayed there until closing time which meant Frank stayed there until closing time. Surveillance was the easiest but most time-consuming part of his job. He had never liked rock and roll and after that night he disliked it even more. Standing Room Only played rock and roll covers. The only one Frank liked was their cover of the Venture’s tune “Hawaii Five-O.”

   “We’re looking for Richie,” Frank said, flashing his badge just long enough for Jimmy to get a peek of it. The bartender hitched his thumb over his left shoulder. “Last booth over there by the men’s toilets. He’s got a blonde with him. He should still be sober. At least he’s still doing all the sweet talking.”

   Frank sat down on the other side of Richie Drake after giving the blonde the thumb. “Drift” is what he said to her. She sat at the bar sulking. Tyrone stood to the side, neither near nor far, but close enough so that Richie knew he was between him and the door. Pinball machines and their pinball wizards were making a racket opposite the booth.

   “What can I do for you?” Richie Drake asked.  He didn’t bother asking who they were.

   Somebody slid a dime into the Rock-Ola jukebox. “It’s just your jive talkin’, you’re telling me lies, yeah, jive talkin’” the Bee Gees sang in their trademark falsetto style. Frank thought they sounded like pansies.

   “That business last Sunday down the street,” Frank said.

   “What business?”

   “You can either tell me here or out back while my partner has a Ginger Ale.”

   “Hold your horses,” Richie said. “Everybody knows it was the Italians.”

   “Why?”

   “I don’t know, exactly, but it had something to do with the Irishman. The guy who got it was a bog hopper. They can’t get to the main man, but they got to him.”

   “One more time, why?”

   “So far as I know, it was a message more than anything else.”

   “A message from who exactly?”

   “The way I hear it, it was Jack White.”

   Frank let it go at that. It seemed to him that Richie Drake didn’t know a hell of a whole lot. The police detective stood up and walked away. He stopped at the Rock-Ola jukebox and glanced at the playlist. He walked back to the booth. “I need a dime,” he said. Richie gave him a dime. He selected a song by B. J. Thomas. The juke box was playing the tune when he and Tyrone left.

   “Hey, wontcha play another somebody done somebody wrong song, so sad that it makes somebody cry, and make me feel at home.”

   Frank and Tyrone drove to Ethel Ave. They stopped and looked at Lorcan Sullivan’s corner house but didn’t bother getting out of the car. They drove to Tommy Monk’s house, parking across the street. Frank pressed the doorbell. When nobody answered they walked up the driveway to the backyard. The family was grilling out and having burgers and corn at a picnic table. A sweet gum tree kept them shaded. Chain link fencing and Japanese yews kept the yard private. Tommy’s father Einar invited them to sit down, bringing two lawn chairs out from the garage. Einar had changed the Old World family name but kept his given name. For all that, everybody and his wife called him Eddie.

   “How did you know the man in the corner house?” Frank asked Tommy. 

   “I delivered his paper every day,” Tommy said. “I knew him better than most because he tipped me better than most.”

   “Did you see anything before it happened?”

   “No, it was like any other Sunday morning, except it wasn’t raining or snowing.”

   “Did you see anything special after it happened?”

   “No.”

   “What is it you have to tell us?”

   “Mr. Sullivan asked me to keep an eye out for anybody prowling our street who didn’t look right. He always gave me a big bonus at Christmas. He told me what to look for. I never saw anybody until yesterday. The man I saw was just like what Mr. Sullivan said he might be. I memorized his license plate.”

   “What is it?”

   “Wait a minute,” Tommy said. “I need a copy of the newspaper.”

   He ran to the back door. A minute later he burst back through the door and ran to the picnic table. He had the front page of yesterday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer with him. He crossed out the headline and in its place wrote down the license plate number. He handed it to Frank.

   “Are you sure this is the number?”

   “I never make a mistake whenever I memorize anything this way.”

   “Good work, son,” Frank said. “If you see that man again, be careful. Don’t draw any attention to yourself. Tell your father right away.”

   He gave Eddie Monk his number. “Call me if your son spots anything else. I don’t think there’s any danger to him, but you never can tell. Make sure he knows not to talk to strangers.”

   “All my children already know that,” Eddie Monk said.

   “Good,” Frank said.

   The police detectives walked back to their car. Tyrone called in the license plate number. Frank smoked a cigarette while they waited. Tyrone had already formed  the impression Frank wasn’t big on small talk. He seemed to keep most talk to himself. When they got the license plate’s address, Tyrone wrote it down and handed it to his partner.

   “That’s in South Collinwood,” Frank said. “Let’s go there and pay Earnest Coote a visit.”

Excerpted from the crime novel “Bomb City.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.

“Hell’s Kitchen” 

New York City, 1956. Times Square, Coney Island, and the World Series. A high profile Mob contract in the works. Stan Riddman, a private eye working the edges, stirs up the shadows.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

By Ed Staskus

   The morning after my first night waiting tables at the New York Spaghetti House I got a call from the assistant manager to not come back. He was loud and clear about what he meant to say. He said, “Don’t come back.” I told him I understood. I couldn’t have done a worse job. It would have been better for all concerned if I hadn’t shown up at all. I was surprised when he called me back in the middle of the afternoon and asked me to come back. He was again clear about why I was being asked to return.

   “I am not able to find anybody else,” he said.

   When I went back that night I was demoted from waiter to busboy and one of the experienced busboys was promoted to waiter. I had told them I was experienced at waiting tables, which was a gross exaggeration. I had once waited tables for a month at a greasy spoon near Chinatown where all I had to do was pour coffee and shuffle plates of breakfast and burgers back and forth. My first night had proven how thin my qualifications were.

   I worked at the New York Spaghetti House for nearly two weeks in the late 1970s because one waiter had gone to Las Vegas for a daughter’s wedding, where he stayed for another week when he got on a winning streak, one was helping his mother move into a rest home, and another was coughing his head off with the flu. The restaurant was all of a sudden short-handed. They had to take desperate measures, which was the only reason I was there. I was neighbors with one of the waiters. He was an older man, divorced, and lived in North Collinwood, like me. He had put the good word in about me. They paid me in cash, which I was good with.

   The New York Spaghetti House opened in 1927 in downtown Cleveland. Before it became a restaurant the building, built in 1870, had been the parsonage of the Zion Lutheran Church. After it wasn’t a parsonage anymore, sometime around 1900, a vaudeville promoter housed his actors there. The restaurant was opened by Mario and Maria Brigotti, who came from New York City, where Mario had worked as a waiter in several basement spaghetti houses. When they opened on E. 9th St. the neighborhood around them was overflowing with Greeks and Turks. They went to the New York Spaghetti House for Turkish coffee and hookahs. 

  The Brigotti’s served fresh warm bread and large bowls of pasta with a spicy brown sauce. The sauce was made from a vegetable and plum tomato base, finely ground up beef, and a secret blend of spices. The brown sauce made their name in the city. It’s not     how you write your name, it’s the ink in the pen that matters.

   The waiters at the New York Spaghetti House were all men, middle-aged and older. They carried themselves with poker faces, as though on military parade. The busboys were younger. I was one of the youngest busboys during my tenure there, even though I was in my late 20s. The waiters wore black pants, black shoes, and black ties. Some of them wore black vests. Their shirts were white. They took orders by memory, never writing anything down. That turned out to be my downfall. My memory played tricks on me all night long my first night there. The kitchen crew got sick and tired of replacing my mistakes.

   Once I got the hang of busing tables I didn’t mind it. At least I didn’t have to memorize anything. Bussing meant removing soiled  plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins from tables, setting tables for new feeders with clean plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins, refilling drinks and delivering food if servers were busy, as well as keeping the dining room tidy, mopping up spills, and staying out of the way of the head waiter. He was a stern man and didn’t suffer fools among the workforce, although he was unfailingly polite to diners.

   One evening a woman with Shaker Heights written all over her asked him if the cream in her coffee was fresh. “Yes, it is fresh,” he said. “This morning it was still grass.”

   “Oh, I’m so glad,” she said. The head waiter flashed a thin smile.

   The tablecloths were red and white checkered. Bussing tables meant always being at hand, even though there wasn’t always anything to do. In between staying busy I listened in on the goings on at nearby tables. It was like going to the movies. There were first dates and wedding anniversaries. There were birthdays, graduations, and family reunions. There was plenty of gossip to be overheard, there being plenty of lawyers, bankers, and politicians downtown.

   I listened in on a pair of yuppies. I worked out that they were both lawyers. I couldn’t work out the whys and wherefores behind their dinner date. They were a good-looking couple but sparred with mean-spirited conversation all through the appetizer, soup, and the principal meal. When they were done chewing their food they kept on chewing on each other.

   “You shouldn’t drink so much,” she said. “You’ve got be at work bright and early.”

   “Like they say, work is the curse of the drinking class,” he said.

   “You should know.”

   He got steamed up and looked like he was going to jump down his own throat, but instead poured some more booze down it.

   When vaudeville houses downtown were going strong in the 1920s performers like Jimmy Durante and W. C. Fields ate at the New York Spaghetti House all the time. After World War Two Mario’s brother Marino came from Rome to help out and stayed, eventually becoming the head chef. He was the boss of the kitchen during my short stint there. After my first day I avoided him, the same as I avoided the head waiter. I didn’t have a problem with authority, so long as it ignored me.

   The dining tables were draped with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and the walls were wood paneled, except where they were covered by murals. The murals were painted by John Cgosz, an expatriate Hungarian painter. They depicted gondoliers in Venice, the harbor at Naples, the Coliseum in Rome, and the island of Capri. The island was intensely sunlit in the dimly lit dining room. It was like a tour of Italy.

   Every so often somebody or other came in alone and ate alone, He was almost always a man. The life in his eyes was usually the color of something he’d forgotten. He drank Chianti while waiting for his spaghetti. He slurped coffee after dinner and never left much of a tip. He always looked the way somebody looks when he doesn’t know anybody at a party.

   One night a couple came in with twin six year olds. Children eating at the New York Spaghetti House weren’t entirely unusual, but it was uncommon. The twin girl started acting up during dinner and wouldn’t stop. Her brother soon joined her. Diners at two tables asked to be moved downstairs. The head waiter finally made an appearance and explained the children were being disruptive and they would have to leave. The father of the children, however, wasn’t prepared to leave his half-eaten dinner behind. He frog-marched his twins outside and came back alone a minute later. When the head waiter raised his eyebrows the man said, “I locked them up in the car.”

   The front of the restaurant was chalet-style, like something from the old country. Inside it was bigger than it looked from the sidewalk. It was six thousand square feet big, which was nearly two thousand square feet bigger than an NBA basketball court. There was a long oak bar in the lounge. There was a floating staircase. The kitchen was small. The station chefs, sous chefs, and head chef were always cursing in Italian in the infernal heat.

   On a mid-week night a man and woman walked in. “They have great spaghetti here,”  the man said as they entered. They had gotten married over the weekend and were still celebrating. They were seated on the main floor and ordered a bottle of red wine and matching spaghetti plates with meatballs on the side. Shortly after being served dinner their waiter came over and said to the wife as politely as he could, “We do not cut our spaghetti here.”  Long spaghetti is designed to be twirled around a fork. It ensures a better distribution of sauce. The brown sauce at the New York Spaghetti House was their measure of craftsmanship. Cutting the spaghetti made it harder to twirl and reduced the lengthy surface for the brown sauce. It altered the aesthetic.

   The wife looked up at the waiter and said, ‘I’m from Baltimore and we cut our spaghetti there.” She didn’t put her knife down. The waiter didn’t want to insult Baltimore and so he  didn’t say any more. The waiters could be stiff-necked but knew when to be discrete.

   I got acquainted with the other busboys, since we were all in the same boat. One of them, whose name was Enzo, was my age and we got along fine, until he was sent home and I didn’t see him after that. What happened occurred on a Sunday night. It wasn’t especially busy. Enzo and I were busy doing nothing when a young man strode across the main dining room right at us. He was wearing a gray t-shirt, black pants, and a scowl on his face. His hair was black, slicked back, and his skin was olive. He was Italian like Enzo.

   When he got to us he ignored me and got into Enzo’s face. He was speaking in Italian. I didn’t understand a word of it, although I could tell he was angry. Before I knew it he grabbed Enzo’s shirt collar, twisted it, and pushed him hard against the wall. Enzo was pinned. He pulled the ears of the young man but to no effect, so he head butted him. Blood gushed from the young man’s forehead. He punched Enzo and broke his nose, but before anything else could happen a scrum of waiters and busboys broke it up. They dragged the young man out the back door and threw him into the alley.

   When they came back Enzo was sitting in a corner with his head thrown back and ice on his nose. There was blood all over his white shirt. I asked one of the waiters what it had all been about. 

   “Enzo steal his girl,” the waiter said.

   A man in a dark suit and an angel face in a low cut dress were one of the last tables my last night. Thankfully, nothing had gone wrong that night, although closing time was still an hour away. The man was smoking a cigar. He looked like a gangster. After dinner he ordered decaf coffee for himself. The angel face was inspecting herself in a hand mirror. She didn’t order anything. The waiter was  busy and asked me to serve the coffee. “Make sure it’s decaf, pal,” the man said. “If I’m still awake at three in the morning, I’m going to call you to complain.” I didn’t like his sense of humor, if that’s what it was. It was the end of my job of work at the restaurant and I decided one more mistake wasn’t going to kill me. I brought him straight-up coffee. I wasn’t worried about him calling me. He didn’t have my phone number, which was a good thing. I found out later he didn’t just look like a wise guy. He was a wise guy up the hill in Little Italy.

   I collected my pay, had dinner on the house, and went home. It was the last time I set foot in the New York Spaghetti House. After I got married and thought about going for dinner sometime, it had closed and moved to the suburbs. My wife and I didn’t drive out there because the suburbs are more flavorless than not.

   One day the next summer I was standing outside of Captain Frank’s on the E. 9^th St. pier when a man in a dark suit approached the front door. He looked like the Mob. Another man in a dark suit, younger and bigger, held the front door open for him. He looked like Mob muscle. Captain Frank’s was a seafood house. Cleveland’s underworld ate there day in and day out. I had gone for a long walk along the lakeshore to the Cleveland Public Power plant and back and was waiting for a friend of mine to pick me up.

   “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” the Mob man said, pausing inside the doorway. ”Aren’t you a waiter here?”

   “No, sir, I don’t work here.” I didn’t say anything about the New York Spaghetti House.

   “I swear I remember you from somewhere and it’s a sour memory.”

   Oh, oh, spaghetti-o’s. “I’m new in town,” I said. “I just got here, so it couldn’t have been me.”

   “All right,” he said and made his way into Captain Frank’s.

   I walked to the landward side of the pier and leaned on a telephone pole, waiting for my friend. Whitecaps were breaking over the pier. Lake Erie is shallow, long, and narrow. The fetch makes waves grow taller and break forcefully. I knew full well there were no sharks in the water, but I kept my eyes open for any more unpleasant surprises.

A version of this story was published in the ezine Spillwords.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Cross Walk” by Ed Staskus

“A Cold War thriller that captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Late summer, New York City, 1956. The Mob on the make and the streets full of menace. President Eisenhower on his way to Brooklyn for the opening game of the World Series. A killer waits in the wings. Stan Riddman, a private eye working out of Hell’s Kitchen, scares up the shadows looking for a straight answer.

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication