The Seventeen Traditions (9 page)

W
e learned about work at an early age. Every one of the children was expected to pitch in and contribute daily to the smooth functioning of the household. The boys mostly worked around the house, shoveling snow, cutting the grass, raking the leaves, taking care of the chickens in and about their coop, and collecting the eggs. The girls worked mostly inside, cleaning rooms, ironing clothing, washing the dishes, and performing weekly chores such as polishing the dining room set. Girls and boys alike helped their parents with the vegetable garden, weeding, watering, and harvesting. When we became teenagers, our responsibilities grew: Shaf began working part time in Dad's restaurant after school,
and I had a paper route for a while. Claire and Laura augmented their household work with serious piano lessons ($1.50 a lesson) from a wonderful piano teacher, Miss Ann Breshnan, who lived two blocks away on Main Street.

The task of ensuring quality control fell to our mother, who monitored our efforts for what she called “the finishing touch.” Mother's efforts sometimes produced mirth, sometimes grumbling, as she sent us back to do the job all over again, or at least finish what we'd started—as with cutting the grass and raking it thoroughly together for compost. She viewed these tasks as strong fibers within the daily fabric of our family, something we came to understand when a heavy rainstorm or a blizzard came along to pose us a challenge. There's nothing like nature to bring about a swing-to-the-emergency camaraderie, even among easily distracted youngsters.

We were never given an allowance, for our chores or for any other reason. Our parents saw allowances as inducing divisiveness, inviting nagging (for increases), and likely to produce reckless spending. It was far better, they believed, to preserve the household as a place of shared responsibility, instead of making it a place of monetary transactions and having them pay for our work. And they believed that giving routine allowances would dull us to the meaning of money. Instead, we were obliged to ask our parents to buy things that caught our eye, forcing us to make a good argument as to why they should say yes—something an allowance would have circumvented.

They did, also, want us to learn how to save. So when we
earned some money outside the home, or were given money by relatives for birthdays or Christmas, they arranged for a savings account—at first in a symbolic piggy bank, later in the local savings bank—where we could deposit the proceeds. The little bank book in our name was a source of pride, for us and the other local children who were encouraged to save. The head of the Winsted Savings Bank even walked the kindergarten class to the bank to deposit their dimes and quarters.

Now, I'm not saying we always did our chores cheerily, or punctually. I know I sometimes grumbled when the call came to get going on cutting the grass or some other task. I would have preferred to keep reading or keep listening to the Yankees and their marvelous announcer, Mel Allen, on New York's WINS. So after the first call I would temporize. The second and third calls became more audible and insistent. Only when I heard my mother's footsteps heading into the living room did I suddenly decide I could skip the next inning or put a marker in my book. It always amazed me how fast the grass grew, the leaves fell, the chickens had bowel movements. But down deep I knew we all had to pull our weight for the greater good of the family, and that thought got me past these faltering moments. We children didn't know it at the time, but this was our education in the work ethic: Our parents were giving us far more than they themselves had back in the old country, but they were just as determined not to spoil us in the process. We had to earn it, to taste some of the exertion required for that better life.

Of course, not all the work was unpleasant. An afternoon
spent baking in the kitchen was hardly a chore. My sisters were more attracted to learning the baking arts from my prolific mother than I was, and as a result they not only learned to make celestial Arabic pastries and bread, but also absorbed all the lore surrounding the celebratory baking events that preceded religious days and festivals in old Lebanon. They also got first dibs on every new item that emerged fresh from the oven. (I did manage to bake twenty-one bran muffins for my sister Claire's twenty-first birthday, which my parents delivered to her at Smith College, where she was a student.) And of course Shaf knew how to do everything, in and out of the kitchen.

For me, it was watching my Dad work his long hours in the restaurant—solving every kind of problem you can imagine, from a failing boiler to a no-show cook to a sudden surge of impatient customers—that showed me what hard work was like, and the patience and ingenuity it takes to run a small business.

I was astonished at how many things there are to worry about when you're running a restaurant/bar. Supplies coming on time, the food kept fresh, equipment kept in good running order, all kinds of services kept up—my father carried these and other concerns on his back. He was on his feet so much every day and night that, over the years, his tired legs bulged with varicose veins, the painfully visible evidence of his intense commitment to support his family and save for his children's college and graduate school education. But the workplace was also a joy because he could engage his customers from far and wide in talk about community and public affairs.

When it came time for me to start working, I knew I wasn't cut out for the restaurant business. Thankfully, my mother and father agreed. It was while I was working my paper route for the Winsted Evening Citizen that I got my first feeling for the obligations of daily work—and a taste of the excitement of small-town journalism. The papers were still warm as I piled them into my large satchel. Then it was off on my door-to-door delivery rounds, warding off dogs, braving inclement weather, chatting with family members eagerly coming to the door for their paper, collecting the weekly billings and getting glimpses of how people were making it through the day, sometimes pleasant and sometimes unpleasant. How could anyone not develop an ease with people under such circumstances! When it came to meeting regular people, it was the next best thing to being a postman.

Nothing speaks to my parents' view of work better than a story my sister Claire recalled. One day, when she was quite young, she was walking home with Dad when they passed a street cleaner. “I'm glad I'll never have to do such dirty work,” she cried out. Dad stopped and looked at his little girl. “Then you should always respect street cleaners,” he said, “if only because they're doing work that you don't want to do, but that you very much want to have done. This is the same reason they should be paid well. Claire, as you grow up, you'll see all kinds of work being done. Don't look down on people for the work they do—and don't be in awe of anyone, either.” Laura had similar conversations with Dad.

Though it would be years before my sisters shared these stories with me, I'd long since absorbed those lessons. Without the labor of millions of low-paid, unrecognized workers, I realized, the economy—along with the activities of the wealthy—would come to a halt.

O
n August 19, 1955, after several days of steady rains, the cumulative effect of Hurricane Diane struck Winsted, pouring water into the Mad River. True to its name, the river swelled up quickly, overflowing its banks and destroying the businesses along Main Street. The nearby Still River joined in, rushing over its banks and severely damaging the North Main Street part of town.

Most of the damage occurred in a terrifying twenty-minute surge of raging waters. Cars were tossed around like ten pins. Several people lost their lives. Along the mile-long west side of
Main Street, the stores, apartment buildings, and factories were either washed away or crumbled from the force of the rushing waters. On the east side, which included my parents' restaurant, there was serious damage: the first floors of the buildings collapsed, and the carefully designed window displays and interior spaces were swamped by six feet of mud.

The next day the sun came out. The merchants up and down the street viewed the devastation in stunned silence. Years of their labors and millions of dollars of their investment had gone down a river that turned into a Moloch.

At the time I was in California, having finished a summer job in Yosemite National Park right after graduation from Princeton University. I was about to head home when I walked into a store in Bakersfield, California, looked at the front page of the newspaper—and saw a large picture of my father's ravaged Highland Arms Restaurant, done in by Hurricane Diane. I made it home in time to help dig the mass of mud out of the premises.

Shaf and Laura, who were there at the time of this Great Flood, told me later how my father had reacted to the devastation. Coming down the hill that morning, after just barely escaping the flood water the evening before, he surveyed the flood damage. He turned to Laura and quietly said, “It is a good thing I put my money in the children's education.” Then, speaking with a few other forlorn retailers he'd known for years, he said, “Well, we'd better get to work. There is much cleanup and re
building to do. We can use the opportunity to beautify Main Street.”

Think of it: At age sixty-two, having already endured one giant flood in his lifetime—the storm of 1938, which destroyed his restaurant—my father hardly wasted a moment looking back. He just looked ahead, to a future that was unknown or at least uncertain. He did his part to get the storekeepers in a heads-up frame of mind.

There was no flood insurance in 1955. Only the Small Business Administration came in to help with low-interest loans. By then, my siblings and I were all in our twenties. But the way our father reacted in those desolate days after the flood taught us much about reacting to adversity. He was cool, practical, and immediately focused on recovery.

Growing up in a small-business family was a significant factor in our daily lives. The Highland Arms was far more than a simple restaurant. It offered three dining areas, counter service, a cocktail lounge/bar, a delicatessen, and a bakery. Over the years, tens of thousands of customers dropped by to assuage their hunger and slake their thirst—many of them from around the country and around the world, but the majority from within the community. Suppliers came by regularly to deliver the raw materials for the kitchen and bakery. Plumbers, electricians, and carpenters came to keep the place in repair. Jurors from the county courthouse down the street were brought there on their lunch break. Factory whistles at noon brought workers
there for a sandwich and coffee. Lawyers, doctors, policemen, accountants, insurance agents, bankers, teachers and school principals, summer camp managers and their campers, children and parents, poor tenants on Main Street, storekeepers—they all coursed through the Highland Arms.

The Highland Arms could fit two hundred patrons comfortably, which is quite large for a town of ten thousand. The premises became a community gathering place, in part because it was spacious enough that no one felt rushed to give up their tables for new customers. Moreover, Nathra Nader was the embodiment of vigorous free speech, and in the atmosphere he created there, free speech was contagious, combined with a wry sense of humor. Want to express your opinions without getting a cold stare in return? Go to Nader's. And they did, from 1925 to 1969, when Dad retired and closed the business.

When you grow up in a family business that is open seven days a week, you can bet it becomes a tradition in your life—especially when the business is so inherently personal, so constantly conversational, so insistently pressurized with daily deadlines. We grew up with long-time employees who became part of our education, wittingly or unwittingly. Our customers loved them, and for us they were a kind of extended family. There was Benny Barton, the chef who was forever talking about returning to his home in Damariscotta, Maine. It took him more than twenty-five years to do so, and in the meantime he gave his customers quality food with great reliability. There was Paul Randazzo, funny and a little flamboyant, who cooked
away in the kitchen except when he suddenly disappeared for one of his unexplained absences. And so many others: Homer, the superb dining room waiter, collecting dime tips faster than a slot machine could spit them out while he shared stories about his French Canadian days; Jake Stankiewicz, the nighttime baker, who was so steady, kind, and proud of his daily creations.

Though I never longed to take over the restaurant, I did try my hand at the many skills involved, from dishwashing to short-order cooking to waiting tables. I soon grew comfortable behind the counter, talking, arguing, and joshing back and forth with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds in every kind of mood. I developed an ability to read people, catching their expressions, learning about their troubles, and sharing in their spirits. I wish I knew how each of these countless interactions contributed to shaping my personality, but I'm certain that, in one way or another, most of them did. I do know that the experience helped me enormously in my career as an advocate, teaching me to communicate with sources in our investigations, as well as with the political and media people we had to deal with regularly. Those random exchanges with friends, neighbors, and strangers in the restaurant made the work of my adult life far easier to handle. I couldn't help feeling bad for my friends and classmates, who were missing out on this vital part of their education—on this immersion course in the thoughts and feelings of working people from all over the mosaic of America.

Watching my father in business also gave me an education
in the meaning of character. He had the most wonderful relationships with his longtime builder-carpenter, Bob Morgan; his longtime plumber, Ed Hutton; and others he called on for help in maintaining his restaurant and repairing it after the floods, fires, and other periodic damage. These were relationships built on trust, and an easygoing mutual respect. (Mr. Hutton even enrolled McNader into his Scottish clan!) Nothing was ever set down in writing. Their word was their bond.

The floods and fires often left Dad with business debts that took years to pay off, and his meticulous drive to do so—assisted by his Ben Franklin-worthy frugality—became a minor legend in town. Even so, his frugality never conflicted with his charitable giving. Rather, it only gave him more leeway for charity. Less waste, more giving.

As the owner of a nearby shoe store once said, at Nader's a nickel bought you a cup of coffee and ten minutes of political talk. Lots of social issues were tossed around, catching the attention of the customers and helping the local residents get both informed and stirred up. That was one contribution Dad's business made to our small town—along with many others, including a community college that was inspired by Shaf's wide-ranging conversations at the Highland Arms. To my father, the business and the community were one and the same.