THEN

My oldest friend shared this photo online of Gruning's, a restaurant in our hometown of South Orange NJ, famous for its homemade ice cream and candies. This shot is before I began working there in my teens (the 1950s) as a busboy, and later dishwasher, week nights and Sunday (I worked after school and Saturdays at my father's home repair business for "room and board", i.e. for living at home once I was sixteen). I quit after a while because the manager objected to the ways I interacted with the customers, sometimes too friendly, sometimes too confrontational. The beginning of a pattern perhaps.