The idea for a hot dog stand had actually come to me about two months before the rice pudding attack, while sitting at the Crotona Park Lake with my grandmother. She had just fried warm potato latkes (pancakes), and we were taking them out of their wax paper covering and dipping them into an old Maxwell House coffee jar full of cold, sweet homemade apple sauce we had cooked together the night before. Nothing, I thought, could make this moment more perfect than a nice long hot dog with mustard, covered with onions in tomato sauce. There was a cart vendor by the far side of the lake. Unfortunately for me, it was the Jewish holiday of Passover, when leavened bread (buns) and (nonkosher) hot dogs were especially prohibited, and so the lust for hot dogs had to just linger in my mind. Until I thought, why not run a hot dog stand of my own instead of working afternoons and weekends in the butcher shop?
I told my grandmother what I had in mind, and she said it was impossible. I was too young. I wouldn’t be able to get a license. I would be robbed. This wasn’t an appropriate thing for a nice junior high school student with middle-class parents to be doing. That settled it. I was going into the hot dog business.
It wasn’t that I had anything against my grandma. Far from it. She was, in fact, my best friend in the world. It’s just that I loved a challenge. Not only that, but in truth, I hated being a kid. I often complained to my parents as I was growing up that I was an adult trapped in a child’s body. I enjoyed adult TV shows, adult books, adult conversation, and spending time in my father’s adult insurance office. Adults were reasoning and tolerant. They enjoyed working, making conversation, and laughing. Kids, on the other hand, liked wasting time, ganging up on anyone different or weaker than themselves, making trouble, and fighting. This was especially true in the increasingly tough part of the South Bronx where I grew up. The rules of kid society were mean.
I could not have put it into words then, but my basic complaint against kids was that they were unproductive, takers and users. I still think one of the highest things a person can aspire to be is productive. That’s why the Bible says, “Six days shall you work and on the Seventh day you shall rest.” Everyone seems to know the rule about the day off, but a lot of people forget the rule about the other six days. But they’re just as important. Man is supposed to imitate G-d’s productivity in creating the world in six days by going out and being creative himself. This is the best way to benefit not only yourself, but humankind as well. I often run into young successful people who tell me they are retiring to pursue charitable activities. What a crock! I believe in charity. I give away 20 percent of everything I make. I always have. But I don’t kid myself. The good they do is important, but it’s also limited. Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, said, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for one day, but teach him how to fish on his own and he’ll eat forever.”
In that spirit, weigh the work of the good done by all the combined charities in the world against the good done by just one company like General Motors. Thanks to GM, millions of people have productive jobs and can support their families with honor. Hundreds of millions of people are free to travel from place to place to enjoy themselves, and people can use their stock and dividend checks to retire in dignity. What charity can make such claims?
