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The stand stood in front of a hospital and across the street from a bar. The bar was called the Tender Trap and the hospital Van Etten. One of the hospital’s main functions was to run a methadone clinic for former heroin addicts. You would think these addicts would be terrible people to be around. Actually, they were great. They were really trying to get their lives together. And in a way, I, with my own hot dog stand, was the most establishment-type person many of them had ever been befriended by. We’d spend hours talking politics, sports, crime, religion—whatever you could think of. I even hired several of them to run the stand for short times while I went to buy supplies. Risky, you say? Well, they never stole a dime from me. A couple of the patients even got jobs driving cabs that summer, and would come back to visit me in their cars, or between shifts. They would proudly insist on now paying for their hot dogs and sodas. I learned from this the great potential (and potential goodness) that’s locked inside everyone, if you give it a chance to come out. IDT is known today for hiring people from way-out fields, or promising young people with no background, and quickly giving them big responsibilities. More often than not, our people do their new jobs better than any of our competitors’ people.
The story of the bar was perhaps more interesting than the story of the clinic. The bar, you see, served only alcohol (no food), and drinking seemed to build a considerable appetite on the part of many of the patrons. The reverse also seemed to be the case; that is, the more people ate, the longer they were able to keep drinking. As naturally as between man and woman, a partnership formed between me and the bar. At first the bar hostesses would come running across the street to pick up hot dogs for their patrons. Soon they would just yell the order across the two-way, six-lane street and I would prepare the hot dogs and run them over. This was a good deal for me, since I usually got a tip, and sometimes another order as well. Leaving the stand alone for a couple of minutes was no big deal, since one of my friends from the clinic was always happy to run the business while I was away. Eventually the bar and I developed a signaling system similar to that between a major league catcher and pitcher. The hostesses would go to the window and on the right hand hold up fingers to signal the number of hot dogs needed. Then, on the left, they put up one finger for onions, two for sauerkraut, three for mustard only, or four for plain. After receiving the signal, I’d prepare the dogs and, sure as any major league screwball pitcher, deliver them pronto to the bar.
There was one other thing the bar had that interested me besides the hungry drinkers, and that was their ice. (To be honest, there was a third, but I was only fourteen and had never been on a date yet. So though the hostesses were nice to think about, they didn’t have as much practical value in my life as hungry hot dog eaters and ice.) Ice was a magical substance that could make my business thrive. You see, I sold twice as many sodas a day as hot dogs. Not only that, but on every 25¢ can of soda I made 15¢, whereas on every 25¢ frank I only made a dime. The hotter the summer day, the more I made. And in New York City, summer gets pretty hot. Unfortunately, by two or three in the afternoon, my ice was usually all melted, so by four my soda sales were finished—and just before the hospital complex let their hot, tired, and, most importantly, thirsty employees off of work.
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