In short, I loved the Tender Trap—everything about it and everyone who worked there. Every morning when I came in to get my ice, their staff and I chewed over details about the day just passed and the day to come. Every day, that is, but Sunday. Sunday, by law, all bars in New York are closed till afternoon. This was probably a good thing for the Tender Trap, since Saturday night was always party night till the wee hours, so on Sunday mornings the place was always in shambles. Cleanup work was not done by the regular staff, but by an elderly, sort of grizzly-looking couple who pulled up each Sunday in an old blue Dodge sedan, unloaded their cleaning supplies, and went to work. This was a problem. I still needed ice, but these people didn’t know I was a part of the enterprise, and the first week I asked for the ice, the old lady said she didn’t know if she was allowed to give it out. The next week, though, I went in all prepared to tell this tough old lady that Frankie, the bartender, said it was okay, but the old lady said, “Oh, you’re that nice young man with the hot dog cart. Well, why didn’t you tell me last week? You’re so ambitious. Your mother must be so proud. Of course you can have ice; you can have whatever you like.” I was stunned. This was no tough old lady. She was like my grandmother. I tried to bring her and her husband free hot dogs, but she said they couldn’t eat them because they were on a salt-free diet. No problem. I had another way to say thank you. I had started selling flowers on weekends, on consignment from a local florist. I selected the nicest bouquet of red roses and brought them to the old lady.

“Now, isn’t that nice,” she said. “But I have so many flowers at home, I have no place to keep them. Plus you need to save your money for college, not waste it on an old lady like me. So you just take these back, but thank you anyway for the lovely thought.” No, I insisted. Finally she agreed to take just one rose, which she put in her hair, just above her ear. “Now, aren’t I beautiful?” She giggled, spreading her arms—and we both laughed. After that it became a ritual each Sunday morning. After they showed up I’d go across the street to get my ice and bring her the nicest rose I could find in all the buckets.

A word about the flowers. In business if you don’t innovate, you’re dead. Just opening a hot dog stand on the hospital’s corner wasn’t nearly enough. If it was, someone else would already have claimed the corner. In fact, the hospital I was in front of was actually the smallest one in a very large medical center. All the larger hospitals already had one or more stands in front of them and the local mob, in cooperation with the police, was paid for these choice spots near the hospital and guaranteed a complete or partial monopoly as the value of the spot warranted. I, a fourteen-year-old boy selling hot dogs during the summer and on weekends, had to take what nobody else wanted. I was forced to ignore the old adage that the three most important things that matter in the retail business are location, location, location. My job, therefore, was to convert my location from a loser to a winner. This I did by asking all my customers what else they’d like me to carry and, if possible, adding it to my repertoire. Thanks to advice from a nursing student, I was one of the first stands to carry diet soda. Thanks to requests from kids, I became an authorized Lay’s potato chip dealer. For doctors, I had fruit drinks, and for Hispanics, Coco Lopez soda. Pretty soon my little hot dog stand was like the neighborhood convenience store. In fact, my hot dog distributor let the local powers know that I was selling as many hot dogs as the guys at the busy spots, and I had to fend off payoff requests from the local “protection” agent and even from some cops.