Finding Special Photos of My Father

When I think I was in my 20s, early 20s, I found this big photograph, huge photograph, it was rolled up and I was surprised to find it because it was a photograph taken from a balcony looking down and I saw my mother in the first row all dressed up and they didn't go out very much. So I was really surprised to see her there. I said, "What are you doing there and where's Papi?" And she said, "Oh, he's up there." And she showed me on the dais. I said, "What is he doing there?" And she said, "Oh, that was the year that he was the president of the Puerto Rican Merchants Association." I get chills now thinking about it. My father had a fourth-grade education. He hadn't been able to get the formal education that he deserved to get because of his family circumstances.

Then I also just recently realized in looking at one of the pictures of his time when he was in the Jewish Deli, there are all these people, almost I'm sure all immigrants. We remembered Willie Sacconino, who was Italian immigrant and he was Papi's best friend and there was

“Mama Kulka” who was a Polish woman who was also a really good friend of the family and sent us gifts all the time. And there's my father and he would bring his family members, so one of his brothers was there who he moved from Puerto Rico, his sister, who he found a job for there, and another brother and so on. We did the immigrant thing. And so there's my father. He's the only one, sort of on the side, with a big chef's hat and I couldn't figure out why that was.

And then I realized he must have been like the supervisor by then. And he had been hired years before to sweep floors and there he was. I just found that out recently as I was looking at these pictures that my family gave me one of these digital frames and I had never realized that before. My father was able to do quite a bit in his life. He was a very smart man and then of course he had the bodega. We were able to go to college because he had that bodega and he could pay for us to go to college. He then bought towards the end of his working life, he bought another bodega, a bigger one on Marcy Avenue in Brooklyn. And that just showed that he was able to use his wits and his determination because he was an incredibly hard worker.

We all picked that up from him and he would work 12 to 16 hours every single day in the bodega, except on Sundays when he would try to leave by two or three and bring home ice cream and cream soda so we could have a little dessert, but that was the only day.

Otherwise, he'd get home at 10 at night or eight at night and leave very early in the morning, six or so. And many times, I was waiting for him. My mother, of course, was there waiting for him and served him as soon as he walked in and I often sat on his lap or sat next to him as I got older to make sure that I would be next to my papi while he had his dinner.