Summary
It's Friday, and George Fabian and the guys are hanging out in his shoe store. It's small, green inside and out busy with customers, phone calls and visitors. "I never know who'll come," says Fabian, wearing an apron "There's fewer now Time's been unkind to my old friends."
In-between chatting with bar patrons and making wisecracks ("You still don't have Equal sweetener? Tell him there's a guy here who's an asshole about Equal"), he reminisces. At age 18, he was supposed to leave for a Las Vegas jpb offered by Jewish mobster Mo Dalitz. He had a going-away party but kept putting it off: "I couldn't leave Madison Loved it too much."Back at the shoe store, [Joe Cerniglia] is needling Fabian with a question: "When's the last time you heard of the Democrats and Republicans agreeing?" Fabian is quick to answer: "When they wanted a pay raise." He adds, "To me, politics is the last bastion of the incompetent. After living 76 years, I know I'm right."See the full content of this document
Extract
Remembering the 'Bush
It's Friday, and George Fabian and the guys are hanging out in his shoe store. It's small, green inside and out busy with customers, phone calls and visitors. "I never know who'll come," says Fabian, wearing an apron "There's fewer now Time's been unkind to my old friends."
The men in Fabian's Park Street Shoe Repair store are Greenbush survivors. They were forced from their homes when "urban renewal" destroyed the neighborhood -17 blocks bordered by Washington, Mound, Brooks and Regent streets-between the mid1950s and early 1960s.Whenever Fabian's store is open (generally Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), the men come here to talk about days long gone. It was a time, they say, when Italians (mostly from Sicily, the poorest part), blacks and Jews lived together in what is remembered, with pain and longing, as harmony"You're not born with prejudice, and our parents didn't teach us prejudice," says Fabian. "They just took you for who you were."Through the years, former Greenbush residents have kept the ...See the full content of this document
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