On a similar note, when I was working in fashionable East Hampton, on Long island, during the last ten years of service, I went into a small German deli and ordered a toasted bagel with cream cheese. This was in, say, 1992 or 3. When a dollar was worth something. The owner of the deli was a big old jolly German man, complete with "aggsent" frummm der old country. He took my order, and handed me the bagel in a few minutes. I was wearing my Bell T-shirt and hard hat. He announced the price: "Three dollars."

I was slightly taken aback, even though I WAS in the fashionable Hamptons. "Three dollars???" I said. "Ja, three dollars" he answered. "One dollar for the bagel, one dollar to toast it, and one dollar for the cream cheese. You verk for the phone company, ja?...you can afford it!"

Turns out, as I learned from some of the older guys in the gang, when Otto came to the US as a teenager, having been a graduate, in fact, of a German trade school for electricians, right after WW2, he was denied employment mit the phone company, because he was, after all, a recent citizen of one of our enemies, and was not yet a citizen of the US. He was obviously a security threat. He bore a grudge against Ma Bell for 40-something years, because they wouldn't hire him, and took it out on telephone workers whenever he could.

I'm a kraut/mick myself, so I can say without the PC police chastising me, that he was the incarnation of the famed German trait of "Don't get mad...get even."


Arthur P. Bloom
"30 years of faithful service...15 years on hold"