ManicDDaily

Big Bicycle, Small Silver Box

Like many New Yorkers, I sometimes buy an egg sandwich in the morning from a little stainless-steel cart parked outside of my office building.

I love these stainless steel carts; my daughter calls them “boxes.”  While she was in high school, she would go out every morning at a time that was somehow called lunch, and buy “box coffee.” It was reasonably good, very cheap, reliably hot.

The carts remind me of little, square, Airstream trailers, everything silvery and compact, the glass of the little windows, as slightly dulled as the 1950’s, showing the Art Deco curve of crullers; the boxes of tea displayed on the top shelf, even green tea, brightly anachronistic.

My particular silver box guy is named Nick; he is from Greece.  For some years, I thought he was from Macedonia, and, trying to be nice, commiserated throughout the late summer of 2007 about the forest fires there.   But I have finally gotten it into my head (after several bemused corrections) that Nick is from the Peloponnese (Olympia).

Nick would be unlikely to make a corresponding mistake about where I am from.  Like almost every silver box guy I’ve ever dealt with, he has a memory akin to Borges’  Funes the Memorious.   He knows the caffeine, dairy, egg, ketchup, bagel and doughnut preferences of a few hundred regular customers, many of whom simply greet him with a grunt, or (the more polite ones), a nod.   (People waiting for coffee tend to be quiet.)

Nick and his some silver box occupy my corner every single weekday, rain or shine.  His only vacations come when the police cordon off the street.  His is one of the few businesses, other than Goldman Sachs, that has done well  in the economic downturn.  His prices for a substantial breakfast are so much cheaper than lunch prices in mid-town that, over the last year, more and more people fill up early in the day.

I really like Nick.  He treats everyone with friendly respect, never even rolling his eyes at  their requests for eight sugars, or their bacon sausage cheese, grape jelly, and ketchups on a roll.

Besides all that, I look like his mother.

He has told me this a couple of times.  I’m never sure whether to be insulted or touched.  (Nick is younger than me, but not that much younger.)  (He also once made a guess of my age, a wrong guess;  we don’t talk about that time.)

I asked Nick today about his mother.  He laughed and said that he had told her about me.    (This time I actually did feel touched.)  Then we moved on (it takes a while to cook eggs) to the Greek economy.  He shook his head sorrowfully, murmuring about the tough time people were having, the tough times that were expected for a while; higher taxes, higher expenses.

“A man steals a bicyle, he goes to jail,” he said.  “He steals a million dollars, he goes to…” he shook his head.

“The Ritz,” I finished.

We bemoaned stealing and dollars (both millions and the lack thereof).

I asked him if he could visit Greece soon; he wistfully shook his head ‘no’ again, wrapping my sandwich in thin silver foil, passing it through the small silver space.

“A man steals a bicycle, ” he said again, “he goes to jail;  he steals a million dollars….”

(Note re above post:  it’s not intended in any way as a criticism of what Obama has done, or is trying to do, with respect to overseeing and regulating financial system, executive compensation, etc.  )