End of a dream

...My grandfather retired to nurse my invalid grandmother, and was supported by weekly contributions from his sons...

...And he doesn't care what the nature of the work is...

...THE LAST WORD End of a dream Wendy Schwartz Shortly after the turn of this century, my grandfather left Rumania in search of the freedom and economic independence denied to him there because he was Jewish...

...He came to the United States, settled in the Bronx, and opened a fruit and vegetable store...

...He is also looking for a job...

...Until the day he died, he firmly believed that American capitalism had been his salvation...

...My father is appealing the Unemployment Insurance determination on the basis that his health now precludes working a sixteen-hour day, six days a week...

...He isn't concerned about earning much money...

...His five sons took turns delivering orders, choosing stock, waiting on customers, and keeping track of charges...

...My grandfather, my father, and his brother eventually moved the store to a more prosperous neighborhood on the upper West Side of Manhattan, and expanded its stock to include the gourmet canned goods that appealed to their new customers...

...Thus, at the age of sixty-one, my father is putting aside the dream that has sustained his family for most of this century...

...A claims official decided that selling the store was a free-choice decision made at least in part by him...

...The insurance company that holds their group major-medical policy wants to discontinue it when the corporation is dissolved, and will not take on members of the group individually, so my family will be without health insurance coverage...

...But no one in the business ever took home more than $10,000 a year, and well into the 1960s salaries were still stuck at $100 a week...

...Last summer, though, my father took only a few days off...

...Army...

...he never has earned much, so why should he think of a large paycheck now...

...he is considered self-employed despite his legal status as an employe of the corporation that owned the business...

...It served them well, he thinks...

...the store had to be sold before inflation, further changes in the neighborhood, and shortened business hours destroyed its marketability...

...Recently, it became evident that such active participation in the capitalist system was no longer possible...

...He died in 1968, leaving some old furniture, a few pieces of cut glass brought from the Old Country, and the four sets of dinnerware required in a Kosher home...

...His new job, if and when he finds it, will be his first for a boss who is neither his father nor the U.S...

...They used to work until seven every night, and much later on Fridays, but in recent years they have had to close the store earlier—an inconvenience to customers who shop after work and another drain on the meager receipts, but a necessity in view of my uncle's semi-retirement and my father's advancing age...

...There was just good, fresh food to bring home in paper sacks on Saturday night—and to use for barter with the butcher, the grocer, the dry cleaner, and the druggist who had shops on the same street...

...My father and his brother still believe it...

...Six mornings a week, each of them rose at four o'clock to get the best produce from the Hunts Point Market and other wholesalers...

...thus, he didn't really "lose" his job...

...Combined, they have put almost 100 years of hard labor into the store, and sometimes my father reinvested some of his small savings in it...

...The accounts are not yet settled, but if my father and his brother realize $5,000 each from the sale, it will be more than they anticipated...

...There was no pension plan, and there were no shared dividends from the "corporation" established a decade or so ago as the store's owner...

...Wendy Schwartz, a long-time peace activist, is on the editorial board of WIN Magazine...

...They also used to get two separate two-week vacations every summer, arranged so that neither would have the burden of two consecutive weeks alone in the store...

...The New York State Unemployment Insurance representative told my father he cannot collect benefits...

...Finally, a Korean greengrocer, already located on the block, decided to expand into Schwartz's Gourmet...

...Three of them eventually moved on to more lucrative careers—careers in which their success could not be undermined by decisions made in the boardrooms of West Coast agribusinesses or by an unforeseen frost in Florida...

...as the owner of a business, he has a great deal of diverse knowledge and skill...

...Many potential buyers looked at the store and looked away again...