By Charlie Brannick
Special to the Chronicle
When it was time for just hanging around, it was Timmy’s Luncheonette in my West Orange neighborhood for me.
For some people, it was a luncheonette but the breakfast and lunch crowd had fallen off after Betty and Marie stopped running it.
I must have been about 9 or 10 when I first wandered in.
The place had everything: candy, potato chips, bottled soda and ice cream sandwiches, plus popsicles, cigarettes and newspapers. From the counter, you could order sandwiches, burgers, a fountain Coke or an ice cream cone. There was also a jukebox and a pinball machine.
At first, Timmy’s parents were there to help him keep things ship shape but things began to slowly drift from their moorings and take on the full imprint of Timmy and his patrons.
Now it was a happy place, a ship barely keeping up with the docking fees but no one on board was complaining.
Timmy was a small man, about 25 years old, barely over 5 feet tall and 100 pounds. He was still living with his parents and was enjoying himself but tended to skimp on a few of the vitals such as the cleaning and the scrubbing of things. Refrigeration and expiration dates on items might also come into question.
I remember having a good burger there once but consistency wasn’t one of Tim’s strong points. Camaraderie, banter and lively interaction of the youth and young adults in the room was the main draw.
You didn’t need much money and you knew all your friends would be there.
I could paint a picture for you as easily as I could tell you the names of my brothers and sisters.The whole scene hangs prominently like a Norman Rockwell over the living room sofa in my mind.
Take a cold day in December, say Christmas break, crusty old snow turning gray was piled along the shoveled sidewalks. Sneakers, or desert boots carefully placed, would stay dry on the short walk to Timmy’s.
The luncheonette was one of six shops that sat in an aged yellow brick strip mall wrapped around the bend in the south side of Valley Road between Central Avenue and Main Street.
They were the shopkeepers who served the residents living in the lower portion of town.
The store at the far south end of the strip was vacant and collecting cobwebs the entire period of my youth. Next to it was Herman’s Butcher shop, a no frills kind of place with fresh meat and fish on ice. Kids weren’t welcome to gawk at the fish and ask questions, Herman being a no nonsense kind of guy, stayed busy slicing, hacking and stacking his products in a white blood stained smock.
Bill, was another middle aged balding guy with a pleasant personality who ran the liquor store in the next spot. It was probably the biggest money maker but there was also Gartenberg’s Drug Store and Glassman’s cleaners across the street which had three or four full-time workers and supported a family of four.
Next to the liquor store was Sal’s barber shop. Sal came all the way from Bellville to clip hair for the men and boys in the neighborhood and place bets on horse races to supplement his income.
For $1.25, you could get the latest styles from his somewhat steady hands and uncertain eyesight. More than a few customers used words like “hatchet” and “butcher” to describe the kind of cuts he was famous for.
For myself, dad put a bowl over my head and told me with some angst to sit still while mom observed and gave counsel. (Just kidding about the bowl.) But God was it torture and how I wished I could be among those paying customers for a real haircut from Sal, who finished off the cut with Vitalis rubbed in.
At the other end of the mall was Harry’s, sometimes referred to as the Rebel’s store. Harry, being the least productive but perhaps the most creative of the lessees, arrived at his shop mid-morning and after his coffee at Timmy’s would retreat to the back of his shop where he’d sit at his work table under a bright light to focus on a ring he might be customizing.
When he wasn’t doing that, he might be seated at the counter in Timmy’s, or engaging in dialogue with the kids, or showing them tumbling moves, or teaching them how to light farts, or hold their legs while they did sit ups.
All kinds of things that had interest for young fellas.
There were boxing gloves if you wanted to go a few rounds, and he might fill in as a player for a basketball game, and during the Easter season he would set up tables and make vats of chocolate and shape them into the various forms of chickens and rabbits, and all the broken pieces became freebies for the kids.
For an additional source of revenue the building owner had two billboards placed on the roof angled precisely to nail the attention passing motorists to two of the most compelling addictions known to man; liquor and cigarettes.
The sophisticated seductress in black held in her hand a martini glass of Smirnoff’s Russian vodka and in the other monster billboard the Marlboro man would take a moment away from a cattle drive to refresh and light up reminding the always in a hurry east coaster to slow down, and that real men smoke Marlboro’s.
But for me, it was Timmy’s to see what was going on at any given time.
Charlie Brannick graduated from Our Lady of the Valley High School in 1966, joined the Army and served with the 82nd Airborne Division in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. He returned home, graduated from Kean College in 1974 with a degree in psychology and has lived in Eureka, California since 1977 where he works as a painting contractor. He has published three travel/memoir books, which are available on Amazon.
Timmy’s Candy Store, My Home Away from Home added by Editor on
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