<\/p>\n
My father, Toby, was never shy<\/strong><\/span> about discussing money\u2014 who had it and who didn’t.\u00a0 He never hid his salary.\u00a0 On our street he topped all the Italian bricklayers.\u00a0 Toby excluded polka star Frankie Yankovic from the calculations.\u00a0 Yankovic was several streets over, where the big houses were.<\/p>\n Our neighborhood was Levittown-plus living: 3-bedroom\/1\u00bd bath colonials.\u00a0 The paradox was our neighbor, right across the street. He had a freaking airplane (Piper Cub).\u00a0 And six kids too. \u00a0This neighbor, Mr. Cermak, was a second- or third-generation drugstore owner. \u00a0(Odd: a Christian with a drugstore.\u00a0 All the other pharmacists my family knew were Yidn<\/em>.)<\/p>\n You could make big money before<\/strong><\/span> the Revcos came in, particularly if you were the storeowner and<\/em> the pharmacist.\u00a0 Mr. Cermak was both.\u00a0 Mr. Cermak was his own boss.\u00a0 My dad took note of that. My father, Toby, was never shy about discussing money\u2014 who had it and who didn’t.\u00a0 He never hid his salary.\u00a0 On our street he topped all the Italian bricklayers.\u00a0 Toby excluded polka star Frankie Yankovic from the calculations.\u00a0 Yankovic was several streets over, where the big houses were. Our neighborhood was Levittown-plus living: 3-bedroom\/1\u00bd bath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8613,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/8613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—
\nWhere are they now?<\/em> . . . Mr. Cermak lives in the same house.\u00a0 He has been there 60 years.\u00a0 The plane is gone.\u00a0 So is Yankovic.\u00a0\u00a0 So is my father.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"