Thursday Mar 6

Tried to see my lawyer after work
as per appointment but he was
not at home

I went to Miss Weisman
delivering the banquet picture
I spent there 2 hours in con-
versation with her,

Later me the manager
of the Success School Mr. Lubow
at the Parkway Restaurant
accidentally, he came over to
my table!

After a brief talk about my
brother in law, he declared he
would drop the whole matter
that he would not sue and
declared the incident closed

--------------

Matt's Notes

So, here ends our subplot about the dastardly Mr. Lebow -- head of the Success School and the very man about whom Papa tried to see his lawyer earlier in the day -- and his mistreatment of Papa's brother-in-law, Phil. Since I have trampled on his memory already, I'll keep it going and assume he only dropped the matter of Phil's tuition (remember, he kicked Phil out of school and tried to collect tuition anyway) because he was drunk, fresh from a visit to an opium den, or feeling flush because he had just burglarized an apartment.

He couldn't have been all bad, though, because he knew where to go for good chopped liver. The Parkway Restaurant, where he ran into Papa, must have been the very Allen Street Roumanian schmalzateria Calvin Trillin pines for in the "Mao and Me" chapter of The Tummy Trilogy. Like Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse, the only such restaurant I've ever been to, the Parkway is said to have had singing waiters and pitchers of chicken fat on every table, though I expect it didn't strive for such novelty in 1924. Incidentally, the photo Papa brought to Miss Wiesman was from a banquet he attended with her at Greenberg's Roumanian Casino. This means he ate Roumanian food at least twice in the span of two months, making his mere survival until spring something of a miracle¹. Papa finds more ways to win my admiration every day.

Anyway: A trip out to Brooklyn to see his old flame, a happy ending to the Success School Saga, and a nice piece of chicken (or maybe a veal chop) at the Parkway. Not such a bad day for Papa.

-------------

Additional notes:

1 - Quoth Trillin:

The standard line about Romanian-Jewish cooking is usually credited to Zero Mostel, a great fan of the Parkway: "It's killed more Jews than Hitler."

I hope to learn more when I get my hands on another Trillin article from 1974 in which he profiled the Parkway in more detail for the New Yorker. Perhaps it'll reveal if the Parkway Restaurant and the Parkway Palace, which Papa referred to earlier, are one and the same.

-------------

My mother writes:

I still wish I knew more about the elusive Miss Weisman. If she was an old flame and Papa took her to banquets and brought her pictures of their evenings together, why was she still Miss Weisman? Why not Eva or Sally or whatever her first name was? Such formality. Well, she couldn't have been too smart if she didn't see Papa's worth and grab him for herself.