It was a store whose ambiance and irascible tenant could never be replicated. There never will, and cannot ever be another Pop Myer’s.
His tiny store stood on the northwest side of Crotona Avenue just off Tremont in the Bronx. Overwhelmed by its prosperous commercial neighbors on Tremont Avenue, it seemed to have dissolved into the surrounding bricks of the one-story building that housed it.
How did I learn of Pop Myer? My friend, Alvin entered the candy store dressed in the most outrageous orange tweed pants. They had a zipper fly that appeared to be made of fossilized teeth from Tyrannosaurus Rex. It’s waist rose to the armpits, and the crotch extended from his upper abdomen to his knees.
To annoy, horrify and amuse the women sitting outside the candy store on East 172 St, Irv would grasp Alvin’s fly, and twist it into a spiral, while Alvin held his hands to his head screaming, Oy! and groaning Vey!
My day came to meet Pop Myer. The Central Hotel in the Catskills hired me as a busboy. My wardrobe consisted of a pair of dungarees, a brown, and a gray pair of woolen pants. I needed navy-blue pants like I needed a pair of corduroy spats. Where do I get a cheap pair of navy-blue pants? Alvin’s orange pants flashed before me.
“Alvin, where did you get those pants?”
“You wouldn’t believe this place if you saw it. It’s called Pop Myer’s. Finding the fabric and being measured is more fun than the candy store.”
“How much did they cost?”
“You pick out the cloth and he makes you a pair of pants for five dollars.”
“Five dollars? How can you beat that? Men came from all parts of the Bronx to mine into his mammoth mound of twine-tied remnants.
The following day, Irv, Alvin and I walked across Crotona Park to Crotona Avenue. We crossed Tremont Avenue then came to Pop’s tiny store. Upon opening the door, you hurdled, stepped on, or knocked over tightly wound remnants in order to locate the bundle of your choice. Five dollars was the price for Pop’s pants regardless of the fabric selected. You carried the bundle to Pop to learn whether there was enough fabric for Pop to create a custom-made pair of pants.
With a cigarette seemingly Krazy-glued to his lower lip, he could be found at the rear of the store bent over a humming sewing machine illuminated by a single light bulb. This was the legendary Pop Myer.
“Pop,” Alvin said, “ he needs a pair of pants.”
“So, tell him what to do. I’m busy.”
As I began quarrying for a navy blue fabric, I heard Alvin yell, “Iwo Jima positions, take!”
He ran up a huge pile of remnants near the window pretending it was Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima. He planted Pop’s yardstick into the peak (the American flag), and he saluted.
As if it was rehearsed specifically for this occasion, a flow of searing expletives hitched a ride on Pop’s saliva.
“Son of a bitch! Bestid, Mahmzer!” and some foreign curses ricocheted off the lonely bulb dangling in front of him. Finally, I found a navy-blue remnant.
“I need them today, Pop.”
With a mouth dry from lubricating the profanity he had just spewed, he rasped,
“What do you think? I’m a machine? OK, in a half-hour you’ll come.”
He removed the twisted, wrinkled, yellow cloth tape from around his neck, measured my inseam and waist then sent us away.
We returned in thirty minutes.
“Dey’re done, but dey’re not pressed,” said Pop. In ten minutes you’ll, come back.”
We returned in ten minutes. Upon opening the door Alvin and Irv shouted,
“Press the blues! Press the blues!”
With a throat dry from his glossary of obsceeiies, Pop shouted,
“Drop dead. Dey’re pressed!”
I carried the blues home, still warm from Pop’s steam iron. Any wrinkles they developed in transit became a permanent feature of the pants.
As the days of bussing tables at the Central Hotel passed, a congealed veneer of the Central Hotel’s cuisine oozing from my clients plates and mouths coated my navy-blues. By summer’s end the pants chronicled a sample of nearly every meal I bussed at the Hotel. They joined the leftovers from the last meal of the season — in the garbage pail.
Edited from Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir by Daniel Wolfe
danielwolfebooks@aol.com