by John C. Schoeni

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It’s the last Saturday in April and I head out the door for my job at Turk’s Men’s Shop.  Mr. Turk has taken a chance on a 15-year-old, partly because my brother, William T. (Bill) Schoeni is the manager.  I’ve been to Turk’s Men’s Shop several times to buy and to visit my brother, and Mr. Turk has enjoyed my shenanigans and the fact that I can impersonate John F. Kennedy almost as well as Vaughn Meader.

When I open the door at 2402 Mt. Vernon Avenue I am greeted with the job of filling a bucket with ammonia and hot water in the bathroom behind the register, to find the sponge on the stick and the long squeegee.  The fumes are like tear gas and my throat starts to itch.  It’s time to wash the windows.  It used to be Mr. Smith’s job, now he’s glad to see me.

Mr. Smith is a tall, serious looking man who resembles an older Henry Fonda.  He’s just arrived for his part-time job.  He’s quiet but clever and witty like Fonda but doesn’t have the fame, the money or the popularity.  Yet I’d see one of his movies if he could act.

As I’m drawing the last streak of wash water off the window I see a cute blonde in a short skirt walking by.  I turn demurely to look at her legs then stop quick when I realize it’s Mr. Turk’s oldest daughter Rochelle.  Rochelle and I are in the same year at George Washington High School but we seldom talk.  I’m too shy and she’s too good looking.  She smiles and says hello and that’s a big thing for me.  She doesn’t realize that Bill Karas whom we also go to school with at G.W. is inside buying a bleeding Madras shirt and a pair of Bass Weejuns.  When Rochelle tries to walk to the back of the store to pick up something from Dad, she’s intercepted by Billy Boy as he’s known to his friends, for a date.  He’s persistent and clever with his approach, yet everyone knows what the answer will be - a polite, smiling NO!  The same no I’d probably get if I had the nerve to ask her out.  But Billy Boy keeps his chin up and starts thinking about next time.

Customers who have not been waiting at the door for the store to open begin arriving.  Some are looking for dress shirts, some for shoes, some for underwear, a few are in a rush because even in the sixties there’s lots to do on a Saturday and some are just there to socialize.  One social butterfly is James Duncan.  He walks in in grey overcoat and hat.  He looks like he’s going to the office but he’s just there to spend two hours shooting the breeze.  I think he’s funny, some say he’s slow, on the verge of retarded.  I don’t judge him and enjoy his shenanigans.  He gives Mr. Turk a hard time just to rattle his cage then begins on Mr. Smith.  But Mr. Smith has his number and when he strokes James under his chin and around his neck, James bunches up like a baby and laughs until he turns red, as Mr. Smith says, “He’s getting pink around the gills.”  Or, “James is getting fat enough to butcher.”  And that brings on more laughter.

A woman arrives to pick out clothes for her husband who won’t even come with her to try them on.  She’s very specific and requires a lot of time so I feel sorry for Mt. Smith as he walks around with her answering a hundred questions and trying to make her feel important.  And she is, because Mr. Turk always emphasizes the importance of each customer.  Mr. Turk comes by to see if he can help Mr. Smith with answers and they both help the lady.  Mr. Turk has a habit when he’s nervous of moving his head back and forth to get his tight suit off his neck.  It’s as if he is uncomfortable in a suit and tie and would rather be home in a sports shirt and old comfortable pants.  His mannerisms become a trademark, at least for me.

Stanley Hicks arrives late for his part time job and has his younger brother Bobby with him.  Stanley wants to show Bobby the new Alumni Shop that Mr. Turk and my brother have conjured up to attract the juniors and seniors in high school and the young college crowd.  It’s a corner of the store near the back partitioned off with plywood covered with red brick paper and a sign over the door painted by my father.  It’s in Old English and gold and simply says: Alumni Shop.  Stanley heads there to check out the Windsor shirts, the Van Heusens, the Arrows, the Cricketeer sports coats, the Bass Weejuns, the button down shirts (no one would wear a fly away collar now) and Chino pants.  It’s the sixties and this is where the latest fashions for men are in Alexandria.  Bobby goes wild while Stanley tries to control his younger brother’s spending.

I check the clock.  It’s already eleven as my brother gives me a cash register slip with scribbling on the back and asks me to go Lawrence’s to pick up everyone’s lunch and to get myself something.  Lawrence’s is a block away near the Scott Shop and I’m glad to take a breather from the clothes.  When I get to the delicatessen the sandwiches are wrapped in white paper waiting and the cash register slip is to double check the order.  Now all I have to do is find a Hires Root Beer and a Nehi orange drink.  When I get back to clothing central the boys are chomping at the bit for lunchtime to begin as Marty Turk, Mr. Turk’s son, arrives to help out on a busy Saturday and just in time for lunch.  Marty works weekdays but Dad has drafted his help for the busy weekend.  He heads for Lawrence’s and is back before the crew has finished chowing down.

Mr. Turk used to brag that he was going home to make himself a banana milkshake.  He described them in such a way that I couldn’t resist asking if I could try one.  That’s when he invited me to his house that night on the way home to taste one of the specialties.  I was honored to get an invitation to the boss’s house.  After that it became a standing joke and he’d fix me a banana milkshake or invite me to his house.  It was on Howell Avenue at the corner of Commonwealth and was very nice.  I got to meet his wife Shirley and met the funny and gregarious Glenda, Rochelle’s younger sister.  She could kid and cut up better than anyone.  I figured since I was 16 and was a big shot, I could ask a thirteen-year-old girl to the movies.  I knew Rochelle would never go with me so I flirted with the idea of taking Glenda.  But dad soon discouraged it and said I should wait until she was 16.

Mr. Turk has made the final decision to close up his new store, the second Turk’s Men’s Shop, in the Shirlington Shopping Center in Arlington.  Everyone is sad because it has given us a chance to diversify and work in the new store in the new shopping center.  But business is not so good at the new store and soon we will be running a huge going out of business sale and working long hours, so you can imagine I’m not keen on all of this. But it will be awhile before that happens.

Today I’m also learning how to do alternations.  I’ve been summoned to the back room of the building that was once the Palm Theater.  I remember all too well hearing of a Sunday that my brother was going to a movie with my mother.  It is small for a theater by today’s standards but they have nothing to compare it to so they were happy to have a Sunday outing.  As I look around the back room I imagine when the screen stood there and gave Del Ray residents a chance to see the latest flicks.  The cash register counter in the front was no doubt where the ticket booth was and the first counter in the middle that now holds pants was the pop corn, candy and soda counter.

My brother lays out pants on the ironing board and shows me how to measure the inseam with a yardstick then mark the correct length based on previous measurements from the customer.  I use a white wax stick that will melt when the iron makes the final crease.  Then he shows me how to cut across the line at the cuff, how to roll them up seam inside and run the cuffs through the sewing machine.  Finally he shows me how to change the sewing machine’s setting, roll up the cuff and tack it with the machine.  I iron the cuffs and they are ready for delivery.  Only once did I cut the cuffs while part of them were on the inside waistband and cut off a piece of material from the inside waist.  I sweated when the customer picked the pants up.  He didn’t say anything but I expected every day for two weeks that he would call up and complain.  Then I realized he wasn’t coming back.  It’s been almost 40 years and I now think I am off the hook.

While I am finishing up another pair of pants I hear John F. Kennedy’s voice across the P.A. system and feel proud that our president is speaking on the radio.  Then something sounds funny and I realize that he wouldn’t be speaking at this time of day on a Saturday.  When I listen more intently I realize that Mr. Turk is playing a tape of one of my funny skits in which I impersonated the President.  I think to myself, “Gee, that wasn’t bad.  I thought it was Vaughn Meader.”

My mother helps out when there’s a big sale.  She’s at the register while us clerks bring her customers with piles of clothes.  This makes Mr. Turk very happy because he is already worried about the demise of the Shirlington store.  I’ve always heard it said that you shouldn’t be taught how to drive by a relative.  And now I can kind of understand what it means.  I bring my mother a pile of clothes being purchased by Bill Karas from the Alumni Shop.  There’s three pairs of socks at 99 cents each.  I call out the prices while my mother rings them up.  I say, “three 99s.”  She hears $3.99 and rings it up.  I say, “No, there’s three pairs of socks at 99 cents a pair – three 99s.”  She says, “It sounded to me like “$3.99.”  And I answer, “What pair of socks would cost $3.99?  What do you think this is, 2001?”  And she says, “Watch your tone with me boy, I’ll box your ears.”  Then Mr. Turk steps in to void the register sale and my brother Bill steps in to calm the feathers of his mother and younger brother. Thank goodness Bill Karas is a friend because he’s gone off to try and get another date with Rochelle and hopes that when he comes back he’ll have a total and can put it on his personal Turk’s account that has fallen slightly in arrears.  Mr. Turk counsels Bill by the front window and when he comes back Bill takes his purchases and promises to bring in a ten-dollar payment this week.  If it weren’t for the generosity of Jerry Turk, many of us then would have been walking around Del Ray half-naked.  But then I think I hear him mumbling to himself, “That’s how I ruin myself, being generous.”  And then I think of the closing of the Shirlington store but decide to keep my young opinions to myself so I can stay employed and keep on getting banana milkshakes.

A lull in the action.  No customers.  As I’m about to stand in front of the Windsor shirt table and stare at the labels, it is suggested by my brother that I use the steamer to take out the wrinkles on the Cricketeer sports coats.  And that sounds like more fun than listening to Mister Smith eat peanuts by way of a Coca-Cola.

Mr. Sam Turk, Jerry Turk’s brother, rushes in with a question for his brother about the grand opening of the Baby Store that they are putting in next-door.  The two brothers confer and as usual Mr. Turk is the expert on retail stores.  His other brother Morty is in town and stops in to make an appearance.  He is tall and reminds me now of Jerry Orbach who is on TV and was the voice of the candelabra in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

Evening comes quick to a full day and it soon approaches the magic hour – six o’clock – closing time.  Mr. Turk is finally tired after a long week so he’s not one to hang around.  Glenda walks in from somewhere and asks her father for a ride home.  He’s got a stack of boxes and is stopping for an errand.  Glenda is joking with everyone and displays her trademark laugh which lights up the whole store.  I more than anyone am listening to her from a distance and wonder if I can wait long enough to take her to the movies. By the time four short years goes by I am 20 and on my way to getting married and Glenda is only 17.  Thirty-five years later I am using E-mail to write friends and find Rochelle on the Internet in Florida.  She has children and says Glenda is still in Virginia and I wonder what they all look like. She says that her father passed away six years ago and I stop and think.  A long silence comes over me as I remember in a flood of recollections, Jerry Turk who took over the old Palm Theater to create his new location at 2402 Mt. Vernon Avenue, “the only men’s store in Del Ray.”  I smile at the remembrance of the taste of banana milkshakes.  And for some reason I recall the words of Gus in “Lonesome Dove” as he stood over the grave marker of Josh Deits and the words Gus said about Josh are certainly true for Jerry Turk.  “Cheerful in all weathers, never shirked a task, splendid behavior.”  I could add to that – a great friend!