You’re eighteen, second semester at Brooklyn College (a tough school to get into) and always looking to make a few bucks spending money. I mean, you live at home and college tuition costs only $32 a year. Ah, the good old days of free tuition at the CUNY ( Ciy University of New York) schools. College, after the first six months of stress from transiting out of high school, became a breeze. You major in Phys Ed looking for a career in recreation and have lots of free time to find part time jobs. Look at what you already have done for employment: salesman at Miles Ladies Shoe Store, bartender for private parties at doctors’ homes, referee for intra murals at college… and you wish you could drive a yellow cab (had to be 19).
Suddenly, as the Spring followed winter on East 24th St, providence struck. A neighbor down the street, Lisa F. had a brother in law who opened up his own inventory business. He was a CPA, maybe just 25, was known as EJ Levine, had a handlebar mustache and drove a year old El Dorado Cadillac. He needed guys to take inventory in the supermarkets and large retailers that he had signed up. The pay was like two bucks above minimum wage and you didn’t need a car to go to work… EJ would provide that for you. So, I signed on, got my older brother Peter to come along and we were ready to make some money.
The first job was actually right in our neighborhood, and it was at night after the supermarket closed. EJ put us into teams, and didn’t want Peter and me to work together ( ” Too much blabbing slows us down”). So, we walked over to the supermarket at 6 PM, got set up with a partner and off we went. One guy would be the counter and the other the recorder. We took turns and it went like this: One guy, me, starts yelling out each item and its cost while the other guy sits in a shopping cart and writes down the figures. As we got into it I was able to estimate, like if there was a slew of cans of tuna, same brand, I figured how many there were and shouted out the price per can. It went like that. EJ had at least four such teams in the store and by 10 PM we were done.
Before you know it I was being called every Friday night and told to meet at EJ’s brother’s house Saturday morning. When we had four guys outside EJ would pull up and we loaded up and off we went. This Saturday we were going to do a TSS (Times Square Store) in Oceanside Long Island. TSS stores were these humongous low end department stores. EJ had his foreman Milty with him up front, I sat in the back, squeezed between my brother and another guy. EJ had to be the worst driver I ever saw. He never used his mirrors, relying on us to guide him. ” Phlly, let me know when I can change lanes.” This is how it went all the way to the Belt Parkway and out to Oceanside. I swear I gave us 50-50 to get there in one piece. Well, we did. EJ told us, after he talked with the TSS manager, how long this job should take (he had this ‘way ahead of time’ feeling for analytics) and that he would buy all of us lunch at The Sizzler next door to TSS IF we did a good job. Then, off he went and Milty was now in charge. Milty was this 50 something chubby guy who didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. His favorite expression was ‘Stay loose’. He obviously knew EJ for years and was as loyal to him as one could be.
That Spring and summer EJ kept us busy as hell. He was signing up all kinds of supermarkets and a few TSS type stores. The best deal for us was when we had to do a D’Agostinos superette on the upper eastside of Manhattan. We had just two teams with Milty and we had a time. You see, in the late 60s D’Agostinos was THE most upscale food market anywhere. I can still recall counting items in the prepared fruit section, and scarfing down two fresh fruit cocktails with ‘sweet as sugar’ strawberries. Since EJ paid us by the hour beginning when we were picked up and ending when we were dropped off, this job was super! My friend Al T. had to pedal this gigantic delivery bicycle for S&P produce store earning 2/3 of my pay with EJ. Of course, there was also the downside of taking inventory for EJ. A few Sunday mornings we were taken to lower, really lower Manhattan (you always referred to it as ‘The City’ if you came from one of the other boroughs) to work in the opposite of D’Agostinos, a Pioneer Food Store. The neighborhood was one which you did NOT travel in at night, so doing a Sunday morning gig was OK with me. Problem was this Pioneer store was dirty inside. When Milty told my brother and his partner to count items down the basement, I shuddered, especially when my brother came back up. He told me he could see a few pairs of eyes staring at him as he went down those creaky, filthy stairs. OOH!!
When school returned in late August we bid goodbye to EJ, and of course Milty. By the next June I was 19 and able to get my hack license. Thus, my career as a cab driver would take me right through college (which in my case was a total of seven years – I had gotten a low draft number in ’71 and, as Milty would put it, ‘Stay loose’ from being shipped to the Nam.
PA Farruggio
December 2025