A Thanksgiving Story

(Originally published 11/20/17)

While duly employed in another line of work more than two decades ago, my boss, Richie, spied a couple of our customers, Bud and Sally, dining in a Nathan’s fast-food restaurant. At the time, he was cruising down the well-traveled Central Avenue in Yonkers and noticed them—courtesy of the place’s paneled glass windows adjoining the busy thoroughfare—seated at a table. Were it not for the fact that it was Thanksgiving night, this sighting wouldn’t have been worth mentioning.

Often a cynic, Richie nonetheless found something poignant at the spectacle of this long-married couple eating at Nathan's on Thanksgiving. After all, Bud and Sally were pleasant enough people who spent a fair amount of change shopping in our store week after week after week. Bud was retired and considerably older than his wife. They had no children. That is, if you didn’t count their menagerie of pets, which included through the years everything from minks to ferrets to monkeys. And, yes, they had multiple cats and dogs as well. Anyway, Richie thought it would be a nice gesture to invite Bud and Sally to the business’s forthcoming Christmas party, which he did. They happily accepted and a grand time was had by all.

Fast forward twenty-five years and Bud and Sally are still among the living. They are, however, experiencing financial woes. Money troubles that Bud never envisioned possible when he called it quits after a rather successful working career. Considering Bud and Sally’s sizable brood of animal friends through the years—and the amount of money they spent on them for food, supplies, and medical care—we were all convinced that old Bud had quite a tidy nest egg and would never, ever be sweating the bucks.

Last winter, however, Bud turned up at Richie’s new place of business. He requested a helping hand—i.e., a cash allowance to pay off a large and long-overdue fuel bill. It was a brutal winter and Richie, who hadn’t seen Bud in years, didn’t have the heart to say no. It was actually a rather distressing tale of woe that a former professional and proud man—who was now closing in on ninety years of age—would not have enough money all these years later to pay basic household bills. Bud informed Richie that the economic meltdown of several years previous did a real number on his retirement portfolio. It’s a cautionary tale, I fear, that all too many of us may be facing in retirement someday—if we make it that far and almost definitely when we are pushing ninety.

Looking back on it now, I suppose that Bud and Sally’s past Nathan’s Thanksgiving repast was a happier, less stressful dining moment than the one they’ll be having this year. As a postscript to this story: That sprawling, iconic Nathan’s restaurant was bulldozed a few years ago to make room for yet another strip mall. There is a much smaller, decidedly pedestrian Nathan’s in the mix of stores on the old spot, so Bud and Sally can dine there this Thanksgiving if they so desire and if, of course, they can afford it.