Esposito Meats was on Mulberry Street, not far from Canal, on the east side of the street next to Ferrara’s. Johnny Esposito ran the place and he made a display concerning the roots of the store in the neighborhood.
Before we go into Johhie’s place, when i make accurate duplicates of time and place, particularly when they will be gone, it’s the predictive moment that sometimes i’m aware of, but in this case, never thought about it being gone, until i found out it was gone.
The way to practice history, or even, simply, enjoy it, is to relax your presence. Our culture is no different in its thinking than any other. We have a monster built-in prejudice, part of which, is thinking, we are the first to transcend that, when we are no better.
This display was part of Johnnie Esposito’s life and was remembered by him, as lived, no different than any family taking pictures of themselves throughout their times together.
The way to practice history, or even, simply, enjoy it, is to relax your presence. Our culture is no different in its thinking than any other. We have a monster built-in prejudice, part of which, is thinking, we are the first to transcend that, when we are no better.
This display was part of Johnnie Esposito’s life and was remembered by him, as lived, no different than any family taking pictures of themselves throughout their times together.
Your family immediately gets to work at its business – meats.
This type of family business, even for immigrants, could support an extended family network. I have another friend, Frank Azman, who runs a generational Slovenian sausage business, and his father and three brothers supported many people from grandparents to grandchildren from a single neighborhood shop.
The immigrant years, when so many came, often from the same areas, were boom times on a working-class level.
As Italians, all of them had close ties to the Church, which usually meant Catholic, and was the case in every immigrant neighborhood in every city in America. And people, like Johnnie, who was young at the time, remembered its beginings and the rise of Italian-American culture after enough American-born had occurred.
The window of Esposito Meats with the Easter lambs on display. Being from Italy, the country that did so much to define and build large cities, the tenements and narrow streets were nothing new to the descendants of Roman culture.
In ancient Roman cities, seven story stone tenemnets with shops at street level in narrow alleys dwarfed by the apartments, were the typical “slum” dwellings of the time, and weren’t much different than the Lower Manhattan blocks such as Little Italy.
Johnnie Esposito, shootin the breeze, at his block in 1987, while taking care of an order.
Taking care of business on Mulberry Street since coming here with his parents back around the turn of the century before World War I.
Hangin out with Johnnie, though, was, by far, one of the best ways to spend time. Like many his age he had a lived history with Little Italy and could tell stories and andecdotes that could really fill things out.
Not to mention the folks who were stopping by to get their meats, who, like Johnnie were friendly and outgoing good neighbors and fellows, and, if comfortable with you, would tell some good tales.
But there was nothing like Easter which called for lamb. It was a good time to come around the shop, which was nowhere near bustling. Johnnie was in his 80s, and took special orders. I never really thought about it until now, i guess, because my place in Brooklyn and most everywhere i went, looked the same, but Johnnie’s place was an antique, even back then. I just thought of it as another old place, but the more they went the way of disappearing, the more i understood them as antique, and worth something, if only as an image.
I’ve always hung around older folks. Before i turned thirty it ws forced. It was at work, where the older people were very well represented. Later on, in my work amd where i lived, i always had older friends – two and half times older. You certainly learn a lot.
But there’s a lot more.
Can you imagine cutting meat your whole life at the age of 86? Johnnie could butcher up a storm and take care of his Easter orders, and do it like the Italian shops did for one hundred years – utilizing the whole animal.
Esposito’s had a reputation as a good place to hangout. When it was a busy shop, it would be crowded on Saturdays with neighborhood men staying clear of their wives on busy Saturdays.
Now that Johnnie was a lot older, i would enjoy the times in his shop when it was quiet and he would sometimes drift off, but never stop talking, in a kind of free-form story-mode and reminence.
Having many older friends, i found a gift, over time, with the way they could transfer knowledge, especially if the trust was there.
Johnnie, was a character. He had a lot of character. Wouldn’t have it, any other way.
He liked playing around with the camera as much as myself, and, here, Johnnie is reminding youse to pay up, or, perhaps, suffer the consequences, and end up like an Easter lamb on Good Friday, reminding you that he will send his messenger if need be.
Mr. Esposito, in street clothes, with a picture of his mother and father in the background.
Johnnie butchered a lot of lambs in his time. And they tasted great.
Johnnie Esposito
But i think his main occupation is that he enjoyed the hell out of life, here on Mulberry Street, where it was better than a good life.
It was a pleasure to be around him and his humor, serious recollections and complete openness. So much so, that i would trade just about anything new today, for it.
Nostalgia? To return home generates warmth, familiarity and original friendships. Don’t confuse that with how i judge home and friends. It’s simple empirical comparisons, having lived long enough and been on every side of so much, to be accurate by virtue of experienced proof. More than what i prefer, it was a better time, complete with, what we now call, the bad old days, in our cities. How stupid dismissing that fact, by virtue of something negatively deemed, nostalgic, when that can actually be turned into a power. When i find a better time, i’ll revise this, but, for now, it’s the simple truth.
This situation where memory is seen as trapped by nostalgia, seems a contemporary conceit. Memory (history) evaluates the present moment innately by documenting in real time and place, that which, by its nature, will never survive the ongoing contemporary world, but will remain a marker of a time, that i call better.
