Daisy, Dave and Kareem Cheeze

Dave, Daisy and TGP
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

Dave and Daisy are retiring this morning, the lazy louts. They've only been working since they were 16 -- Dave is 84, Daisy is 80 -- and they figure it's high time they take the riches they've amassed slicing bagels, spreading cream cheese and toasting Egg Tasties at Manhattan Bagel on 24th Street, and begin to live the life of leisure.

In this photo, Daisy and Dave pose with The Great Plotnik's bagel representative Kareem Cheeze. Cheeze has been ordering half a dozen poppyseed bagels every Saturday morning for more years than he wants to remember, after his game of Plotzketball at James Plotz Middle School. He will miss Dave and Daisy's smiling faces, miss talking to them about their childhoods on the Lower East Side, and the one-penny mustard sandwiches, and the potato soup at Galishoff's, and the rich life everyone knew back then, even without an extra nickel for salami.

Dave and Daisy will be remembered for inventing the hole in the bagel. Before them, the hole was a six pointed star. That got shortened to a parallelogram and then an isoceles triangle. "Then I had an idea," says Dave. "A hole's a hole."

The Great Plotnik sends congratulations to Dave and Daisy, and wishes for many more happy years. Saturday morning's poppyseed bagel with cream cheese, sliced red onion and tomato will never be the same. Plotnik just may switch to jelly donuts.