First Posting: George and John are Back

It was just like the old days this morning. George and John were back at the fruit stand, bantering in Greek to the bread delivery guy and their various old school friends who just happened to be walking by. It had been an every-day morning ritual for the neighborhood, to cruise down the hill for a carton of milk or package of strawberries and listen to George and John and Nick and Gus and all their buddies, smoking cigarettes and laughing hysterically at jokes we couldn't understand -- but yes we could.

George and John sold the fruit stand to two guys from their home town in Greece, who are a generation younger and more able to handle the work load. The new guys have spiffed everything up -- you look for the Acme baguettes in baskets on the floor where they used to be but now they're packed neatly onto shelves. There's parsley where the sign says 'parsley' instead of a nicely mixed up mess of two kinds of parsley and cilantro falling into the kale and chard. The sales clerks still speak to us and to each other in Spanish, which neither George or John nor the new owners can understand. They stay open until 8pm now, an hour past the old closing time.

One thing that hasn't changed is oranges. Juice oranges are outside, larger juice oranges are inside in the corner, Australian oranges are in the middle of the store and fancypants oranges are over by the honey tangerines.

John pulled Plotnik to the side. "I want to thank you for all you did for us," he said, probably referring to an article or two Plot wrote about the men and their store for various publications. The truth is this fruit stand slash meeting place has boosted the quality of life of the entire neighborhood. No supermarkets for us. The only thing you can't buy here is meat, and that's not completely true -- they've got Molinari and Greek salamis in the cooler.

John and George are retired gentlemen now, but George still is wearing the same blue sweat shirt and nice brown shoes. His Beamer is still parked in the driveway. John's got that same oversized jacket and ratty tennis shoes. You can't work as hard as these two did all their working lives and not miss it. They'll probably be hanging around more and more.

While neighbors passed by, saw George and John and gave them big hugs, the new owner stood by quietly in his red t-shirt. No hugs for him. Yet.