She Can Still Put It Away

Mummy Plotnik seems to be losing weight, but you wouldn't know it by the amount of food she can put away. Yesterday at the fabled Langer's in MacArthur Park, she ate that whole corned beef sandwich, muttering "This is really, really delicious" the whole time. Pickles too. All gone.

Langer's has been in that same spot since 1947. The pastrami has always been the best in town, and ditto for that amazing rye bread, but the neighborhood, with the exception of Langer's, is 100% Latino and Korean now, with lots and lots of Mom n' Pop stores selling cheap clothing, package shipping services to Guatemala, dolls wearing flouncy, tiny baptism dresses, hairnet boys selling pupusas and tacos, and trucks serving mariscos and chultes. What are chultes? Plotnik is not sure. He was too full from the pastrami to walk over and order one.

His guess is fried something.

Langer's sells caps, which is great for Plotnik's collection. He fully intends to go on a nationwide Best Pastrami search one of these days, stopping only in those beat-up, rapidly-disappearing delis in large, metropolitan cities, where they make fabulous pastrami and also sell caps.

If Plot had been carrying his old Flip Cam, he could have made a small inter-generational and inter-cultural documentary yesterday, as Mummy P. was forced to use the bathroom in the back of the Tango Bar, which is next door to Langer's. Langer's bathrooms are upstairs and if you can't get up the stairs you are allowed to use the rest room at the Tango.

The Tango makes The Peaks look like the Copacabana. Completely dark, a few sullen and sodden Latinos at the bar, Porky Pig cartoons in Spanish blaring from grainy TVs, Mummy P. with her cane and her son guiding her by the arm, slowly make it through the bar to the bathroom which is padlocked with three locks and rolls of chain.

The owner is kindly. He unlocks all the locks on the bathroom door and peels back the chain, then takes Mummy P. by the arm to help guide her. She stares at him like he just ate her pickle. He backs away.

As Plottie waits outside the door for her, he can't help thinking about the half of his scrumptious Pastrami sandwich that he hasn't eaten yet, getting cold back at the table next door. He hopes they won't automatically clear it away. And he knows she'll have to go to the bathroom again before they finish.

But the bathroom is so bad she decides not to use it again, and the sandwiches are still there when they get back, and the hostess is kind enough to offer to let M.P. wait with her while Plotnik goes to get the car in the lot in the next block and drive it back to pick his mom up.

"That was scrumptious," she says. "All these years and I'd never been here."

"Scratch it off your list, Mom," says Plotnik.