KNOBBY KNISHES AND CARCINOGENIC "ENDS"

Mrs. Friedman has likely gone on to her heavenly reward, but her influence lingers in my perennial struggle with obesity and bittersweet memories four decades old. Ominous numbers tattoed to her forearm, she sent two sons through medical school, wore a God-awful sheitel and spoke mangled English through a goulashy Hugarian drawl. Hence, the name of her well-garlicked establishment, Hungarian Kosher Sausage Company, situated in once glorious Albany Park on Chicago’s northside.

“Hungarian” was never to be confused with the grossly mediocre Romanian Kosher Sausage Company, which cranked out provender without passion from a retrofitted supermarket in a neighborhood that bore nary a whiff of Yiddishkeit.

One phrase that Mrs. Friedman’s Hungarian accent could not obfuscate was “my boys.” To be one of her boys inferred special considerations: a look-who’s-here greeting, hyper-fatty deli rejects squirreled away just for us, and a spate of other minor indulgences. She still made us pay full price for “real” food, but then again, I cannot remember even once purchasing so much as a quarter-pound of real pastrami over her counter.

What then? The roundtrip from Yeshiva to Mrs. Friedman’s domain was 16 miles through Chicago’s ooze-along traffic. But, the lunches at Yeshiva were infamous. So, two, three times a week we commandeered Mike Myers’s car for a lusty Mittagessen of sodden meat knishes and “ends.”

The knishes were misshapen, underbaked rejects with an enticingly gooey filling of ground corned beef, onions and garlic, bound with egg and tallow. They were so greasy that one dare not lay them on a talllis or a page of Chumash for fear of permanent desecration.

Ah, “ends.” Have you figured out what they are? A week’s worth of the fattiest, gnarliest chunks of leftover corned beef, pastrami, roast beef, bologna, salami – all rejected from sale to respectable customers and secreted away under the counter, because they were “ends.” These were so patently unhealthy that even Mrs. Friedman sternly warned me in all my rotundity to stay away from them.

On occasional Sundays, Mrs. Friedman would slather fatty flanken with a rub of paprika and garlic, then smoke them to an unctuous veneer. If you didn’t wash your hands meticulously, your steering wheel got so greasy that odds of getting home without an accident were all but nil.

Were misfit knishes and ends ever takeout food? No, never. Not that Hungarian had an al fresco courtyard shaded by gay umbrellas. We dined at vinyl-topped stools surrounding a wheezing freezer that vaguely resembled a coffin, a portent perhaps of the years that saturated fat stole from our lives. A bottle of Plochman’s “real Chicago-style” mustard passed among us as we squeezed and schmeered knishes and “ends” on butcher paper. Did we ever bring back orders for Yeshiva boys left behind? Go get your own. Couldn’t find a ride to get you there? Mike Myers’s Chevy Nova held five. Otherwise, toughies.

Ultimately, the Albany Park neighborhood went bad, and Hungarian moved uptown. “Ends” disappeared, as did the coffin and stools. Likewise malformed knishes, as only perfectly shaped ones were now spat out by some hi-tech robot. Too many customers to afford a special greeting; take a number and wait like everyone else. They were selling weird foods like fried chicken and barbecue beef. Go ahead, why don’t you? Replace the Statue of Liberty with J Lo carved in halvah.

I wonder if any of her other “boys” of the ‘60s remember cockeyed knishes and carcinogenic “ends” or whether, despite two stents, I am the last one standing. If only I could find the rest of the survivors, I know that we would reminisce richly of forty years gone by and wistfully toast each other on the departure of our youth, Mike Myers’s Chevy Nova, the coffin, knobby knishes, “ends,” Mrs. Friedman, and all the rest . . . over heart-healthy carrot sticks dipped in yoghurt.