The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (45 page)

After his little chicken shack had burned to the ground, my dad was penniless. Because he wasn’t properly insured, everything was a total loss, and he had absolutely no money to start up another business. His health was suffering, too; he had gotten emphysema from all the smoke he inhaled in the fire. It was a very hard time in our family. My mom was already working full-time as she always had, and my brothers and I were doing whatever we could to bring in extra money. Still, for a long time after the fire, there was never enough. Everyone was saying how unlucky my dad had been, which started to bother me, so I went right up to him and asked him if he was unlucky. “Maybe yes,” he said, “maybe no.”

One day I heard him on the phone taking a call. “Really?” he was saying. “How can this be? Are you sure?” And then, “Great! I’ll take it!” I walked into the hallway where the phone was and he looked at me and said, “Honey, we are back in business!” I can remember to this day how thrilled he was. A salesman who had been one of my dad’s suppliers at the chicken shack told my dad that the meat-packing company was going to give him the start-up money to open a new place, and that they had found the perfect location for him as well. I said, “See, Dad? You are lucky after all, aren’t you?” Again he just looked at me and said, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

A few months later, Morry’s Deli (named after my dad) opened up on Chicago Avenue in downtown Chicago; my brothers and I worked there every day after school. From the beginning, there was always a line out the door, and this time I knew my dad was really going to make it. Then one day he came home looking forlorn, and said that Northwestern Medical School was
expanding and taking over our space, so we would have to find a new location. This can’t be, I remember thinking. We were just starting to do so well. Just to check, I said, “I guess we’re not so lucky after all, Pops,” and he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

My dad began looking for a new place. When the word got out that he needed a new location, a landlord back in Hyde Park, where the original chicken shack had been, contacted him and said that he had the perfect spot and that, again, everyone would help with the cost of moving back to Hyde Park. He was so happy—in fact, we were all so happy since, for my brothers and me, it was a whole lot easier getting to Hyde Park than downtown Chicago from where we lived. The day he signed the new lease, I felt I had to set the luck record straight, so I said, “I guess this means our luck has changed for the better, right, Dad?” “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

The new store was also a success from the day it opened. I loved it. My brothers and I would race around seeing who could make the sandwiches fastest, especially Dad’s corned beef sandwiches, a house specialty. Dad’s health was getting worse, but somehow we were able to manage. My brothers Gary and Bobby took turns running the store, and I would work all summer when I was back from school.

Only two years after the store opened, though, we had another fire. It happened at night, at least, so the blessing was that nobody was hurt. This time, I said outright to my dad that I thought he was the unluckiest man in the world, thinking that finally he would agree. “Maybe yes,” he said, “maybe no.”

It turned out that the fire was caused by an electrical short that had started in the apartments next door. The landlord, knowing that my dad had been doing such great business, put him on notice that he was going to triple the rent after he rebuilt the place. There was no way we could afford it, so, at
the age of seventy, with his emphysema getting worse, my dad began looking, once again, for another location. When word got out, a representative from the University of Chicago, who loved my dad (not to mention his food), called up and said they had this place right on campus and would my dad like to open the first private business ever on the university campus? The spot was perfect, right by the bookstore and a hospital where thousands of people worked, and the rent was affordable. “Wow,” my dad said, “I’d love to!” Then he called up his old landlord to say he wasn’t moving back in. The landlord was in such shock that he offered him back his spot totally rebuilt, and for less rent than he had been paying before. Now my dad was the one in shock. He took both places.

Soon, with my brother Gary’s help, both places were up and running—and successful beyond my father’s wildest dreams. For the first time ever, there was enough money—more than enough. My dad knew, too, that my mom would be taken care of after he was gone, and he was so proud that Gary would carry on the family business. I went up to him one day as all this was happening and I said, “You know what, Pops? You are one lucky duck.”

This time, to my utter amazement, he said: “Yep, Suze, you got that right.”