Louie Lesak

When I was five, my family moved from Whitinsville, Massachusetts, to the nearby town of Uxbridge. I always thought it funny that we moved from one Oak Street to another.

Oak Street in Uxbridge ran from Mendon Street to a fork in the road, where it split to the left and became Granite Street.  The right fork ran up over a small hill where my father bought a small parcel of land. Here he built our home. In the middle of the fork was a World War II memorial with a flag pole that displayed a large American flag. Facing this was a small store selling goods and candy called “Lesak’s Store.” My family always called it The Little Store.

The building was a one-room affair. It was painted grey with white trim, and because it was built into the hill, it had three granite steps leading up to the door.  Inside the store, everything was quaint and old fashion. The floor was made of heavy wooden planks, while the two counters were made of dark-stained maple with wainscotting. Two lights hung down from the ceiling with green metal lampshades. The ice cream chest to your right held snow cones, fudgesicles, nutty buddies, Eskimo pies, and small cups of vanilla and chocolate ice cream with wooden spoons attached to the tops. I didn’t particularly like eating with the wooden spoons because of the sensation on my tongue. It gave me the willies.

Directly in front was the counter on which the cash registrar stood and various items on display. To the left of that was the penny candy counter with its curved glass viewing top. It seemed to me it held every type of candy in the world! And because Mr. Lesak smoked a pipe, the entire store smelled of rich pipe tobacco.

Behind the store was the Lesak’s home, a barn and, behind the barn, a vegetable garden. They kept chickens, so there were fresh farm eggs for sale but only a carton or two a week. 

 Mrs. Lesak, known as Mama, would bake round homemade Polish bread with a nice hard crust.  My mother would give me a dollar and tell me to hurry up and rush down to buy it every Thursday before someone else could. I would also buy her a pack of Lucky Strikes because, in those days, it was still alright to sell cigarettes to kids to take home to their parents. I have to admit the fresh eggs and bread were delicious. 

           By this time, I was around seven, and my mother would often send me down alone to buy something she might need for cooking or baking that she had forgotten to buy while out shopping. She never worried about me going alone because it was only to Lesak’s right down the street. She’d say, “Watch out for cars coming over the hill!” That was it! How easy life was.

I got to know Mr. Lesak and his wife from running all those errands for my mother. Mr. Lesak, who my father called Louie, was straight from the old country-Poland. He spoke broken English but not so bad as to be unable to be understood. He was probably around seventy-two and stood five feet and four inches tall, not much taller than most of us kids.  I remember that he always had a face full of gray stubble. Plus, all the time I knew him, he wore the same soft hat. 

 I loved his accent. If I walked in alone, Mr. Lesak would greet me with, “Hello, boys!” The first couple of times that happened, I looked around to see who came in with me. Cigarettes were thirty-eight cents a pack, and my mother would give me forty cents. Mr. Lesak would say, “You don’t want change. You want candies!” He then would walk behind the counter, “So, what you want?”

Buying candy from Mr. Lesak was fun because he wasn’t much taller than the counter. It had the effect of operating one of those crane machines, you know, the kind you can try to pick up a toy for a dime. Because he was so short, he couldn’t always see what you were pointing to. It would go something like this. 

“I’d like two squirrel chews, please.”

“Where are they?”

“To the right.” He’d go left.

“No. My right.”

“This right?”

“Yeah. Now come forward. A little more. Now a little to the left. YOU GOT IT!” 

 On Sunday afternoons, we all watched Sunday Afternoon at the Movies.  Before the show started, my father would call for a “chip-in.” A chip-in meant that we kids would all go to our rooms, return with some money, and put it in the kitty with my father’s donation. We were then sent down to the little store and told to buy as much candy as we could with what we had. Poor Mr Lesak. He must have hated to see me and my three sisters come in, all of us asking for what we liked simultaneously. He worked really hard for that dollar fifty!

I have a confession to make. Once, I attempted to put one over on Mr. Lesak. You see, there was a soft drink that only came in quart bottles named KIST, and there was a five-cent rebate if you brought the bottle back. Mr. Lesak stored the returns in crates by his chainlink fence behind the store. I found out I could stick my finger into the open top and, with my other hand, move the bottle up to the top, where I could lift it over the fence. And I did. I must have looked guilty as I gave him his bottle and asked for the nickel because he looked at me hard and asked, “ Where you’d get this bottle? I don’t remember you buying it here.” I swallowed hard, “Yeah, you weren’t here. I bought from it your wife.” Looking me straight in the eye, he nodded his head.  “OK, but from now on, you buy soda when I’m here, yes?” He gave me my nickel, and I asked, “Can I have a Devil Dog, please?” A Devil Dog in those days was as big as a hot dog bun and only cost a nickel, and they were moist, not dry like they are now.  You’d be in trouble if you ate one of those before supper. I ate it.

                                                              …  

The years passed, and one day when I was around fifteen, I walked into the store to buy an ice cream. By then, Mr. Lesak must have been about 82, sitting in front of a fan, looking tired.

“Hello, boys.”

“Hi, Mr. Lesak. How are you today?”

“Ahh.”  

I bought an Eskimo pie and put my dime on the counter.

Mr. Lesak removed his pipe and sighed. “You know I have something to tell you. Take good care of your health, eat vegetables, and work hard. Make sure to practice doing all your chores, and then someday, maybe you will win an award for something and be famous for a week or a day. However long it last, you will never forget in your heart and feel good. He then took a bronze medal about the size of a coin with a worn satin ribbon from his coat pocket and showed it to me.

“You see this? I won this medal for speed skating in the Nordic Games in 1901. I came in third. That’s what I am saying to you. You understand?”

I looked at the prized medal. “Yes, Mr. Lesak, I understand.”

“Good, good. I hope someday you, too, will be a success. Just remember what I have told you and you’ll be alright. He then did something I don’t remember him ever doing. He smiled.

Mr. Lesak passed away shortly after, and I read his obituary in the Evening Gazette. It said his name was Leonek Lesak. Puzzled, I asked my father why he always called him Louie. He said, “I just felt it was easier to say Louie Lesak than Leo Lesak.” I stared at him for a long minute before blinking, my mind totally blown.

Mr. Lesak gave me, a fifteen-year-old boy, sage advice.  I’d forgotten it until now. So to whoever is listening, remember Mr. Lesak’s advice. Success can be yours if you work for it.