LIKES:
Late nights at the Fillmore East, getting high before class in the Social Studies bathroom, spending time with his girlfriend, Sue Kates.
DISLIKES:
Narcs, authority, getting hassled by school principal Dr.
Bixler.
Now, set the controls for 1970 and read on…
Chapter 29
"Bruce & Sue Go To Kuck's"
Sue missed Bruce the week he was in Miami. Sue was no longer
a stranger to Bruce’s hash pipe. And she never smoked alone. Boy and girl
sucked heartily together, burning down little coals of Red Lebanese, Green
Moroccan and Black Afghani. They smoked openly along the sidewalks of town on
Middle Neck Road, where all the teenagers of Great Neck engaged in social
intercourse. Wall’s was Great Neck’s primary record store. Disoto once bought
hit singles right off the charts to play on his mono record player. But now he
only bought albums, having graduated to a stereo with two speakers. What began
as underground music had now risen in the record industry to an artistic
pinnacle. Musical freedom flourished in 1970, even Motown artists like Marvin
Gaye and Stevie Wonder broke free and evolved into album rock. Some kind of
genius turned loose in the universe that rock groups tapped into. As such,
Disoto picked out a $3 album each week. He found enlightenment. He watched his
stack of albums grow thicker, in competition with the stacks of friends. As a
matter of prestige, boys compared their record collections. They studied liner
notes and album credits, fascinated by who played every note on each cut. There
was a ritual smell of the vinyl, the sound of the plastic wrapping uncrinkling
through the night from the garbage pail. An album required multiple listens to
reveal itself, and then you were under its spell. It peaked after 10 or 20
plays; as you came down from one album, you fell in love with another.
Bruce chose some serendipitously, from the lure of the
cover. The first King Crimson album, for instance, with the flaring nostrilled
ghoul. Robert Fripp’s Mellotron aroused unbroached aural passageways of the
brain. Blodwyn Pig split off from Jethro Tull; there was Atomic Rooster, Tin
House, Buzzy Linhart’s Music, a psychedelic masterpiece; Santana’s Abraxas,
Traffic’s John Barleycorn, Chicago II, Johnny Winter And,
the studio album with Rick Derringer; Edgar Winter’s Entrance, the
Allmans’ Idlewild South, James Gang Rides Again, Mountain’s Climbing!,
Jethro Tull’s Benefit, Hendrix and Buddy Miles’ Band of Gypsys,
Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, Clapton’s Layla, The Who’s Live
at Leeds, Woodstock, CSN&Y Déjà Vu, Let It Bleed, Bridge
Over Troubled Water, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Cosmo’s Factory,
Bitches Brew, Free’s Fire and Water, The Kinks Lola,
Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, Spirit’s 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus,
and Morrison Hotel.
A few doors over from Wall’s was an even stranger world of
cheese. Kuck’s Gourmet Cheesatorium at 34 Middle Neck Road had just as many
cheeses as Wall’s had albums. If there was a cheese for every wine, Bruce
decided there might be a cheese that complimented hash. A specific bacterium
that went with green Moroccan, one for black Afghani and one for red Lebanese.
The two teenagers entered Kuck’s Cheesatorium smashed, in
search of cheese. Great Neck’s most mysterious proprietor resembled Charles
Laughton as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He was nasty to everyone except the
old cheesers who were his primary customers. There was much speculation about
Kuck’s past. He was a portly German who emigrated to Great Neck right after the
war. Before Great Neck had become a predominantly Jewish enclave. At the start
of WWII, a German bakery in Great Neck named Uhlman’s put a sign in their
window: “We are not Nazis, we are Americans.” Several Japanese citizens of
Great Neck Plaza lost their businesses and were sent to internment camps. As
such, a cloud of suspicion hung over old man Kuck. Swastikas were graffitied
onto his front window with regularity by schoolchildren, an albatross the poor
merchant had to bear. He was constantly erasing Kuck the Schmuck or Kuck
the Fuck from his window. He locked bicycle chains across the glass front
doors every night.
Kuck was first and foremost a man of cheese. A professional Käseschmecker
or Goûteur de fromage. The store’s design could only come from the
sensibility of an obsessive European. “Cheeses of the World” filled every nook
and cranny, exotic cheeses for sophisticated palates. Many were not available
anywhere else, not even in New York City. The Swiss cheeses and more common
varieties came from SS Pierce of Boston, with whom Kuck’s had an association.
He imported the most obscure aged fromage from French villages and
German hamlets, cheeses named after their towns. Even a few from Africa. Kuck
had his own personal sources, but it was hard to imagine much profit incentive
in stocking these rarities shipped in small units. Perhaps he earned his profit
sending “telefood” gift baskets around the world. These included cheese
“condolence parcels,” ordered for funerals of lifelong customers.
Kuck’s also sold items of convenience. He once offered baked
goods, and an old commercial bread oven lay in ruin at the back of the store.
First thing in the morning, his employees would take the lettuce shipments to
the back room sink to rinse and remove any brown leaves. Then stock each
vegetable with the nicest side facing the customer. Kuck did daily inspections.
“Sunny side up,” he demanded. He went ballistic when customers squeezed the
produce—“Don’t touch ze fruit!”—getting all red in the face and spouting
obscenities in some German dialect.
When customers walked in they were assaulted by an aroma so
pungent that most did a pirouette right out the door before keeling over. The
Limburger stench was astringent as ammonia. Kuck was oblivious to it. Only the
most arcane connoisseurs could handle the smell—a small clientele of old
cheesers, wealthy connoisseurs who were the backbone of his business.
On the last Friday of each month, his best customers would
gather for private samplings after the store had closed. Retired doctors who’d
had practices in Great Neck since the 1920s, an ancient heiress or two,
holdovers from the Gilded Age of Long Island’s Gold Coast. On this occasion,
the old cheesers went into cheese heaven, where samples were gorged upon like
drugs. A fine Stilton served with a 30-year-old bottle of Port, cheddars that
tasted like rancid soap to all but the most sophisticated Old World palate.
Kuck demonstrated his expertise, naming each exotic schmear by its odor
and taste.
“Unt now, mine friends, I giff you un zample of Stilton chez
vat nobody eff ever tried.” Rude though he was with the general public, he
reserved his fine manners for the cheese aficionados. A customer or two was
known to have vomited, but it only improved the store’s smell. Dulled by age,
their dormant taste buds and olfactory senses could only be revived by the most
rancid of Limburger. Which furthermore stimulated the gastrointestinal tract,
inspiring the most ambitious bowel movements they’d experienced in years.
Kuck was known to despise children. He followed them down
the aisles and chased them out. Kuck the Schmuck, Kuck the Fuck, or
Kuck, that Nazi. Kids were the bane of his existence, not his target
audience. So, as “Deutschland über Alles” played over a PA when Bruce and Sue
entered, Kuck went on alert. He braced himself to overhear, for the thousandth
time, that he was a Nazi.
Well, had he been one? Nobody knew. Certainly nobody ever
asked him point blank, no one ever investigated. Perhaps Kuck would have been
low enough on the totem pole of Nazi war criminals to never turn up on Simon
Wiesenthal’s radar, nor the Israeli government, like Adolf Eichmann. He evaded
capture at the Nuremberg Trials hiding behind cheese. He wasn’t living in
Argentina. He was living right in the middle of the most Jewish suburb in the
United States, surrounded by Great Neck psychiatrists. Could these psychiatrists’
wives been buying their cheese from the Butcher of Buchenwald?
“Do you sell Velveeta?” asked Disoto. Kuck sensed he was
being mocked.
“You vill go to the supermarket for that,” said Kuck.
“How about blood sausage and head cheese?” Disoto continued.
“Schwartamaga?!” yelled Kuck.
“Umwelt?” came Disoto.
And at this, Kuck exploded. The man of cheese dragged Disoto
to the back of the store. Though his body reeked of cheese, he was big, burly
and strong, and was able to hoist Disoto off his feet. He opened the hatch to
the old broken oven.
“This is where you belong!”
Disoto was taken aback by the man’s strength as he hoisted
and stuffed him headfirst into the oven.
This was where Disoto remained for 45 minutes, as Sue
summoned Mrs. Disoto to come and get him. Disoto lay sobbing in a fetal
position when Kuck dragged him out to present to his mother. Not since he was
made to stand in a garbage can by his 5th grade teacher, Mr. Hale,
was he so humiliated. She found Mr. Kuck unpleasant, his red face in a huff.
Bruce would never enter Kuck’s again.
Years later, after Kuck died, some local historian postulated that he may have rescued three or four Jews during the war. Maybe not as many as Schindler, but nonetheless he risked his life to harbor several. Kuck moved to Great Neck himself because he was so fond of Jews in Germany, then came to despise them because they assumed he was a Nazi. The same Jews who swore never to buy a Volkswagen or Mercedes, like the Morgansterns and Einsidlers. Even Dr. Bixler—that paragon of reason and fair-mindedness—never set foot in his establishment. Had they heard he might have been a savior, the legend of Kuck’s Gourmet Cheesatorium would have played out differently.
© 2026 Josh Alan Friedman, all rights reserved
