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On February 1,
2004, I had the distinct pleasure and privilege of chatting with
82-year old Murray Handwerker and his wife, Dorothy. The son of
Nathan Handwerker (founder in 1916 of Nathan's Famous in Coney Island), Murray was the visionary
who, with Dorothy, took over ownership and operation the then closed
Roadside Rest
in late 1956 and brought back its success and its
glory and fame to our
little town. In 1959, that glory and fame was enhanced
exponentially when the Roadside Rest took on the Nathan's name.
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As discussed in detail elsewhere
on this site, until 1942, the Roadside Rest was a place of great
popularity and renown that had fallen on bad times during and after World War II. According to Murray, it was so rundown that it was closed for the
summer of 1956 and put up for sale by its debt-ridden owner. But
meanwhile, a
building boom had caused the population of suburban Long Island towns to
begin grow rapidly after the war, and in Oceanside, it exploded in
1955. Murray saw opportunity.
Below are some selected excerpts of my
conversation with the Handwerkers:
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HL: |
So I have some questions I would like to ask you if you don't mind. |
| MH: |
Oh, I don't mind. If I can answer it, I'll be very happy to. |
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HL: |
I appreciate that very much. I'm going
to go chronologically. |
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MH: |
Well, you'll put my brain in order because it been a long time since
my wife and I took over that operation, and it
was just the two of us |
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HL: |
How old were you
then? |
| MH: |
I was about 35 years old. |
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HL: |
Newsday said the property had been closed for while before you
took over. |
| MH: |
Yes, the owner
[Murray Hadfield]
went to Florida and had some problems, and he put it up
for sale. |
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HL: |
Do you know how
long it was closed? |
| MH: |
Oh, I think it was closed maybe one summer because it was run down and
he, of course, had to make a deal to get out of the property himself; he
had some debt that he had to resolve. Oh, it was a short time; it
was one summer. I took it over right after the summer
[October
5, 1956].
I
always believed in working into the community as part of a going
business. So I became very active in the Oceanside Board of Trade right
away. They were happy to see someone take over the property, renovate it and
bring it back to life. Nothing was happening or developing along
Long Beach Road because the Roadside Rest was a rundown
operation. A lot of people weren't renewing their leases. But we put a little "jazz" into the whole community. |
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HL: |
What attracted
you to invest in the Roadside Rest? |
| MH: |
Long Beach Road was a major road to go to the Atlantic Ocean and to Long
Beach, and that's why I thought we did enough investigations to see what
was happening on Long Island after the war ended. People were
coming back from all over the world, and they were really moving out to
the Island. That's when Levitt built their major community, and
housing developed on Long Island. |
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HL: |
When you took over in 1956 or early 1957, did you remove the round tables [shown
in post cards circa
1940] and put in
the picnic tables? |
| MH: |
Yes, we had to change them almost right away 'cause a lot of them were
rusted -- not in good shape; they were metal tables. |
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HL: |
When you
operated the Roadside Rest before it was Nathan's, were you
serving Nathan's hot dogs? |
| MH: |
They were made by the same company that made Nathan's hot dogs, and I
had arrangements to have them made with the same formula that Nathan's
was using. The formula was my mother's formula, the spice formula,
and I wanted to make sure that the quality and the standards were of
that type. |
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HL: |
So they were
effectively the same hot dogs. |
| MH: |
Absolutely. Of course, we had a little battle between the
companies, but we worked things out
-- fortunately. |
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HL: |
Were the fries
the same? |
| MH: |
Certainly, yes, absolutely. We used Mazola corn oil, and the
potatoes came from Maine. The Maine potato was the best potato for
frying. I took my knowledge that I developed in Coney Island when
I was there and used that to develop the Murray-Oceanside operation. |
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(Continued
below) |
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| Ash tray used in
the early days of our Nathan's |
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Promotional
glass tumbler given away at our Nathan's opening
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HL: |
Let's jump to 1959 when the property became
a Nathan's. |
| MH: |
Well, my father was very concerned that I would have less of an
involvement with the Nathan's operation if I stayed involved with
Oceanside, and he came to me and wanted to know if I was willing to
merge it into the Nathan's organization. I knew what the potential
was with Nathan's, but I wasn't 100% sure of the l-o-o-o-n-g
[Murray
stretched that word] term
advantage of being with Nathan's rather than being on my own. So
we thought about it because my wife and I really went all out to put all
our own personal investments into that operation. It was
ours. The result was that Nathan's, of course, took it over with a
long-term lease, and then I sold out everything. |
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HL: |
One last question for you, Murray. You are
82 years old. Do you still eat hot
dogs?
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| MH: |
Absolutely! |
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Newsday ad for
opening day, June 4,
1959 |
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