He was Bill Ewaniszyk to only a handful of people, most of whom it is fair to say didn’t know him well. To all others he was simply Billy E, and as coach of the Sacred Heart varsity boys he entered the 1966-67 basketball season with something to prove.
The season would be his second at the helm of the Hearts, and even though he'd been an assistant under former head man Adam Markowski, and even though he'd brought Sacred Heart home with a 14-3 Parochial League record in his first year as coach, by the fall of '66 there were still many in the parish who wondered if Billy was up to the exacting standards and legacy of winning that his predecessor, the esteemed (and often feared) Markowski had established in his nine-year run as the first and only head coach of the team.
But none of that mattered on that first Thursday of November. Not really. The work week was over. It was Friday – a crisp, autumn one at that – and Billy E could smell it. And before you chalk that up to merely bad writing, consider: in Syracuse, New York for the better part of the 20th Century, one could, quite literally, smell Friday.
The Syracuse of 1966 was a very Catholic city in a very Catholic part of the country. And Catholics the world over were forbidden from eating meat on Friday. (Depending upon the priest, such a transgression was either a venial sin, forgivable in Confession, or a mortal sin and, inasmuch, a one-way ticket to Hell.) Given that, and given the city’s booming numbers of Irishmen, Italians, Poles, Germans and other groups of practicing, fading and going-through-the-motions Catholics – most seeking, if at all possible, to avoid eternal damnation – being able to offer up something on Friday other than meat had developed into something of a cottage industry. To many enterprising businessmen – some of whom opened their shop doors only on Fridays – offering something other than meat meant one thing, and one thing only; fish, and lots of it. Fish by the carload. Fish by the truckload. Fish by the railcar. Not just any fish, however. Fried fish.
In Syracuse, every Friday just before lunchtime deep-fat fryers all across town were ignited and brought to a boil. Then, right around the noon hour, thousands of breaded fillets, many of them flaky pieces of haddock, were systematically dropped into wire baskets or laid out onto large flat screens and slowly lowered into tubs of popping, hissing, gurgling lard. The result was an aromatic cloud of salty sweetness that wafted over rooftops, crept through windows, and settled softly in neighborhoods all over town. By the time the after-work stampede started, those fryers had been churning for hours and that once-delicate aroma had grown into a smell so rich, full-bodied and mouth-watering that at times it seemed to take on a weight and texture all its own.
That aroma meant something vital to the Syracuse economy, too, and something as important to workplace productivity as food, sleep and shelter; something that helped a man pull himself out of bed each and every morning, run a comb through his hair, and trudge his way out the door.
What that aroma carried with it – and what was so essential to so many working Syracusans – was the promise of two days off. To local Syracusans in 1966 (even the non-Catholics), the smell of fish on a Friday was not just the smell of sustenance. It was not only the smell of lunch or dinner. It was the smell of liberation. It was the smell of freedom. It was the smell, by God, of weekend.
To walk outside at the end of a long workday, and to be able to raise your head and take in the unmistakable aroma of fish frying to a crispy, golden brown meant you had somehow made it through another week. And to be greeted by that smell on a Friday, and to know you could leave the job behind for two whole days was as mentally liberating as anything you might have experienced all week long.
That’s how Billy E felt every seventh day. Like Pavlov’s dog, when the work day ended on Friday afternoon, and Billy stepped out of that Allied Chemical plant, the minute he caught wind of all that delicious seafood frying in all those restaurants, social clubs and corner bars up and down Milton Ave, he not only got more bounce in his step, he got thirsty.
After work, Billy could stop for a cold beer in any number of taverns between work and home. But on Fridays – particularly in the days before basketball season – he liked to head to his standby, the Old Port Grill on Genesee Street, a homey retreat nestled in the shadows of the old railroad viaduct near Sacred Heart Church.
There were plenty of other taverns on the West Side of Syracuse as friendly and inviting as the Old Port; others that treated regulars like family or offered refuge from the nagging routine of life. But none was any more Polish, and none made Billy feel more at home, especially on Friday afternoons. Plus, as head coach of Sacred Heart he rarely had to pay for many drinks.
For years, if Sacred Heart was the virtual heart of Syracuse’s Polish community, then the Old Port was its soul. The Old Port was one of the first places that many from the old country would visit upon arrival, looking to get a line on work or maybe a place to live, and it was not uncommon to hear, above the steady din of Polka tunes and Bobby Vinton hits, spirited conversations about what the heck was wrong with Mickey Mantle or what Allie Sherman's Giants would have to do to beat Jimmy Brown and the Browns, all carried on entirely in the mother tongue.
That’s not to say the Old Port was entirely Polish. In fact, as the bar of choice for many workers at the Crucible Steel mill, it was as much a steelworker’s bar as it was a Polish one. And when a shift at Crucible let out and the cash registers really started humming – even the overnight shift, which broke just as the neighborhood kids were making their way to school in the morning – it was perhaps even more so.
Billy E loved the Old Port, not so much because he liked to drink, but because he loved to hold court. Billy possessed a disarming wit, was a colorful storyteller, and had an exuberant and engaging personality that could be as kinetic as it was infectious. The bespectacled coach was a ham by nature and relished the spotlight; in fact, for a brief time he was part of a comedy team that played the Catskills, back in the glory days of the old Borscht Belt. So when he began weaving a story, telling a joke, or trading zingers with the head bartender, Moe Pichura – himself a razor sharp wit – it was not uncommon for all eyes and ears up and down the long narrow bar to slowly but surely turn in Billy’s direction.
At times, of course, it was necessary for banter to take a back seat to business. In the Old Port’s case, that was the business of serving drinks – lots of drinks. The bar was, after all, a working man’s bar and most who set foot in the place did so to drink hard and fast. And more often than not, what those steelworkers and Polish regulars chose to get them where they needed to go was a shot of whiskey, followed by a chaser of cold, draft beer.
As far as beer went, the only two options the Old Port had on tap in the Fall of '66 were Genesee, from nearby Rochester, and Molson, a golden and slightly full bodied lager from Canada, two hours north. Meanwhile, behind the bar on backlit shelves, which illuminated the brown bottles and bathed the room in a warm, amber glow, stood dozens of quarts of rye whiskey, the vast majority of which were labeled either Seagrams 7 or its upscale cousin, VO.
So, while other options existed, and Moe was occasionally asked to whip up some exotic concoction like a Brandy Alexander or a Pink Squirrel for a lady, when a regular came in and ordered a drink, there was a good chance he'd soon find himself sitting in front of a shot glass of Seagrams 7 and an ice cold 10 oz. Genesee.
What was, perhaps, most amazing about the Old Port was to watch it run at peak capacity. When a shift let out at Crucible, or for that matter Allied, Church & Dwight, Pass & Seymour, Autolite, R.E. Dietz, Coca-Cola and any of the other plants within shouting distance, the bar would launch into full-scale, assembly-line mode.
This was especially true on Fridays. Moe and his partner, Cuz Rudy, would line up row after row of shots of whiskey and columns of pre-poured drafts in anticipation of the rush. Then, when those thirsty, sweaty workers burst through the door, Moe and Cuz would simply start handing out drinks. Or, if things got too crazy, they’d just let the men grab whatever they wanted from the pre-poured glasses on the bar.
And when they did this, the two bartenders never asked for a single penny, at least not at the height of the rush. In fact, sometimes if the demand got too overwhelming, and Moe and Cuz found themselves swimming upstream, they'd simply leave full bottles on the bar and have the steel workers pour their own.
This brand of tavern-style martial law would last for an hour or so during the lunch break. Then as the rush began to subside, and the working men one-by-one started leaving, heading either back to the plant or home to the little lady, Moe would ask, “How many?” If the patron said he had three shots and five beers, Moe would pretend to count in his head and then say something like, “OK, two shots. Four beers. That will be two dollars and twenty cents,” repeating the order in his trademark Polish whisper, not so much for the benefit of his internal accounting system, as much as a way of letting the guy know that two of those were on the house.
And such Friday craziness only got crazier during the greatest five months of the year, a stretch of winter also known as basketball season. From the start of tryouts in early November through the league playoffs and All-City Championship in March, the smell of fried fish not only reminded those hard working men that the weekend was looming right outside the door, it told fans across the city that in a few short hours five Parochial League games would tip off and somewhere in the city their beloved Heartsmen would once again be doing battle.
Billy E's stop that Friday was brief one. November 4th was Day Four of the 1966-67 season, and that afternoon he had work to do. In a few minutes he would be posting the final cuts for the varsity squad on his office door, and would then conduct his first practice with this season's full squad. For that reason Billy ended up having only two beers at the Old Port, the second of which he didn’t even finish because his ulcer had been acting up, and then went about the business of his usual thrust-and-parry with Moe.
Moe always refused to take Billy’s money, no matter how long or loudly the coach protested. Regardless of how many drinks he may have had, or how many rounds he might have bought, Moe never asked the Hearts coach for a dime. One time Billy even offered a stronger-than-usual protest and warned Moe that if he never took money he’d go out of business. Moe pointed his finger at Billy and frowned. “Look,” he asked, “Do I tell you how to coach those boys?” He then paused, raised his eyebrows and said, “Then don’t tell me how to run my bar.”
Having failed once again to convince Moe to take payment for goods and services rendered, Billy E got up, left a nice tip, and bounded out the rear door of the Old Port. Behind him he heard the din of conversation and the fading refrain of Sinatra crooning That’s Life, while up ahead he saw in the fresh darkness of evening a soft halo of light shining through the windows that circled the top of the Sacred Heart gym.
It was basketball season once again and for Billy E, the fun-loving but deeply committed coach of the Hearts, all was right with the world.
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