IN 1951, MAX BIELER BOUGHT A FAILED RESTAURANT in downtown Binghamton and turned it into an Army-Navy store. His family members, who were not shy with their opinions, assumed he would call it Max’s Army-Navy Store. But Max was determined to call it Mac’s, and no squawking by his family could alter his mind. Suits and diamond rings you bought from a Jew, he said, but it was better if the man who sold you surplus combat boots was a Scot or an Irishman named Mac, an American tough guy. Besides, he explained, an apostrophe attached to his name invited confusion. It would sound like Max is an Army-Navy store, a crazy idea if ever there was one.
Now, twenty years later, Max had installed his son-in-law, Ben, as second-in-command. Ben was a thin, nervous-acting man with glasses and a mustache, and a receding hairline at too early an age, which, Max believed, was one of the reasons he acted nervous. Max was himself almost completely bald, but somehow it suited him – short and barrel-chested with a prominent nose, a fast talker fast on his feet, and not a person, by the way, that anyone would take for a Scot or an Irishman.
Ben had married Max and Miriam’s only child, Rachel, whom they had tried to raise without turning her into a princess. But Rachel was so adorably appreciative of the nice things they gave her that they gave her even more nice things, and a princess she became. Nevertheless,
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Larry Gaffney is a tennis coach in Williamsport, PA. In the autumn of 2024, McFarland will publish his book, Finding Nabokov: A Literary Companion.