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 PIN THE TAIL/Daniel Rubin 
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
There Goes the Neighborhood
Had some time for history, so I dropped by the corner of Park and Beacon, where in 1890 my great-grandfather Phillip Weiner had opened his antique shop. It stayed in the family through three generations, until my cousin Paul died.
This is where my grandmother, one night just before closing, trembled as two men well-dressed men came down the stairs and into the shop. One asked about all the good pieces, and my grandmother, a teenager still, named whatever price she could think of. The man told her he'd take everything he'd inquired about, and presented his calling card. He was Henry Ford. Frantic, my grandmother called her brother Hy. 'Don't worry,' he told her. He packed up the pieces, sent them to Michigan with a bill for the proper amounts, and got paid. I hadn't seen the shop since the 1990s, when Weiner's was still going strong, and so I was expecting the worst when I got to the State House and looked across the street. It wasn't a Starbucks. It was weirder. The family place is now a studio for Fox News.
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