Los Angeles Tech Writer

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, as was my dad. This is a story about L.A. back in the good old days. Its telling requires a little background.

My dad's parents emigrated from Sicily at the turn of the century (the 20th century, not this one). In the early 1920's they moved from New Jersey to California, to remove themselves, as the story goes, from an increasing involvement with the... Cosa Nostra. But that's another story.

Where they lived was in the portion of East Los Angeles called Lincoln Heights. Back up toward the hills there is the area known as Happy Valley, and that's where my grandparents owned a corner grocery store, lived in the house behind it, and also owned the small apartment court next door - some of the tenants were our relatives. The store and "the courts" are still there.

The store and the courts today

There were a couple of celebrities who came from that neighborhood whose families were customers of my grandparents, including the big cat trainer Melvin Koontz, and Robert Preston of The Music Man fame, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Meservey, were friends of my grandparents. I have a couple of stories from my dad about Mel Koontz that I'll tell at another time.

I never knew my grandparents, but have always had a great fascination for my Sicilian roots (genealogy in general, actually). So I've spent quite a bit of time over the years interviewing family members for their recollections. Anyway, recently I found a great Lincoln Heights history website, and printed off some pages to send to my dad for his birthday. As I hoped, my dad's reminiscences about what I sent him have resulted in some neat stories that I've decided to share here.

Today's story is about a local burger joint in Lincoln Heights on N. Broadway called Ptomaine Tommy's. According to the story, Ptomaine Tommy's was the originator of the "chili size," the hamburger covered with chili. The Lincoln Heights history site writes about it here (scroll down the page), and this is what my dad had to say about Ptomaine Tommy's and Mrs. Hummel, another of my grandparents' customers.

The timeframe was the 1930's and 40's, that period sandwiched between the Great Depression and World War II. As today, things were not easy, and part of what my dad says resonates.

Another favorite place of ours, as teenagers, was the place called "Ptomaine Tommy's" as it was famed for its chili, and they invented the dish of a hamburger patty smothered in chili, called a "chili size." What made their chili different was the beans (pintos) were cooked separate from, not cooked in with the meat chili. When you ordered chili and beans, the guy would put a big ladle of beans in a bowl, then ask, "Do you want mild, medium, or hot chili, over the beans?"

Then he'd ask, "Do you want a smother of chopped onions?" (They did not put cheddar cheese on their chili.) Believe me, if you said you wanted hot chili, you'd darned well better have an asbestos mouth! (I never got beyond medium).

The other thing I want to add to your knowledge of the place was they were also famed for their pies. Many people just assumed they were baked on premises, but the people of our little valley all knew the pies were all baked by one of our customers, a lady named Mrs. Hummel, from Germany.

Her husband was disabled in a work accident and could no longer work. She had three kids to raise, and everyone knew of her fantastic fruit pies. So, one of the neighbors, an LAPD cop, went to Ptomaine Tommy's and asked them if they'd try the apple pie he'd brought. Well, one taste and the deal was made; Mrs. Hummel then made all of Ptomaine Tommy's pies, and she financed her family!

She was an amazing lady, in being able to care for an ailing husband, raise three kids, and bake pies seven days a week. She had a carpenter remake a chicken coop into a cooking/baking area, piped with water and natural gas.

She used nothing but rendered pork fat in her pie crusts, and I've never, ever, tasted such tender, flaky, tasty crusts. She had a cauldron on a small stove, and rendered (melted) the long sheaves of pork fat sliced off the pig's bellies. As a kid, I'd have to put these huge packages of "leaf lard", wrapped in Dad's butcher paper, on my shoulder and walk a block down to her house. Obviously, sanitation codes then aren't what they are today, as the pies were obviously not baked/made under the most sanitary conditions?

She was so thrifty that in the rendering of the leaf lard, little pieces of meat and crispy fat would float to the top of the vat. She'd skim these off and sell them in paper bags to the Mexican folks in the Valley, as they considered them a delicacy. Our store never sold her pies, only commercial pies, as Dad knew most of the Valley residents who wanted a "Hummel Pie" bought it directly from her.

Even Dad, who was a dessert freak, would often phone her and order one of her apple or cherry pies. I'd then go pick it up from her, and Dad would deduct the cost from Mrs. Hummel's tab at the store (in those days, everything was done/transacted on the "honor system").

And a lot of movie stars did drive all the way over to "The Heights" for a bowl of chili, or a "size."

Downtown LA from Lincoln Heights