This post is dedicated to my late grandfather, Hamid Ahmed Khan, because it reminded me so much of him. “Baba” moved to America in the 80’s after retiring from his job in London, England, where he had lived most of his life. My grandfather introduced Indian food to the tiny town of Columbia, Pennsylvania in Lancaster, long before anyone had heard the words “Tandoori and Tikkah Masala.” His restaurant, Taj Mahal, was something of a novelty for this small town! His restaurant quickly became the hangout spot for all the locals (who would have brushed him off as a “foreigner” if he hadn’t introduced himself.) He was greatly loved, but soon learned that his generosity and desire to feed everyone who walked into his small restaurant –with or without money to pay – wouldn’t afford him to cover the costs of running a restaurant. That still didn’t stop him from handing out free mango lassi’s (mango shakes made with yogurt) to all the children who stopped by after their karate class. The kids were sad to see his restaurant close in the dead heat of summer and the adults all mourned the man who had graced them with his generosity, love, fresh spicy samosas and a hot cup of chai. On the house!
Good Will to All, With a Side of Soft-Serve
The Dairy Queen at Kenhorst Plaza outside the city of Reading, [at first glance] seems no different from the 5,000 others lighting up the country’s summer nights. It has the standard freezer filled with Dilly Bars, and the black-and-white photographs evoking a past that includes the first Dairy Queen in prison-centric Joliet, Illinois, in 1940. But [what’s different are the] plaques, letters and children’s handwritten notes that cover nearly every inch of available wall [space], all praising someone clearly without Pennsylvania Dutch roots; someone named Hamid.
The Cumru Elementary School thanks Hamid. The Mifflin Park
Elementary School thanks Hamid. The Brecknock Elementary School thanks Hamid.
The Governor Mifflin Intermediate, middle and high schools thank Hamid. The Boy
Scouts and the Girl Scouts, the soccer leagues and the baseball leagues, the
Crime Alert program, the home for adults with mental retardation — they all
thank Hamid.
And here comes the owner, Hamid Chaudhry, in the midst of another
80-hour workweek, fresh from curling another soft-serve. As he makes his way to
a corner table, customers hunched over chicken-strip baskets and sundaes call
out his name, and he calls back theirs.
“Hi, Tracey; I have that check for you.” “Bye, Mrs. Brady. All
good for the homecoming?” “Bye, Mr. Rush. How was the Blizzard? Want another
one?”
With such familiarity, you might think that Mr. Chaudhry, 40, grew
up rooting for the Reading Phillies and taking late-night rides up to the
iconic Pagoda on Mount Penn. But in words inflected by his Pakistani roots and
slight speech impediment, he explains that he has lived in southeastern
Pennsylvania only since the uncertain year of 2002, not long after September 11th.
As a couple of local officials he knows catch up by the window,
and a former state police officer he knows picks up a frozen cake, and while
the regular Mennonite customers eat his soft-serve out on the patio, Hamid from
the Dairy Queen tells his American story.
He was the youngest of six in a Muslim family in Karachi. His
father, an accountant, was physically and mentally damaged after being hit by a
car; his mother, a schoolteacher, took care of her husband and insisted that
her son go to America for a better life. That meant Chicago, where a brother
was driving a cab while studying to become a college professor.
Mr. Chaudhry took several years to earn a college degree in
finance, partly because of language difficulties, and partly because he was
always working — mostly at the celebrated Drake Hotel. He was the unseen
busboy, working his way up to assistant manager from room service and minibars,
serving Caesar salad to President-elect Bill Clinton, delivering unsatisfactory
apple pancakes to Jack Nicholson, tending to the dietary needs of a guest named
Lassie. The Drake became an immersion course in Western pop culture.
He became an American citizen and started a career in
financial-accounting software, eventually moving to New York, where he got
fired. (“Wall Street wasn’t for me,” he says.) But he did meet a medical
student named Sana Syed. Their first meeting was with her parents; the second
was for a coffee at Starbucks; the third a brunch at a diner; and finally, a
dinner date at an Outback Steakhouse.
After they married in 2001, Sana landed a residency at the Reading
Hospital and Medical Center. While his wife worked 90 hours a week, Mr.
Chaudhry mustered the nerve to ask the owner of the local Dairy Queen, at
Kenhorst Plaza, whether he wanted to sell. When he heard yes, Mr. Chaudhry
scraped, mortgaged and borrowed to meet the asking price of $413,000.00
He completed his classroom training at Dairy Queen’s headquarters
in Minnesota, where he studied everything from labor management to the proper
way to hand a customer a Blizzard. On June 27, 2003, he finally opened the
doors to his Dairy Queen, but he was so jittery, intent on making every
customer feel extra, extra special, that one employee quit on the spot. Oh, and
the soft-serve machine malfunctioned.
Once he found his footing, Mr. Chaudhry decided to give back to
the community, and held an elementary-school fund-raiser in which he provided
the parent-teacher organization with 25 percent of the sales. Though the $450
seemed a generous amount, the publicity he received did not seem right to him.
“It felt like I got more in return than what I was giving,” he
says.
Just like that, the Dairy Queen began to become the center of
communal good, notwithstanding its contribution to the high obesity rate recorded
among adults in Berks County! Mr. Chaudhry immersed himself in fund-raising,
splitting everything 50-50 so that he only covered his costs. Good for
promoting the business, yes, but also good for Hamid.
Fund-raisers for a father of four with cancer; for the Children’s
Miracle Network; for soccer teams and Little League teams and the widow of a
deputy sheriff recently killed in a shootout — he was a regular customer who
liked Blizzards. Sponsorship of car washes and high school homecomings and
blood drives four times a year. (Donate a pint of blood and get a $20 frozen
cake.) Free parties held at every local elementary school, as well as at a
Bible school run by the Mennonite church.
“My customers have made me well-to-do,” Mr. Chaudhry explains.
“They patronize me, so why wouldn’t I give back?”
He gets up to hand a check to Tracey Naugle, the president of one
of the local parent-teacher organizations who sits at a nearby table, enjoying
a chocolate cone. [Tracey] recently helped to organize a modest fund-raising
event at Dairy Queen for a children’s swim team. “Hamid gave me a check for $1,
000.00” she says. “And I know we didn’t make $1,000 that night.”
Every community has its magnetizing place: a post office, a diner,
a coffee shop. Here, it’s the Dairy Queen, Ms. Naugle says, mostly because of
Mr. Chaudhry. He randomly shows up at schools with frozen treats for teachers.
He once set up a petting zoo outside his store. He even bought his own dunk tank
to use on the patio.
“He knows everybody and everybody knows Hamid,” Ms. Naugle says.
“We’re so lucky to have him.”
The soft-serve has been a welcome balm, but it is time to toss
those balled-up napkins and get back on the nerve-rattling road. Time to say
goodbye to Mr. Chaudhry, who can tell you that younger people prefer Oreo
Blizzards and older people prefer dipped cones, but he cannot say more about
his motives than that he is lucky, and thanks God.
Living in Pennsylvania, he says, with a wife, two children, a
thriving business, and many friends. For Hamid, the Dairy Queen is home.
Hope this blog post made you smile…and on a hot day like today,
why not go out and treat yourself to a soft serve!
