(Writer’s Note: In my upcoming book “Angel
Food Cake” A Forty Day Devotional for an Upside/Down World, there are stories
referencing angel experiences. Included is one from November of 2015 at Patak
Meats, Austell, Georgia. It was to my great dismay that I arrived to shop there
this past week only to discover their business closed because of a fire. It has
moved me to create this blog post.).
*****
In the early nineties at the beginning of a
career in the beverage alcohol distribution business, I was living in Smyrna,
Georgia. One of “the guys” favorite places to play golf was at a quaint little
course in Austell named Dogwood Golf Club.
It was when speaking of an outing there one day a coworker suggested to me,
I should visit a nearby butcher shop called Patak Bohemia.
“It is just a stone’s throw from the course,” my
friend would say. He went on to explain that Patak had a smokehouse on property
and their sausages were the best one could find on this side of the Atlantic. It
was also pointed out to me that all the fresh meat was processed without fillers
or preservatives.
Primarily a wholesale distributor, their retail
store in the early days was an adjunct to their growing presence in Atlanta’s grocery
stores. Closed on Sundays, Patak’s meat
market was and is open only the first Saturday of each month. If one could not manage
a visit into a work week schedule, then they marked their calendar for that critical
weekend day. It is this first Saturday
visit almost thirty years ago that marked an indelible image in my memory.
It was a scene straight from an Eastern European
travelogue, complete with one of Cobb County’s finest directing traffic out
front on Ewing Road. The customer line from the front door snaked outside into
the parking lot. I found no lack of
patience in myself nor the folks standing in wait with me, for we all knew what
was literally in store for us. I had to
put on my best listening ears for much of the understandable conversation would
flow with heavy eastern European accents. Frequently customers would speak amongst
themselves or with the store’s service staff in native tongues, and I could
only guess if I was hearing the Polish, German or Czechoslovakian language. You
see, expatriates from neighboring counties and states marked their calendars for
a first Saturday Patak trip back in time to their native lands and culture.
A sweet memory always accompanies my reflections
on the early days going to this carnivore’s paradise. When my late father-in-law
Herschel came to live with us, he cherished visiting Patak because it reminded
him of his favorite mid-west butcher shops back home along the northern
Illinois, Wisconsin border. In his last
years my daughters would often accompany me. Every trip for them was a feast
for the senses and they would always remind me to get some liverwurst for Pappy!
For me the main attraction at Patak’s
has always been their slab bacon sliced to customer specifications. Taking an
always big slab, the ladies consistently cut a slice and hold it up for their
customer to judge before prepping the order.
Of all the characteristic attractions of this
unique place, one that stands crystal clear in my consciousness is family. Patak Meats as it is named today is a quintessential
example of a realization of the American Dream.
Over three decades I have seen it grow into the second generation. Tony
Patak, who fled during the eastern Europe advance of communism, planted his
dream in Cobb County, Georgia. Now his
children are carrying the dream forward and preparing a path for a third
generation to be able to do the same. The small family business is a critical underpinning
of what makes our country great. Patak
Meats is an oasis in the desert of a fading cultural climate that would nurture
growth of the Judeo-Christian values which have been the basis for our great
American experiment.
Let us pray that this family business will get
back on its feet and thrive another thirty years through the family’s next
generation.
****
Bradford Bosworth
September 2021
