Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1961-09-01 / 9. szám

FRATERNITY

15

HIS SHOE BUSINESS BEATS NO BUSINESS

For players of the cimbalom, a rare and ancient Hungarian musical instrument, the road from show business to shoe business is a short one.

László Bencsik, a Hungarian-born shoemaker who owns a shop at 5012 Connecticut Avenue, N. V/., in Washington, D. C., gave up a cimbalom-playing career to become a shoe repairman.

Why?

“I was hungry”, Bencsik laughs, “and there weren’t many openings for cimbalom players.”

Bencsik came to this country at age two, when his father, a violinist and orchestra leader, emigrated from Miskolcz, Hungary, to Philadelphia.

By the time he was 14, young László was playing professionally with society bandleader Meyer Davis as a featured performer on the cimbalom, an instrument which looks like a xylophone with strings and sounds like a combination harp-guitar-piano.

But World War II came, and Bencsik returned from overseas to find the cimbalom business at a near standstill. After a brief job playing in a Washington restaurant, he opened his shoeshop, using childhood training gained from a shoemaker uncle.

The shoe-repair business, if less glamorous than cimbalom playing, is more profitable.

Bencsik, however, a stocky man with a bristling mustache and boundless energy, doesn’t confine himself to the shoeshop.

A gradudate of the Fleischer Institute in Pennsylvania, he has won a reputation as an artist and mural painter. He executed murals in a Rosslyn, Va., steak restaurant and at St. Gregory’s Byzantine Catholic Church here. His shop, hung with paintings by him and other artists, is, according to Bencsik, “the only shoeshop in town that’s an art museum too.”

He dabbles in interior decorating and is a hi-fi addict. And now he has a new project: he’s looking for some musicians who’d like to form a gypsy orchestra.

If he finds them — and he thinks he will — he’ll devote his days to tapping on shoes and his nights to tapping on the cimbalom.

"OUR FACES ARE RED" DEPARTMENT

We’re accustomed to the idea that manufacturers use their own products. Therefore, we were somewhat startled by the bland admission of the British government’s Gas Board that its new special training school is completely equipped with electric appliances. It seems there’s not a single gas outlet on the premises.