Burnsie...
in the
House!
Prologue:
This is an up-close-and-personal story. It’s about the necessity of making lemonade out of lemons; making the best of an abysmal situation; and, in my case at least, choosing a new state of Bean.
1. The Trip
In 1979 my second wife, Laura, and I drove from Las Vegas to Long Island to visit her parents. They lived in the quaint little harbor town of Northport, New York, just across the Sound from Norwich, Connecticut.
Downtown Main Street, Northport, Long Island, NY (2008). Photo by Fife Club.
Just before we returned home, we stopped in the local health food / book store where we’d been shopping during our stay. Chatting with the staff, we learned that this very cool store was for sale!
It was a jolt out of the blue. We had already set a long-term goal of owning our own store, and had taken heed of Woody Allen’s line in The Front that “the biggest sin [is] to buy retail.”[1]
We’d moved from California to Las Vegas because I’d found a first-year teaching job, nearly impossible at that time in our usual state of California. While I was immersed in showing a flock of fourth-graders how to do long division, Laura dove into learning how to improve her health via natural food diets and alternative medicine.
Author and public speaker J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986).
The above is a 1987 Indian stamp. Author: India Post.
The owners of this dream store were then in Switzerland attending a Krishnamurti retreat[2] so negotiations were not yet possible. Still, we said, fuck it, we’re doing this!
And so, with the Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon final cranked up on the car radio, we drove straight back to Vegas, loaded up a thirty-six-foot U-Haul, grabbed the dogs, and lit out for Long Island.
Image create using Gemini_Ai and ChatGPT tools.
By this time the hippy owners had returned and we spent maybe two days of intense negotiations discussing price, only to realize in the end, we couldn’t afford it.
Now what? We were there, our stuff in storage, living with her folks. A case of lemons indeed.
But one day Laura saw an add in the Pennysaver:[3] a health food store for sale, The Venus Health Scene. This store was the polar opposite, aura-wise, of the Northport store. Like a Woodstock vibe versus the fortune teller/soothsayer feel. The location contrast was sharp also, like the difference between Pacific Grove and San Jose.
Eventually, in 1980, we bought the store because, after all, that was why we were in Long Island. That was our goal and we could afford it.
We named our store The Mung Bean Natural Foods, thanks to Laura’s unhealthy — but clever — father, Herman, who surely didn’t know what mung beans were used for, but liked the unusual name.
Laura had knowledge of which foods and supplements an accredited natural/health food store would carry. She knew enough to usefully advise the customers, and did so well and profitably.
The Mung Bean storefront in 2018. Photographer unknown.
I knew how to manage inventory, and had exposure to the tools of self employment from working at my dad’s business, especially in the warehouse.
We remade and restocked the store with high standards, and it became a thriving 1,200-square-foot “mom and pop” store in a strip shopping center, Commack Corners, on a major corner at Jericho Turnpike and Commack Rd.
All went well for the next six years. But jump ahead to ’86 when I did a men’s weekend called “the 20th-Century Initiation into Manhood,”[4] (see Gratitude for Living with Terms, Legacy Magazine, Nov. 2023).
In it I discovered barriers in myself that stood in the way of me living into my full masculine identity. I came away feeling I needed to fill in some base hormonal experiences I’d missed as a young man. I didn’t have the maturity, sense of commitment, or support to work these needs out with Laura.
2. Lemons
Photo by Kaitlyn
So we divorced. She became the sole owner of our house in Northport while I became the sole owner of The Mung Bean. Now, we’re heading towards the challenging, lemon-laden, abysmal circumstances of near failure.
The first order of business, it seemed to me, was to sell the store and return to California to help my aging and ailing parents. However, the managing agents of the shopping strip didn’t feel a health food store was right for the population and weren’t willing to continue leasing the space to one. Meaning, I couldn’t sell the store and sign over the lease. So what to do? Liquidate?
I wasn’t sure what to do, and lapsed into a state of being that can only be described as fence sitting on a fence. For a number of reasons, the store was heading for bankruptcy: I’d been gone a good deal and, despite our early success, I hadn’t managed the store’s profitability effectively. Added to this there were major renovation going on to the shopping center’s storefronts and the entire parking lot was being restructured and resurfaced. It was more like a war zone than a shopping center.
Then came the coup de grâce, the near-final nail in the economic survival of the Bean. A brand-new health food store opened catty corner to us, in a new strip mall. This store, Village Natural, was an extension of a very successful store in a college community further east on Long Island. So the customers now had an option to either shop at the sub-par Mung Bean Natural Foods while braving the hazardous environment, or to choose the new, pristine, well- funded and well-stocked Village Natural.
Liquidate or….?
Boiling mung bean soup. Soup photographed by Biswarup Ganguly.
Cauldron and background created using Gemini_Ai
3. The Lemonade Stand
The determining factor here was this: I was a newly initiated adult man with a circle of other initiated, trustworthy, capable, supportive men at my back to help me succeed in life. I had the essential revelation volunteering on the impeccable production team that made all future men’s and women’s Initiations into 20th-Century Adulthood weekends possible. This vision was, in essence, that it was time for me to gird my loins and own my responsibility to run The Mung Bean in the right way.
First, I had to modernize: freshen up and restructure the interior. I order to compete I needed an upgraded juice bar and salad bar, more food to go, and a fully stocked inventory. I also required a “put on a happy face” attitude. Fortunately, I had a great staff, who provided the majority of the happy faces.
Then we took inventory of what the Mung Bean had that the competition didn’t, and the results were obvious: we had thirteen years of local legacy and community building.
I created a customer mailing list, bought my first computer, a monitor, some floppy discs, and a printer. I created a monthly newsletter with personal wisdom, store sales, community announcements, and added a comic strip called Captain Forehead and His Merry Band of Beanies, drawing on the staff’s artistic talents for calligraphy, artwork, and text.
Captain Forehead, Volume 1, Issue 6. (Circa 1990) Written by Lynn Cascio and Michael Burns.
Artwork by David Gaudino
In my bachelor studio I printed the hard copy and the mailing-list labels, bartered with a customer who owned a printing company for two-thousand copies. Then I labeled, sorted, and banded them by zip code and sent them bulk mail to our mailing list.
I called the newsletter A New State of Bean (Mung Bean!), announcing the rebirth of the store and this new phase of my life where I was learning, growing, and myself evolving into a new state of being: a grown up, successful man.
The new, bustling Mung Bean Natural Foods, the advent of Village Naturals across the street, along with the dawning of the age of supermarket-size health food stores, changed the outlook of Commack Corners’ managing agents. They clearly saw the value a natural food store had in attracting customers. Now, they would gladly assign a lease to a new owner of a successful business. And so, in 1995, I could finally sell the store.
To this day, The Mung Bean Health Market is a going concern (I Googled it, gives me a feeling of success to see it still in action). The logo, created by a customer when we first bought it, is the same. The neon window signs, made by a community member, are also still in place. Our famous juice bar is still in service, using the same juicer I bought years ago in Manhattan. It is a legacy, my legacy.
Meanwhile, Village Natural is no longer in business!
Mung bean plan in flower.
Epilogue:
I really turned the abysmal state of being around by asking for help, and by having the courage to change the things I could. All phases of my life have been a quest to discover my true identity, and as I aged, each successive phase of questing has increased in intensity and depth.
Layer after layer of false identity became exposed and, more or less, discarded. At least, it was relegated to back-seat status, no longer in the driver’s seat of who I was and how I showed up.
References:
[1] Martin Ritt, dir., The Front, screenplay by Walter Bernstein, (1976; Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 2001)
[2] Between 1957 and 1985, Saanen, Switzerland, hosted numerous large-tent events featuring the Indian author and speaker Jiddu (J.) Krishnamurti
[3] The ‘Pennysaver’ describes a variety of local advertizing newsprint papers distributed free at various outlets across North America
[4] Men, Sex and Power, a precursor to the Sterling Men’s Weekend.
About the author:
Michael “Burnsie” Burns has been active in men’s circles since 1986. He is 78, retired, has been married for 27 years, and is a member of both the East Bay Circle of Men (EBCOM) and Mentor, Discover, Inspire (MDI). He is committed to supporting men, teams, families, and communities. His focus and attention are centered on his wife, Pat;
on personal fitness; and on mentoring, and awareness.
A Word on the Frontispiece:
Image by Alexander Startsev.
