Factories that made Manayunk a potent mill town on the Schuylkill had come and gone. Poland's stayed put.
Main Street shops from that industrial heyday had departed. Poland's stayed put.
The fortunes of generations of self-described "Yunkers" - the denizens of a big rock known as "the hill" - had risen, fallen, and risen again. Poland's stayed put.
But on March 29, as two men with a loaded semiautomatic weapon put on rubber gloves and headed for the loot, staying put was not what Vic Ostroff had in mind.
"I'm so close to retirement," he thought as he lay on the floor. His going-out-of-business sale was just five weeks away.
"It's hard to believe that this is happening now."
Tall and lean, Ostroff was a fast talker, a fast mover, even as a kid running down the hill's zigzag streets after school. His sweet spot was hustling behind the counter or fixing a necklace, not kicking back and watching the clock. He wriggled and squirmed as his two captors ransacked the store.
The robbers were rifling through century-old wood-and-glass showcases that made Manayunk's only remaining industrial-era shop feel like a Smithsonian exhibit. A democratic display of baubles - gold charms, $40 crystal bowls, diamond pendants - honored the store's ethos of selling to the working class, even after the affluent had turned Main Street into a bon-vivant strip.
The two men were scooping up $100,000 of his jewels. Ostroff craned his neck to see what he could in a mirror.
Maybe he could slip out of his cuffs? Find some scissors? He scavenged and scraped and wasn't very quiet about it. Then . . .
Thwack!
The butt of the 9mm semiautomatic handgun struck the back of Ostroff's skull, and he began to bleed.
Manayunk-made
