People in the 1950s didn’t eat out very much. Fast food, aside from hotdog stands, just didn’t exist. However, my parents were devoted customers of a local Chinese restaurant called Pang’s Kitchen. It was on Grove St., now Martin Luther King Way, not too far from our house.

As a child, I was a picky eater, however, Mr. and Mrs. Pang went out of their way to make me happy. They would strain the chicken broth and add a little white rice for my own, very simple, version of chicken-rice soup. There were also unlimited crispy noodles for me. My parents, however had more conventional tastes: my Dad liked Egg Foo Yung and my Mother liked Chow Mein and Pang’s Chicken.

But, our relationship with the Pang’s went deeper than Chinese dinners. Mr. and Mrs. Pang bred Pekinese and Pomeranian dogs. So, in the days long before Labradoodles, the Pangs were producing Peekapoms and Pomapeeks, or whatever one might call them. Our dog Panda was one, but we described her as half Pekinese and half Pomeranian.

I was very close to Panda, but I never regarded her as “my” dog. My father walked her and fed her. My mother groomed and bathed her. She lived inside the house, unlike most other dogs in the neighborhood who lived in dog houses in the back yards. She was a very sweet and mild mannered dog. My father taught her to sit up and lay down and roll over. Panda had puppies a couple of times, probably in cooperation with the Pangs and their connections selling puppies. In the first litter my sister and her husband kept one of the puppies who they named Tiny. The photo above shows Panda (sitting up) and her daughter Tiny in our back yard on Vicente Street.

Panda lived until I was in college and had left home. My mother called me to say that Panda wasn’t doing very well, and I went home to see her. Her black muzzle was almost totally gray, and it was obvious that she didn’t feel well. I sat with her next to her bed and cried and cried.

In the years since I have thought of the Pang’s many times. The building where Pang’s Kitchen was is still there, but there are no traces of the restaurant. I don’t know when the restaurant actually closed. I have searched for the name of the restaurant many times on the Internet, and, only recently did the above menu turn up on ebay.

January 15, 2022