Morscher's Pork Store and the Grimm Brothers

Morscher’s Pork Store, at Catalpa and Woodward avenues, recently replaced its old-school neon sign with a bland new model, but thankfully, they’ve kept the whimsical little drawing at left with a German title. Ridgewood in the past was dominated by German immigrants; one by one, German restaurants and delis have been disappearing from Ridgewood and Glendale, but Morscher’s soldiers on.

The German inscription means roughly: ‘little table, set yourself’ and is taken from the Grimm brothers’ classic story “The Wishing Table, the Gold Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack.” The context is a magic table that sets itself:

When the tailor was thus left quite alone in his house he fell into great grief, and would gladly have had his sons back again, but no one knew whither they were gone. The eldest had apprenticed himself to a joiner, and learnt industriously and indefatigably, and when the time came for him to go travelling, his master presented him with a little table which had no particular appearance, and was made of common wood, but it had one good property; if anyone set it out, and said, ‘Little table, spread thyself,’ the good little table was at once covered with a clean little cloth, and a plate was there, and a knife and fork beside it, and dishes with boiled meats and roasted meats, as many as there was room for, and a great glass of red wine shone so that it made the heart glad.

Just another of the unending quirks found on the streets of Queens.