When Dennis Yushak’s father died, he took over the family deli and grocery in the small town of Shushan, N.Y., a few miles north of our farm. Dennis had planned for a different life, but he threw himself into this one, along with his wife Debbie.

Denny, as he is known here, decided to focus on making the best meat products – sausages and beef and bacon – in the area, and his meats are legendary. Customers, including many chefs from Albany and Saratoga and New York City, come all the way to Shushan to get meat from Yushak’s deli for their  homes and restaurants.

The Bog’s hamburgers are famous, they are all from Yushak’s, so are the sausages  used in the pizza at the Round House Cafe.

Denny is something of a rabbi up here as well as a meat wizard.

He loves the New York Mets, and is philosophical about them, as he is about everything else.

He is a warm and open man, his eyes believe the dry humor that makes him so much fun.

Every few months, I get the urge to take  his portrait, and he always smiles and gives me his bemused look, he never can figure out why I want to take his photo, but he is much too kind and polite to say no.

Today, I even got a tour of his freezer out back. I often see Denny dress up in a jacket and his fur hat and had back into the freezer to  prepare his meat. He is very proud of his reputation and has the kind of relationship with his customers that  used to be the foundation of the small family business.

I am so grateful there are no giant box stores nearby to drain the blood out of Denny’s store. Denny is a testament to what community mans, and how our social fabric is torn and broken when every store must be monstrous and cheap. I could walk into Wal-Mart every day for the rest of my life and never be known.

Soon, the summer people, the campground people, the tourists, will be coming to Yushak’s for sandwiches and dinner and food for company. Dennis is the King of all he surveys, the deli counter his throne. It will be busy in there, long lines and big orders, but Denny will not ever lose his cool or snap at a customer.

He knows everyone by name.

We are extremely fortunate to have Denny and Yushak’s around.

Today I his big and tasty crab cakes there, thinly sliced American cheese and Denny’s own recipe for baked beans, chopped sirloin, coleslaw and Apricot chicken sausages.

I brought my camera. Denny laughed the second he saw it. “Haven’t you already taken a photo of me?, he asked.

Yes, I said. And I’m going to take another.

And I got a portrait I love of a good man whose like took a curve but who made the absolute best of it, for him, and for a lot of other people.