Verbal Misunderstanding, Man's Reason To Live

This past Saturday morning Jerry Amerstam went to his Brooklyn corner deli as always for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich (on a Kaiser roll), light on the salt, heavy on the pepper, heavy on the ketchup. But a little after 9 a.m. he heard something which, according to the 56-year-old bus dispatcher, gave him "a reason to live."

Mr. Amerstam recalled, "I was just standing there, waiting for my sandwich, when a guy in a chef's outfit comes in, and I hear him ask Billy [William Santoro, the deli's owner], 'You got any meunster cheese, chief ?'"

What caused the recently divorced man to break into riotous laughter, however, wasn't the chef's question; it was what both he and Santoro thought they had heard from the anxious chef. "I give Jerry his sandwich," stated Santoro, "then I ask this chef guy how much meunster cheese he needs. Well, he says, 'No, I need mustard seeds!' At this point, Jerry breaks out into the loudest laugh I've ever heard, slapping his knee and all."

* Jerry Amerstam (center) no longer plans on checking out of this world anytime soon thanks to what he thought heard at his local deli.

Amerstam, whose wife filed for divorce this past September, has felt depressed about his marriage's demise. The Williamsburg resident even admitted to thinking about jumping onto the Broooklyn Queens Expressway this past Christmas Eve. All of that, though, seems to have changed ever since the incident between the chef and the deli owner. "I'm telling ya, somebody's gotta make this into a movie, or at least a book," suggested Amerstam. "Stuff like this doesn't happen everyday."

* William "Billy" Santoro, owner of "The Corner Place," is confident that Amerstam, a devoted cutomer, will be back for his breakfast sandwich for years to come.