Food Stories

I rarely clip coupons, as the expiration dates, remembering that I have one, or having to buy 2 or 3 items to get a dollar off are reasons uninspiring.  Not that much of anything is used in the household, and certainly not brand name products; thrift stores, Aldi's, and Amazon are the triumvirate powers, the Bermuda Triangle which suck in my debit number and spit products back out.  Cash?  Hardly, and that is why the fast fingered thief who recently took my wallet for a holiday just got away with six dollars.

The counter clerk at the post office was handed the slip, asked me for identification, then trundled over to a small table where about 8 plastic envelopes, golden with a jolly Santa illustration, sat lined up.  It was still a minor miracle sponsored by St. Anthony as I sat in the car and opened the packet, spying that first corner of familiar red, indeed, my wallet.  Everything, every little nuance, cat stickers, friend's house key, wadded tissue, debit card, license, tool kit, Triple A, Blue Cross Blue Shield; all  still there.

Plus more; a Groupon coupon for fast food delivery from a local Thai restaurant that I never would have clipped or used.  Food delivery is not in my history; growing up in the fifties, only the milkman brought food to the door where we lived out in the sticks of Clarence, New York.  Cottage cheese in plastic cups called raffiaware, Squeezies of lemon or orange sherbet, margarine that had a colored tablet to be mooshed into the grayish slab, butter, ice cream in cardboard cartons; that was about it.  When we moved to Tonawanda, a bread man would roll his truck down the street, throwing candy at the kids and ringing a handbell.  But regular food?  There wasn't even a pizzeria to order from, much less have it brought to the house.

There was a Hobart's slaughterhouse, however, where you could get really fresh ground beef; my Mom would go with my Auntie Ann, who knew how to drive and had a car.  It put both me and her off from eating hamburger for months.  Aunt Ann and my Uncle Bob would also rent a chicken plucker, then get 100 chickens to process and keep in one of their giganto chest freezers; I would be invited to help, which I did, gladly.  Innards fascinated me, and learning the colors of what each organ was matched the transparent overlays of the human body in my science book.  By the time the chickens got to me and my cousin Michelle, they looked like the supermarket sort, except the guts needed scooping out with rubber gloved hands.  They smelled burnt, for my aunt would singe the pinfeathers over her gas stove after my uncle had defeathered them, after killing.

Sometimes an egg would be there, the shell not quite formed; these went into a plastic sandpail.  You saved out the dark red chicken livers, hearts, and gizzards, were very careful with the green gallbladder, the crop was just above the stomach fascinatingly filled with grit, the lungs were pink, and there was something yellowish, a pear shaped thing.  The guts would go into a metal bucket, which my uncle sold to a farmer down the road, Mr. Wuhlers, for his pigs.  Wuhlers was an old German fellow who had seven springs on his property and stories of bobcats and fishers disturbing his animals, and my father would haul buckets of the spring water for my mother to drink when she was pregnant with my brother.

Even if we went to a drive-in movie, Mom would pop our own corn and take it in the large yellow bowl.  When little, I only remember two places that we ever went to; one was Ted's Hot Dogs under the Peace Bridge when we would visit my Grandma and Grandpa in the city, the other was the Turkey Roost, which was just down the way on Main Street near Gunville Road.  They raised their own white turkeys in a coop around the back.  Noisy things.  A Henry's Hamburgers later opened up on Sheridan Drive with fifteen cent hamburgers that made my father's eyes pop open and his pupils spin like cherries from a one-armed bandit in the cartoons.  Fifteen cents!  A working man's dream.

In the city, there were more offerings such as a popcorn cart, the rag and bottle man, a wagon pulled by a horse with produce, and a fish market that had the live fish swimming against the front window. I don't remember a restaurant down on Grant Street, at least one that we went to except for the counter at Woolworth's, which would sometimes be a stop during a shopping trip, but just for tea.

So when the Groupon coupon appeared in the returned wallet, I knew that it wasn't there prior.  Was it meant as a consolation prize?  Was the man saving it for later and just slid it into one of the card pockets?  Did whoever put the wallet into the mailbox add it?  I don't know, nor  is there any temptation to use it.  $12 dollars off a delivery means that the sum of the product is close to an amount I wouldn't pay for real food from a real grocery.  Plus tip.

Maybe I need to get with the times, friends (younger ones, to be sure) order online and have it brought to the door.  Food trucks ride the streets in battalions, gathering in Larkinville during summer months.  There is an Ice Creamcycle Dude who pedals his wagon all over the city, offering deals if you can answer a geography question.  Food is a way of exploring, of being in sync with your fellow creatures, including the dog and cat.  Funny how it's turning into delivery of pre-measured ingredients for a dinner or as a menu choice from a virtual ghost restaurant.

The wind is coming from the east, with a drop in temperature causing the rain and fog to crystallize into snow.  It's cold in here, since the windows are all on the east, and the hot weather air-conditioner is in one of those windows with drafts abounding.  It is New Year's Eve, a night to watch the old year dwindle and creak quietly away into squalling new resolutions at midnight.  Perhaps later in the week, an unfamiliar venture into online food is in order; after all, paper towels and cat food arrive at my door these days, why not Thai?  My Grandma's recipe for Cabbage and Boiled Wieners in white sauce is shaking its ancient head in dismay, while murmurs of Pho suggest gastronomic ethernet escapades.

Good night, good night all and Happy New Year.  At midnight, my Mom would wake me to hear the factory whistles and church bells sounding at the strike of twelve.  In the lonely darkness, peering out the back screen door at low stars hanging in the pitch black sky, the far off sounds would carry through the cold air, alive, connected, haunted.  I knew that somewhere, a person had toggled a switch, pulled a lever or rope that created a call of celebration acknowledging another revolution around the sun.  It was all that we did, she would hustle me back to bed as if it were a secret, and I would lie under the wool blankets with my cat Smokey, talking to God about wishes.

Sleep well.

St. Anthony

I was brought up strict Roman Catholic, the kind that sat through the Tridentine Mass, lived through meatless Fridays, and pinned Kleenex to the top of my head if I forgot my chapel veil.  As far as those Fridays, my Protestant mother cooked me a hot dog for lunch one time, and made me swear not to tell my father.  Her imagination for Fridays included fishsticks, and whatever else could not be meat but was a cooked meal.  She had the law as laid down by my father that dinner was to be hot, not breakfast food, and included me not eating with them at the table.

Her go-to Friday night supper was usually mashed potatoes (hot), Birds-eye bright orange squash (hot), and fried eggs (hot).  We weren't a fish eating family unless it came from the frozen food section in rectangular sticks and was breaded.  Even those were consider fancy, exotic, and desperate.  Picky food for blue collar families.  But then, the Church said no meat, and if you were over the Age of Reason and ate it even if your own mother put it on your plate, it was a venial sin; if you actively planned to go to your Protestant friend's birthday barbecue and ate a hamburger on purpose, now that was a mortal sin, an offense against your relationship with God.  Two hamburgers and here come the pitchforks.  However, if Mom threatened to clop you one in the head if you didn't eat what was put in front of you, that was understood and accepted as an act of self-preservation

Sort of like you can kill a dude if you are in danger of losing your life from his actions.  The rules and regulations of the Church, well, I'm not familiar with the latest interpretations and revisions for I stopped going once I found out that after annulment, dotting all the i's necessary, and paying $350 for the process, that attending Mass was allowed, but not communion.  I was supposed to go to "Divorce Class" for another fee.  These days, 25 years later, it seems to have let up a bit, and an annulment gives you a pass to belong fully to whatever the Church is dishing out. Still, if you remarry without an annulment, you are not considered as being married by the Church. You are to live together as brother and sister, and unable to participate in sacraments.

But, there are perks to being Catholic, and the biggest one besides the elaborate pageantry with candles, incense, mysterious rituals, visions, miracles, resurrections, and intercessions are the saints.  I can't begin to tell you the exact number of saints there are, and many were declared so simply by the Church upon their death until the year 1234, when it was decided that the process needed tightening up.  Criteria were established, so that just anyone killed in a brawl could not be found as deserving of reverence as a genuine, living on bread-and-meat-brought-by-a-raven holy person.

Each saint has the ability to intercede with God, to speak to God on human behalf; each one of them, and there are over ten thousand, have a connection to their life on earth.  This means that you can pray to the saint who has the most expertise in the area addressed.  For instance, St. Columbanus is the patron saint of motorcyclists because he traveled, wandering through Europe.  St. Ambrose is the patron saint of beekeepers and candlemakers, St Theresa of Avila favors lacemakers and chess players.  You got a problem, the Church has a pavilion full of saints.  This also underscores the life after death thing, if you have a whole, working, categorized community in another dimension.

So, this is the story: On December 9, twenty days ago, my wallet was stolen out of my purse which was in a drawer in my classroom.  There was only $6 in it, and I will only say that it was not a student.  Today, twenty days later, I found a notice in yesterday's mail that the post office is holding a lost wallet for me, $3.60 postage, please.  My wallet?

A friend had suggested that a prayer to St. Anthony might get it back, and I think I snorted; now, I have begged St. Tony for car keys a hundred times, but a wallet stolen by a perp?  Naw. No. Har de har har.  But I talk to the unknown regularly, so why not?  Presumptuous of me, why should anyone listen about a wallet when so many serious problems trouble the world?  Yet I did; I apologized for bothering him, but if he had connections, and if it wouldn't hurt anything or anyone, it would be nice to have it back, thank you, and here in the mail is a notice saying come and get it, after you pay the postage.

Don't forget, that if you ever do find a wallet, a driver's license, or government I.D. card, you can drop it into a mailbox and the USPS will put it in an envelope and get it to the owner.  I want to find out the particulars, such as which mailbox, when was it dropped in, and then ask if I should call the police as I had filed a report regarding the incident.  Probably.

But then, there is still this business with St. Anthony, or was it merely the wheels of time?

The corner to 2020 is sliding into place, a leap year, a Chinese year associated with the rat, indicating prosperity.  Light is gaining a toehold, and cats and saints are keeping score in the matter of lost things.  Roscoe stole the bath tub plug and plopped it into the cat food, still has my twenty dollar bill, and returned the lost Apple Watch.  St. Anthony has revealed places hiding car keys, cell phones, Finnegan the kitten, my mother's engagement ring, and simple calmness.  Calm.  Calm down, girl, it will reappear; and if not, you just live without it.

Within the curved hulls of sailboats, there are bunks with high wooden rails to keep you from rolling out if the weather is rough.  Mattresses are thin, made to be shaken and aired above decks; a decent blanket is cotton in summer, wool for colder nights.  When you are on a boat, this is what you see before retiring: the black evening sky full of stars and planets, the luminous Milky Way spilling across the vault of heaven and you wonder, what am I supposed to be doing here?  When you fold under the blankets, and lay on the flattest of pillows, you will feel the heartbeat of the earth contained in water's waves, pulsing and rocking your bed in rhythm with current and tide.

Sleep then, and pass through the door of forgetfulness.  Night will cover you.