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.