Typical Pawtucket Xmas

Usually I do a Christmas Eve story but I'm running out of them. So it'll be a little vignettes of scenes I remember from long ago.

 

Billy K was our friend. He came from a HUGE Irish family. I guess the admonition from the Pope to be “fruitful and multiply” was taken seriously. Billy's nickname around here was “Dirt Bomb” and that was easily evidenced by his continued wearing of dirt splotched clothing. Overall, he was a ball buster but a good friend who had your back at any moment too. He never backed down from a fight no matter how large the opponent was. He was a typical street fighter who feared no one and probably felt no pain either. Hell, he enjoyed getting into a scrap.

 

Billy's car was this rusty, dented Station Wagon that had a four barrel carburetor on top of it's engine. If you put a blade on the front of the car, it could've plowed up the earth it was so powerful. Add to that it was your typical 70s gas hog. Around a particular Christmas back then, he was missing a good part of his exhaust system as well. There were times when I could hear him start it up at his house three blocks away and knew enough to go upstairs to tell my brother that Billy was coming.

 

One Christmas Eve I was at a Polish family gathering with gwumpkies and perogies and all that weird food the Polish eat. We guys were taking turns drinking this Polish liquor called “Spiritus” which was Polish moonshine apparently. The stuff burned like hell when you drank it. The bar and buffet table was downstairs in a finished cellar that night when we all heard Billy start up his car. We knew he'd be by in about one minute.

 

Billy comes roaring down the street with his “Dirt Bomber” station wagon whose sound could make windows rattle. He comes in, completely drunk way too early and starts “Merry Christmas-ing” everyone there. He then picks up Sharon's one year old to hold and adore, all the while with a Marlboro cigarette dangling from his mouth near the baby's face. The women in the room became anxious that Billy was too drunk thought he'd put a nice cigarette burn onto the baby's face with the loose cigarette. We guys were thinking how funny this looked. Billy could hardly stand and was in his green Dickie mechanic's clothing covered in grease, holding this clean, fresh bay in his arms. The two couldn't have looked more at odds with one another. The aunt of the baby moved in quick and scooped the baby from his arms and probably saved her.

 

After finding the Spiritus bottle, Billy knocks down three shots in succession, puts a perogie or two into his work coat pocket and says he has to visit others. We followed him out to the street because this was still a developing comedy. He gets into his car, fires it up, shaking our chests from the reverberation and hits the gas. The car lurches in reverse down the street at an ever increasing speed. We figure out this wasn't a mistake as he kept at it till he passed the intersection, hopped a curb and the ass end of his car plows into this 12 foot yew bush on the McPherson property. He throws it into drive and then comes off the curb and fishtails, at great speed, into the intersection to make his way to his next stop. We figured it was the Supanic house as you could easily navigate the car's direction in your mind just from the exhaust blast alone.

 

 

 

Remember these? Imagine no exhaust.

*****

 

I once used to make killer dinners for my family. I had made a real demi glace with some decent beef stock and it took me all day. The process is this: Beef stock to Espagnole sauce to Demi glace. It takes all day because you are reducing the volume of the liquid with evaporation and you add various herbs and brown roux as you go. The final product, if you tasted it, is like crack cocaine. But, we're not finished yet. Demi glace is a “mother” sauce that can be developed further. I decided I'd do a Robert Sauce (pronounce Robert with a snotty, upsnooted French accent, “Roe-bear!”) in which you add shallots, white wine and Dijon mustard to the demi glace and reduce that further again. The final sauce matures to a velvety consistency.

 

I had made it because we had a nice, fat tenderloin of beef and you can't waste a cut of meat like that without some just as precious sauce to go with it.

 

So, the food is on the table and we all start eating. I don't have to be told that they're enjoying it because I can see how fast the food is disappearing and how they're reaching for seconds.

 

I then see my brother dump another pile of mashed potatoes onto his plate and then tries to scoop more of the Robert sauce onto them. The bowl had run dry.

 

“Do you have anymore GRAVY?” he asks.

 

“Gravy...” I think.

 

He pours gobs onto his potatoes and I have to think, 'Ah well, at least he likes it...even if he has no clue as to what's he eating.”