Be Polite, But Don't Gag Over It

I'm not Anthony Bourdain, God Rest His Wicked Soul, but I've been around food long enough to make some observations. There are some people out there who have the weirdest neurosis about food. Hell, it probably goes back to childhood. It seems some of them go into a near panic if their sandwich is cut at a 45 degree angle and NOT 180 like their Mom used to do it. But wait, you're 39 years old now! Time to grow up! No matter. They won't eat it and treat it as if was soaked in urine.

I can sorrrrrt of understand it. As a kid, there were a ton of things I'd never eat. Most veggies reminded me of freshly cut grass and that was gross. Eggs in any manner? Ugh! I couldn't get past that sulfur reek to them. Mushrooms were the ghouls of the veggie world. I knew they sucked nourishment off the DEAD. And will you believe this? Cheese. My brother thought I was nuts for disliking it. I hated the texture I felt in my mouth when I tried it. There's a ton of other things I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole then too.

I've become better! Honestly! In fact, I have turned into a Billy Goat that will pretty much eat anything if it holds still long enough...or survives the Five Second Rule if it should hit the floor. Except sushi. I've seen far too many times the parasites that live in fish. I don't want some creepy thing laying it's 4,000 young in my intestines. But, barring that, I'll eat most anything now, or at least try it once. I've grown up. I've also learned that bachelor trick of eating right out of the pan you cooked in. Why create more of a mess? Billy Goat Philosophy works well here too.

**

Emily Post (an original Miss Manners) once said:

“Eat Whatever the Host Serves You”

My Response? “Fuck YOU!”

Actually, I wasn't that bad. Anytime I was at someone else's house and food was served, I was lucky enough to be able to identify it and most other Mom's in the neighborhood were, at least, passing cooks with a few talents. I could sit there and eat, say “Thank you” and not burp or fart at the table. I knew enough to keep my mouth closed while eating too!

But...but...there were a few certain things I'd never eat and so what if the host was horribly insulted.

There was only one hot chocolate mix that I'd ever drink. It was called Quik and had a picture of a rabbit on the front. You'd heat up some milk, put far too much Quik into the liquid and hey presto! Great hot chocolate!

I once tried, and not by my choice the new Swiss Miss “Just Add Water” hot chocolate that came in a one serving pouch. You'd pour the dust and shrunken marshmallows into a mug, add hot water and wait till the marshmallows reconstituted themselves.

It was disgusting. I never finished it. Down the sink it went.

A few years later, Gail, Jim and I went door to door one pre Christmas week singing carols to the neighbors in the hopes of getting some money off them. I felt like a moron, at 13, singing “Oh Holy Night” to anyone but since there was a chance at a few bucks, I guess I can put up with the early teen embarrassment. It was pretty cold that night and after we had scored about three bucks a piece in change, we headed back to Gail's house to warm up.

Gail's Mom, trying to be nice to us all said she'd make some hot chocolate to “warm us up.” I then saw her open the cabinet to reach for the Swiss Miss.

“Oh fuck...” I thought to myself. Here I am in a friend's house and her Mom is going out of her way to serve us something in the Spirit of Christmas. This was a rare time when I panicked about food.

As I watched Gail's mom prepare this DuPont/Dow/3M chemical glorp, I began desperately trying to figure a way out of this situation. I wasn't coming up with any plausible reasons to scoot out in a nice, normal manner.

I kid you not, I was actually becoming nauseous at the sight and smell of that stuff. The major warning was the watering of my mouth, that saliva your body makes to protect your teeth when you heave a gallon of stomach acid past them. I looked at the kitchen floor and thought, “will I puke right here and now? God, that'll be embarrassing to hell!”

Since I had no nice reason to leave, I just said, “I have to go home now” and bolted right out their kitchen door without looking back.

About 30 minutes later, Gail and Jim come to my house an ask why I left. I still didn't tell the truth but did admit I felt “pretty sick” rather quick. It's been years but I can still sort of remember that weird smell the 70's Swiss Miss gave off.

**

At my old occupation of social work, there were times when we'd drop off the clients to visit their relatives for a day or two. One such relative was the Italian mom of S. DeNuncio. Her mom was a decent person and I had never had any problems with her till one day she INSISTED she feed me. That's Italian Mothers for you.

“Oh great, free food!” I thought to myself as I sat at her kitchen/playing card table.

I watched her as she cut up a bright, green pepper, toss it in a pan with some butter and fry it I sat there waiting for her to add something else but there was nothing else. I had to ask.

“What are you making?

“A fried pepper sandwich for you.”

I began to worry. I wasn't big on green peppers and was the kind of person who ate the insides out of a stuffed pepper, leaving the carcass behind. I didn't mind a trace of green pepper taste in the rice/hamburg mix but I really detested that overpowering green pepper assault should you eat that part too. The trick to destroying a green pepper's flavor is to cook it from 6 AM to around 11:30 AM.

Mrs DeNucio finishes up and places the sandwich before me and, being a good guest, I take the first bite of it.

“Auuuuuggggghhhh!” my brain yelled. I stopped chewing to prevent anymore of that taste from leaching out.

“What can I do? I have to spit this out!” I said to myself. “But you can't! She's still in the kitchen!”

So, each time she turned around to clean up, I quickly spit the mess into my hand and shoved it, without a napkin, into the pocket of my Navy Pea coat. I didn't care. I wasn't going to eat this gross thing any further.

I kept taking largish bites of the sandwich, waiting for her to turn the other way and dump it into my coat, until the sandwich was gone.

“Oh, you ate that quick...want another?” she asks.

“NO! Uh, no..thank you...that was enough!”

Driving down her street after we left the house, I dug up my pocket and heaved the mess onto the street.

**

This one is a bit different. It comes from when you refuse to return to a certain restaurant ever again.

In 1976, after twenty-five years of being a “company man” and working his way up the ladder, my Dad was elected the CEO of a small chain of banks. His dream realized. Work hard enough, ignore you family, be loyal to the company and they will in turn, repay the favor. This actually happened back then vs. the backstabbing you get routinely today for showing loyalty to a corporation.

I can remember many people congratulating my Dad over the position and there were also, some who grumbled about it, loud enough so you'd hear them from across the street.

Anyways...

Every Friday, for like a zillion years, we'd go the Friendly Tap on Beverage Hill ave for a dinner and then off to the Almacs in Seekonk to do the weekly shopping. This was like clockwork. The thing about any town in RI is that everyone know's everyone else's business and that restaurant was no different. My Dad was probably one of the very few in a suit vs the other blue collar workers there. I am sure the management, waitresses and a few customers had heard about Dad's elevation.

About a month before that though, when we went there, my Dad got on a kick of ordering Hero sandwiches there for supper, Friday after Friday. I had heard of them, never eaten one and didn't really care as I liked my pasta and meatballs instead. But one Friday, about a week after Dad's promotion, I had ordered one to try it out. My Dad had then ordered a veal cutlet type of thingy drowned in cafeteria brown gravy.

Flo the Waitress comes and gives us our plates. Now, being curious, I began to take the sandwich apart to see just what's in it and to scrape off anything I find disgusting (ie: too much lettuce, tomatoes, anything raw). It was then I saw it. A great, big GLOB of spit.

“Uh...Dad?” I said. “I ain't eating this no matter what you say!”

I show him the sandwich and he sort of sat bolt upright in the booth and looks straight head to the back wall, in a sort of shocked realization.

“That was intended for me...” he says.

It probably was. He had been ordering them constantly for weeks now.

He calls Flo over, shows her and a look of pure evil crossed her face. She snatches the plate and goes into the kitchen and the list of swears that came out of mouth to the cook should've been recorded for history.

“You SPIT in the kid's sandwich? You SPIT in it you dirty son of a bitch!!” What was great about that was that the entire restaurant became real quiet to listen in.

Dad slowly gets up, grabs his coat and motions for us to leave, leaving the unpaid items on the table.

“What did I DO to get that?” My 12 year old self said to everyone in the car as we left.

“NOTHING...You did NOTHING...That was aimed at ME” my Dad says. He looks at my Mom and admitted aloud that he had been getting some grief from some when they found out how he finally secured the Dream Job he had worked towards. He figured this cook was especially annoyed at him.

We never returned.

Instead, we started hitting up a new restaurant a week to try things out. 

Some of You Remember This, Click n Play

 

Our Left Bank

Click and Play!

0.93

Know what that low number is? That was my college GPA by June 1983. Yes, mine. In two semester's time, I had managed to ruin a fine academic career I was proud of. Academic probation one semester as a freshman, then finally RIC gave me the heave-ho out the door in June.

“Be GONE! You SUCK! Don't EVER come back!” as they threw pencils and notebooks at me.

I wasn't partying too hard at all for that to happen. In fact, I haven't met my college buddies yet and my social life revolved around the local delinquents that I grew up with. The reason for that awful result was that I was dealing with a Mom who in six months time, we'd be forcefully pushing through the front gate of the Enchanted Castle (Butler Hospital). By forcefully, I mean my brother and I holding both of her arms and “suggesting” we walk, 'that-a-way' rather quickly, whether she wanted to or not. By January 1984, once my role as nurse, that I had played for a good damn year prior, was relieved, I could concentrate on my classes again.

“But, I thought you told us you were OUT of college?”

Yes I was. But RIC had a backdoor admission's policy called Continuing Education. As long as I wasn't matriculating toward a degree, I could take classes “one by one.” Once I pulled up my average GPA to the minimum of 2.00, I was back again in degree candidacy.

Since my attempts at a Bio degree was FOREVER banned from my grasp, I switched over to psychology major. Gee, after dealing with shrinks, psychiatric nurses and how to inject Haldol in a 50 year old woman, it's no wonder why this was on my mind then and chose that major. 

September of 1985 was when I met Ken O., a Woosocketian who also was pursuing a psych degree and we both shared a class. One day I missed a class and since I talked briefly to him before, I asked if I could copy his notes from the class I missed, he said “Sure.”

But, we would have to find a room, a place to do it. He brought me along to Gaige Hall, the history majors building and we settled in the “Lounge.” There I met Matt K, Meredith W. Joe F. Russ D, Karen R. and a host of others. Plus a weird, seemingly “acting to damn young for his age” history professor whose career involved command of Navy ships and cryptographic communications. The said professor eventually provided cover for our shenanigans I later found out.

I didn't know it yet but the dynamics of our little group would produce a creative, funny, smart and begat a charisma that would fuel growth. That in turn opened up our true selves. In short, we allowed one another to be ourselves no matter what the differences were. “Anything Goes!” would probably be our motto.

The lounge we hung out at, I would go as far to say, turned into a salon. A salon like Hemingway's 1920's Left Bank where they met at a certain table each night at a favored restaurant. I won't back down from that comparison either. You get the “right kind of people together” and loosen them up with some margaritas, and magic happens between them. We all, through our interactions, created a larger sum than our individual parts could've amounted too.

This happens all the time, anywhere, though not every member goes onto write the Great American Novel or start a IPO like YouTube. It doesn't have too. You only hear about that IF someone in the group achieves that exposure.

These associations are born, live, peak then die. It's the nature of them. Our peak was a trip to Montreal in March of 1987 where our “growth” was about show itself in full. I won't go into the various stories but think of a bohemian enclave where “anything goes” and you'll get it.

The trip was legendary. How do I know? Because the antics of our trip got back to Carolyn Guardo, the President of Rhode Island College. How did she find out? On our way back to Providence, the bus we were on got a call to pick up some Boston U. kids who were on their own excursion and their bus broke down. Those poor kids had to endure our Animal House antics all the way to B.U.  Debby B. the hottest blonde on our team, decided to jump into the lap of two BU boys, grind them and then ask, "How are ya?"  You'd think that would be the dream come true for any 20 year old guy but these two absolutely froze in their seats when she did that. "Ok, kid, You have your dream, now you don't know what to do with it!" We generally suppose this bus party was of great talk to the B.U. people who then informed Carolyn Guardo. We also suppose it got back to her from some of our own people.

She then in turn quizzed Norman Smith, the Chair of the History Department who then asked our chaperon, Mr Barn B., a history professor about it all. (I use 'chaperon' in it's most ineffective, 'let the kids do whatever the hell they want and then join them anyways' sense). Barn was questioned about “just what the Hell happened in Montreal? The Bus? All of it?”

“Nothing...what you are hearing is all blown out of proportion.” he tells Norman Smith.

“You sure? I heard about hotel doors being smashed in (That's true, Barn did that). A blond harlot who was going from bus seat to bus seat grinding on the boy's laps and each boy trying his hardest to get her pants off. Various stops to stock up on alcohol. Drugs, nudeness, vomit...”

Barn states again: “Nothing like that happened. I was there, I saw it all. What are you going to do? Believe the rumors Guardo overheard at some meeting? Norm...I was there! None of those rumors are true!

In all honesty, they were.

Luckilly for Barn and us, Norman Smith was the kind of administrator who would rather ignore the fires that were burning in his department, as long as they were sort of out of sight and as long as Guardo found something else to worry about. She eventually did. Smith's management style was to prefer to act as if “none of it ever happening.”

Addendum: After our group had left the Lounge, any trips at Spring Break that had anything to do with the history department were severely curtailed. Norm Smith had given up his Chair to a George Kellner who particularly hated us and Barn. I was told of this years later. Apparently Kellner and a couple of others were insanely jealous of our Little Bohemia and of Barn himself who was later forced out of his position. Barn had the gall to show up teaching classes in a tennis outfit and sweaty from batting a ball on a court and THIS was not the image Kellner wanted portrayed. Barn thought, “Ah screw it, I'm going back into the Navy” and we kids were long since graduated anyway. The politics of the History Dept had changed. The department ought to have an image of serious, sober and austere learning. No more raucous trips to Montreal. Later on, it was found out Kellner was a serious diabetic and had bouts of his own insanity when his sugar levels were out of whack. His tenure as Chair was cut short when his management style was becoming a bit right of Hitler. Medical leave for him! Looking back, we wonder if Kellner was nuts due to undiagnosed diabetes and hence his hatred of the Lounge.

**

Our Gang broke up as it had to, when we all graduated. But we kept in touch in various ways for a few years after and then we further drifted apart as career, travel and marriages, kids happened. Then many years went by without us really seeing one another. That's Life.

Then some time five years ago, I wasn't having any of that anymore, being apart. I started to get us all back together for mini reunions, even if just for a few hours.

We had one last night at a small BBQ joint called BoneYard. I scanned all of our group and couldn't really believe we were that old now. The funny thing is that when we meet, we tend to go back to that Lounge and the old personalities bounce off one another. Sure, I admit, the bouncing is not as boisterous and we all are now salted with experience and have tougher, thicker skins, but the core personalities are still exist. The essence is still there.

There are periods of my life that were great, some not so and I had to slog through them, but 1987 I can point to as one of the better ones. I don't ever regret having falling in with the Lounge. Not one bit. It was nothing but profit for me and I know, for them as well. It was way too much fun! If I could recreate it, I would.

By the way, I graduated with a GPA of 3.43 in the end. OK, it's not 4.0 but a hell of a lot better than 0.93!

Why I Do It

“Man, you got a weird hobby.” K told me.

“What? That I visit graves?”

“Yeah, it's creepy.”

I have to explain myself again. (Sigh...I get tired of that. And when I speak honestly, they don't believe it anyway)

“Look, it's not that I want to sneak out there at 3 AM, dig them up and scatter their bones all over the ground then run barefoot through them....is that what you think?”

I tell him that there places, people and events from the past that interest me to no end, but there's a problem. Either it's in the past or they're long since dead. Going to these places, cemeteries, is as close as I can get to it/them now. I can't jump into a time machine and go live that period, so what else is there for me to do but stand next to it 25, 50, 300 years later? There's a bit of an aura to the grave/place when you finally get there. The aura says, “This happened. This was true. It was real. I was there.”

“Oh shit, I said the word 'aura' to him.” I say to myself. That's not a word in the lexicography of the limited, narrow and intolerant. Saying it tips them off to the fact you're not one of them.

I get a stare. Then finally a dismissive “hmmph.” I get it. I've heard that judgment before. It's the judgment of a blue collar, uneducated, local and small-minded moron. To them, anything worth doing or knowing has to, in some way, benefit their daily lives of getting ahead and surviving. Everything else is meaningless. Well, for YOU it has to be buddy, since your feet are always so close to the damn fire and since you've never figured a way to even leave the Street, if only for a few hours. What the fuck can you possibly know outside of that? The box you live in is small and what's revealing, is that it's self made and hasn't changed in decades.

I don't say that, of course. Instead it's: “You oughta get out of Pawtucket and this electrical supply shop more often K. You won't fall off the edge when you cross the border into North Providence you know.”

His response? There is none except the look of “Fuck you” on his face. That's all I needed to prove I was right.

I'll say it again, I”m usually pretty tolerant of most people, but these kind...ugh. I've had too long an experience with them over the years and it's solidified my aversion.

**

I made it to Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell yesterday. I've wanted to see it for a few years now since I managed to nail it's location down to 10 feet on GPS. Once I saw it, I found it's kind of impossible to miss. It's the only stone with cursive writing and a pile of remembrances stacked around it like the ones you see on Rt 95 after a car load of drunk teens slammed into a bridge abutment.

This was as close as I could get to Jack. As I approached the grave, I heard my mind saying, “Holy Shit, There you are Jack! You really DID exist!” He no longer was some blurry myth I was once told about. This was a real person.

**

I read “On the Road” at the insistence of my brother back when I was 20. Then, I just had a clownish view of what the Beatniks were and it looked like this clip from Youtube. The two Beatniks are Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek of the Cars.

Click the Pic!

As I read it, I became kinda bored with it. I surmised this was going to be in the vein of hopping freight trains to travel like during the 30's Depression. The “philosopher bum” didn't do it for me, in any version, be it Dust Bowl America or Kerouac's travels West.

“You're reading it wrong!” bitches my brother when I told him what I thought of it, just a ¼ way through.

“Wrong? How can I read it wrong? I know how to read!” I thought

“Read it in the context of the TIMES! The late 40's!” he complains.

“Ohhhh....”



This is what you get from an English Major who also berates you into reading Chaucer in the original, 1300's middle English



I reread Road again and then something clicked for me. The independence, the non-conformity. The willingness to say FUCK YOU to even your friends when they try to force you into doing/thinking a particular way. I have always had that part in me, even as a child. I was pretty sharp as a kid and grown up/adult BS rarely got by me. If I knew it to be horseshit, I wasn't going along to keep them happy when I KNEW it was against my best interests. To make it worse, I'd point it out. Like pointing out the Giant Elephant in the room no one else dares to make mention of.



I gladly pointed it out, again and again and again.



I once was harangued, in school, to “respect” my elders. My big mouth got me into trouble for that but I didn't care, I was RIGHT.



“Respect my elders? Like the one down the street that likes little boys? Or the guy across the street that beats his kids in the front yard...in full daylight at NOON? Or his neighbor who loves Nixon and would vote for him again if he could?”



I violated a cardinal rule of being a child: “Adults are always right and shut up.”



(I ought to tell you the story of how I really drew the hated of Goff Jr High's principal, Mr. Forrest, some day. I blew his attempts to turn the kids into “good little Do-Bees and followers” once. In sort of 60's fashion, I “raised their consciousness” to what was going on and started a mini rebellion)



So, Jack's independence, his willingness to live his life on his terms, is what brought me into the book. It also coincided with that time in my life when Icould be as independent as I wanted too. Being 20 with the protection of a roof over my head, some money finally and old enough to go venturing out into the world was great fun! I did what I wanted to, if I could pull it off, with great abandon. It's that part of your life when you are an adult in many ways, but you aren't financially so yet. You get the perks w/o having to pay for them, for a while at least.



Reading Jack was a confirmation that I was right in my thinking, for that time in my life. It was valid then and that's what hooked me about the book.



**



I tell people to re read books they've read decades ago. After 30+ years of life beating the fuck out of you in various ways, you tend to read them differently. I had reread On the Road, but this time with more knowledge of who Jack was, the Beatniks, Counter Culture and the addition of my cumulative experience of my own life. I came to a different conclusion of the book this time around. I suppose everyone who is my age would reach a similar conclusion as well, but you have to be over 50 to do it.



It's nostalgia in a way, a yearning to relive the best part of your life, but THIS time around, do it right, or at least do it better. And without the uncontrollable forces that buffet everyone's life and force you to navigate a different direction, or at best, outside forces that don't blow you too far from your desired heading.



But that ain't what life really is, is it? You know this truth, finally, as you get older and you accept it. This isn't defeatism. Defeatism is when you don't even try. Being in the fight all the time and having to negotiate, skipper and aim as close as you can for your heavenly Goal and being shoved around, delayed and hampered from the goal, is Real Life. You do the best you can.



(I once saw a Johnny Carson interview with an old dowager 1920's actress who said: “I regret NOTHING in my life.” Richard Pryor, who was sitting next to her on the couch turns and says, “Lady, are you KIDDING? NO one gets life exactly as they want it!)



Jack's book blew the top off 50's society and the money and fame it brought him finally ruined him. He couldn't really hack it and having publishers on his ass to redo “On the Road” in other forms wasn't going to happen. There was only one. He was also pushing middle age when it was published so he was just starting to have that yearning for a past when things were Golden and when you thought you were in reach of that Nirvana. You do reach it at times, but it's always fleeting, it never stays. Jack's idea of returning to that period, and doing it “right,” was blown out of the water for good after he was crowned King of the Beatniks. He ran from that Title with a flame coming out his ass.



So, even so with all that...



The conclusion you reach at 20 about One the Road is valid for it's time. It's right and true. Any conclusion you reach about your life then is true, for it's time. You do it with the best intentions and with what you have learned and know.



The one you reach at 50 is valid too, but only to Fifty Somethings.



There will be other, different conclusions to reach as you and I age as well.



That's Life, That's the Road.



(“That's the Road.” Ain't that a hackneyed ending? Sure it is! I am too hot and lazy now to put the effort into a better ending...so nyah nyah!)