i remember

50-4 – Kitchen Zest

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In recent months and recenter days my monthly writing workshop has given prompts that refer to the kitchen. Well, let me correct that. The November prompt was about the kitchen and how it was different and/or similar to the one we had growing up. The March prompt was zest, which I took to mean the kitchen item, so for me the two prompts were about the kitchen. By way of this introduction, I hope that I succeed in blending the two into a competent essay (is there another word for essay – that sounds very middle school-y. Also article makes it sound dull and informative. Everything around me speaks to my writing, my words and the use of them. Including this whatever it is about kitchens.)

My kitchen growing up was already pretty modern albeit with the avocado and mustard colors of the seventies. I. understand that these are coming back in a retro look. One word: why? Lord, please no. Not that my current black and white cow kitchen is all that special, but seriously, just no.

In our house, we complained constantly about loading and emptying the dishwasher. We don’t have a dishwasher. I would love a dishwasher even if my husband does do most of the dishes.

My parents always had a coffee maker. My Dad drank coffee every day, throughout the day. He would often make a full pot as if company were coming and still go out to the local deli for a Styrofoam cup there too. In my house now, we only recently got a coffee maker because my son asked for it as a Christmas present for his father with the half wink that he wouldn’t mind using it as well. I know for a fact that if I was a coffee drinker we’d have one of those machines that does everything from grinding the beans to foaming the milk. I’m a tea drinker. The most complicated device for making my tea is the loose tea strainer that must be emptied and rinsed. It is the only thing I wash immediately upon finishing its use.

In my parents’ house, we had a clear glass pot. It must have had a lid at some point, but I never remember it. We never had a kettle. This was the pot we’d boil water in for tea or hot chocolate. More often than not, I’d boil eggs for my father for him to enjoy hard-boiled eggs. Ironically that along with not drinking coffee, hard-boiled eggs repulse me. My grandmother had one of those metal percolators. To me that will always be the three-dimensional puzzle that I played with on her kitchen floor. Fitting all the pieces together in the right way was how I spent much of my toddlerhood and preschool life.

Our kitchen looks modern with an electric stove and a microwave that is twenty-one years old, but doesn’t look a day over ten. Our counters are Formica or some other kind of plastic, very similar to my family’s old kitchen table. The sink leaks although we’ve changed out the faucet and now it’s much better. The fridge is a testament to American craftsmanship, and hopefully will continue on until we have the money to replace it, millions of years in the future.

The one thing my kitchen has that my house didn’t is a window over the sink that looks out over the backyard. I actually enjoy doing the dishes if I can look out of a window to the world outside. Depression killed that small pleasure.

My mother had a toaster and a toaster oven. We have both in one appliance. It was a gift from my brother and it is probably the most useful thing that we have in our kitchen. Also the most used.

I have about a thousand spices more than my mother’s kitchen. She had four – black pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and onion powder. Salt didn’t count as a spice but she had that as well. Morton’s, of course. When I was married and moved into my first apartment, my mother gave us a container of Morton’s salt (it’s a Jewish tradition to give bread and salt for a new house, although I’m sure it’s not limited to only that culture). We had that same original container of salt when we moved, had our first child and moved again.  My spices come from Penzeys or the Spanish section in my local supermarket. My friend also sent me spice samples from California – one month Indian, one Asian, one Hispanic, and soon I was hooked into playing around in the kitchen with a variety of tastes and flavors, mixing cultures and flavors and loving it.

My mother was not much of a cook. She had one or two things that she did and she did them really well. The smell of meatloaf baking or a roast beef just come out of the oven take me back to the couple of the things my family actually cooked. My mother made roasts all the time – regular roast beef from an eye round or top round, and pot roast in a Ziploc oven bag from a bottom round. I was the meatball and meatloaf maker and mixer. My Dad loved it and so it was my job to make it every couple of weeks. My kids finally like the meatloaf, so it will become a staple in our kitchen again. Instead of ketchup, try it with some HP Sauce. Check the international aisle – it’s from Great Britain and it’s fantastic.

For a long time during my childhood, my grandmother (or her sister, my aunt) lived with us, practically the whole time, so she did all the cooking since my parents both worked. Nothing really stands out which is sad. I’m sure she must have made some good meals. What’s really sad is that I would probably remember them more if they were terrible. After she went into a nursing home, it fell to my parents. I was often asked by my father to make those meatballs or a meatloaf or even to boil the eggs for him. We never ate chicken unless it was fried chicken from a take-out place. Best. Fried. Chicken. Ever. My mother had a real aversion to raw chicken.

When I got married and started cooking real food, I cooked everything. I called it “from scratch” but I didn’t bake bread or mix my own icing or anything like that. I’d buy the boneless chicken, put a sauce on it, bake it and make the rice and some kind of frozen vegetable boiled on the stove top. At least I stopped eating canned except for green bean casserole or what cans we get generously from the church. I actually never used my microwave except as a timer that first year and probably not even until after my son was born. As I mentioned above, we still use that same microwave today. Popcorn, leftovers, frozen burritos.

The reason I’m reminded of this is that simple word, the prompt – zest. I had no idea what it was, what it meant. There was a soap called Zest; somewhat reminiscent or similar to Irish Spring, but putting that in an ingredient for cake didn’t make much sense at all. Even to a novice in the kitchen like me.

Having quite the Tupperware collection, I definitely had a zester; it was one of those freebies you got for attending a party or playing a game. I still didn’t know what it did.

Was the zest the same as the rind? What was the rind anyway? Do you mean the skin off the lemon? Orange? Limes? People use limes?Why? Do they mean the part that gets peeled off and thrown away? The garbage? You want to put the garbage in the cake or the pie or the syrup? I just don’t understand.

And I wouldn’t for many years. If it called for zest or rind, I left it out or added a tiny bit more extra juice – same thing, right?

Finally, a close friend took pity on me. He taught me how to bake bread over the phone. Caramel, too. And how to zest an orange. Or a lemon. It’s pretty much universal, I think. He is why I have a small jar of dried orange peels in my refrigerator at this very moment.

I still don’t understand what difference it makes.

All I know is that my children will never know this intellectual emptiness of wondering and being embarrassed with their lack of zesty intelligentsia. Fortunately for them, when I’m cooking or baking or experimenting in the kitchen I have my trusty tablet, one screen opened to my cookbook, one opened to the Google home page for any questions that might arise. like that loaf of fresh bread under the tea towel. Why they’re called tea towels is another mystery to my pre-cooking self; one that will undoubtedly be rehashed here in future days.

50-3 – My Earliest Memory

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Several of my early childhood memories come from photos; things I think I remember but can’t possibly. Or I remember the distorted memory combination  of vagueness, photograph, and someone else’s recollection.

One thing that I distinctly remember happening was when we were living in a Queens apartment. It was a somewhat dark apartment with table lamps and heavy drapes. We lived on the second floor and there was a big picture window across the living room. I think I was wearing a yellow dress and my hair wasn’t a bob – it was too messy to make a proper bob, but it was neck length and all over the place with those baby curls that nearly everyone has in toddlerhood.

We had no screens on the windows and they opened with those crank handles. There was a bird sitting on the windowsill, chirping, and I wanted him to come in to play or to visit or whatever toddlers think they want when nature is so close and yet so far.

I cranked open the window and in he flew.

This was great for about a second and a half until the bird realized that he was inside and I also realized that he was inside. He didn’t bounce off walls or shriek. He left that to me. I ran around our living room and then into our kitchen – it was a combination kitchen/dining area and stood on the table, yelling at. my mother to get rid of it.

It swooped and hovered and never once tried to leave.

My mother with all the grace of a cackling scarecrow chased it around the apartment with a broom until he flew right back out of the window.

My mother cranked the window shut and that was the end of my bird watching days.

She may have given me a glare as reprimand.

This might be one of the reasons that my family never had any pets.

I Remember…Chanukah

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This is my daughter’s dresser. I don’t know how her clothes fit in here. With the closet and the pjs under her bed, sweaters in the basket next to the dresser, she manages to get it all in. Mostly. This was my dresser when I was a baby, but what I remember this dresser most for was hat it sat in the living room of our NYC apartment (and later of our suburban house). In our two bedroom apartment it was placed against one long wall directly across from our green patterned sofa. During Passover, we’d walk along it on our way to leave a glass of wine for Elijah on the radiator.

In front of the radiator was a television stand, one of those carts with wheels that our television sat on. I remember sitting on that sofa watching Fonzie jump over a shark on Happy Days (although I think that it’s the sofa I’m remembering and not the apartment.) I also remember spending a day or two curled up there, under a warm blanket when I was sick and stayed home from school. It is a comforting memory of warm soup or mashed sweet potatoes with butter and the television.

Behind the television cart is a medium sized picture window that I can still see my brother and I looking out of while we were home with the chicken pox. When we recovered, my sister got them. Some things we didn’t mind sharing more than others.

What I remember most about that dresser, though is the three little piles of Chanukah presents on the floor in front of it, waiting to be opened each night after we lit the candles on the menorah. The menorah was placed on the dining room table on a small sheet of aluminum foil. My mother would never put the burning candles on the dresser; they might start a fire. As the oldest and the only one attending Hebrew school as it were, it was probably my job to do most of the lighting. The candles came in a box of forty-four, different colors that were randomly chosen each night and lit, reading the prayer from the side of the box. We might sing a song and play dreidl. My cousins lived in the same garden apartment complex so they were probably around more often then not. We went to the same shul where we learned the songs and traditions of the holidays. I thought I remembered it differently but when I saw those cousins recently they had the same memories of music in the school basement and we kids not being allowed into the temple on the High Holidays. We used to play in the parking lot, which seems a ludicrous idea today.

Describing the gifts as a pile makes it seem much bigger than it actually was. Yes, there were eight gifts, but they were all small things. Each one wrapped carefully in white paper adorned with multi-hued blue Stars of David and dreidls. We would of course get dreidls and gelt, probably on the first night. One of my favorite things about celebrating Chanukah today is the taste of the gelt. It’s not anything fancy or special but it tastes exactly the same as it did when I was a schoolgirl. My kids wonder why I won’t share mine with them. After all, they each get their own bag of gelt.

Choosing which gift to open was a several minute decision making process. Picking each package up, shaking it slightly, bringing it to my ear as if I would hear something or smell something underneath the packaging and the paper. Nothing was hidden; it was all wrapped around whatever the shape of the package was. Shake the rectangular box. Should I open the Barbie doll shaped package? Or the Barbie doll clothes shaped package? There might have been puzzles and books too. No Nintendo. No tablets. No smartphones. What a simple, beautiful time that holiday was. Everyone in our court had an electric menorah in their windows or their curtains were open and we could see the candles burning deep inside their apartments.

There were also latkes to look forward to. They came from a box, but after mixing and refrigerating and then frying them in the pan, they were as homemade as they could be. The house smelled of the oil, and they were eaten hot with applesauce and sour cream. Back then, they were the only thing that I ate sour cream with. When I cook them today for my family, I still use vegetable oil. They are the only things that I cook in vegetable oil. I tried olive once, but the smell didn’t work for me, so I went back to the usual vegetable oil and they were perfect. Applesauce and sour cream could give any kind of potato pancake that latkes taste, even frozen or those triangles from Arby’s, but there is nothing like the real thing, frying them alongside the burning candles on the dining room table.

For the holiday we celebrate in our family with my children, we keep Chanukah separate from Christmas. That is my personal thing; pet peeve if you will; the one tradition I don’t want to share. I’m fine with families that celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas; we’re one of them, but I prefer to keep the two separate even when they fall in the same week. My personal feeling is that it keeps their significance and their importance significant, and important. For Chanukah, we don’t give eight presents anymore. Some years they might get one larger gift on the first night, but most years they get a new dreidl and a bag of gelt. Some years they get stickers or pencils or an extra something, but we still keep it a little simpler.

Simple, minimalist, centered on the eight candles burning like they kept the fire burning in the temple for eight days until the oil could get there. Just like Christmas, it is a reminder of a time long ago, a history that we forget too often, and the simplicity of working together and taking care of each other.

That’s what this dresser reminds me of – my family and all the special things they taught me, especially when they weren’t trying to teach me anything at all.

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Happy Chanukah.

A Feast of Gratitude

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I don’t recall traveling to my grandparents for Thanksgiving. Or roasting a turkey until I was married and already moved out. We must have, I suppose. I do, however recall that holiday as more of an adult affair bringing home boyfriends, eventually a husband and children, although we must have celebrated it when I was a child. It is quintessentially an American holliday, and my parents, while raising us Jewish were also raising us American. Not everyone celebrated Christmas, but everyone celebrated Thanksgiving. Putting aside the more recent and current political awareness and justifiable Native American concerns and years of invisibility, it was and continues to be the great unifier. As immigrants continue to come with their many and varied holidays and celebrations, the melting pot adds a turkey and sweet potato casserole to each of their tables, and we are all grateful. Everyone can, and should give thanks. Whether it’s to a Creator or to your family for being there or for your grandparents and great-grandparents for making this life of ours possible in whatever way they did, or just plain old ordinary gratitude for what we have and what we will continue to receive in this life. It really is so much more than Pilgrims and Indians, Mayflowers and planting corn and yams and more than turkeys, in the field or on the platter.

I also remember other family feasts – weekends at my grandmother’s for deli or Chinese food on paper plates, of course. Passover Seders, asking the Four Questions and mushing the gefilte fish with my fork; block parties, courtyard picnics and cook-outs. I imagine it’s like this for everyone regardless of cultural background, but food is everywhere in my childhood. Pizza on Springfield Blvd, and Cantonese on Horace Harding. Filipino at my babysitter’s, steak at Ed’s Warehouse in Toronto – a visit north wasn’t complete without dinner at Old Ed’s. Scuffling through fallen brown and orange leaves, walking to Dr. Herman’s office, then driving the two or three blocks to the drug store to buy cigarettes for my parents and possibly a pack of Chiclets for me and my brother; my sister was too young for gum.

Before my parents passed away, just over ten and eleven years ago, we would always visit them for Thanksgiving. We were lucky in our interfaith family that we decided early on not to make those tough choices of who’s house to visit for which holiday. Christmas was always my mother-in-law’s, so Thanksgiving was my mother’s. No muss, no fuss. Nine out of ten would recommend. It might have helped that my mother-in-law is from Northern Ireland and isn’t that big on commemorating the Pilgrims arrival to the New World. My in-laws would come to my parents’ house for the holiday also. It was almost as extended as when I was a child, at my cousins’ cousins’ house or my aunt by marriage’s father’s apartment, all of us squeezing in to seats all over the living room and kitchen, coming and going and never knowing who was related to whom or how. It was really a beautiful day, almost recreating that for my parents and then my children while we could. For them, with the  grandchildren made it all the better.

When we bought our own house, we opted to stay home for Christmas, and with my parents gone, Thanksgiving is now at my mother-in-law’s. The kids miss a day of school, but scholl will always be there; family is more important and there are many lessons to be learned sitting around the table, getting things ready in the kitchen, and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, only an hour by train if we actually wanted to be there, and got up early enough in the morning for that to happen.

One missed exit, and we were driving down the Major Deegan, listening to our GPS navigator recalculate, and with each passing overpass marked with a green street sign, I was flooded; not with specific memories, but with emotions and feelings and memories of feelings of traveling these roads between my Grandmother Celia’s and my uncle’s house. Or to my aunt’s brother, John’s apartment. The back and forth of the Cross Bronx Parkway, and remembering a similar back and forth on the Cross Island to see Grandma Sadie, by way of the Douglaston Pkwy for awhile, the Little Neck and then the Cross Island when we moved to Long Island. The streets, a litany of a life long ago, hidden deep until pulled out by a traffic light, or a tall building or streets and avenues one after the other: Jerome, Tremont, Westchester, Castle Hill.  My grandmother in the Bronx lived on Castle Hill. My Grandpa used to “walk” me in my stroller, me wearing a bunny ears hat, carrying a yellow Kodak film box, stopping at the basketball hoops and then turning around to go back. We passed the sign for the hospital I was born in (Bronx Lebanon).  As I mentioned it, my kids were less than impressed. We passed the Bronx Zoo. It was just the sign, but my son still looked for giraffes. I still shiver when I think about the cable car going over the lions’ paddock.

As night fell, the aura of twilight and taillights, streetlights and traffic lights released the emotions of a long forgotten life, a world so apart and so different from the one my kids are growing up in. I struggle to give them that wonderful life, full of wonder and friends who were also family.
I’m thankful for so many things, but while today we are rushing to claim the Starbucks wifi (Grandma doesn’t have wifi or any internet), I will save tomorrow to list my gratitude amidst the rushing of Christmas shopping and mall traffic and list-making for the rest of the year.

Tomorrow is the day I want to remember my gratitude and b e grateful because that is usually the day we forget about it until next year.

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Have a Wonderful and Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving.

Change of Plans

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I had planned on beginning this week with posts talking about the importance of reading banned books.
This is after all Banned Books Week, and it began on Sunday.

Unfortunately, I woke up on Monday with a headache that would have been at home in a marching band, and ended up spending most of yesterday in bed. I also got some bad news that I will share below the cut, but it entails that I might not have as much internet as I’m used to as I travel and visit family. I’ll try to set up some of the week’s posts while I’m away from home, but if I fall off this week, I hope everyone will understand.

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Tasty Tuesday. Peanuts

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My Dad used to eat peanuts all the time. He’d get this big bag of peanuts still in their shells. He’d crack them open and go through that bag in one or two days. He’d toss the shells in a paper garbage bag next to his chair, but on occasion he’d miss. Some days before he cleaned it up it looked like the floor of a country bar or a Ground Round in the “old” days of my childhood. I still flashback to my Dad sitting in his blue recliner in our den when I see those big bags of peanuts in the shells.

I used to love Nutter Butter cookies because of him also. And Vienna Fingers. It’s amazing what pops into your head from childhood, especially where food is related.

A St. Patrick’s Day Memory

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I’ve always been drawn to the Irish, all Celts really. The Irish captured my heart throughout childhood and college until my spirit finally fled to Wales. Today is St. Patrick’s Day, though and because of that, I will tell you one or two of my favorite St. Patrick’s Day college stories:

I went to college in a college town. Small semi-rural community with two colleges, fifty-two bars and no curfew.

One year, as usual I was underage (they raised it on my birthday), so I became the designated driver. We went to Murphy’s on the other side of town. You actually needed a car to get there; the buses didn’t run that far. We sat, they drank, and as the designated driver, I got free Cokes. At some point I was asked for my driver’s license, which I gave to the cute bartender.

He looked at it three times and exclaimed rather loudly, “Why did you give me this?! I can’t serve you!”

“But I’m not drinking!”

I had to leave and the bartender was pretty upset that I took my four friends, who were paying for their drinks, with me.

Green beer was a big thing at my college, but not in the capital where four of us were student teaching. My friend Mike and I whined (and whined) about green beer until the other two piled us into the car and drove us the 72 miles to our college town for green beer, and then back in the wee hours of the morning, but still in time for us to student teach.

We were warmed over yuck but we were there as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as we could manage. All of us that is except for Mike, who had the day off and presumably was still in bed.

🙂

I Remember…..

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I went to elementary school in Bayside. Queens, New York. I was there for kindergarten through fifth grade. That would have been 1971 – 1977. I remember my kindergarten teacher taking away my grandfather’s pocketknife when I was playing with it in class one day. She never gave it back. More than likely, it wasn’t a knife at all, but a shiny silver colored nail clipper in a black case. It was cool. My grandfather had died around then or just before, and she never did give it back.

I remember being in first grade with my cousin who was in second grade. It was a multi-age classroom that they were trying out.

I remember forgetting my glasses at home and my Dad, who was home resting after back surgery came to school to bring them to me. I hated my glasses. I think the school nurse gave me a guilt trip about making my Dad bring them.

I remember my principal, Mr. Picelli asking me if I had a twin because my picture was on his supervisor’s desk. She looked exactly like me. Exactly.

I remember the Bicentennial. It was kind of a big deal.

The $2 Bill returned to circulation for the Bicentennial. We almost never used them, but collected them. My husband still carries one on his wallet.

I only remember a handful of friends from those days in elementary school. We moved at the end of fifth grade out to the suburbs and another elementary school. Two of the boys in my class stand out; one for his outgoing, loud and friendly ways and the other for his quiet manner and the postcards he sent after he moved. It was either third grade or fourth grade.

As a kid I didn’t notice bussing when it happened. It is only in hindsight that I discerned the change from all white classrooms to mixed race. I don’t remember my parents ever talking about bussing or Black kids coming to school. I think the label African-American still hadn’t come into convention; not until people began to reclaim their pre-slavery heritage.

It was a new school year, and it felt…normal; no big deal. It must have been a huge deal for the kids pulled out of their neighborhood schools to come to ours.

The new kids blended in with the rest of us. I knew they took buses to school when I walked, and they didn’t live in my court. I knew our court, the playground behind our apartment, the big road where I wasn’t allowed, the post office where my parents worked, Joe’s Pizza, and the Chinese restaurant. There was also the drug store where we bought my parents cigarettes (Pall Mall) and my doctor’s office. That was my neighborhood: a handful of shops and about two dozen families.

Once when the bus passed us, I waved to Lonnie. In my memory, he looks sad, but it was probably more that he was quiet on the bus rather than his usual gregarious self in the classroom. In the class, I remember him hopping from one desk to the next, touching everyone with a pat, on the head, on the arm, laughing that he was giving us chicken pox. I laughed too and told him I’d had them already. He had a light complexion and a flat face. His hair was everywhere, not tall or high hair, but big. I don’t think I’d ever seen an afro that wild. I loved it. I remember that he bothered some of the kids in the class but he didn’t bother me. If he were in school today, I’d  think he had ADHD, but the possibility is there that he stood out so much on his own because he didn’t want to stand out.

Robert, the other friend I remember, was the exact opposite. His hair was short, cut close to his head, and his hair and skin were so dark, the color of night, and I thought beautiful. I had a crush on him. He was kind and soft-spoken. About halfway through the year he and his family moved to Africa. I remember it as a going home but it may have been an extended vacation. I don’t know. He sent us two postcards, but I only remember the one: the orange burst of a sunset in a place I thought I’d never see.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear

Earlier this weekend, my son asked why we have to celebrate Martin Luther King Day? I was a little appalled at the question. I asked how he felt learning about George Washington. He felt the same way. Part of me was glad it was his dislike of history rather than some kind of bias. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to him other than that it’s important for everyone to know what he did, what others like him died for, that the civil rights movement was ongoing, even today.

It might be good news that he didn’t think it was a big deal because for him there is no question about equal rights between the races. No one’s told him any different and for him, the civil rights movement is history; it isn’t a current event for him. Like most white Americans, he lives in a post-racial America. It’s very different for Black kids his age and older. But in our house, we do know who Trayvon Martin is; who Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice are.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The last presidential election, when I heard Rep. John Lewis of Georgia talk about voter disenfranchment I got chills listening to him, a living icon of the civil rights movement. I’m in the middle of reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson about the Great Black Migration from the South to the North and West that took place from 1915 to 1970. Knowing the history and recognizing some names in passing, cities that will always stand out, like Birmingham and Selma, and Little Rock; this book moved me to tears when I was least expecting it. I have to pause at each chapter to absorb what was going on in the lives of Black men and women at those times, and still today. I needed time to think; to reflect on something I sometimes think I can relate to, but I can’t quite.

Growing up Jewish I always felt a connection to African Americans, and civil rights. I was proud to have Sammy Davis, Jr. and Rod Carew as two of my people. I think it was the parallels of slavery that drew us together in the first place, outsiders looking in, natural allies, and I’m more than a little saddened at how the two groups who should be standing up for each other seem to have moved apart in recent years.

Martin Luther King Day should be a day to commemorate Dr. King’s life, his works, and his assassination, but it is also a time to regroup; to reevaluate how far rights have come and how far they have yet to go. It’s time to realize the steps back and reclaim them.

The movement is not over; it is still moving forward and Dr. King reminds us that the way is not finished. Each generation picks up its part and carries it further. These are not Black rights, or white rights; these are civil rights and they’re for everyone.

When you make rights available for more people, they do not get more rights; you do not get less rights; everyone gets equal rights and that is what we should all be striving for.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Basement Refuge

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Prompt – Was there a place you liked to sit and hide when you were a child?

 

My basement was my refuge. We had half of a green velvet couch down there tucked against the paneled box where the oil tank lived, so generally it was a warm, cozy place. It had one arm rest. It must have been a sectional sofa when it was in my grandparents’ apartment and I do vividly remember it there too. The arm faced the television on one of those wheeled stands complete with its rabbit ears and an Atari console. I remember lying down on it, my legs thrown over the arm, my head uncomfortably angled to watch the baseball game. I don’t recall if those years were as a Mets fan or a Yankees fan, Doug Flynn or Bucky Dent and I even spent a season as a Red Sox fan for Carl Yastrzemski. I think at this time Phil Rizzuto was a sportscaster and I thought watching the games so intently made me qualified to play one day despite my handicapping non-athleticism.

Also in the basement was a colloquial bar with many, many bottles of liquor: Johnny Walker, Chivas Regal, Dewar, others. It was very common to receive a bottle as a gift, not me, I was 11 or 12, but my parents even though they didn’t drink. I was, however allowed to bring one bottle to college if I remember correctly. The bottles were lined up nicely on the shelf and behind the bar counter was space for glasses and ice buckets. It even had its own light and switch.

On top of the bar was kept the stereo. Very large, very boxy with a clear plexiglass or plastic cover, it took up a third of the bar. Two large speakers stood on either side of it, although my huge headphones were usually plugged in. Here, I was a Beatle singing along to a box set long since warped in a basement flood. I sang loudly and of course, beautifully. They were all still alive and so in 1978 and ’79 there was that small chance that they would reunite. I think we still had an intense dislike for Yoko Ono although that somewhat mellowed after John died.

No one bothered me down there and I liked it like that. It was always my turn to choose the television programs and no one was ever in my seat.