I've been absent and errant, for many reasons, but global tumult has sifted through everything I am. The other day, I admitted to a friend who masters a special bookshop -- which, if forever ambered, could be an Ashurbanipal or Alexandria for our rickety future -- that my daily reliance on cooking as thinking, hand-ballet, and even small achievement was waning, and I wanted to end my relationship. He stopped, struck. As we spoke, he had been sorting books and ephemera in his store's exploded back room. I already knew that New York City … [Read more...]
What a Stranger in the Family Ate
Nothing goes without saying, and I have said and written many times that my father, Harry Weinstein, was crucial to my cooking and eating life. If you have browsed this blog over the last decade you might recall his salami and eggs, or my watching him delicately prize open and slide down steamers in the clam bar at Brooklyn's long-gone shore-stadium, Lundy's. He took his food seriously, with concentration I've rarely seen elsewhere. To be sure, my mother, Edythe, cooked more food for us than Harry did: it was her task and responsibility, … [Read more...]
Nunzio
My grandfather had a baby brother named Nunzio. I could post a photo of him in his 90s, dazed expression, full head of cropped white hair, but I don't have permission to use it. "Nunzio" sounds sexy, no? nOON-zee-oh, not mechanical, like TAHJH-e-oh, although Rufus -- his Canadian name has a "woof" -- made his "Grey Gardens" sung Tadzio warm and confectionary, a wistful vanilla-cream. I can see my mouth opening to say "Nunzio" for the first time. Did I do it right? Nunzio Ciraldo was born in the same Sicilian village, Bronte, as his … [Read more...]
My Particular Beef
It glistened while it spattered. A dangerous smell had already filled the second-floor apartment. What in the world was I to do? The Weinsteins had moved from an elm-lined, tulip-strewn street in Midwood, Brooklyn -- two-family houses built in the 1920s -- to a "development" in Howard Beach, Queens, the year before I would have graduated from eighth grade in Public School 238. I was confused about being uprooted, which sounds like a common U.S. story, of army brats and kids of World War II parents looking for postwar jobs. I'm not claiming I … [Read more...]
Three Tall Teachers
[contextly_auto_sidebar] When you're old, dreams become your memories. The mother raises her voice from another room while you're alone at the table. The father drives a Buick with you on the bench seat so close that your thighs touch -- or is that what you think should have happened? The brother who bites you is missing, and you're frantic. A phone call next afternoon finds him, and we share how it feels to be together in various times. The teachers, they come back too. I cannot focus their faces, in the way we use tricks to pretend … [Read more...]
The Big Crack
[contextly_auto_sidebar] The polite ones pretend to remember, because they don't want to show they aren't down with your age. "Down with" is their age. And the smart ones know what you're talking about, though their eyes twitch as they grin. Old candy is what we liked when we were young candy. No one warned me not to take candy from strangers because I was a boy. Anyone who passed a piece of fudge into my small, sweaty hand was a friend, whether or not I paid with a Buffalo nickel or Mercury dime. Sweet boys like candy -- though no … [Read more...]
Finding My Chowder — Part 1
I don't know where she was born, and I don't know her real last name. When I say this to friends or even to party strangers, they quite rightly raise eyebrows. My late mother lived to almost 90. What kind of adult son would have been so profoundly uncurious? As of now, I've found no record of her before her marriage to my dad -- no marriage certificate, either. Her maiden name is "Browne" on the photostat of my birth certificate, but she told me later that that was not the case and offered another one -- also, as it happens, … [Read more...]
Vazool
A Note to My Readers — Part 2 His name was Harry. Don't think English king; instead, it's from the Yiddish "Herschel," although his three brothers, three sisters and many friends called him "Hashel." When I stared at my freckled, rusty-skinned dad as he watched Gunsmoke or smoked Chesterfields while having his cup of Chock full o'Nuts, I often thought of the Irish name Dinty Moore, the hash that came in a can. I'm watching him now as he drives the Buick Special -- bottom of the line, only three portholes -- on his weekend rounds through … [Read more...]
Yard Sale Tale
I'll never know why didn't he snap up the vintage photo of Public School 238's eighth-grade graduating class. He had a really good reason to do so -- but maybe an even better one to leave it be. Who can doubt that flea markets are museums? Yard and garage sales are those museums' feeder galleries, and all of them provide a surprise immersion into the lives that neighbors past and present have led. Those of us who are hypnotized by these object lessons in popular culture also understand that the rich discards displayed for sale … [Read more...]