You see my Grandma lived on Henry St between Degraw and Kane and everyday my dad would bring me there at 7 in the morning before work. Then at about 8:30 I would walk around the corner to Cheever Place to go to the schoolyard to line up to go into Sacred Hearts. So we kind of retraced my life as we were walking home.
We went past PS 29 and the site of my Grand Aunts vegetable store across the street from the school where she sold the jelly apples. Then we passed the old convent on the corner of Kane St that they sold to the Hari Khrisnas in 1972 or so. I remember when they started walking in the neighborhood with their tambourines and orange saffron robes. I remember how they started trying to talk to kids in the neighborhood to convert them and the Mafia went and beat the crap out of the head Khrisna and told him if they talked to any kids they would burn the fucking building down.
We went down the block to the front of Grandma's house. I used to go there every day before school. My Dad would bring me about 7 in the morning and I would stay there until I had to go around the corner to Cheever Place to line up in the schoolyard at Sacred Hearts. I would help my Grandma while she prepared the food for my uncles when they came home from the docks at lunchtime. That's where I learned to make fresh pasta and sausages with the grinder on the edge of the table and how to make pickled eggplant and fresh vinegar and all kinds of great stuff that I still make today. Every morning she would give me a couple of espressos to wake up from the battered pot she had on the stove. On particular cold days she would pour in a little anisette and go "Nowa donna tell the nuns what you had. Tella them I givea you the peppermint candy capeice?" I would go to the school yard all hepped up and take off my jacket and run around and the old Italian nuns would go " The Irishe....no blood...they don't feel the cold."
After looking at the old house we walked along Henry and turned on Degraw St. We passed Cheever place which used to filled with kids in their Catholic school uniforms playing and yelling and fighting and getting in trouble. We passed Tony's candy store that had a stove in the back where the old man would make the best sandwiches you ever had. Potato and sauce on a half a loaf of Italian bread for twenty five cents. Yummy.
We continued along Hicks passing where the chicken market used to be where you got the fresh killed and plucked birds. Past the old social club till Union St and down the block to Fernando's.
On the way home we walked over the Summit St bridge. We decided that this will be our new morning walk to exercise.
But I don't think I will get to eat rice balls and panale sandwiches every day.
I miss my Grandma.
20 comments:
No better way to handle intense, active boys than a couple of espressos. Works as good if not better than Ritalin. Those old Grandmas knew a thing or two.
It's true MamaM. I use all of her old rememdy's.
Cod liver oil. Flax seeds. Calamine lotion. Meat tenderizer for mosquito bites. Briosce. Oil of cloves for a tooth ache.
My wife says I am like a 70 year old italian woman.
The thing that saves a kid is that he doesn't know any world but the world he's born into so it just is and unless its really awful its the only imaginable world. My grandmother was an imperious bitch. But I hasten to add, not to me. To my mother for sure. And to my dad, who had taken her measure and distanced himself from her...well, that battle had been fought to a draw before I was born. When we went to visit her - at most two weeks would go by between visits - it was like she held court. She would sit in a big highbacked chair and basically everyone knelt at her feet. That was my kid's impression anyway. It was something like you see in old master paintings where the king, in this case the queen, holds court. But there was never any question of not visiting her. I'm making it sound worse than it was because for a kid, for me, it was a ritual. Even comforting in the way rituals are for kids. My grandfather? He was very recessive, very timid, which probably worked to amplify her imperious tendencies. Oh well, you only go around once and it could have been worse, a lot worse, like no grandmother.
Oy. It's not its.
Get screwed, J.
ricpic is a friend of mine.
Play nice or go away.
Have you met it in person, TY?
Either way, "Oy"s a skin tag in CA
Sweet. Thanks.
That wonderful story so reminded me of my sainted grandma. My booster was a drop of brandy in the hot chocolate before grade school on cold mornings.
Memories of Grandma are the best.
Count your blessings. You are fortunate to have had family nearby that you could depend on. I get the sense that you appreciate what you had.
Thanks, Trooper. my grandma made her own grape juice from concord grapevine in her backyard. She would bottle it in old Coke bottles and put wax on top. Most of the time she would mix a bottle w/ fresh squeezed lemonade. But, once in awhile you would get a whole bottle of the nectar!
All us kids would help grandma make the ravioli..huge sheets spread out on the kitchen table. Her house was in the shadows of a GM plant that made all the ball bearings for GM. The plant worked 3 shifts and you could hear the hum of the machines all night. I lived there the first couple years of my life. Then my parents built a house outside town. My old man couldn't sleep for months. He spent his life listening to the hum of the factory and couldn't handle the silence.
The best jelly apples were from the candy store on Rapelye St. They had a daughter real hot. She dated this guy who had a air conditioner and refridge repair.. I heard he used to beat her silly.
Start with the anecdotes, and this is what you get TY. Your essay's not bad--then downhill from there, and Barf-a-Ronis arrives and makes shit up out of his stoner reveries.
that said, look like you need to ease up on the canoli and chianti, TY, er pops
Hey I am proud of being a well rounded individual J.
But thanks for the kind words.
Is that what they call a brownstone?
Yes it is. There are four apartments in the building. One for each floor. My grandmother lived on the parlor floor. You have to walk up the stoop to get in.
This stoop was paticularly good for stoop ball as there is no fence in front of it and you can hit it off the step and get a home run by hitting the house across the street.
I was lucky enough to have two wonderful grandmothers.
One lived thousands of miles away, but she would come and stay with us for 2-3 weeks at a time. She always had one of those half-pound candy bars in her purse and would break-off a chunk for us kids sometimes. We didn't get a lot of sweets, so it was a real treat.
She was a lot like my mom; ever helpful, never complaining and had no irritating habits. Just as an example: We took her huckleberry picking one year. This is done on steep mountain hillsides where clear cutting had been done (this lets in sunshine that the berries need). She must have been 80 then and yet, even though she had never picked huckleberries before, she picked a ton. One time she lost her footing and went tumbling down the hillside! She was uninjured due to an abundance of tall springy shrubs. My dad, being an inveterate smart-ass, asked if she spilled any berries. No, not one.
The other grandma was my dad's mom and she lived about 300 miles away. We saw these grandparents more often, but usually only for a weekend at a time. This grandmother was not what one would call warm. She pretty much didn't have much to do with us kids. I'm not sure if it was lack of interest or because she was always in the kitchen. Either way, it was good: She was an off the boat Southern Italian and could cook. She made simple things but she made them perfectly.
Nobody loves you like your Grandma.
Nobody.
The real stuff is as good if not better than the manufactured when it comes to blog material too. When zany and real mix together, sparks fly and new fires ignite.
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