Remembrance of things Pabst,

When I was a kid in grammar school it was a lot different then it is now. You knew everybody in the neighborhood and they knew you. So you were a young kid in the third grade but you could still walk home for lunch. Or go out to buy something. Sacred Hearts didn't have a cafeteria so during lunch hour you either brought your lunch and ate it at the desk or went out to buy a sandwich or pizza or something.

I have talked before of how we used to walk to Union and Columbia to get panele and potato sandwiches or the deep fried calzones at the "House of Pizza and Calzone." You were under the watchful eyes of the gangsters from the Gallo crew and God forbid a pervert would bother one of the kids. Man he wouldn't have made it off the block. Between the gangsters and FBI guys he would have been dead meat.

Anyway most of the time you would just go to Tony's Candy Store in the middle of Cheever Place right near the schoolyard entrance. You would walk past the newspapers and the candy and stuff to the back room where he had an old stove that the cooked on and made sandwiches. Meatball heroes. Veal cutlet parm. A half a loaf of Italian bread stuffed with frankfurters and sauerkraut and onions. And my favorite, the twenty five cents potatoes and sauce. You see all the heroes were a half a loaf of Italian bread and most of them were less than a dollar. A meatball hero was fifty cents. Ok it was the sixties. But the potato and sauce was the best. Just some boiled diced potato on bread with rich red marinara sauce poured on it for twenty-five cents. 100% carbohydrates and 1000% delicious.

Anyway the school closed and got made into condos and the family that owned the store opened up the Red Rose restaurant on Smith Street. Damn that must of been over thirty freakin years ago. Now the grandson Santo is the front man and he is a good friend of mine. You can go in and get old school Italian recipes. Rice balls. Veal spadini. A great sauce with spare ribs and meatballs and the sliced gravy round. Just like Grandma used to make. Whenever someone wants "real" Italian food I send them there. I don't go as often as I would like because of our dietary restrictions but whenever we go I chow down old school.

It just sucks that he won't make me potatoes and sauce.