Joey Gallo's Lament

Grandma took three green peppers and two big sweet onions and expertly cut them up. A little vegetable oil in the pan and fried the peppers first until they got soft. She never used olive oil like those big shots on the cooking shows do nowadays. That was expensive. It was a buck fifty a gallon.

After the peppers were nice and soft she put in the onions. She always cooked them up in a battered cast iron frying pan that had seen better days. She had bought it when she was a young bride around 1909.  Grandma had a hard life. Buried two husbands and two children. Sewed buttons on a card with all of the family to survive the Depression. Even made a little vino in the cellar that her sister sold at her house parties. My grand Aunt was the brains of the family. She used to mix up a bunch of pasta and some homemade wine and have her husband invite a bunch of his cronies that he worked with on the docks to come play cards. Only on payday of course. My Grand Uncle Tony was a pussy whipped son of bitch but he could really play cards. They would eat and drink and play cards until they got most of their paycheck. Then they would lend them some money so their wives wouldn’t stab them when they go home. The vig alone was enough to let them buy five brownstones.

Just before the peppers and onions were finished Grandma added a capful of White Balsamic vinegar to the mix. She always cooked with vinegar. In fact she was always making vinegar. There were always bottles of wine with a piece of bread stuffed in them on the windowsill in the winter. She made red wine, balsamic, white balsamic even apple cider vinegar. To this day the taste of vinegar was the taste of home cooking.

Grandma would put the peppers and onions in a metal bowl and then threw the sausages into the frying pan which was slick with the oil from the peppers and onions. She cooked them over a low flame until they were halfway done with  a little burned edge. Then she would put them in the oven to cook all the way through. That was what she always did with pork. Her brother had died from eating bad pork back in Ischia and she vowed to never let anyone in her family do that again.

"Jamesy you go watcha the cartoons while I finish. We have to wait for everyone to come home before we put it on the table.” “Ok Grandma.”

I went into the next room which was a combination living and bedroom. There was bed up against the corner wall where we would often sleep when we visited. It served as a sort of couch for the kids to lay on while they watched TV. There was my Uncle V’s armchair and another well stuffed chair with an ottoman. Oh and two TVs.

I turned on the old Motorola. It looked so old that you would think you could only get Sid Caesar and Milton Berle on it. There was a brand new huge color TV covered with a green vinyl sheet. This was Grandma’s pride and joy. She only let us put it on Sunday nights. To watch Walt Disney. And Bonanza. She loved her cowboys.

I put on WPIX which was my favorite channel. It was time for the Abbot and Costello show. I loved to watch them along with the Popeye, the Bowery Boys and Buck Rodgers. The only thing that compared was when the Yankees were on.

I sat in my uncle’s chair and pushed it back to recline. Smelling the sausage and peppers. Watching Costello get yelled at by Bud Abbott. All was right with the world. I felt safe.

I just didn’t know if I should tell my Da about what happened with Joey.