Journal

So there we were, a few friends gathered at an after-funeral reception bemoaning the sad reality that at our ages we rarely get invited to weddings. We noted a few other things that have slipped away from our grasps and suddenly remembered that we no longer have either the stamina or the urge to enjoy a three-Martini lunch.

That classic approach to a noontime repast—described as both leisurely and indulgent—was popular throughout the Sixties and into the Seventies, when President Jimmy Carter campaigned against it in his first bid for the Presidency as being a benefit to the rich being paid by the working class.

His opponent, Gerald Ford, in a 1978 speech to the National Restaurant Association, responded with: “The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?”

Although I appreciate the austerity brought to the office by Carter, I have also enjoyed many a three-Martini lunch, with the gin being replaced by Scotch. And that was when I had no opportunity to declare my noon meals as a tax deduction. Big business could, but by 1987, that deduction was reduced to 80 percent; seven years later to 50 percent.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1976, I called an old friend who invited me to lunch at a well-known restaurant near Westwood. Assuming it would be a drinking occasion, I ordered the same beverage as my host and his other guest. It was something called Perrier, an imported sparkling water from France. I had never heard of it and, of course, rued the fact that I didn’t order at least something like a Campari and soda—the perfect hot-weather beverage.

Oddly enough, water does not float my boat.

Lunch is my favorite meal of the day. Breakfast seems too difficult a task to perform at 7:30, and dinner, with its traditional focus as our main meal seems leaden. Agrarian societies ate lunch (dinner) as their main meal. With two or three courses, it was frequently followed by a short nap that reënergized farm workers to finish the day. In the late evening, a supper of simple sandwiches, salads and fruit would satisfy most appetites.

The Industrial Revolution, as it were, gave way to short break periods to factory workers who brought sandwiches from home or bought street food from vendors with pushcarts laden with gray-water hot dogs, Po’ boys, or Italian beef sandwiches—depending on one’s location. Time was limited and the lunch food of the time was consumed in mere minutes. The executives, of course, went out to lunch (Carter was right in his assessment) and wined and dined at their employees’ expense.

While I like to go out to lunch, I’ve become accustomed to not doing so for the past 18 months or so. And being of a certain age, I don’t eat as much as I once was able. What I seek is a variety of flavors that may weigh-in at around 5-6 ounces per meal.

In Hollywood, I used to have lunch frequently at The Musso & Frank Grill. Typically I had their signature steak salad. I also frequented a Japanese restaurant or Boardner’s, a dive-bar off Hollywood Boulevard where the food was barely edible but the chances of having a cocktail with the poet Charles Bukowski were pretty good.

Two of the most memorable lunches I’ve ever had were in Europe. At bar across from the Dublin rail station, I once had a ham sandwich—thinly sliced ham on white bread with Colman’s mustard—and a glass of Smithwick red ale. It was to die for, and I’ve never satisfactorily reproduced the meal. The next came twenty years later in London when I had my first ploughman’s lunch. Originally a meal of bread and cheese to carry to the field, it has evolved into a pub food that is delicious and fits perfectly my idea of an ideal lunch.

It typically is served on a board or platter with cheese (Stilton and a good English cheddar), a small salad of tomatoes and cucumber, some chunks of sausage or ham, perhaps a small meat pie, bread, butter, sliced onions, and pickles.
Its French cousin is charcuterie, a word originally meant to describe a meal of prepared meats—sausages, pates, et cetera.

My lunch obsession is a happy combination of the two. I always have on hand some salami, smoked ham, or creamed herring. To that I add any number of olives, some gherkins or cornichons, some Brie cheese with grapes and fig marmalade, or Camembert. Other cheeses are welcome, as is prosciutto or mortadella (my favorite). There should always be bread—slices of toasted baguette or seeded rye to play host to chicken liver pate or Braunschweiger, topped with spicy Dijon mustard and sliced onions.

Sometimes a little potato or pasta salad works nicely, as do sliced tomatoes with cottage cheese, heavily sprinkled with pepper. If there’s leftover chicken, I like to eat a small portion with some boiled potatoes and carrots, topped with a mustard vinaigrette. Once a month or so, I like a small baked potato with sour cream and chives. And I love hard-cooked eggs with any or all of the above.

Today is Father’s Day—a Hallmark made-up holiday—but I will nonetheless want to dine on some sausage, cheese, and potato pie. I might even make myself a Martini, or three.

Happy eating!

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Cervelle de canut
This is a cheese specialty from Lyon, France—made of cottage cheese mixed with creme fraiche and fresh herbs, garlic, and shallots. To finish it, it’s seasoned with salt, pepper, walnut oil and vinegar. It is usually served as a snack on fresh or toasted bread, it’s a perfect summer appetizer.

200 grams of cottage cheese
50 grams of fresh goat’s cheese
100 ml of creme fraiche
2 tsp. of finely chopped shallots
2 garlic cloves finely minced
2 tsp. of chopped parsley
2 Tbs. of finely chopped chives
1 small fresh onion, finely chopped
2 Tbs. of walnut oil
1 Tbs. of red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste.

Start by adding the drained cottage cheese into a large bowl and whisking it well.
Add the goat cheese and mix well. Add the creme fraiche and whip again.
Season with the salt and pepper, add the vinegar and mix well.
Add all of the herbs, garlic, onions, and shallot. Use a wooden spoon to blend.

With any kind of luck, we’ll all grow old enough to become burdens to our children.

After spending a couple of decades sacrificing for them—from tying their shoelaces and feeding them, to seeing to their emotional needs and driving them to sports events and local ERs—it’s payback time. Turnabout is, after all, only fair.

To that end, we’ve decided to wed our household with that of our daughter’s and her husband and two children. This decision, spurred by numerous reasons, was not considered lightly, and there has been much planning of the logistics over the past several months. While this transition has not been stress-free, the anxious moments are outweighed by the eagerness to successfully blend our two families in such a way that we will all benefit.

The grandkids should benefit from the knowledge Geri and I have amassed, provided we get it to them before losing our retention abilities.

It’s also been an opportunity to assess our lists of needed items. For me, books, certain memorabilia, clothing, and my kitchen stuff stays; the rest can be piled on the ash heap for disposal or resale. Much, I assume, will be donated to thrift stores. It seems an accurate observation to note that we spend the first two-thirds of our lives collecting crap and the last third trying desperately to get rid of it.

While our house is happily populated by us and a small menagerie, Sean Liam, the grandson in question, has decided he’d like to become a cockroach rancher. This announcement was met with much laughter until we realized he was serious.

My first response was a simple “no.” When more explanation was requested, I answered “no way.” Thirteen-year-olds in general have yet to embrace the idea of limits and so a family meeting was suggested.

I hate meetings in the same way as I hate cockroaches. The former usually resulting in a horse designed by a committee that emerges as a double-hump camel; the latter because cockroaches serve no purpose in the natural world. Except in Third World countries where they may or may not be considered a culinary delicacy and a source of protein, the only thing they’re good for here is to keep Orkin in business.

In lieu of a family meeting, I merely made my case stronger by saying that if I had wanted to live with cockroaches I’d have remained in the slums of the Lower East Side of New York.

Back in those halcyon years, I’d arrive home and kick the rats off the stairs leading to my apartment. Then, I’d unlock the seven or eight door locks, which, I believe was a warning signal to the roaches. When I opened the door and flipped on the light switch, the roaches, who are either attracted to or repelled by light (who knows?) would fly in the general direction of my face.

In a way, I suppose, they were happy to see me.

One winter I went to visit my parents in Boca Raton, Florida. My mother told me about their persistent problems with palmetto bugs. I was curious to meet one of them when one showed its little face from behind a box of roach killer. It was, in fact, a cockroach that some realtor decided to rename for the sake of making the bugs more tolerable by retirees buying into the Florida condo market.

While the palmetto might have sounded like an exotic cocktail, it was euphemistic for a horrible little bug with, perhaps, a deeper tan.

I once knew a guy from Florida whose business was to exterminate any number of bugs, including the palmetto, aka the cockroach. He had hundreds of employees, an impressive fleet of service vans, four ranches in Montana and his own Lear jet. His business plan was based on repeat business because cockroaches refuse to die.

When I lived in New York, exterminators would spray an apartment across the hall and the roaches would take a busman’s holiday to my place. Then they’d go back to 3C, happily immune to whatever chemical had driven them to 3B. It was a vicious cycle. The rats, typically the size of cats, responded appropriately to fourth-down punts.

Stomping on the little brown bugs isn’t always successful. In fact, it rarely is. They have the ability to reduce their height by 85%. Then they play dead for a few seconds and scamper away.

So my friend in Florida became wealthy by not killing whatever he promised to kill. Roaches are funny that way.

Scientists have noted that cockroaches, along with Keith Richards, will be the only survivors of a nuclear winter. I’d like to know how they seem to know that. We’ve never had a nuclear winter, so their information is limited—at best, their suppositions mere speculation.

QAnon, the religiously right-wing conspiracy whack-jobs, deny scientific inquiry and knowledge, but believe that cockroaches—except for those elected to Congress—will not survive a nuclear winter.

I’m hoping that this one time the QAnon folks are right.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Fried Roach

Stolen from Rove Pest Control

First, put the cockroach in a plastic, sealable baggie and put it in the freezer for 5 minutes (to ensure the cockroach is dead).
Wash the cockroach and dry it on a sheet or paper towel.
Heat a frying pan with some olive oil.
Fry the cockroach until it is brown and crispy.
Remove the oil, turn off the heat, and add a small amount of sugar and soy sauce.
When the sugar melts and turns into caramel, take the cockroach out of the pan and onto a plate, ready to serve or discard without ceremony.

If Facebook has any redeeming qualities at all, it might be that during the pandemic the social media platform has served as a refuge of sorts—an escape from the solitude of quarantine. It has provided as close to social contact as is possible during a time deemed prudent by the medical professionals. There are also recipes and cute videos of puppies and kittens. And currently, Trump is banned from it.

What’s not to like?

It’s also been a way for many of us to rekindle old friendships from times long thought past.

A high school friend, with whom I’ve had intermittent contact over the past fifty years, has proven himself to be a prolific contributor of Facebook posts. He, like most musicians, has seen a dramatic shift in his career—the international touring, live dates and recording sessions having been replaced with some rather ingenious uses of technology to get his music to people whose “savage breasts are calmed” by music’s universal charms.

He also recently had heart surgery. Then the frequent posts trickled down to be noticeably few. I inquired to his well-being and received the following note:

I’m good. Losing too many friends these days to illness…aches and pains are one thing, but the endless news of one person after another dying…I missed that chapter in the “how to get old” book. Sorry, you caught me on a blue morning.

Most of us can easily identify with the idea of a blue morning and all that it encompasses. It’s rare to wake up not uneasy.

The COVID-19 crisis has reordered all of our lives. Our apple carts have been upended, the bruised fruit rolling downhill. The natural progression is now spiked with incidents of unprecedented disturbance; the hearty and hale among us suddenly stricken and then gone, passing alone without cherished loved ones at bedside.

I suppose that even the most disordered life has some degree of order, just as the most ordered life allows for spontaneity.

While we may wish to restore whatever order has been altered by circumstance, we may not even recognize—whenever—or whatever will be our return to normalcy. This week’s unemployment figures were hardly rosy, and there is a growing acknowledgement that many are not eager to rejoin the work force until all the unemployment benefits have been exhausted.

On many fronts, things are not getting better.

Like employers re-evaluating their business directions (commercial real estate values have plummeted, negatively impacting urban taxes revenues), there are workers who have used the past months to more closely examine their own lives and have rediscovered the intrinsic value of family, friendships and place. As they should, those values might be found to exceed those represented by the rungs on the corporate ladder.

My old friend Ira and I were kindred souls for whom the corporate ladder held little appeal. We were (are) the last of the post-Watergate reporters, each of us hoping for an investigative assignment that would unseat a government or expose widespread corruption.

We were desk mates, sitting across from each other at gun-metal steel desks in a noisy room still redolent of cigarette smoke and cynicism. He rarely joined a group of us who gathered nightly at the American Legion bar next to the newspaper, where we regularly slugged back too much Scotch or vodka to whitewash the day’s news that the public would read in the morning.

Ira took leave to devote his efforts to writing—brilliantly, I should add—about religion and matters of spirituality and the soul. I took leave to write about two-headed turtles and women doing men’s jobs before securing my position as a jazz critic—one of the least in-demand jobs in history.

Forty or so years later, we connected on Facebook. We’re closer now than we ever were sitting across from each other eating our tuna fish sandwiches at lunch.

We’ve come to know about how close our paths crossed (he’s got a few years on me) on our youthful adventures on the Lower East Side of New York. We lived mere blocks away at different times, visiting similar haunts—McSorley’s at Bowery and 7th, most notably.

What I didn’t know about my friend is that he had son from a marriage that I hadn’t even known of, or had maybe just forgotten.

Brady, his son from a marriage gone afoul, was fifty-four when he passed after a three-year battle with cancer. Losing a child is as cruel an act as any can imagine. It upsets the order that life is supposed to obey. My children are charged with placing me in the ground, not the other way around.

COVID-19, in its relentless insistence at turning our lives upside down, kept my friend from seeing his son on his deathbed. Such cruelty brought by the barely imaginable is difficult to comprehend.

Upon the receipt of his son’s cremated ashes, Ira wrote a heartfelt and beautiful essay. He addressed the emotional strife of losing a child and pondered the questions of Jewish death, our traditions, and the regard for the most precious gift of all—life.

L’ Chaim.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chicken Paprikash

This recipe was one of my grandmother’s go-to dishes. It’s one of my favorites.

2 Tbs. butter
3 pounds chicken pieces, bone-in and skin-on
2 medium yellow onions, very finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 Roma tomatoes, seeds removed and very finely diced
1 bell pepper, diced
3-4 Tbs. Hungarian paprika
2-3 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 Tbs. all-purpose flour
3/4 cup full fat sour cream
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Heat the butter in a heavy pot and brown the chicken on all sides. Transfer the chicken to a plate. In the same fat, add the onions and fry until golden brown. Add the garlic, tomatoes and bell pepper and fry another 2-3 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the paprika, salt and pepper.
Return the chicken to the pot and place it back over the heat. Pour in the chicken broth. The chicken should be mostly covered. Bring it to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken and transfer to a plate.
In a small bowl, stir the flour into the sour cream/cream mixture to form a smooth paste. Stir the cream mixture into the sauce, whisking constantly to prevent lumps. Bring it to a simmer for a couple of minutes until the sauce is thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste. Return the chicken to the sauce and simmer to heat through.

There seems to be a small movement afoot on certain educational fronts that wants to go a tad easier on grading students on their use of language skills. The rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation, these educators believe, should be suspended in the course of writing essays in the classroom.

Some educators say that to be marked down for poor spelling, grammar and punctuation in exams would be “elitist.”

There are also those who find the requirement for a high level of proficiency in written English can be seen as “homogeneous, North European, white, male, and elite.” Some universities have been adopting so-called “inclusive assessment,” a more flexible scheme to level the playing field for students. Its plan is to encourage students to develop a “more authentic academic voice… that celebrates, rather than obscures, their particular background or characteristics.”

This comes at a time when standards of usage among an entire generation of English-speaking university students are now so poor that a British publisher of dictionaries sounded an alarm that there is “a degree of crisis” in their written use of the language.

So, the best way to combat a crisis is to lower its severity by lowering the standards that define it by even further so that we just learn to live with it? Call it what you may, but I believe it’s yet another step in the dumbing down of the citizenry while accepting poor academic achievement as standard. The only way to level an academic playing field is to insist that everyone perform at the worst performer’s level.

When Lewis and Clark led the Corps of Discovery expedition, they kept detailed journals that reflected the use of a language not nearly as standardized as today.

“The men’s erratic, but delightful and ingenious, manner of spelling and capitalizing creates the most perplexing difficulties of all,” wrote author Robert B. Betts. “This is especially true of Clark, who was not only the master misspeller of them all, but also displayed dazzling virtuosity in his approach to punctuation, capitalization, and simple sentence structure.” He points out that “Clark spelled the word Sioux no less than twenty-seven different ways.”

Indeed, Clark apparently had little respect for somebody who knew only one way to spell a word.

In a way, the Lewis and Clark paradigm is closely akin to what is being touted by those wishing to offer forgiveness to those misusing the English language—the difference being that then there were only usage standards established regionally. In their writings, the explorers expressed information in ways that reflected their cultural heritage, characteristics, and education. (Clark was just barely educated.)

Of course, the journals of the expedition were written starting in 1803 and were not widely available to scholars, researchers, and the reading public until 1818. There have been tremendous strides in linguistics and education in the last two centuries, especially with the public access that Thomas Jefferson, who commissioned the Corps of Discovery, promoted.

What some researchers believe have led to this latest decline of language skills is the computer.

Students have only a limited grasp of the most basic rules of spelling, punctuation and meaning because of an increasing dependence on “automatic tools” such as computer spellchecks, grammar applications and unprecedented access to rapid communication using email and the internet.

If dependence on computer software is leading to our inability to communicate effectively and with precision, then we need to address that problem rather than to appease those whose scholastic skills are, in all reality, a result of laziness.

In baseball, the line from home plate to first base is 90 feet. An average right-handed base runner gets there in about 4.5 seconds. If an aspiring player takes 6 seconds, the league does not shorten the distance between the bases; they merely suggest that the guy find a different line of work.

The expression “Next,” was coined to tell an auditionee that his or her perceived lack of talent was not suitable to the play being cast.

Grade inflation was an issue when I was in high school. That was defined as the awarding of higher grades than students deserved either to maintain a school’s academic reputation or as a result of diminished teacher expectations.

Things haven’t really changed.

Social reality seems like something we’re willing to sacrifice to make ourselves feel better based on false premises. If one believes that 2+2=3, that doesn’t make it true. Nor does it help to solve the problems of the world which is an effort richly deserving of our attention and duty.

As a nation, we seem eager to reward each other for just showing up. Children are typically smart enough to know they lost the game and that the participation trophy is an empty honor.

I went to high school with Dan Issel, the Olympic basketball player who had a stellar career that ended with his coaching of the Denver Nuggets. On the asphalt-paved courts in our boyhood neighborhoods, the 6’9″ all-American demonstrated that my basketball skills were limited—at best.

It was an important, hard-fought lesson.

Nobody should have lowered the height of the hoop, or shorten the distance from goal to goal, to make me a better player at the expense of those who could jump, pass and shoot in regulation.

Lower standards do not contribute to either proficiency or equality.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Gnocchi

I love gnocchi, but I find the potato variety far less than fool-proof. This is a recipe that makes an easy, never-fail dish that is guaranteed to delight.

8 oz. ricotta cheese
7 oz. plain flour
1 oz. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3 egg yolks
Small scraping of nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Mix all of the ingredients and wrap in plastic wrap to rest for 30 minutes. Remove, divide into three pieces. Roll out each piece into logs about an inch in width. Cut into one-inch pieces and indent with the tines of a fork.

Sauce

Sauté three (or more) cloves of minced garlic along with red pepper flakes in olive oil until fragrant (a minute or two). Add a 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes and stir until well blended. Add a handful of torn fresh basil leaves. Plate the gnocchi and add the sauce on top.

From the “leave well enough alone” department comes a report from the BBC that remarkably doesn’t even mention the Royal Family, the world’s wealthiest clan of welfare recipients whose every clink of a teacup gets the kind of press coverage and scrutiny usually reserved for nuclear disarmament talks and economic summits.

The report details the efforts of Stephan Beringer, chief executive of Mirriad, a U.K. advertising company, to digitally alter film and video to insert product images that weren’t there before.

Product placement is nothing new, dating back to the earliest days of film-making. Companies pay big fees to the film studios to make sure that their brands are seen by moviegoers. Stars wear designer clothing because if some actor is seen wearing DKNY products, some viewers will run out and buy the same to emulate their screen idols.

Or so the thinking is. There is no doubt that movies are an effective way of influencing behavior. In Adam’s Rib, directed by George Cukor in 1949 for MGM, Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) and her husband Adam (Spencer Tracy) are preparing dinner together in the kitchen, and while it’s cooking, they share a grapefruit. It was a slight reference to a fad diet at the time that experts described as “nonsensical, irrational and even dangerous.” Nonetheless, grapefruit sales soared nationwide.

What is behind this new movement to add advertisements to old movies and television shows is a flexing of technological muscle and, lest we forget, greed. It only makes sense that an advertising company would be leading the way to the well promising such riches.

Imagine the possibilities. The next time you watch Casablanca, An Affair to Remember or It’s a Wonderful Life, you might notice signage or re-labeling. Finally, that dull brick wall behind Lee Marvin’s drunken character astride a horse in Cat Ballou, could be used to host a billboard advertisement for any number of consumer products.

The situation speaks to the intent of the filmmaker and his or her integrity in creating a product of artistic merit. There are probably legal ramifications as well, most likely for infringements of copyrights, trademarks, and ownership.

Back in the mid-80s, I was an editor at The Hollywood Reporter, the entertainment industry trade paper, when the relatively new technology of colorization was being widely touted. Producer Hal Roach and mogul Ted Turner were key figures in efforts to add color to black-and-white movies. They, of course, wanted to find new revenue streams by enticing audiences to see old films in a new light.

There was no shortage of detractors who complained that the process was crude, at best, and that lighting designed for black-and-white photography would not be effective in color.

Those opposed to the colorization process included film critic Roger Ebert, Jimmy Stewart, John Huston, George Lucas and Woody Allen.

“They arrest people who spray subway cars, they lock up people who attack paintings and sculptures in museums, and adding color to black-and-white films, even if it’s only to the tape shown on TV or sold in stores, is vandalism nonetheless,” Ebert said.

“What was so wrong about black-and-white movies in the first place?” he asked. “By filming in black-and-white, movies can sometimes be more dreamlike and elegant and stylized and mysterious. They can add a whole additional dimension to reality, while color sometimes just supplies additional unnecessary information.”

At issue was the original intent of the filmmaker, which in many cases could never be known. Would Frank Capra, for instance, have made It Happened One Night (1934) in color had it been an option? I doubt that Elia Kazan could have more effectively captured the gritty essence of New York’s shipping docks in On the Waterfront, his 1954 masterpiece, had it been filmed in Technicolor. And color photography could no more have added to the intensity that Sidney Lumet built into 12 Angry Men (1957) than if he had included a car chase with Steve McQueen at the wheel.

Woody Allen’s opposition was notable, not to mention ironic, in that his first major film was What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, a 1966 effort (in black-and-white) in which he took an existing Japanese spy movie, International Secret Police: Key of Keys, re-edited it and overdubbed existing dialogue with a new script. The result was a chaotic spoof on secret-agent films with a plot involving a farcical search for the world’s best egg salad recipe. It hardly recognized the integrity of the original movie or its director.

The technology of colorization merely added color to an existing product. There was nothing being sold other than the product itself; no McLuhanesque subliminal message of 7-Up where there was none. 

The latest technological development comes at a time when product placement is becoming increasingly more important to advertisers. Globally, according to a PQ Media study, such advertising rose 15% in value in 2019. The ever-increasing practice of streaming films and TV shows through Netflix and Amazon Prime, which do not have advertisement breaks, gives product placement a way to subtly reach target audiences.

Because musicians and composers have been essentially cut off from making their livings due to streaming services that remove the need to purchase recorded music, many of the MTV generation are finding hope in the new technology. Old videos could be edited and re-mastered to provide advertising platforms that could be tailored to meet any number of demographic profiles. This could provide new life to old videos, perhaps even reaching new generations of listeners while providing older audiences with a sense of nostalgia in the way that hearing an “oldie-but-goodie” on a car radio might.

But unlike commercial radio, in which songs are sandwiched between commercials, videos would have no alternative but to add logos, signage and actual product to create new sources of revenue.

While we may have become inured to the constant bombardment of advertising in myriad forms, I can’t think that redoing the past will offer much benefit. Nor can I imagine that paying audiences would tolerate a quarter of the movie screen devoted to scrolling pop-up ads.

Tonight, the movie industry, which prides itself on its cultural contributions and its commitment to humanitarian causes, will don its designer best to safely gather and pat itself on its collective back in a heartfelt homage to commercial art. Despite their good intentions, it’s only a matter of time before—taking its cue from ESPN—award categories will be sponsored.

“And the nominees for Bank of America’s Best Actor in a Supporting Role are…”

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Egg Salad Sandwich (deconstructed)

6 large, cage-free Organic Valley eggs
1/4 cup Best Foods mayonnaise
2 teaspoons Grey Poupon Dijon mustard
1-1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. Morton salt
1/8 tsp. Durkee ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. Domino’s sugar
1/4 cup finely minced celery
3 Tbs. finely sliced scallion
1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh parsley

Place the eggs in a saucepan in a single layer, and fill the pan with enough cold water so that it covers the eggs by about an inch. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat, then remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes.

Drain the water and run cold water over the eggs. Once cooled, allow to sit for ten minutes or so.

In a medium Corning glass bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and sugar. Add the celery, scallions, and parsley. Using a Rubbermaid rubber spatula, fold to combine.

To make the sandwiches, slice one egg for each hoagie sandwich roll. Slather both sides of the roll with the dressing, adding lettuce, and slices of tomato and sweet onion if you’d like. Add the slices of egg. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Although the Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Center, an entity known mostly for fundraising to keep itself in business, hasn’t made any formal announcement of plans for the Roundup Rodeo Parade on July 2, rumors abound about the festivities.

Insiders from the various groups that partner with the Chamber, including delegates representing every entity in the county, have said that, by order of Governor Body Slam, masks will not be required. In fact, the governor wants the people to not wear masks at all to demonstrate to all the world how much we cherish our freedoms and how we won’t act like sheep.

That’s a bit grandiose in scale. Attendance is usually limited to locals, a few folks from adjoining counties and tourists who typically describe the event as “quaint.” It is hardly worldly.

The theme for this year’s gathering is inspired by the 1970 chart-topping “Close to You,” by the Carpenters. The subtext is “Viral Infections Along a Parade Route in Small Town America.”

Slated to act as Grand Marshall of the Roundup Parade is Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican loud-mouth from someplace in Ohio who is still operating under the mistaken belief that Trump won re-election.

Those questioning the wisdom of hosting the parade at all have been asked by management to sit down and keep their anti-American, anti-business mouths shut. Better yet, they should just pull up their little paper masks and leave.

“One year of no parade was enough,” noted an anonymous source, who asked to remain anonymous to maintain his anonymity. “How much do the townspeople have to suffer just because 560,00 Americans have died from a fake disease? Obama did nothing about it and now Biden is sitting idly as our economy crumbles in front of us. We, the people, need the bars to open to full capacity. The pipers must pipe, the Shriners must clown, and the beer must flow.”

The economy notwithstanding—on which a three-hour display of floats, fire trucks and horses will have minimal impact—parades are not enjoyed by everyone. I happen to be one of them.

There’s never been a Thanksgiving when somebody hasn’t called to ask if I was watching the Macy’s parade, which is only ever interesting if a gust of wind blows and happens to cause a four-story-high blow-up of Goofy to be launched into the stratosphere. That rarely happens and when it does, it’s all over the evening news. So, I tell whoever asks, that I’m busy doing other things like trying to avoid viewing the crass commercialism that drives our crass consumerism. If disaster strikes, I’ll catch the highlights later.

While our town’s little parade isn’t void of commercial aspects—every realtor and insurance agent who owns a convertible sticks magnetic signage on the front doors of those cars and wave imperiously to the people who line the streets watching them drive by—it’s more focused on community things. Every charity and do-gooder group are well-represented, as are all of the folks who own farm equipment or horses. (You’ll never see a Deere harvest combine on Central Avenue South.)

The fire engines blare their sirens if I happen to be fewer than twelve feet away. The politicians hand out enough election propaganda to carpet the streets in glossy paper, just under the detritus of discarded packaging from the street food that is consumed from the taco, gyro and hot dog stands that pop up along the route.

As a downtown business operator for twelve years, I came to dread parade day. It required me to triple the staff to deal with the crowds and reinvent what we did as a restaurant, down to one year serving a Sunday brunch to about twelve people; we were prepared for forty. Pastas are hardly parade fare. One year I made two gallons of gazpacho, eventually throwing out all but one serving. The next year, no fewer than a dozen people asked why I wasn’t serving gazpacho.

One year we made some little knots of baked pizza dough. Who knew so many people liked to dip them into ranch dressing, a condiment I didn’t stock? One year we had a keg of Bud Light on tap. At the end of that day, we had nine-tenths of a keg of Bud Light. Fine wines at $7-$8 per glass were eschewed by people wanting something in the $3 range, which is wine probably not worth drinking.

Nobody has ever accused me of being a good businessman, especially my wife. In fact, my most successful business venture was redeeming for two cents each the soda and beer bottles I found as a five-year-old in the alleys of Chicago’s west side.

I was driven by a desire to create good food, an inviting atmosphere—figuring that the books would take care of themselves. I was wrong much of the time. But parade day was never a salvation. In the end, I realized that I would have done better to have sat in the window and watched as the parade passed me by.

Parades have at their very heart a sense of belonging to the military—traditions of troops marching in stride to show the strength and fortitude of a nation’s power. I have never found that appealing. From the brass bands to the goose-stepping soldiers, it has always seemed to be a patriotic ritual that leads to nationalism and onward then to war.

And speaking of misplaced patriotism, there seems to be a movement afoot to erect a 100-foot tall flagpole in the middle of the park to hoist a flag the size of Connecticut on the morning of July Fourth. I don’t get it. Does an out-sized flag somehow represent a greater sense of the American sensibility than that already displayed by the beautiful array of simple flags that surround our park on holidays?

Or am I taking this in the same way I recognize that the oversized pickup trucks are some kind of compensation for something small?

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chicken Cacciatore

The Italian hunter’s chicken is easy and delicious. Adjust the seasonings to your taste.

8 chicken thighs
salt
freshly ground black pepper
all-purpose flour, for dredging
olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, diced
1 cup dry white wine
1, 28-oz. can diced tomatoes with juice
1 cup chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp. dried oregano leaves
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves

Generously season the chicken with salt and pepper.
Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour to coat lightly.
In a large heavy sauté pan, heat the oil over a medium-high flame. Add the chicken pieces, skin side down, to the pan and sauté just until brown, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.
Add the peppers, onion and celery to the same pan and sauté over medium heat until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute or two. Season with salt and pepper. Add the wine and simmer until reduced by half, about 3 minutes.
Add the tomatoes with their juice, broth, and oregano. Return the chicken pieces to the pan and turn them to coat in the sauce. Bring the sauce to a simmer. Cover and continue simmering over medium-low heat until the chicken is just cooked through, about 30 minutes.
Transfer the chicken to a platter. If necessary, boil the sauce until it thickens slightly, about 3 minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken, then sprinkle with the basil and serve.

As if the last year hasn’t presented enough challenges that even Gabriel García Márquez or Thomas Mann might have had trouble navigating, there now appears to be a ketchup crisis that is emotionally crippling the vast number of Americans who eat fries with every meal.

While the grocery stores have plenty of the ketchup that comes in those squeezable bottles that cannot remain upright, the chain drive-thru restaurants have been forced to ration the little plastic packets of a condiment that began life in either China or Great Britain as a sauce made from anchovies, mussels and walnuts, among other odd ingredients.

I’m guessing it was the Brits who were so desperate to create something that would improve England’s food.

There was a time when those little packets were tossed into to-go bags of alleged food by the handful—much like candy at Halloween. At year’s end, many a kitchen drawer was filled with them, along with similar packets of soy sauce, unopened Fortune Cookies and rolls of plastic bags to pick up dog poop. But the demand for the packets has forced retailers to limit their distribution to one packet per order, barely enough to coat the ends of more than four or five fries. This is a cruel dilemma for those who regularly eat in their vehicles and haven’t thought to keep a bottle of ketchup in the glove compartment—a beneath-the-dashboard bin in which gloves have never been kept.

Allegedly, this shortage has been created by those unwilling to share the bottles of ketchup found on many restaurant tabletops or use the pump dispensers near the soda machines because of a possible exposure to COVID-19. But since most of the fast food joints have been closed to dine-in customers since the middle of March 2020, that makes no sense. And many of those same people afraid to share ketchup also believe that wearing masks is an infringement of their rights. Go figure.

To simplify a national food crisis with the idea that people are merely picking up more food to-go, is to deny our current reality.

What does make sense, of course, is a dark government conspiracy—orchestrated by Joe Biden and John Kerry (who married into the Heinz family and reportedly has eleven private jets, ten of which are always airborne)—to create ketchup shortages that would increase the value of each packet by at least thirty percent.

The nutritional value of ketchup was determined during the Reagan Administration when it was designated a vegetable (the ketchup, not Reagan), and a minimum daily consumption recommendation was established at six ounces. Now it’s time, ketchup producers say, to make more money.

I’m not sure how ketchup became the favorite sauce in which to dunk a deep-fried strip of potato. It should never have happened.

In Belgium, where French fries were invented when some chef was trying to create a potato chip for the newly established Frito-Lay company, fries are consumed with a sauce of a “ketchup-like” substance of dubious origin and sprinkled with diced raw onion.

In Spain, fries are known as patata fritas, a popular tapas that are usually served with packets of spicy salsa from Taco Bell.

France claims to have pretty much created every culinary contribution in history, without ever acknowledging that everything they know about food was learned from Italians. Nonetheless, pommes frites, with which Thomas Jefferson seemed so enamored, are served with homemade mayonnaise or a Mornay sauce with Gruyère cheese.

That sauce, delicate unless used on the Kentucky state sandwich of turkey and bacon called a Hot Brown, no doubt inspired the people of Quebec, Canada, to create poutine. Maybe. Poutine is made with fries, cheese curds and brown gravy, and has become as revered in that province as has barbecue in Texas, hot dogs in Chicago, cheese steaks in Philadelphia, and corn dogs in Iowa.

I had poutine once. Once was more than enough.

Ireland, the island nation whose citizenry refused to eat fish during the famous potato famine—choosing instead to emigrate to Boston or starve to death—does not have French fries. Potatoes are eaten boiled. Period.

But back to ketchup, which in the time of this pandemic has been called the “new toilet paper.” I find that to be a rather disturbing image.

In this time of condiment hardship, I would suggest that people broaden their horizons and dip into new sauces. For a ketchup lover, such a suggestion may seem as unseemly as asking a Proud Boy to give up his automatic weapon, but I believe it’s a sacrifice we need to make.

It’s also the only way to thwart Biden’s evil plan to upset this nation’s dietary code and line the pockets of ketchup moguls, who are currently adding secret ingredients that will, when exposed to the gamma rays of G5 transmitters, allow Bill Gates to know where each of us are 24/7. The new, improved ketchup will also act as a booster vaccine to combat COVID-19.

The anti-vaxxers will need to make a condiment switch, leading the nation away from the newly hatched plot by the unhinged radical liberal that is Joe Biden. His behavior from the Oval Office is clearly out of control. He’s obviously coming after our guns, as well as our ketchup, and is promoting a commie agenda that encompasses the ideas of equality, a clean environment, the well-being of us all, and civil rights, human rights and voting rights.

This madness has to stop.

Clearly, there will be a shift of the earth’s axis as thirty percent of the country switches to mayonnaise for its fries.

Photo creation by Courtney A. Liska

Tomato Ketchup

6 oz. can of tomato paste
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat; whisk until smooth.
When it comes to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring often.
Remove from heat and cover until cool.
Chill and store refrigerated in a covered container.

My mother was all of seven years old when the stock market crash ushered in what would become known as the Great Depression.

On October 24, 1929, as nervous investors began selling off over-priced shares in a trading frenzy, the crash that some had feared happened at last. A record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.”

Five days later, on “Black Tuesday,” some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic divestment swept Wall Street. Millions of shares ended up to be worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks with borrowed money were wiped out completely.

Financial ruin swept across the nation from Lower Manhattan, where reckless speculation had led countless Americans to pour their savings into stocks. As a result, the market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August of 1929.

But by then, industrial production had declined, and unemployment was on the rise, leaving stock prices much higher than their actual value. Wages at the time were sagging, consumer debt was rising, and the agricultural sector of the economy was struggling due to falling food prices and shortages brought about by a drought that would see the nation’s bread basket turn into the Dust Bowl. Banks had an excess of large loans that could not be liquidated.

Less than a year after the crash, my mother began her day by making soup from the leftovers from the night before. Left to simmer while she attended school in the small town of Callaway, Nebraska, she would come home and serve the soup and scraps of stale bread from the town’s bakery to the “traveling men” from the front porch of her family’s white-washed clapboard house.

These men, unlike the settlers who had homesteaded much of the West, represented a diaspora that would forever change the face of both the nation and that of the American family.

Homesteaders, their eyes filled with hope for a bright new future, came looking for opportunity. The men to whom my mother ladled soup—sad-eyed, their suits worn, their fedoras sweat-stained and weathered—came looking for a chance at survival. Opportunity must have seemed fanciful. Having left their families, they traveled in search of elusive jobs that might provide enough income to send home.

By 1930, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. For those who were lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and buying power decreased dramatically. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers couldn’t afford to harvest their crops, and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved. That same year was when the severe droughts in the Southern Plains brought high winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock, and crops.

The Dust Bowl inspired a mass migration of people from farmlands to cities in search of factory work, and from the plains to California to become field laborers. John Steinbeck found poetry in the sufferings of those he portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath.

In 1933, the financial stress on the American people could be measured in a 24.9% unemployment rate. From 1931, the same year my father quit school to join the work force as a 12-year-old, until 1940, the unemployment rate never reached above 14%. Half of the American people were living below subsistence levels. More than half of the nation’s banks had failed.

While there don’t seem to be many statistics about the effects of the Depression on the structure and stability of the American family, it can be safely assumed that many of the men never returned home or were successful enough in the pursuit of jobs to send money home.

From 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million. Though women had been entering the workforce for decades, the financial pressures of the Great Depression drove women to seek employment in ever greater numbers as male breadwinners lost their jobs. Marriages dropped 22 percent during that time.

As war loomed on two fronts, my father lied about his age and enlisted in the Army. Other enlistees, as well as those conscripted into service, became part of a workforce that would make a large dent in the unemployment numbers. In anticipation of war came a massive increase in industrial, i.e., armaments, production. The low-paying jobs of nursing, sewing, and teaching that FDR’s Works Progress Administration had created for women, were replaced by what came to be symbolized by Rosie the Riveter.

The end of World War II ushered in an era of prosperity and helped restore, if not, create, a middle class. It also saw the African-American diaspora from the rural south to the industrial north—all in search of jobs and opportunity, without the oppressive racism that permeated the south. Or so it was believed.

I had an uncle who had been too young for service in WWI and too old for WWII. He worked at the General Electric factory on Chicago’s West Side throughout the war. He drew no salary, opting rather for stock options. As he toiled on the assembly line, he honed his vision of the future. He figured that at war’s end, the GIs would come home, buy a car, marry the girls they’d left behind, and move into cracker-box suburban houses.

He was right, as demonstrated by his becoming a wealthy man through the Lincoln-Ford dealership he started, followed by his partnering with a lumber company to develop Naperville, Illinois.

But the rise of suburbia signaled yet another diaspora as returning GIs left their family homes to settle elsewhere.

America had become a country on the move, perhaps no better symbolized than by Bing Crosby’s hit recording of the Gordon Jenkins song, whose refrain promised: I’m gonna settle down and never more roam / And make the San Fernando Valley my home.

When thousands of GIs passed through that Los Angeles valley on the way to the Asian front, they saw from the train windows what must have seemed a paradise of lush orange orchards. The Valley was quickly settled after the war, the orange groves plowed under to make room for housing.

The dispersal of our citizenry led to a distancing of our families. As my family continued to relocate further and further west from Chicago, we became more distanced from my paternal grandmother, which, in retrospect, I regret (although it was not my doing). Grandmothers have a special way with their grandchildren that provides special senses of learning and security—as well as cookies.

There was a time when newlyweds moved in with parents, and when the newlyweds got around to having their own place, the parents moved in with them. All told, it was not a bad system.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Mary Pickford

The actress was married to Douglas Fairbanks and presumably did not suffer terribly during the Great Depression. My babička named this ground beef and noodle casserole for “America’s Sweetheart,” perhaps hoping to lend a sense of elegance to what is clearly a Depression era dish. But I’m not sure. I just loved it as a kid.

1# ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, chopped
½ bell pepper, chopped
1 can of tomato soup
Salt & pepper
1 Tbs. chopped parsley
12 oz. elbow macaroni

Sauté the onion in a Tbs. of neutral oil for 4-5 minutes over medium heat. Add the celery and bell pepper, cooking for 2-4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Turn the heat to high and cook the ground beef.
Meanwhile, cook the macaroni according to the package instructions.
Add the tomato soup to the cooked meat mixture. Stir in the cooked macaroni. Garnish with parsley and serve.

It never occurred to me that one day I might compose these words: I really am beginning to miss the son-of-a-bitch.

For four years I slept restlessly, wondering what catastrophe or disaster or embarrassing tweet awaited my awakening. Cold sweats in mid-sleep would be accompanied by my blood-curdling screams into the night air. “The Best Is Yet to Come,” became my anthem to counter the idea that maybe things couldn’t get worse.

And yet they always seemed to.

But now, where is all the lunatic screaming and name-calling, the profiteering golf trips, the posturing, the show-and-tell bill signings, the crowds of toadies surrounding the most powerful man in the world? Why can’t we see world leaders rolling their eyes at presidential boorishness? Where are the teams of special prosecutors?

Where are the suggestions of bleach injections and the rectal Klieg lights, the projections of a mere fifteen cases before this little health issue would pass? Missing also are accusations of cancel culture, the support for Proud Boys, Fat Boys, Meth Boys, QAnon and white supremacists; the disdain for a domestic terrorist organization—antifa—that doesn’t exist?

No insurrections, no snowstorm of daily lies, no posing in front of a church holding a bible.

Who would want to live in such a world?

After 60 days of relative calm, of watching the American government climb back to the business of being responsive to the travails of a nation while working to provide its people both protection and opportunity, I wake up with a blood pressure reading that is through the roof.

Could it be that if I don’t have serious concerns to rant and rave about—issues to preach about stridently to the choir—that my system feels deprived and becomes hypertensive? Is this the punishment for wearing one’s  progressive liberalism on one’s sleeve?

I know it’s not because President Biden used “cheat sheets” at his first press conference since taking office. Trump would have done well to have a few facts at hand during his briefings, conferences, and rallies. And I know it’s not because Biden has the occasional verbal gaffe. Trump’s gaffes were multiple and far more impressive in that his vocabulary was equal to that of an average fourth grader. Hard to make too many mistakes when you only know about four hundred words, yet he misspoke more often than Norm Crosby.

I believe that Biden wants us to know the facts about the problems we face and his Administration’s proposed solutions. Hence, the cheat sheets. Maybe, just maybe, the truth is making me ail.

After starting medication on Tuesday, my blood pressure readings were still at ceiling level. By Friday, I had added a pounding headache, whose every throb seemed in time with the beat of my heart, and my vision had blurred as if I was looking through somebody else’s reading glasses. The doctor I had seen on Monday advised me to go the emergency department, where medications could be administered that would control my hypertension immediately.

Unless your heart has been pierced by a wooden stake, shot in the groin, or your jugular vein severed, few things happen immediately in the ED.

Nine different people were involved in my nearly five-hour stay. A scan of my head showed no bleeding from the brain, which is always good news. (The last time I had a brain scan, the doctor told me there was nothing there. He thought that was funny.) The EKG showed a change from the last one, perhaps due to the heart attack I had two years ago. My BP started dropping, indicating to the doctors that additional meds would not be needed and that the diuretic was starting to work.

But nobody there could offer a reason why, after four years of Trump, I experienced a mild health crisis after sixty days of Biden. Maybe there is no connection, but I remember when my sister died, I told the attending physician it was because Trump had just taken office. He agreed. And that was in the pathetically red state of Indiana.

Back in the ED, the subject of the Holocaust came up. One of the attendants, upon hearing that nearly thirty percent of American adults don’t believe it even happened, noted that the figure coincided with Trump’s base.

And in the meantime, I’m reading an article in The New Yorker about the devolution of the Republican party into a party—at least its far-right faction—as an occult of Trump. There is no policy; only a personality that encourages free-wheeling abhorrence of civility, decency and lawlessness.

I’ve also read more than one suggestion that Biden is the new FDR. While I find that comforting, in a way, I doubt that he’ll have the Congressional support to put in place programs that pay for themselves—as did Roosevelt’s. America’s infrastructure is in dire need of repair and Biden would be wise to establish a Works Progress Administration to address the issue.

But I wonder about the source of my blood pressure problems. Unhappy with Trump for four years, now my hypertension soars.

I made an appointment with my shrink, Dr. Günter Klaus von Grubersteingruber, who, as you might remember, works days as a diesel mechanic.

“There is a certain sense of loss, a sense of abandonment, a sense of emptiness,” he said, his Austrian accent more pronounced than the last time we met when he spoke those exact same words. I was lying on a folding chaise lounge in the crowded backroom of his shop. The room was decorated with Hustler centerfolds and it smelled of cigarettes, burnt motor oil and sauerkraut. The space heater heaved from power surges. There was the occasional spark.

“You miss Trump for the same reasons you miss Nixon.”

“How so?” I asked.

“You don’t have him to kick around anymore.”

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Easter Lamb with Peas

This is a stew that is easy, festive and delicious for the Christian holiday coming next week.

2# lamb shoulder, boned and cut into large chunks
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 large carrot, sliced
1 celery stalk, chopped
5 garlic cloves, crushed
2 oz. anchovy fillets in oil
handful thyme sprigs
1 red chili pepper, sliced
9 oz. dry white wine
1 oz. white wine vinegar
10 oz. frozen peas
1 large potatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
8 oz. cherry tomatoes, halved
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Season the lamb with salt and black pepper. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large, lidded pan and fry the onions, carrot, and celery for 4–5 minutes, or until softened. Add the garlic, anchovies, thyme and chili, and continue to cook, stirring, until the anchovies have almost dissolved into the oil. Add the lamb chunks and fry for a further 4–5 minutes, or until browned all over.
Stir in the wine and continue to cook until the volume of the liquid has reduced by half, then add the vinegar. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Add the peas, potatoes, and tomatoes, cover and continue to cook for about an hour, until the sauce is reduced by half.
Serve hot with plenty of bread to mop up the sauce.

It’s been too long since I’ve indulged in a conversation about bagpipes. Actually, I’ve never had such an indulgence in this space.

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, I detest bagpipes in the same way I detest haggis—a Scottish culinary creation that is made by shoveling whatever is left over from butchering a lamb and stuffing it into the lamb’s stomach and cooking it until the evil spirits are driven out of the house. Then it is transported, somewhat ceremoniously, by wheelbarrow and thrown away in the vicar’s garbage can as a tithe offering.

The Scots, besides their history of aggressive lawn care, have contributed many things to the world. Golf, for instance, a game played on grassy fields made to ruin a perfectly pleasant afternoon. And Scotch, a delicious beverage to help salvage an afternoon ruined by golf.

Bagpipes are believed to have been invented by the Scots when there was a leftover sheep’s stomach from the annual haggis bee. Somebody there had two tubes which he stuck into the stomach. Hoping to scare all the wee lads and lasses, he blew into one tube, forcing air—and noise—out of the other while squeezing it between his elbow and his rib cage.

This history is somewhat suspicious because there’s an entire sura in the Quran devoted to warning Muslims that using a bagpipe is a mortal sin.

I have a friend who likes the bagpipes so much that he has traveled more than once to Scotland to visit the pipes’ ancestral home. He might have other faults that I don’t know about. And the fact that he’s a Scotch drinker tells me that “the pipes” aren’t the only attraction to a country where English is spoken only while gargling marbles.

I am curious to know if bagpipes—created as a war instrument to keep the British away—sound different there, echoing about the brae-filled countryside. Since pipers seem to only know one song, I somehow doubt it.

Every year, except this past year due to Covid-19, our little town hosts a Fourth of July parade on July 2nd (don’t ask). There are farm implements, antique cars, Shriners, and no fewer than sixteen bagpipe bands—separated by mule trains—all playing the only song they know, the pipers…mules know no songs. After the parade, the bands invade all of the bars in town, demanding free drinks in exchange for not playing that one song over and over. By the end of the evening, our little town is littered with drunk folks in kilts.

I was the best man at a friend’s outdoor wedding and had to arrange for a bagpiper to perform for the bride’s stroll down the aisle, which I estimated would take three minutes, tops. I found a piper who wanted to play not only the three minutes, but between the sets a band would be playing as well. I told him that three minutes would be more than enough and that we were willing to play him for four hours’ work.

He seemed upset, but not nearly as upset as he was when he asked me how I would recognize him on the day of the wedding.

“I assume you’ll be only man there wearing a plaid dress.”

SPEAKING OF WOODWINDS, consider the oboe. Unlike its cousin, the bassoon, there is nothing remotely humorous about the oboe.

Oboists are special in myriad ways. Usually, their eyes are narrow set and they know and accept, for instance, that the most common cause of death among them is when their heads explode while trying to force a stream of air through a mouthpiece whose diameter is roughly the same as a human hair—and that’s just when tuning the orchestra. When this happens in an actual concert it pretty much puts a damper on the day for everyone.

Oboists can only talk about their reeds. They are not conversant in any other subject. As every crossword puzzle enthusiast knows, the oboe is a double-reed instrument. The reeds are sensitive to every climatic element known and oboists spend a lot of time wringing their hands worrying about climate change. I was at a party once where two oboists were telling stories to each other as they sipped their white wine spritzers through their reeds. They were red-faced and crying.

I’ve always wondered what the attraction to playing the oboe is. Of course, I’ve always wondered who is attracted to sadomasochism as well. My simple theory is that in fifth grade, the children line up outside the music room at school and are given clarinets until they run out of them. A few trumpets are handed out next, then a trombone or two. The last kid in line gets an oboe and a jelly jar with distilled water to keep the reeds wet, which they must carry dutifully like the cup of mare’s sweat in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

The handful of kids who refuse to stand quietly in line get snare drums.

I grew up in Chicago where there was no shortage of accordions, probably because there was no shortage of Germans, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans who seemed to share an affinity for both the instrument and it best-known use: the polka. Many showed an affinity for kielbasa as well.

Vital to modern klezmer music, an instrumental tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, the accordion was the core of the Lawrence Welk Show that vaulted Myron Floren, aka “the happy Norwegian,” to international fame.

In my childhood neighborhood, if there was an accordion in your house it meant that your parents couldn’t afford a piano, which is like a large accordion without all those little buttons on the left side. Of course, you don’t squeeze a piano; nor is it as easy to move from one place to another.

Accordions are rarely featured on movie soundtracks, unlike the banjo. Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit (Parts 1-103), and Petticoat Junction tell you all you really need to know about the banjo.

Photo montage by Courtney A. Liska

Cock-a-leekie Soup

For a quick indulgence in authentic Scottish fare, try this delicious soup before venturing into haggis territory. I can’t for the life of me figure out why one would put prunes into what is basically chicken soup.

3 chicken legs, or 6 drumsticks
4 cups water
1 onion, chopped
2 leeks, sliced
2 carrots, chopped
12 prunes, chopped
2 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
salt

Heat the oven to 400˚
Roast the chicken pieces for about 30 minutes, then place in a heavy bottomed stockpot along with any juices. Pour water over the chicken until it is covered. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 1 hour to make a stock.
Add in the vegetables, prunes, herbs, a good grinding of pepper and half a teaspoon of salt. Cook until the vegetables are tender, around 20 minutes. Remove the chicken, take the meat from the bones, and stir back into soup.
Discard the bones and the herbs, check for seasoning and serve.