Hail and Farewell

It’s the last edition of CBS Sunday Morning of the year, and I am waiting eagerly (is that the right word?) for the “Hail and Farewell” segment. That’s when the host recalls and we react to many of the notables who died during the past year.

This year’s segment opens with a brief montage of Mary Tyler Moore before and during her spunky Minneapolis career woman days, then gives brief mention to other recently deceased actors, comedians, artists, and musicians, and even to some persons far outside of the pop realm (such as Medal of Honor winner Thomas Hudner, who crashed his own plane during the Korean War in an unsuccessful effort to rescue one of America’s first African American pilots. I didn’t remember him at all.)

MTM and the hat toss

I am not sure that I am a typical viewer, but I always find myself missing many of the persons noted, even though I have not thought of them for many years. Rose Marie from the Dick Van Dyke Show, for example, or Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It’s hard to believe, but both of them matter to me as Jane Pauley leads me to think of them again.

And this TV viewing comes just a few days after I spent part of a morning on a brief year-end visit to my hometown of Savannah, Georgia, placing stones upon the grave markers of my parents, grandparents, an aunt and uncle, a recently-deceased young cousin, the parents of childhood friends, and one special, much-missed childhood friend of my own. My most surprising find that day was the gravesite of a dentist who treated both of my parents long ago. His stone proudly includes his D.D.S. title after his name and notes that he was a “devoted husband, father, grandfather, and dentist” — a man who treasured both family and profession.

I don’t think I’m at all obsessed with death, but I am fascinated by cemeteries, particularly those that are homes to the graves of famous people. A few years ago, I dragged my wife and daughter through a persistent drizzle to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to view the “final resting places” of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, and 12th century lovers Heloise and Abelard. 

One unusual memory of that visit involved our being approached at the cemetery by a young woman speaking very rapid French. She wanted directions to a particular grave. (Since I was a poor student of French, at best, I didn’t really understand her request at the time, but I did some research after the fact.) It turns out that many young French women seek out the grave site of a noted 19th century journalist and lover killed in a duel as the result of an affair. The women rub themselves against one part of the statue’s anatomy in hopes of increasing their fertility. Could this happen anywhere besides Paris?

Note the location of a suspicious bright spot on the statue.

A few years before that, Audrey and I walked gingerly through the chaotic Jewish cemetery in Prague, where graves have been stacked atop each other for centuries and gravestones placed there many years apart lean heavily upon each other. We never found the grave of famed Czech Rabbi Judah Loew, who is reputed to have formed a Golem to protect Czech Jews from a series of pogroms in the 16th century. Rabbi Loew’s Golem has an important place in Jewish literature; it could have been useful in our later history, too.  

My photo of centuries of graves in the Prague Jewish Cemetery

So this is what I am thinking about on the last day of 2017. I am reacting to Hail and Farewell for a year many of us would like to ignore or forget. 

Tastes of “Home”

In one of his books, Kurt Vonnegut describes heading back to his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana, for his sister’s funeral. He reminisces and notes that you can live many places in your life, but your original hometown is always your real “home.”

I am reminded of this idea because, in a few weeks, the four New Jersey Goodmans (both adults and children) will be heading to Savannah (my “home”) for a few days to join in the annual Cousins’ Party at my cousins Debbie and Joel Rotkow’s house. I am in training for the event.

Some people train by working out and dieting. Sure, I am doing a little of each of those. But I am also working out my taste buds to get them ready to take in some special Savannah delicacies.

There have been many yearly cousins’ gathering in Savannah. Debbie and Joel weren’t the first to host the cousins’ party. That honor belongs to Aunt Sara Heyman, who was really my cousin and not my aunt (but we follow Savannah custom in which older cousins and even older friends of our parents are automatically called Aunt and Uncle).

The Cousins’ Party guest list expands from year to year as cousins marry and have babies, and spouses and kids get added to the list. Sadly, it also contracts. We have lost some family members both older and younger in recent years.  So we spend part of each party welcoming and part remembering. We tell new stories and rehash old ones. And we eat—a lot.

This year, I am getting a culinary head start as I prepare for my return to Savannah. I am indulging in three essential Savannah foods to get myself in the mood.

First, Brett put in an order for me through Amazon for a “boiled peanut kit.” A box arrived with 2 pounds of raw peanuts, a large packet of sea salt and a smaller packet of Cajun seasoning. I followed the directions and combined them in a big pot filled with enough water to lift the peanuts 2 inches above the bottom of the pot. Then I boiled them and boiled them and boiled them. The package directions suggested 4-6 hours. I kept them going for more than 7. And they still weren’t as soft as I remember or really like. But they are salty and watery and taste like a mixture of garbanzo beans and heaven. In my distant memory, there was a store called the Chatham Peanut Company on Jefferson and State Streets. halfway between my mother’s workplace at Heyman & Son Clothing on Broughton and my father’s radio and TV repair shop on Jefferson. The peanut store had great parched and boiled peanuts and an owner who knew both of my parents and made me feel very welcome when I came in to make small purchases.

My boiled peanuts on the way to perfection

(If you want some history and trivia about boiled peanuts, go here: https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/BoiledPeanutsHistory.htm. One caveat: General Sherman sees closely connected to the history. Oh well.)

So there are now boiled peanuts in my home. And they are homemade! Which means my New Jersey home could masquerade as a Savannah home, sort of. The Savannah aspect is even more apparent if you check out my pantry which contains two bottles of Johnny Harris Barbecue Sauce.  They are the last two bottles from two cases I ordered last year. (And I just put in a new order to replenish my supply.) 

Sadly, Johnny Harris Restaurant on Victory Drive is gone, but the spirit (and the sauce) go on. Johnny Harris was where you went after a dance if you had money and a special date. It was a clear step up in cost and class from Shoney’s next door. Those were my two main alternatives during my high school years.

Johnny's as it must have looked when my parents first went there.

The third Savannah must in my training regimen is a little more controversial than the other two. It requires a little back story. 

Each year, I succumb to a “sales pitch” around Christmas time from an organization in Alabama that prides itself on employing numerous handicapped people on its staff, including the person who is calling me. According to his persuasive phone spiel, the cleaning supplies, garbage and storage bags, and other products I buy help to keep handicapped people like him at work. I am trusting and hopeful that the company is on the up and up. (It did pass the Google test.) 

  

Will these two fruitcakes last until our trip?

This year, the company offered a new item I couldn’t pass up—Claxton Fruit Cake. For me, historically, Claxton Fruit Cake is an essential part of Christmas time in Savannah. It’s heavy and sweet and may rot my teeth and expand my girth. I don’t care. My entire family makes fun of me when I buy one of more pound-size cakes to slip into my suitcase for the trip back to New Jersey each year. I don’t mind. And their making fun means that I have little competition when it comes to eating the goodies.

So there it is—my special Savannah first aid kit—boiled peanuts, barbecue sauce, and fruit cake. They are more than foods; they are memories and history. They are “home.”

Snow Blower Sagas

Friday morning, I picked up my snow blower from the repair shop. This is not a sentence that a boy from Savannah, Georgia, ever expects to write—or even think.

The repair shop had cleaned the carburetor, replaced a spark plug, tuned the engine, checked the blades, replaced the oil, and refilled the fuel tank. If writing that list implies that I understand very much about motors or their maintenance, I can assure you that I am out of my element there too. Presumably, if I knew how to handle the necessary maintenance, I could have done the jobs myself and saved $78.65. I’m not that crazy! I may need the snow blower this winter, and I want to know it will work if called upon. Fixing things mechanical is not in my DNA.  

According to the repair shop owner, I’m now all set to deal with a winter of snow that I hope will never come in New Jersey but would welcome farther north where we hope to ski this winter.

There I go again, talking about skiing. Something else a Savannah boy seldom expects to discuss—or even think about.

The snow blower is not a recent purchase, but it was made only about 10 years ago after a lot of soul searching. For many years living in my transplanted northern home, I figured that snow shoveling was good exercise. For several of those years, I was also under the delusion that my then teenaged children would take up the shovels and spare me the task (right!). Finally, I came to the conclusion that neither of my reasons for avoiding buying a snow blower was based on fact. Besides, the children were no longer teens and no longer living at the family manse.

So the snow blower and I became winter partners about a decade ago. We are not close partners, however. I still have to reread the manual every winter to make sure which switch to move where to get the machine started. And it often coughs at me if I don’t do the settings right—or is it sneering?

So many parts to manipulate in the right order!

I am not alone in my snow blower maintenance mysteries or miseries. Last year, my friend Gary decided that he needed a new snow blower. Combining that need with his basic cheapness, he ordered the machine from an online source. He knew it came with “some assembly required,” but he decided to ignore that fact, as well as his basic incompetence when it came to assembling machines. “I saved over $300,” he proudly announced.

The snow blower arrived in a large box and in many pieces. It also came with diagrams and detailed assembly instructions written in that special language that instruction manual writers use. Gary was perplexed. 

A big box, many parts, unfathomable instructions!

He brought the problem up at the next gathering of our Tuesday morning breakfast club. The club consists of several aging Jewish men. Amazingly, at least two of our group are not incompetent when it comes to tools or to reading assembly instructions. (I am not one of those, obviously, nor is Gary.)

So Mark decided to take on the task of assembling Gary’s snow blower with Gary serving as kibitzer and helper. It took a number of hours, but the job appeared to be done. Then Mark noted that one piece seemed to be attached in the wrong direction and another was just left over on the ground. Gary’s wife Adrienne watched the proceedings with a look of amusement, though (good for her) she didn’t offer any criticism. Just that smile.

The next Tuesday morning, Mark and Gary described the problem at our breakfast gathering, and Bruce, our other mechanically-minded member, offered to help. A convoy left the diner for Gary’s house. Mark and Bruce took on needed disassembly and reassembly with Gary looking on. During the process, Adrienne arrived home and noted the array of cars in her driveway. She walked over and took in the messy scene.

“The saga continues,” she announced with a laugh. Wives can be so cruel!

Amazingly, the crew did get the machine into working shape in a relatively short time. Though I never learned how well it ran last winter when the snows finally arrived.

As for my own snow blower saga, things went pretty well last winter, start-up-wise. After one snowfall, I even tried to persuade Audrey to join in on the fun of pushing the snow blower through 10 inches of the white stuff on our driveway. Within five minutes, she deserted me and went back inside. Snow removal is man’s work, it seems.

And so is snow blower maintenance, though it’s lucky for me and my snow blower that I am able to farm out the maintenance task to another far more competent man. One who is not handicapped by my mixture of Southern (non-snow) heritage and serious lack of mechanical instinct.