Old Rock Stars

Laugh-out-loud funny.   Thanks to Diane (AKA, the Blue Ridge Gal), another Wandering Iowegian.  She’s added a new nostalgia blog, Dragging Main, about life in Algona Iowa in the sixties and seventies.

- Poppa

For Those of Us Who Miss The Cold War. . . .

The Ridiculous: The Crazy Old Man and Psycho-Bitch Wineries

We usually take at least one Missouri winery tour each year with friends and family in remembrance of Tom, Mary Jo’s husband, who enjoyed touring the wine country.  This year we started on Saturday with the Yellow Farmhouse Vineyard and Winery in Defiance, MO.  It was a beautiful day and a great setting.  Mary Jo came prepared with sausage, cheese, cherries, peppers, hummus, and sunglasses. 

There was nothing ridiculous about the setting or the company, but Doug (AKA Jake) introduced us to bottles from The Crazy Old Man and Psycho-Bitch Wineries.  They are sub-micro wineries that exist only in Doug’s (AKA Crazy Old Man’s) fevered imagination.

The alcohol content of the Psycho-Bitch wine is “Who gives a shit?”  It’s enough to make you laugh ’til the wine comes out your nose.

On Sunday we paid our first visit to the Olivette Diner, a local landmark almost as old as we are.  I ordered a Slinger, and was thrilled to get the classic version, hash browns, hamburger patties, and eggs any way, all covered by chili garnished with cheese and raw onions.  I now consider the Olivette Diner Slinger to be my current favorite in the St. Louis area.  There’s nothing ridiculous about a good diner, either, but it’s a long way from The Stone Soup Cottage.  I do love both extremes.

- Poppa

How We Came to Eat Fresh Sweet Corn Last Weekend

Disclaimer: I did not create the amusing corn-eating-cat graphic.

Ideally, the way to eat sweet corn is to bring the water to a boil, AND THEN go pick the corn from your garden, shuck it as you cross the back yard, and drop it right in the pot to cook.  I’ve only done that once in my life, back in the ‘70s on Kim and Jim’s farm, and it was a life-changing corn experience.  But if you can’t do that, at least try to find ears that were still on the plant when the sun came up on the day you’re going to eat them.

It’s been years since we’ve had sweet corn fresh from the fields.  I know we haven’t had any this millennium since we’ve never found a roadside stand around St. Louis and we don’t know anybody here who grows it.   Grocery store corn is better than no sweet corn, and the farmer’s market corn we’ve had hasn’t been much better than grocery store corn.  It’s a little chewy, a little starchy, but still good and that’s what we’ve settled for.

But enough about that for now.  This is supposed to be about eating fresh sweet corn last weekend.

Around the time Nan and I were born, Nan’s parents bought themselves a nice floor lamp, very modern for its day.  For over 50 years, the lamp sat in the Moore home, minding its own business, not causing any trouble.  Then Nan’s mother moved and we brought the lamp back to our place to grace the floor next to my TV-watchin’, lap-top-usin’, book-readin’ chair.

We dressed it up a little, replacing the brittle old shade with a new one and adding a filial made from a beautiful blue purie shooter.  For the first time in many years, the lamp was expected to perform on a nightly basis and its old circuitry just wasn’t up to it anymore.  It had a three-level bulb, and, level by level, it stopped working unless you jiggled the lamp.  One night, no amount of jiggling would persuade it to work.  It was time to change the switch, and, since the cord itself was old and brittle, time to change the cord.

Easier said than done.  It wasn’t as simple as snaking the cord through a tube; there were four right angle turns required because the lamp had a double-jointed swivel at the top.  I finally figured out how to disassemble the whole thing down to its component pieces by unscrewing the heavy metal disk that served as ballast in the base plate.  After much muttering and grumbling, Nan and I succeeded in getting the cord through all of the bends only to discover I’d gotten a loop of the cord trapped between the metal disk and the base plate and I stripped the cord and broke the wire while pulling it out.  Naturally, we didn’t have what we needed to fix the cord in the house, so the lamp sat in a corner until we got a round tuit.

Last weekend there were thousands of baseball fans swarming around Downtown because of the introductory events leading up to the All-Star Game on Tuesday when Obama and his sharpshooters will no doubt completely shut the city down (except for pedestrian traffic) when he comes to throw something at Busch Stadium.  As much as I enjoy seeing people spend money in my neighborhood, I hate trying to get around Downtown in a car when something like this is going on; streets are closed or jammed, and every now and then some yahoo blocks the entrance to our garage, leaving us trapped in or blocked out, depending on which side of the door we’re on when it happens.

We had every intention of barricading ourselves in our Fortress of Solitude all weekend.  But I said I thought the recycling was getting full and we could probably make a quick dash to the bins, and Nan suggested going an extra few miles to Home Despot [sic] for the hardware we needed for the lamp and reward ourselves with a nice lunch somewhere.  By the time we’d finished our shopping at the Big Orange Box, we were starving.  OK, we weren’t actually starving, but we were both one of the 1 in 8 people in America who were hungry at that point in time.

I lobbied hard for Gioia’s Deli, one of my all-time favorites, but when we got there, we found they were on vacation (it’s a small operation).  Nan remembered reading in Sauce Magazine that The Royale has a burger that got good marks in a recent He Said/She Said article.  We’ve known of The Royale for several years; it was opened by a Friend of a Friend.  But the menu always looked a little too New Age for me, so we’d never tried it.  However, a highly regarded He Said/She Said burger is not to be dismissed lightly.  We were in the neighborhood, and we went.

It was an altogether positive experience.  The burger was called the Royale, a half-pound of Australian-raised Wagyu Kobe beef on a perfectly sized slightly sweet bun reminiscent of a brioche.  If you wanted cheese on it, you can get a little extra frisson when you order a “Royale with Cheese.”  Nan had a fish taco that was outstanding.  The place has a cool hipster vibe, the specialty drinks look interesting, and there’s no smoking inside.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be back.

 

Royale with Cheese

Fish Taco

And now for the dénouement.  When we walked in the door of The Royale, we saw a copy of the Sauce Magazine that led us here.  We didn’t own a copy, so we picked one up, perused it, and noticed an article about a place to buy fresh sweet corn, Keller Farms.  They sell fresh sweet corn from four different stands just across the river in Illinois.  Sold the same day it was picked.  We went.  It was good.  We’ll go back.  The kernels popped between your teeth like caviar.

And all because fifty years ago, Nan’s parents bought a lamp.

- Poppa

Returning to the Scene of the Marriage

Several months ago, Nan bought tickets to a Gipsy Kings (yes, that’s how they spell their name) concert at Powell Symphony Hall.  She bought them for the evening of June 5th, our 33rd wedding anniversary.  The date was purely a coincidence; June 5th was the only night they were in St. Louis.  Nan is a Gipsy Kings fan.  I’m not, particularly.  I don’t dislike them, I find their music enjoyable, but I don’t feel about them the way I feel about Led Zeppelin, Dread Zeppelin, or John Prine. 

We had planned to have a pre-concert dinner at Vito’s, a good restaurant convenient to Powell Hall, but bad planning on my part and scarcity of parking caused us to seek dinner someplace closer to the venue.  We walked down Grand Avenue, looking for alternatives, and settled on a place called Wm. Shakespeare’s Gastropub.  Since we like both gastronomy and pubs, we decided to give it a try.  I had a snort of Jameson’s and excellent fish and chips, and Nan had a serviceable curry.  It wasn’t until we paid our bill and walked across the street that we realized we’d been dining in the Old University Club building.  We were married in this building, 33 years ago to the day.

We were married at Seminex, the Concordia Seminary in Exile.  In 1976, Seminex occupied the top floors of the Old University Club building on Grand Avenue.  Our officiant was Father John Damm, the founding academic dean of Seminex and an old friend of Nan’s family.  Nan grew up calling him ”Uncle John.”  We were married on the 10th floor and had our reception on the top floor.  We were amused that we were oblivious to where we were having supper.  We never fail to point the building out when we’re with friends.

We finished our walk to Powell Hall and found our seats, third row center.  The King’s percussion gear was extensive.

The Gipsy Kings are an amalgam of two families backed by two drummers, a keyboardist and a bass player.  They were introduced as some of France’s most popular musicians.  I had no idea they originated in France, I assumed they were Spanish or Latin-American.  Turns out, they were born in France, but their parents were Catalonian.  They’re credited with introducing Rumba Catalana to a worldwide audience.

The introduction of the Kings was the last English we heard from the stage that night.  Being monolingual, Nan and I couldn’t understand a word the Kings were singing.  It could have been, “Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Baked-Beans-and-Spam” for all we knew.  The sound system wasn’t doing a very good job of projecting the vocals, but it didn’t seem to matter, those who understood the words were singing along from memory.  During the last couple of numbers, fans poured down the aisles to gyrate in front of the stage.

The Gipsy Kings put on one hell of a show.  I may not be a fan of their recordings, but I loved seeing their performance.

- Poppa

The Inflatable Television

The Downtown St. Louis Partnership is always looking for ways to entertain and engage the downtown St. Louis residents.  One of the latest projects is the showing of movies at the Old Post Office Plaza, downtown’s latest public space.  We went to the first movie Thursday evening, a showing of Jaws.

When we arrived at the Plaza, we were met by the sight of a twenty-foot tall inflatable TV.  The “inflatable” aspect applied to the frame, the image was displayed on a standard projection screen with the projector working from behind the screen.  Before the movie started, the organizers passed out ballots to determine what the next film would be.   After Jaws was over, they announced that the next movie would be Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I’ve probably seen Jaws a dozen times, but it was still fun to see it again.  That movie freaked me (and everybody else) out when it was released in 1975.  I had nightmares for months about seeing Ben Gardner’s head.

The Plaza event was fun.  There was a hot dog vendor there and he was doing a brisk business; he sold out of dogs and sausages before the movie was over, though he’d been there since 10 AM, so he didn’t sell them all at the movie.  The weather was great, cool and low humidity, low for St. Louis, anyway, and our folding chairs were comfortable.  We’ll probably go back to see the next movie unless it’s too hot and sticky.

- Poppa

Pork Steaks, Beans, Bacon, Peanut Butter, and Corn. And Little Nan. And Cats.

You know it’s Spring in St Louis when the Pork Steaks can be seen in back yards around the city.  They’re usually be found where Cole Slaw, Pea Salad, and Baked Beans are also emerging into the sunlight.  This one was captured at the home of Joe and Marie last weekend.

For several years, we’ve been trying to replicate the  Unwritten Corn-on-the-Cob Recipe of H. Earle Moore.  Earle was the Moore Family Patriarch and the Maternal Grandfather of Leah and Erin.  At one memorable back yard barbecue in the mid-seventies, he grilled corn-on-the cob using a method I’ve never heard of before or since.

 He smeared peanut butter on a raw ear of sweet corn. . . .

. . . .wrapped it with raw bacon, rolled it in aluminium foil, and cooked it on the grill for X amount of minutes.  When he judged it to be done, the bacon was cooked, the peanut butter was melty and delicious, and the corn was perfect.  We haven’t quite recreated it yet.  We may be using too much peanut butter, or maybe we need to blend it with regular butter.  But we’ll keep trying. 

The post-Pork Steak entertainment was sorting through boxes of old 3-D slides from the Moore 1950s and 1960s.  We only got through about 5% of the total.  They were divvied up based on who was striking the cutest or most embarrassing pose.  This is Nan in the foreground, stealing the scene at Mary-Jo’s 4th birthday party.  Our flatbed scanner doesn’t do the slides justice.  We’ll either need to get a new scanner, one equipped with a back-light to handle slides, or have them digitized professionally.

It’s been a while since I posted a Cute Cat © picture.  Here’s Rufus, looking very sly and devil-may-care, like a real bon vivant.  He’s actually just so blissed out he’s about to drool on me.

And last, proof of McGregor’s full recovery from his spinal injury.  Rufus is cuddling him again.  While he was still sick, Rufus wouldn’t have anything to do with him, probably because McGregor smelled like a cat box.

- Poppa

Singing Poetry

I still remember the first time I heard John Prine.  It was the summer of ’73 and I was living in what used to be a gracious old Des Moines neighborhood.  The neighborhood was on its way downhill, with beautifully maintained family homes being turned one-by-one into seedy dives filled with raucous students, impoverished laborers, and unemployed ne’re-do-wells.  I lived in one of the seedy dives and was working my way through the stages from raucous student to impoverished laborer and unemployed ne’re-do-well.

Impoverished Laborer in Transition to Unemployed Ne’re-do-well

I felt that, in many ways, my life was moving in the same direction as the neighborhood; downhill.  I was a fresh college drop-out whose future looked like it would consist of eking out an existence as a ditch digger.  (According to my conditioning at the time, ditch digging was the only alternative for someone with no college degree.)

In spite of my gloomy self-prognosis, the summer of ’73 was one of the best and most memorable of my life.  I was living with four friends in a great old house and making enough money to get by.  And if I didn’t have a future, I didn’t have anyone expecting anything of me, either.  I had a job that was… unusual.  I was hanging out with people who were… unusual.  Life was one long party, and there was no place else I had to be.

The best thing about the house was the second-story sleeping porch.  The house was perched on a little rise at the corner of the block.  The porch was at the front of the house, so it dominated the street and gave us a commanding view of the intersection.  Giant hardwood trees shaded the porch and it was always cool.  In an un-airconditioned house during a Midwestern summer, this was important.

When we first walked through the house, my buddy Jim laid claim to the bedroom connected to the porch, thinking he’d scored a coup.  What he’d actually done was choose as his bedroom the corridor between the porch and the rest of the house.  People tramped through his room and carried on right outside his bedroom window at all hours of the day and night.  Jim spent most of the summer sleeping at his girlfriend Kim’s apartment.

Late one night, we were hanging out as usual on the porch when we heard someone bellowing at us from the street, inviting himself up to join us.  He was boisterous, bearded, burly, and none of us had ever seen him before.  He’d heard us partying in the wee hours and decided to party with us.  But he was friendly and a lot of fun.  He had us splitting our sides while he told us stories about the psychotropic properties of nutmeg when ingested in large quantities, “You have to eat, like, a quarter pound, man, and you’ll puke your guts out, but you’ll trip your ass off!”  And then he asked, “Do you guys like bluegrass?”

Well, being Iowa boys born and bred, we didn’t even know what bluegrass was.  So we moved the party over to boisterous, bearded, and burly’s place, two or three houses down, and he introduced us to John Prine.*  I’ve been listening to John ever since.

One of the reasons Nan and I knew we were sympatico early-on was because we both loved John Prine.  We’ve gone to see him at every opportunity since the late ‘70s.  Last Friday night at the packed Touhill Performing Arts Center, we were with 1,623 other people who, judging by their enthusiasm, felt the same way we did about John Prine.

John and two other musicians performed for over two hours.  The crowd was absolutely in love with what they were hearing.  John’s voice has gotten rougher, but he still has a great stage presence.  When John and his sidemen finished Lake Marie and said farewell, all 1,625 of us leapt to our feet and cheered until they came back for an encore.  They were joined for the encore by Carrie Rodriguez, the talented young fiddler/guitar player who opened the concert.  They performed the duet In Spite of Ourselves, and finished up with an extended version of Paradise.

Dang, it was a sweet show.

- Poppa

 

* I don’t think John Prine actually plays bluegrass.  I’ve been told he refers to what he plays as “shitkicker music.”  But the album cover in 1973 was mostly blue and there was straw on it, so we all agreed it must be bluegrass.

Blog Refarkling and SGMAaGC

Please bear with me.  I can’t export the postings from the old blog, so I’m trying to import a select few and I don’t have them ordered by posting date yet.

And I’m celebrating 14 years of membership in the Sensitive Guys Martial Arts and Gun Club this year.

 

- Poppa

Forward, Into the Past! Dining at Ruggeri’s in the ’40s

Ruggeri’s was a landmark St. Louis Restaurant located on The Hill.  Earl and Barbara would take the kids there for special occasions.  I got to go with Nan just once just before it closed in the mid-seventies (I’m sure Nan’s parents treated us).  The cumberbunded and starched-shirted waiters all looked as though they’d worked there since WWII.  For a small-town boy from Iowa, it was like living a Damon Runyon story.  We found a 1945 Ruggeri’s Menu while cleaning out 312 Spoede over Labor Day (pictures at: http://johnandnan.benjerin.com/Photos/Labor_Day_2007/index.htm).  It presented an interesting view of the times.

There were several reminders that there was a war on and that people were expected to make sacrifices.

“All prices listed are our ceiling prices unless otherwise indicated, in which case, they are below ceiling prices.  By O.P.A (Office of Price Administration) regulation, our ceilings are our highest prices from April 4th to April 10th, 1943.  Records of these prices are available for your inspection.”

“Keep ‘em flying.”

“Buy more War bonds and stamps.”

“Due to War Time Restrictions we are striving to help our Government in conserving meats for our Armed Forces–Please note that we have added additional Sea Food and Italian Dishes.”

Aside from the wartime reminders, it was interesting to note what people were eating those days.

Cold Tongue Sandwich (20¢)

Combination Sandwich (35¢) Combination of what?  It doesn’t say.

Frog Leg Sandwich (90¢)

Imported Sardine Sandwich (50¢)

Eight kinds of cheese sandwiches!  Swiss, Brick, Pimento, American, Roquefort, Liederkranz (now an “extinct cheese” because the bacterial culture was corrupted and lost in 1985), Camembert, and Cheese Soufflé for between 20¢ and 40¢.

Vegetable Plate with Poached Egg (75¢)

For dessert there was Parmeggiano, Philadelphia Cream Cheese with Currant Jelly, American Cheese, Camembert, Swiss, Gorgonzola, Roquefort, and Liederkranz along with Ice Cream, Spumoni, Zabaglione, and “Pies in Season.”

The Entrees were notable because there were no Italian dishes included, just good old American fare, such as Charcoal Broiled Milkfed Chicken served with a Rasher of Bacon ($1.25) and Braised Tid Bits O’Beef (also $1.25).  The Italian dishes were in two separate categories, Special Italian Dinners (no pasta) and Special Italian Dishes (pasta).  The only unusual items I noticed in this section were Spaghetti with Chicken Livers (85¢), Spaghetti a la Tuna (also 85¢), and Chili-Mac (35¢).  A side-bar touted “Spaghetti with Bottle of Wine” for $1.

Appetizers were mostly what we would think of today as garnishes or condiments: Pickles, Raw Bermuda Onions, Celery, Celery and Olives, Green Olives, Ripe Olives, Radishes, Green Onions, and Sliced Tomatoes and ranged between 15 and 50 cents.

Seafood Specials included both Jumbo and Medium Frog Legs for $1.50 and $1.25 respectively.

Prices are always interesting when you look at menus from earlier eras.  I Googled a dollar value calculator and found one that says $1.00 in 2006 had about the same buying power as $.09 in 1945 so it’s not that everything was dirt cheap back then.  But the values were still a little skewed by today’s standards.  For instance, you could get the “Special Seafood Platter: One-half Lobster, Fried Oysters, Scallops, Shrimps, Filet of Sole, Tarter Sauce, Potatoes and Salad” for $1.50 ($16.67 in 2006 dollars, a hell of a good deal today).  The current St. Louis Fish Market “Catch Combo: Chilean Seabass & Atlantic Salmon” costs $28.  But apparently spending 50¢ ($5.56 in 2006 dollars) for the Celery and Olives appetizer was considered reasonable.  I’d need to get a whole lotta celery and olives to make that look cost-effective.

Now, to find me a cold tongue sandwich with Liederkranz.

- Poppa

2007-09-19 02:09:48 GMTComments: 0 |Permanent Link