TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 194

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 2, 2000000000000007


Dear Beacons,

	Today is a day of cooking.  Solid 
cooking.  I get to make the red beet horseradish! 
This is horseradish that is legend.  One dot and 
your whole head is on fire.  Don't breathe it; 
you'll choke.  You have to put a paper bag over 
the Cuisinart to contain the fumes, and even so, 
the skin on your hands starts to burn from being 
in the vicinity.  We make the tsimmes today: 
carrots, yams, onions, raisins, a meat bone and 
knedlach.  The knedlach are called the gonifs.  A 
gonif is a thief, and the knedlach steals the 
flavours from the rest of the dish.  We have to 
set up the seder plate.  That means reading the 
Hebrew and putting the appropriate ingredient in 
the little concavity.  There will be a hundred 
plates on the table, and that's just for five of 
us tonight.  It will be the coziest seder we've 
ever had.  When I was growing up, the whole 
extended family came to the seder, and then, all 
the friends of the offspring.  Sometimes there 
were more than forty five people.  We read the 
Haggadah, everyone taking turns with one 
paragraph apiece.  There's always some hog who 
just has to take several paragraphs.  And no one 
says anything.  We just let it happen.  A shande 
auf ihr.  I made the charoshes a few days ago. 
We peeled 25 apples.  I used one of Feyna's fancy 
pieces of equipment.  Yes, Cutco makes a peeler. 
I peeled part of my left middle finger.  Only now 
am I taking the bandaid off.  We made the gifilte 
fish and the soup on Saturday.  It's a big deal, 
Passover is.  It's bigger than Thanksgiving. 
More food, more ceremonial food, and the rituals 
are myriad.  I love it.  Oh gosh do I love it!

	Outside, I hear the birds starting to 
chirp.  The sun isn't up yet, but the birds know 
what's going to happen.  I've never gotten over 
my dread of hearing the birds chirp early in the 
morning.  When I was on cocaine, it was the sign 
that I'd stayed up all night and still couldn't 
sleep.  Innocent little birds.





                               ñññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññ
                                µµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµ
                                 ¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼




Dinner for three minus one

	I was twenty eight and had come back up 
to Berkeley from visiting Harry in San Diego.  I 
divided my time between writing songs, worrying 
about the music business and frequenting a coffee 
house called the Caravansary on College Avenue. 
It was right in the middle of the block.  You 
could buy coffee beans there, and you could get a 
cup of coffee, sit at the counter and talk to the 
other wanderers.  Behind the counter were the 
familiar employees who sometimes took part in the 
conversations, and sometimes helped shoppers pick 
their favourite bean, or favourite method for 
making coffee.  There was, even then, a dazzling 
array of coffee equipment: drippers, inverse 
pots, stove top espresso gizmos, cones, beakers, 
press pots, turkish coffee ibriks.  Before 
Starbucks lurked on each street corner, little 
coffee houses like the Caravansary existed, and 
each place had its steady clientele.  It was a 
tradition to go in there at about 10:00, a.m., 
every day, and have my cup of coffee.

	There was usually the retired 
Pediatrician who spoke to everyone about 
anything, and engaged her conversation partners 
in lively discussions about the cultivation of 
roses, what it was like in the '20s, how the '60s 
and '70s were very much like the '20s, and every 
detail of her Pediatric practice, her long 
history of healing babies, children, adolescents, 
dealing with their parents, doing house calls. 
She practised in a time of no insurance maze, no 
HMOs.  Once Dr. Peterson got hold of you, you had 
to get used to your bar stool, because you would 
be growing around it, as a tree grows around the 
straps wrapped around the stick that supports it.

	If Dr. Peterson were not there, Jane 
would be there.  Jane was an employee, but came 
in on her days off.  Jane could be found on both 
sides of the counter.  She was a transplant from 
the Ozarks.  She'd come to the bay area in the 
'60s with the runaways to find her inner God in 
sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, but she abandoned all 
that for a tipsy organic life, tending an edible 
garden outside her cottage, learning about 
culture, taking up with the people at the end of 
the bell curve, people you could write a book 
about.  John, who opened up a travel agency 
called, Trips Out Travel.  He was married to his 
boots, high ones with hammered patterns in them 
and heels.  He wore a black leather jacket, drove 
a motorcycle and grew his hair very long.  He and 
Jane were sometimes lovers, and sometimes not, 
but they had their secret life that no one could 
quite figure out.  Jane had her own way of 
looking at life.  She was avant-garde but still 
had the Ozarks in her.  Men fell for her, 
business men, rich men who wanted to buy her 
furs.  She told me about one such case, a love 
struck three piece suit who brought her presents 
and courted her formally.  She told him she had 
no interest, but he persevered.

	"There's only two things you kin do with 
a guy like that.  You kin set him down and tell 
him the straight truth.  Send him on his way. 
Or, you kin take him to the cleaners.  Know what 
I mean?"

	Jane had a streak of anti-semitism in 
her, and I caught her once, exhibiting her 
stereotypes when she didn't yet know I was 
Jewish.  She referred to an ex-boss.

	"He was Jewish, but he was nice.  Know what I mean?"

	"No.  I don't know what you mean."

	"Well, he was a Jewish business man, but he was nice."

	"Explain that."

	"Well, you know Jews and business 
ethics," she said, as if everyone thought this 
way.  The Jewgirl next to her sat in the puddle 
of anti-semitism.

	"Don't tell me about Jewish business 
ethics.  I've got people in my family who are in 
business.  Some of them are good at it, and some 
of them aren't, but they're all ethical!"

	She lifted off the seat she was sitting 
on.  There was no apology, but there was a 
silence and fitting embarrassment.  I guess Jane 
had met her first anonymous Jew.  There was no 
label on me, though, "Shapiro," is a dead 
giveaway.

	There was also Dennis Bum.  Dennis Bum 
showed up outside the Caravansary and sometimes 
came in.  He wore rags, filthy rags.  The crust 
on his clothing and his skin was a couple inches 
thick.  Grease, dust, dirt, the pants acquired a 
slick patina.  He wore shoes made of a hundred 
layers of socks, and they were all worn through 
so that his heel was exposed, a toe or two, with 
long arcing nails like butter curls.  They were 
black.  His hair had not been combed, ever.  He 
stank fearfully, and his teeth were rotten.  He 
stood outside, not begging money from anyone.  He 
seemed to have money.  He'd wait there at the 
threshold and stare inside.  I don't know what 
sign he was waiting for, but at some point, he'd 
walk in, dragging his stripped shoes behind him. 
He'd order a cup of coffee and put a fifty dollar 
bill on the counter.  He never talked to anyone. 
He only mumbled to himself.  His appearance grew 
denser as the weeks flew by.  He'd get absolutely 
intolerable.  He could clear the whole place out 
just by venturing in the vicinity.  Then, 
suddenly, Dennis Bum would disappear.  He 
wouldn't show up for months.  We'd all forget 
that he existed.  Then one day, there he would be 
again, but with his hair cropped short and neat. 
It turned out to be reddish.  He was wearing 
clean clothes and actual shoes, a watch on his 
left wrist.  He'd come right in and ask politely 
for a cup of coffee, pay and leave.  It took a 
few weeks before he started to resemble Dennis 
Bum again.  And several months to work his way up 
to his former glory.  His eyes would get wilder, 
he'd drag his feet in their layers of socks, 
blackened by mud and the detritus on the 
sidewalks.  Then suddenly, he'd disappear again, 
and the cycle would start all over.  No one ever 
looked him in the eye.

	There was a young mother who came in with 
her five year old son.  He didn't have a name. 
She just shouted at him, called him, "Squirt", 
"Idiot", "Ya little monster".  She'd park herself 
on a stool and let Ya Little Monster roam around 
the store dismantling things.  He liked objects 
that had many working parts.  He'd wrest the 
pieces from each other, scatter them around and 
leave them where he'd dropped them.  The 
employees got stiff when the two of them came in, 
and their eyes would follow Idiot around the 
store.  I think the mother's name was Robin. 
There was never a reference to a father.  When 
Squirt was done with his disassembling projects, 
Robin would get up, drag her son out of the store 
and up the street.

	The man who owned the Caravansary was a 
brute, a pig.  He had a huge head and always wore 
work clothes.  He had a sail boat that he loved 
more than his wife who ruled over the store. 
When they were both in the same place, they spoke 
to each other in German, a harsh dialect with 
lots of gutterals.  They didn't seem pleased with 
each other.  She was a stickler for order and 
pinched pennies.  He threw himself around as if 
there were no such thing as gravity except for 
the blocks of lead in his boots.  One day, when 
he was out sailing the bay, the boom swung around 
and knocked his head off.  He died instantly.

	It was at the Caravansary that I met 
Norman Shea.  He was the manager, and had the 
responsibility of opening and locking up the 
joint.  He didn't get paid considerably more than 
the other employees, but it was enough to keep 
him afloat.  He was a literary type.  He found 
antiquated books that were in public domain and 
republished them.  He was clever, had a dry sense 
of humour and secretly laughed at all the 
characters who patronized the store.  He did 
studied renditions.  He had fine shoulder length 
hair that fell from his temples like a sheet of 
water.  We made eyes at each other.

	From making eyes to making conversation, 
we progressed through the standard courting 
procedures and thought we'd fallen in love.  One 
of the things Norman liked to do was cook.  He 
took it very seriously.  He would invite a half 
dozen people over for dinner at the house he 
owned and shared with a roommate, Hector.  The 
people would arrive, as instructed, at six, and 
Norman had barely started to take the food out of 
the shopping bags.  Some time around nine o'clock 
he'd get around to serving dinner.  He'd make 
gnocchi from scratch, or marinate and grill 
squabs.  He followed recipes to the last detail, 
and experimented on his friends with complicated 
recipes he'd never tried before.  When you were 
invited to one of Norman's dinner parties, you 
had to eat before you came or your stomach would 
catch up with you and kvetch loudly.

	When Norman and I got together, the 
natural thing to do was to cook.  I introduced 
him to Chinese dishes, weird vegetables he'd 
never heard of before, and organ meats that 
frightened away the average American.  I found an 
out of the usual market where they carried fresh 
bull testicles, Mountain Oysters, and I bought 
several packages of them.  Norman looked up a 
recipe and I said I'd follow it as far as the 
preparation went, but after that, it was in black 
bean sauce with black mushrooms and onions.  He 
agreed.  There was quite a pile of oysters, so he 
invited his roommate.  Hector was Hispanic, had 
the machismo disease and was a dyed in the wool 
chauvinist.  I found him amusing, but not 
appealing.  Understanding Hector's take on life, 
I insisted that Norman tell him what it was we 
were serving him.  Norman wanted to surprise him. 
I thought that was unfair.  It would be like 
serving pork to a Muslim and telling him 
afterwards what he'd just packed away.  So Norman 
agreed after I gave him the ultimatum.  I don't 
cook it unless you tell him beforehand.

	Cooking the Mountain Oysters was not 
difficult.  But there were parts of the 
preparation that gave pause.  First, we were 
instructed to toss the oysters in boiling water 
until they puffed up and floated to the top. 
Then we were to slit open  the outer sack and 
pull out the nuts.  After that it was a matter of 
slicing them into strips.  Actually slicing the 
balls was bothersome.  Just a little.  Norman's 
face fell.  He identified.

	When the dish was ready, it had a subtle 
taste like sweetbreads, and it was rich like 
brains.  It was not the only dish on the table, 
but Hector took a hot liking to them.  He pulled 
the bowl over to himself, wrapped his arms around 
it and said, "This is all for me."  I was 
delighted that he wasn't squeamish about eating 
testicles, and was about to re-evaluate him when 
Norman jiggled his eyebrows and told Hector, 
"Guess what you're eating!"

	"You didn't tell him!"  I gave Norman the look and shook my head.

	By this time, Hector, no fool, had an 
idea that something was up.  He stared straight 
at Norman's brown eyes and demanded, "Okay, what 
is this?!"  He held his breath.

	Norman took some obvious delight in this. 
He waited for the timing to be right, then said, 
offhand, "They're Mountain Oysters."  He smiled.

	Hector's face went blank.  "What are Mountain Oysters?" he asked.

	"Bull testicles," Norman grinned widely, maliciously.

	"I'm sorry, Hector," I said, earnestly, 
"I thought Norman had told you before.  He 
promised he'd tell you before."  I turned to 
Norman.  "You shit!"

	Hector turned a shade of green, and got 
up from the table.  He said, "I'll get you for 
this," to Norman, and staggered into the bathroom 
where he threw up a day's worth of serious 
eating.  Norman Shea was snortling, chuckling, 
laughing.  I was furious.

	"You tricked both of us!"  I gave him the 
meanest look I could muster.  "It's not funny!"

	This didn't phase him.  Norman was a 
literary type, and they're ruthless, as you know.



                               ñññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññññ
                                µµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµµ
                                 ¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net