Posted on December 25, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Let’s talk turkey

 

 

When you ask people about Christmas, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  Is it the idea of spending time with family and friends or the exchange of gifts?  Is it the beautiful music sung at midnight Mass to celebrate the birth of the Saviour?  Is it the chance to put your feet up and relax?  Surely, it is all of these things but, truth be told, my big deal about Christmas is the ability to eat and drink with reckless abandon.  No box of chocolates is safe.  Ditto for fruitcake, plum pudding,  sherry trifle, eggnog and shortbread cookies.  And nobody is watching your alcohol consumption because they are too busy refilling their own glasses.  The centerpiece for most of us, though, is the turkey dinner.

We all learned how to cook at our mother’s side and watching her manufacture Christmas dinner was something bordering on the miraculous.  And so it is in my own married life that my wife and I have mastered the dance.  Not the “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies” but the waltz of preparing Christmas dinner.  This presentation is exquisitely choreographed and has been honed to perfection over the last thirty years.  Like ballroom dance partners, the moves are automatic and there are no words exchanged.

The day before Christmas I go hunting for old scraps of bread in the freezer.  You all know exactly what I mean.  Lurking somewhere in the bowels of your freezer are bags of unused rolls from the lobster boil last summer; a half-eaten bag of hot dogs buns from the wiener roast and odds and ends of various and sundry loaves of bread.  These are brought to the light of day and allowed to thaw.  Later I break them into small, bite sized pieces and place them in a large bowl to become dry and crusty overnight.  I can still picture the massive steel bread making bowl my mother used for the stuffing.  When you’re cooking a 50 pound turkey, you need a lot of bread.

Most people get up on Christmas morning and their first thought is about the presents.  Mine is about the onions.  Even before putting the coffee on I am crying my eyes out cutting up those pungent globes, a crucial ingredient in the stuffing.  The onions are swimming in a sea of artery clogging butter in an old cast iron frying pan as my dance partner makes her appearance.  Before uttering the words “Merry Christmas “ or “ Good Morning”, I thrust a cup of steaming hot coffee into her waiting hands.  Better to have these hands around a cup of coffee than my neck.  When she is sufficiently caffeinated, she completes the stuffing and the turkey is placed in the oven.

Potatoes peeled.  Check.  Carrots and turnips sliced. Check.  Everything is on autopilot now and a few minutes before dinner is served, I face the enemy one more time.  The onions.  The finishing touch to a Christmas dinner is the gravy and my wife makes world class gravy, provided I first get the onions simmering in turkey drippings in the old cast iron pan.  Throw in a pot of peas, some cranberries and a fabulous trifle and you have your traditional festive meal.  The dance usually ends with me stripping the turkey carcass and getting the bones simmering for turkey soup.  My wife puts away all the leftover food and I tackle the mountain of pots and pans.  It doesn’t get much better than this but it certainly can be worse – much worse.

In the early to mid ‘70’s, I was living in Victoria, B.C. trying to “find myself”.  A lot of other long haired freaks just out of university were doing the same thing.  Many of us were merely trying to regain consciousness after the turbulence of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s.  We were the Woodstock generation (New York, not New Brunswick) and we ingested our share of liquids and leafy greens during college days.

And so it was one Christmas that a few family members along with some newfound friends decided to have an old fashioned Christmas.  If our mother could turn out a fabulous dinner on the east coast then so could her offspring in the west.  Now you have to understand that as newly-minted graduates, we didn’t have a lot of money.  What we had a lot of was debt – student loans.  Buying a turkey was an expensive proposition.  Even buying a pizza now and then was a stretch and occasionally required ingenuity. One evening we ordered a pizza late at night.  After placing the order and marshalling our financial resources, we realized, too late, that we were a few dollars short.  Undaunted, we marched down to the pizza shop and, en route, composed a song, featuring the name of the pizzeria.  We stood sheepishly at the counter and stated our case and sang our song for the owner.  He was either impressed, tone deaf or just wanted us to leave because he ended up giving us the pizza.

We managed to procure the turkey and that Christmas morning we stuffed it and put it in the oven before dutifully going off to Mass.  One family member was living in an apartment and that had become Christmas dinner headquarters.  It was sparsely furnished and we felt that we deserved better than the cheap cutlery and flatware that graced her kitchen.  So we cajoled a friend into loaning us some fine china including Waterford Crystal wine goblets as we would no doubt be drinking expensive (!) wine with dinner.

Upon our return from Mass, with the unmistakeable aroma of turkey filling the apartment and the joy of the Nativity in our bosoms, we set about to prepare the feast.  And then, someone suggested we have a drink, a toast, as it were, to the Prince of Peace.

I remember that a concerted effort was made to prepare the meal just as Mom had done countless times.  The only difference was that mom wasn’t intoxicated as she went about her business.  We managed to peel the potatoes, carrots and turnips and actually had them in pots of water on the stove top.  Only problem was that we got distracted and forgot to turn on the elements.

We were momentarily snapped out of our reverie with the sound of the oven timer, indicating that the turkey was cooked.  That wasn’t the only thing that was cooked.  The sound of the timer seemed to signal round two and with that, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a forty-ouncer of Captain Morgan and twenty four shiny beer.

When we finally discovered the well-done turkey still sitting in the oven, the idea of a traditional Christmas dinner was definitely in the rear view mirror. The unfortunate fowl was placed in the middle of the table on a platter and we proceeded to attack it.  It was hand to hand combat and when the dust settled, the bird looked like it had stepped on a landmine.  At one point I distinctly remember someone juggling the drumsticks as if preparing for the busker festival.

Mercifully for the turkey, the indignities ceased and the Christmas Day massacre came to an end to the heartfelt singing of Silent Night, in perfect harmony.

Posted on December 23, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

A Gentle Man

 

 

“Time it was and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence, a time of confidences”

Old Friends/Bookends by Paul Simon

I grab the baseball hat from the shelf, shake off the dust and admire the beautiful penmanship one more time: Jean Beliveau.

When we were young there was hockey and there was religion.  If you were a follower of the Montreal Canadiens, you got both in the same package.  And if your mother was born in Montreal , then there were no options when it came to following one of the six teams in the N.H.L.  It was your birthright.  You were a Habs fan.

There was a time when sport was sport, but today it has morphed into the realms of business and entertainment.  All you need to do is go to any major sporting event and witness gaudy displays of show business and unbridled commercialism.  Occasionally you may be treated to a decent game but for many owners, this is an afterthought.

I am not naïve enough to think that owners of sports franchises haven’t always had a nose for the buck, the way some of their players had a nose for the puck.  Indeed, back in the day most players were pawns of the owners.

But through my rose colored lenses, I choose to believe that I witnessed the golden age of hockey when you knew every player on each of the six teams, including their jersey numbers.  And, by and large, you were either a Leafs fan or you sported a jersey with the familiar “CH” logo. That’s “Canadien Habitants” lest you think I’m referring to the Chicago Black Hawks.

On most weekends, religion was sandwiched between hockey, on and off the ice.  On Saturday evening, after polishing our shoes for Sunday Mass, we would gather around the grainy black and white television, twisting the rabbit ears to get reception.  We watched in awe as the legends of the game displayed their elegance and mastery.  Richard, Howe, Hull, Bower, Sawchuck and “Le Gros Bill – Jean Beliveau”.

We attended Mass on Sundays and spent the rest of the day skating on the “Salt Ponds” or playing street hockey.  And when the cold winter winds blew on Sunday evenings, we would curl up in bed under the sheets and listen to a hockey game on the radio.  Even today, I could easily pick out Foster Hewitt or Danny Gallivan’s voice.  It was easy to visualize the game when the names of the players were as familiar as those of your school mates.

Is there any place on earth more magical on game day than Montreal, on Rue St. Catherine?  I was very fortunate to see a handful of games at the old Forum on Atwater Street.  Prior to the game, it was not uncommon to go to one of the small bars downtown.  You could always feel the electricity and anticipation when the Habs were playing a home game.

Role models.  We all have them.  For a generation of young boys who are now men, Jean Beliveau epitomized what many of us hoped to be.  He was a great athlete, a good sport and a humble man.  In this day and age of chest pumping athletes who want to shine the bright lights on themselves, it is easy to forget that there were people like Beliveau who were self-effacing.  Back then, the two most important people for hockey players were the coach and the trainer.  Today’s pampered athletes need to look no further than their agent and lawyer.

But most important, especially right here and right now, was that Jean Beliveau put his family first.  The man who could have been Governor General knew that he was needed more by the women in his life; his family, who supported him in equal measure.  It was mutual respect.  That’s the way it’s supposed to work, folks.

I was lucky enough to see Beliveau play in his prime and luckier still to meet him at a charity golf tournament many years ago.  He was sitting on a bench behind the tee off waiting to hit his drive.  I approached him with my hat in hand.  As he had done thousands of times before, he carefully affixed his autograph, for my son.  What struck me most then, and now, is that he was a gentleman in word and deed.

As I watched the funeral for Jean Beliveau, what struck me most was the passage of time.  My childhood heroes are old men.  Let the standards they have set be the measure of the modern day man.

“Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset”

Edited December 17, 2014

Posted on December 22, 2014 under Monday Morning Musings with one comment

Merry Christmas

 

 

I would like to start off by thanking more than 2500 people who took the time to read the tribute that I wrote for my niece, Audrey Hibbs. It is very obvious that she was loved by a lot of people.

As another year winds down, I would like to thank my wife Betty who tries her best (!) to keep me on the straight and narrow. Most of you already know this but she edits all of my stories. ( Not this one ) Typically, I get an idea, scratch a few words in a scribbler and then early in the morning ( usually around 5:00 ) write the piece from start to finish. After Betty is suitably caffeinated, she does the edit. Not only does she tidy up punctuation and spelling, but she also adds and subtracts words… sometimes complete sentences and even whole paragraphs! I almost didn’t recognize my menopause story after she got her hands on it!  She makes every story better and deserves much of the credit.

After Audrey’s funeral, we had a great gathering of family and friends at our old house on Hillcrest Street, as we have done countless times over 60 years. We sang non stop for several hours.  Music has always played a central role in my family’s life. I decided that I would do a story about music and gatherings which are commonplace in this part of the world. Coming up soon, “The House That Roared.”

In case you missed it, I put a YouTube video on Facebook yesterday. My tribute to Audrey referred to a song written and performed by Vince Gill, along with Alison Krause and Ricky Skaggs. I have asked my kids to sing this at my funeral. I suggested that they didn’t need to learn it right away! Please take a few minutes to listen to this. It is magnificent and may bring comfort to those of you suffering the death of a loved one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFiWCUkk4M

Coming up on Wednesday, is a hockey story. It is pure, unadulterated nostalgia. If you ever watched a hockey game on a grainy black and white television, while fiddling with the rabbit ears, then this is a story for you. The death of Jean Beliveau prompted me to write this one. “When We Were Young” takes a look back on what many feel was the golden age of hockey.

Expect a number of “road stories” as my son Peter and I hit the road on Boxing Day for a 9,000 km road trip to Victoria, B.C. via the southern United States. We hope to spend a day in Nashville and check out New Orleans. I am looking forward to getting back to San Francisco. I happened to be in the city on April 15, 1974 when Patty Hearst and and members of the SLA robbed a bank. This was a big story back then and being there that day was somewhat surreal.

As you will be busy stuffing your face with turkey and chocolates on Christmas morning, there will be no Thursday Tidbits this week, unless , of course I win the lottery!

Have a wonderful Christmas and thank you for your support  of my work.