The Miracle Food

     "Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!" 
     My brother and I pumped our arms up in a victory dance.      
     "We are having pizza tonight!" 
     "Get the plates!  Paper Towels, we need paper towels.  Don't forget the Coke!"
     Dad would walk in the back door of our house with the world's best pizza, grease soaking through the white paper tented cover.
     "Dad, where's the pizza from?" 
     Like we had to ask.  Dad only went to one place, but we liked to hear him say the name.
     "I-tal-yen Village."
     "Dad, it is Italian, not I-tal-yen."
     "I don't care.  Yew want to eat?" 
     And of course we did.  The pizza was just the best thing in the world to our mouths.  It wasn't one of those deep dish Chicago pizzas that tasted more like a lasagna forced into a pie crust.  This pizza was from Italian Village.  It had a paper thin, crispy crust, with a charcoal tasting burn or two on the bottom.  The tomato sauce was sweet, the mozzarella lightly browned, and the Italian sausage filled with wonderfully exotic spices like caraway seeds.  We always got Italian sausage, not the perfectly round kind that looked like pepperoni, or the thick slabs that looked like a Jimmy Dean breakfast speciality.  These were oddly shaped that appeared homemade.  The pizza was cut into squares, not like a pie.  I preferred the ends.  The smell of sweet tomato sauce, toasted cheese, and lightly fried Italian sausage would fill the entire house, lingering until the morning.  A surprise pizza was always the next best thing to a trip to Disney World. 
     If we were lucky, it would just be my immediate family.  But a lot of time we would have our piggy cousins over.  Little Jimmy, who wasn't so little, would take a piece, lick it, then take another piece until an adult noticed and made him stop. 
     "Little Jimmy, what the HELL are ya doin'?  You act like you don't have the sense the good Lord gave a turnip." 
     Little Jimmy would smile, knowing that he at least got enough pizza to satisfy his hunger even if the rest of us would do without.  There was no getting another pizza once this one was gone.  Italian Village didn't deliver, and the adults were already too busy eating and drinking their Miller Lite to care. 
     Pizza night always had two accompaniments, Coke and salt.  We'd drink the Coke, with the ice cubes put in first, so that the liquid would just ease on up around the cubes instead of making them float.  We would cover the pizza with salt to the point of making it  burn the roof our mouths.  We used plain old Morton's Salt, with the blue label picturing the little girl in the yellow dress, carrying her umbrella pouring out the salt as the rain poured. 
     Salt was a big deal in our diet.  Mom used it in everything she cooked, and we all added it to everything we ate.  We put salt not only on pizza, but also on on apples, watermelons, beans -- everything.  Dad wasn't much into sweets.  I can hardly remember him eating a dessert, but no one ever tried to take away his salt. 
     All my relatives were this way about salt.  I only realized when I had friends over that something wasn't right.
     "Ick!  My tongue is burning!" my friends would say as they gulped red Kool-Aid to get rid of the taste. 
     "I know, my mom is a terrible cook."
     "It just taste like salt."
     I knew mother couldn't cook, but I didn't think it was a salt issue.  It thought it was more of a "I hate this damn cooking, and I never want to do it again" issue.  I heard these words every day as mom destroyed another meal.  Mom could eat anything that wasn't nailed down, but Lord help us if she actually had to do more than open a can of Campbell's Soup. 
     My father said that if food was salty, you knew it was good.  Not good, in the fancy restaurant kind of way, but good as in not sour, spoiled, rotten, or carrying some disease that could give you the runs that could lead to dehydration that could lead to death.  Salty equalled safe.  If only that were true, they could have salted the water so that his sister Imogene, and many of his cousins, wouldn't have had to die of typhoid.

The Duece and a Quarter

     When I was a child, my favorite activity in the world was riding in my dad's car.  Dad's car was not the family car.  Dad's car was his car.  It was new with a glossy coat of paint and that new car smell.  When the smell wore off, it was time for a new car.  My brother and I just couldn't go in my dad's car.  It had to be a special occasion.  The special occasion came once a year for our cross country road trips from Chicago to LA to visit my Great Aunt Alice.  Of all the cars in my childhood, my favorite was dad's 1969, Buick Electra 225, or the Deuce and a Quarter as he called it.  She was avocado green, with a black landau top, and black vinyl seats which could scorch our legs in summer.  She seemed as long as our house.  I loved every inch of her. 

     Dad had all the upgrades that were offered, including headrests which were new in 1969.  But even better was the below the dash 8-track tape deck my father installed on his own.  The player hung below the dash on brackets.  We had to be very careful if we were playing in the front seat not to scrap ourselves on any of the sharp metal corners.  The player had four buttons by which we could forward a quarter of the tape at one time.  There was no rewind button.  If we wanted to hear our favorite song again, we had to wait for at least a quarter of the tape to play then push the button to forward to our song.  The tape would take a few seconds making a whirring noise as it moved into position.  My dad had all the greats artists of the time, such as Johnny Cash singing "Ring of Fire", Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee", and even Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" for my mother.  However, the best song in my three-year old opinion was "The Unicorn Song", by the Irish Rovers, who were Canadian.  Dad would pop in his day glo orange mix-tape that he worked hours on featuring the family's favorite songs.  When "The Unicorn Song" came on, my little brother and I would hold onto the headrests and dance standing in the back seat singing at the top of our little lungs,

    "You'll see green alligators and long-necked geese 
    Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees 
    Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born 
    You're never gonna see no unicorns"

     Words and music Shel Silverstein.  (Note the same Shel Silverstein of "Where the Sidewalk Ends.)

     Some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent dancing in the back seat of that boat of a car while driving across county.

Water Play

Yesterday, we went to Carl Schurz Park.  It was a lovely, sunny day in the mid-70's.  The sprinklers were on and all was right with the world. 

Until I sat down. 

No sooner had I started reading my email on the sideline of the water play area, did I see a very tall girl crying to her mom.  The mom then stormed over to KZ.  I saw her pointing and talking down at KZ, all while her much-taller-and-probably-much-older-than-KZ daughter shot KZ with her water gun.  The mom then came by me.

"Sorry, but she was spitting at my daughter, and we cannot have spitting at the park," she said. 

I just looked at this woman.  We are in the water play area.  KZ just turned 5.  KZ was much smaller, and probably younger, than her daughter.  And the girl was shooting KZ with the water gun in the first place.  Since KZ didn't have a water gun, she did the next best logical thing of filling her mouth with water and spitting at the girl.  I was honestly very proud of KZ's ingenuity. 

"My daughter is 4 (so I fibbed a bit).   It's a water park for kids,"  I said to the mother.

What could I say?  This woman had a bully for a daughter. But truly, the mother was a bully, herself. 

When I was a kid, my mother would have never dreamed of fighting my play ground battles.  She would have said something like the following:

"So, did you knock them down?  I bet they wouldn't bother you again if you did." 

or

"Solve it yourself and get out of my hair.  I got dinner to make." 

When KZ came over to me, I said very gently, "You know that girl you were spitting at?" 

She was sad, as if she knew she were in trouble.

"Yes," she answered. 

"You did the right thing by standing up to that bully.  If she ever does it to you again, you go right back and spit at her as hard as you want." 

KZ just glowed. 

"Really?" 

"Yes, honey.  You will never be any bully's target.  I don't want you to bully anyone, but don't you ever take it either." 

I gave her a big hug and kiss and sent her on her way.  I noticed that the bully girl kept on squirting other kids with her gun, but not KZ. 

But I wonder what this Tiger Mom really thought she was doing.  She had three kids there.  I'm sure she runs to her childrens' schools whenever someone sneezes in their general direction.  But what was she going to do when they were in college, or God forbid, got a bad review at work?  Did she think she was helping them by fighting their battles now?  How were they going to learn the self-confidence to trust their own decisions?

I sometimes feel, and felt yesterday, that I should have jumped in and taken that woman on head-to-head.  But really, what would that have looked like?  Two grown women fighting in the middle of the water play area at Carl Schurz Park?  Not something I would have wanted to star in on YouTube.

I pray that KZ knows I have her back, even if I'm not standing right behind her at all times.