Fragile Industries

Grandma's Dishes -- A Happy Ending

Happiness all around.

The eBay auction for my grandmother's Desert Rose Franciscanware (story here) closed this morning for a phenomenal sum, more than triple times my reserve price.  I'm happy for the money, but absolutely delighted that it is going to the perfect home.

My purchaser stuck in doggedly through fierce bidding.  By the end, there were 19 bids, many hundreds of hits, and over 50 separate eBayers had the item on their watch list.  I had the feeling that these dishes had a special, personal meaning to the buyer, and that she was not a dealer who would break up the set for individual sale.

That turns out to be the case.  My purchaser just wrote to me and told me that this had been her mother's china, originally her great-aunt's set, but that the set was lost somewhere along the way.  Her mother passed away just a few weeks ago, and this pattern reconnects her with happy memories. When she saw this for sale, it spoke to her.   The timing was perfect, and no mere coincidence, I think. 

Grandma, did you have an Italian mamma's hand in this?  Bless your heart.

Re: Hermes -- more news soon.  And by news, I mean News.

Grandma's Dishes

After 16 years of hauling around this enormous (122 pieces!) set of Franciscanware Desert Rose china, I'm selling it on eBay.  A representation of just a few of the 30 serving pieces is to the left. It's my first step (and an unexpectedly laborious one) towards stripping away the STUFF.  The stuff in the garage that remains in unopened boxes since my move here two years ago is a good start -- if I haven't needed it in two years, I don't need it.  The cake stands.  The old drapes.  Useless Kitchen Stuff: the breadmaker, juicer and lots of deep fryers.  I'm hanging on to: my beloved 1954 Wedgewood stove, big as a 1954 Buick and with more chrome -- I don't care where I move next as long as I can use that stove; my collection of 40 eggbeaters; the old blown-glass Christmas decorations; two beautiful huge rugs (I will rip out any wall to wall in my next residence so I can walk on these again).  That's it.  Everything else, damn the sentiment, is going.

These dishes were a blessing and a curse.  They belonged to my father's mother.  Grandma -- wow, where to start? -- was a character.  She too was a blessing and a curse, depending on who you were.  She was a feisty, independent woman with little education, who defied her deeply Catholic Italian immigrant family and divorced her sullen, alcoholic husband in her early '30's.  Then she set out to make a living for herself and her adored only son, Tony, my father.  She went through beauty training -- "I sweated bullets, honey," she said to me once about the difficulty of going back to school, barely knowing how to read -- and graduated to become a hairdresser, which she continued to do well into her 80's, with a 1930's style.  "I was the best in my class in finger waves," she said modestly.  She did my hair in a perfect marcel -- pure Jean Harlow -- in the '70's the afternoon before I went to a Bette Midler concert.  She didn't know it was camp.  Her other attempts on my hair (The Perm From Hell) were less pleasing to me, but perfect for her aging clientele. 

She was the ultimate Italian Mother, devoted to Tony with a frightening intensity.  When I went through Daddy's photographs after he died, there were at least 20 or more professional portraits of her with her son from the age of 4 to 40, posed more as lovers than as mother and son, cheek to cheek, romantic lighting.  I looked at these and said to my mother, who was helping me clear out his place, "It's a good thing neither of them read much Greek tragedy."  When my mother entered my dad's life (she was 18, he was 24), Grandma went with them on the first date and sat between them in the front seat of his car.  Mom should have read the signs.

Here's a wedding photo.  Note how Grandma is poised between them, tilting her head to edge in even further and force my mother into an unnatural position.  That remained the pattern though their marriage.  Grandma never liked my mother and made her life hell for nine years.  Now when I came along, her only grandchild, I was treated like visiting royalty.  She spoiled me rotten, and would have tried to poison me against my mother after my parents' divorce, but my mother finally put her foot down.  It was the first time I saw Mom, a gracious and unassertive woman, enraged.   She was quiet but firm, and was trembling while she held me and confronted Tony about his mother's meddling.  I didn't understand the reason for her rage, and it made a huge impression -- it's one of my earliest memories.

After that, all was well with our relationship.  I knew Grandma could be a dragon lady, but she always treated me with love, that bottomless Italian abbodanza of adoration for grandchildren.

Here I am at about 4 in her lap, wearing an atrocious black eyelet dress with a hot pink petticoat and yards of pink ribbon threaded through the holes.  A gift from Grandma, who thought black was fine for toddlers.  This was the single time my mother let me wear it on the street.

So of course, she wanted me to be the recipient of her most prized possession, her enormous collection of Desert Rose China.  It was the one luxury this thrifty woman allowed herself.  She well knew the value of a dollar, and had scrimped and saved to buy a sweet Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena.  She was canny enough to buy a house with extra bedrooms, and rented them out to students attending Pasadena City College a short distance away.  Even in her last years, she was proud of her ability to earn and save every penny, take every advantage.  She never had a checking account or invested her money in anything other than a passbook savings account at Pasadena Mutual Bank, swiping all their ballpoint pens on every visit.  Everyone in the family had hundreds of them.  She also stole sugar packets and silverware from restaurants.

Even so, she and her sister Mae spent nearly every Saturday through the '50's taking the long bus ride to Atwater and the Gladding-McBean factory, which made Franciscanware for half a century. It's still manufactured in England, but is far inferior than the original Californian product.  She'd buy as much in the Desert Rose pattern as she could carry home in her lap, and had a silent competition with her sister in acquisition of the best deals, the greatest quantity, the most unique serving pieces.  Often, she'd gaze proudly at the collection displayed behind the built-in glass cabinets in the dining room, and say to me, "Honey, someday all this will be yours."  I was torn.  I knew Grandma loved the pattern, but it was never me.  I'm just not a pink person.  Why not Apple, or Ivy?  Desert Rose was the most popular pattern of its time, perhaps of all time.  For once in her life, Grandma was in the mainstream.  Everyone's mother or grandmother had a set.  But Grandma won, she had the most.  Dinner service for 12, even though I never remember more than 6 people in her home at a time.  And only used on holidays -- the rest of the time, we ate spaghetti off Melmac she probably got free in boxes of detergent.  Not only dinner plates, but salad plates, bread and butter plates, teacups, three kinds of bowls, and funny crescent shaped dishes to sit next to the dinner plates, harking back to the Victorian tradition of a separate plate to hold discarded bones.  I doubt she knew their purpose, I certainly never saw them used.  A baby plate for me.  Then there are the serving pieces, enough to hold food for a crowd, say the Italian Army.  Again, not just the usual set of salt and pepper shakers and single platter.  Tureens, turkey platters, fancy tiny open roses for individual butter pats (she used them as ashtrays), every kind of divided dish and platter offered in the pattern, celery dishes, giant water pitcher...  yep, she won.

Grandma died in 1990 at the age of 85. (In an eerie link to their weird karmic bondage, Daddy died ten years later to the day.)  This is the last picture of her, taken weeks before her death, the two of us on the same porch thirty years after the above picture.  (And I'm still badly dressed.)    I loved her dearly and was sad to see her go, sadder for the emotional devastation her death wreaked on my father.  Her bequest, the dreaded Desert Rose, was shifted to the attic of her house where Daddy lived for nearly all the rest of his life.  When Daddy moved to assisted living, there was nothing for it, I had to take the dishes home.  I still was torn: there was definitely a sentimental attachment.  Just looking at them, I could smell the spaghetti sauce.  I intended to sell them eventually.  Eventually turned into six years of storage on top of the ten years my father held them for me. 

You see, Grandma wasn't completely gone.  She haunted the house when Tony was in the last stages of his decline, looking for him, turning on lights.  Seriously.  The ceiling fixture in the room where I stayed while caring for Tony and later during his move and the sale of the house, would click on in the middle of the night, over and over.  Finally, I unscrewed the bulbs, but I could still hear the clicking.  I called an electrician, who pronounced the wiring sound.  This went on for months.  I could hear clicking down the hall, too, where other switches remained to light fixtures removed when Daddy remodeled.  During the time the house was on the market, the realtor called me to ask whether I'd been at the house in the last few days.  I was in San Francisco, 400 miles away.  "Then I can't figure it out," said the realtor.  "I know I turned off the lights when I last showed the place, but today, every light in the house was on."

So I hung onto the Desert Rose, with as much superstition as sentiment.  Finally, I realized that with Daddy now gone for six years, she had what she wanted.  Whatever the afterlife holds for us, I'm sure they are together again.  And she would be delighted if I made money on the sale -- satisfying her innate appreciation of a dollar earned -- especially if the set could go in a single lot to another family that actually liked them.

I hauled the six huge heavy boxes into the house and went through the laborious process of inventory, finding and listing every perceived flaw, and photographing them all.  I have 12 photos of different sets on my eBay site, with a link to over 70 photos posted on flickr.  Without visual evidence, no one would believe one person could own all this crockery.  I'm selling it in a lot, hoping a family gets it.  However, the real money is to be made by dealers who can then resell each piece individually at a markup, and I made that a strong selling point.  I don't have the time or energy -- there's more crap in them thar garage needing to be strip mined.  In less than 12 hours, I've had five bids, over 100 clicks, and the item is being watched by 15 people.  It hasn't reached my reserve price, yet.  The reserve is ridiculously low given the current market value for vintage, mint condition Desert Rose.  It has as many fans as ever if not more.  Entire websites and discussion groups with hundreds of members are devoted to these dishes.  I had a sense of what Grandma would consider "real money," and that's what I'm happy to get.

It isn't about the money.  I don't really need it.  It's merely self-protective capitalism in action.  As for the next owners, I don't think her presence will follow.  But now and then, no matter what they're cooking, a faint aroma of garlic and oregano may linger in the room.

(P.S. Just noticed that this is entry #200.  My god, I do go on...........)

Father's Day

My ex, about whom I have written with affection and bitterness, in equal measure, is dealing with his father's impending death.  He's going to go visit him during his final days.  This merely seems like common filial duty, but it involves a long trip to a foreign hellhole, and a ton of emotional baggage that must be checked at the gate, so to speak.  My thoughts are with him.  He never had a father figure in his life.  Life dealt me a different hand.  I had an overabundance of fathers.

I've posted a lot about my dad Tony.  I don't want to slight him today.  However, he's passed on for nearly six years, and wouldn't mind if I spent a little time talking about this guy.  Tony loved him too.

Uncle Hal

This is going to be an unapologetic paean of love.  The man had his faults and weaknesses, he was human, but not in my eyes as a child.  Even as an adult, looking at him with as unbiased a view as I can muster, given my adoration, I can't say that his sins were ever those that harmed anyone but himself.  That alone sets him apart from anyone I've ever met.

Professional history, with varying degrees of accuracy and detail: link #1 , link #2 , link #3, link #4, link # 5 , link #6 (and note that omitted from the list of cast members with whom he worked in that cinematic masterpiece "Crash Landing" is Nancy Davis, aka Nancy Reagan -- who at the time of filming, 1958 or so, was still widely known as "The Best Blow Job In Hollywood") , link #7 (which proves his international appeal) . . . etc. etc.  I've made my point. (Photo gallery to right courtesy of Spookytoms, with much gratitude.)

I've said it before, I come from a family of Z-List actors.  My parents, Hal, and his wife Ruth, toiled together in little theater years before I was born.  They eventually became best friends.  Childless, Ruth and Hal (when a toddler, I had a blanket name for them both: "Uncarootenhal") were anointed as my godparents, and took the job seriously. They were primary residents of the village that it took to raise this child.  After my parents divorced when I was quite young, Hal took it upon himself to visit me weekly, even after my mother remarried.  He never talked down to me, was never "too grown up" to happily join in whatever I wanted to do, was probably the only person whose love for me I never doubted, and vice versa. I learned more from him in an offhand way than nearly anyone else in my life.  There's too much for me to say about what he meant to me, and this isn't about me (well, of course it is, it is ALL about me, 24/7, it's my damn blog).

Hal was born in the piney woods of some backwater town in Georgia.  He got out early.  He was handsome as hell, tall, powerful, and was drawn to acting, after some stints as a boxer and, rumor has it, a moonshine runner.  He had a perfect deep baritone actor's voice, and lost the Georgia accent quickly (although he dipped into it when telling a joke or when he patiently read all the Brer Rabbit stories to me, with a different voice for each character.)  After his time in community theater, he did get some film and TV roles in the late 50's-early 60's.  Mostly in the rash of sci-fi-horror films of the time -- giant bugs, space invaders, zombies, you name it.  He was a good enough actor for classic theater (and I'm sure he would have preferred it), but he viewed his career with philosophical good humor.  Actors take what they can get. (That's Hal as lead zombie towards the bottom of the poster to the left.)

One acting story: he was on the studio lot for one of these roles at the same time Elvis was making a movie.  Hal's path to the parking lot at the end of the day took him past Elvis's trailer, and the King was leaning against it, bored.  Elvis called out a greeting, and Hal replied, lapsing back into a semi-Southern accent, instinctively, I suppose.  Recognizing another good old boy, Elvis invited him into the trailer for a conversation that lasted for nearly an hour, full of humor, memories of the South, and love of music (Hal played a passable guitar, Carl Perkins as a favorite).  Hal said there was no pretension to the man, in fact he seemed to genuinely appreciate Hal's own friendly, unpretentious nature.  They were two of a kind.  Elvis could have used a Hal in his life.

He was a wonderful, wise witty gentleman of the old school. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loved him from the moment they met him.  Even people who generally disliked all of humanity made exceptions for Hal.  Like many actors, he was secretly very shy, self-effacing, and more than a little insecure, I realize now.  But he was so charming and entertaining, both one-on-one or at parties, that everyone else in the room receded into the background.  His secret was how special he made you feel, which is the key to true charm.  (Hal is to the left, and my father to the right, of some actress in the photo to the right.)

Hal never went to college (a very poor background), but he was brilliant.  His favorite reading, which he would try to explain to me even as a child, was Civil War history and quite advanced works on physics, cosmology, and the higher reaches of mathematics.  I understood a little more as time went on, but when he got to theories of relativity and the search for the Unified Theory, he lost me.  When I was about 10, I had to write a science report on a topic of my choosing to read aloud to the class.  My first choice, "color" was rejected, which demonstrates my limited grasp of even what science was.  The only source available was Hal, and I remembered him talking about relativity, so I asked him to tell me about it.  As beads of sweat formed on his brow from the impossibility of the task, he essentially dictated a child-accessible description of Einstein, relativity, its proofs and effects.  I took it down verbatim, and actually understood it in a dim way at the time.  When I read it to the class, the silence was deafening.  Everyone, including the teacher, had the glazed-eyed expression that told me that I had just recited Swahili.  I got an A, I suspect because of its incomprehensibility to any layman, anyone not actually hearing Hal's version. ("Uncarootenhal" to the left.)

He was intensely loyal.  As I said, until I became a blase teenager, he visited me weekly (always greeting me by pressing his face to mine, nose to nose, eyes open, and exclaiming, "We're stuck!")  Some jokes are funny once.  Some are funny every time, and if it came from Hal, its humor was inexhaustible.  So we had an entire catalog of shared rituals, stories, jokes.   Even when I was in my impossible teens and despised all adults, his regular visits -- no longer overtly to spend time with me, but just a family visit -- I found a reason to hang out, casually, pretending to ignore everyone, but hanging on his every word.

I'm not revealing anything here by saying he adored my mother.  Their completely platonic love affair lasted nearly 50 years.  No one ever talked about it, but it was the world's most poorly kept secret.  Every childhood visit to me was concluded with several hours, and many drinks, with my mom.  They'd laugh, and drink and smoke and simply bask in their affection for each other.  None of their spouses were threatened.  It was chaste and pure and perfect.  It formed an ideal for me, and I think I have something similar with another friend, or I hope it can become an approximation. (Mom and Hal onstage during their theater days together to left and below right.)

He even tried to create with my little brother (half-brother, technically, my mother and her second husband's son) the same kind of relationship as he and I shared.  He largely succeeded, as Steven loved him with the same intensity I did, and to this day cannot talk about him without a crack of loss in his voice.  Steven chose a different path for his life, and I can't say what lessons he learned from Hal.  Still, I'm grateful for Hal's efforts with Steven.

Random memories:  Hal sitting on a tiny chair in my tiny playhouse (he was 6'2" and the ceiling on the playhouse was maybe 5 foot tops) pretending to eat with all due respect something I had concocted from mud, weeds and a few artfully placed pebbles (even before Martha Stewart, I knew presentation was everything).  A Halloween when I dressed up as a Beatle (back when they were cute mop-tops in black suits) and he plucked the Official Beatle Wig from my head and placed it on his own, picked up my play guitar, and sang "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah."  My mother has the photo of this, or it would be here for your enjoyment.  A full hour when we crouched together in the back yard, watching from beginning to end the process of a spider building its web, with his quiet commentary illuminating the remarkable beauty and complexity of nature even in its most common events.  That is possibly my favorite childhood memory.  Hal's tender, abashed, response when I asked him an appalling question.  I went through a period of questioning my paternity in my early 20's.  The most eligible (and hoped for) candidate was Hal.  After liquoring myself up for courage, and him for in vino veritas, I asked him if he was my biological father.  He did not flinch, but blushed, and said softly, "I'm not, honey, but I wish I was."

I filled the role of daughter for him and Ruth; family is largely what we make it.

His last years saw a frightening decline in health.  There's no question that he was an alcoholic (of the kind that simply grew a little quieter and unsteady, never loud, abusive or foolish) all his life.  He constantly smoked unfiltered Chesterfields (but in a rakish holder, one of his few vanities).  By the time he was 65 or so, it caught up with him.  The robust, physically magnetic man shrank, the voice became weak, his mind remained sharp, but his presence was so much smaller, the hidden insecurities and shyness now visible.  It was painful to see.  I was young enough (mid-20's) and callow and stupid enough to avoid him.  It hurt too much and I couldn't muster the decency to push aside my feelings, to stop taking and start giving.  In terms of karma, it worked out.  My shame in deserting Hal gave me the strength to stand by my father during his last years, and his own sad descent into Alzheimer's.

He eventually developed lung cancer.  I had lived in San Francisco for several years by that time and had seen him rarely during that time.  It was inoperable, terminal, and quick.  My mother called to give me the news, and reported that he wanted no visitors or calls, he wanted to go with dignity and not leave anyone with memories of his difficult end.  I could not let him leave the earth without trying to express what he meant to me.  I wrote a letter, something along the lines of this post, but shorter, more to the point, and full of all those old in-jokes we shared.  Ruth, his widow-to-be, remained at his bedside in the hospital, and a few days before he slipped into a coma, she received the letter.  She read it to him.  He asked it to be repeated several times, and according to Ruth, tears rolled down his cheeks.  He then asked her to put it under his pillow, where it remained until he died shortly thereafter.

Hal, I hope there is a heaven full of wonders for you, spiders building webs, audiences cheering your Shakespearean performances, endless golf games, many children of all ages with whom to share your gifts, large frosty glasses of bourbon and branch that never make you ill, and when it's my time, I hope with all my heart I join you there.

Happy Father's Day.

Uncle Fred

"Man’s power of choice enables him to think like an angel or a devil, a king or a slave. Whatever he chooses, mind will create and manifest." "Our power of choice is the greatest blessing we have, for with it comes the ability to select the mental states we entertain and hence our experiences. The encouraging feature of what appears a discouraging problem is that as we change our inner mental state, our outer experiences will change in conformity to it. To the extent that we learn to control our mental states, we control our lives. I cannot emphasize often enough the extremely great importance of 'I choose.' Cultivate conscious, deliberate choice." Fredrick Bailes (1889 - 1970)

It's time to throw some props Uncle Fred's way.  He was my great-uncle, my mother's father's brother.  Like my grandfather, Uncle Fred started out as a conventional minister. Then he became a visionary, one of the founders of the Science of Mind Church, and the origin of much of the current New Thought and Healing movement.  So many of the new agers would be surprised to know that he published his first book in the 1940's, describing the importance of mental choices to our happiness and health. Dr. Frederick Bailes was born into a family of pioneers in New Zealand and was educated to be a medical missionary. Just as he was completing his training he was found to have diabetes, a so-called “incurable” condition at the time (1915), which prevented him from entering his work. Shortly afterward, he came across the writing of Judge Thomas Troward and began to develop a philosophy for living which led to his complete recovery long before the discovery of insulin. Later, as a student at a large London hospital, Fred closely observed the mental factors which entered into the recovery of patients and noticed that certain fundamental thought-patters invariable produced bodily reactions. By stimulating his patients causative mental patterns toward healing, Fred soon found remarkable results. Frederick Bailes was among the most popular and important teachers of the Science of Mind. Dr. Bailes served with Science of Mind founder Ernest Holmes as Assistant Dean of the Science of Mind Institute in Los Angeles. He also headed the largest Science of Mind church of its day. In addition, Dr. Bailes was an accomplished metaphysical healer, having healed himself of a so-called incurable disease, using the very technique – “Treatment” – that he explains in these Lessons. “The Science of Mind philosophy,” says Dr. Frederick Bailes, “is not a few psychological tricks; it is a life to be lived.” Uncle Fred gave weekly lectures to capacity audiences in Los Angeles and was well known for his twice-weekly radio broadcasts. He is also the author of Your Mind Can Heal You; Basic Principles of the Science of Mind; The Healing Power of Balanced Emotions; and Collected Essays of Frederick Bailes. In his book Your Mind Can Heal You he gives a seven step approach to spiritual mind treatment. It starts, he says, "with the fundamental truth that the person for whom we are treating is a perfect idea in the Mind of God, and our whole procedure during a treatment is intended to remove from our own mind any idea or picture of imperfection or sickness." The logic is simple: If the mind can create certain thought-patterns that result in illness, the mind can therefore also create certain thought-patterns that can lead to and maintain wellness. Fred's books have been studied for generations by countless New Thought followers around the world, but the impact of his work is now being re-discovered as medical professionals, researchers, and mainstream media echo his sentiments and awaken to this healing philosophy. He wasn't just a healer -- he demonstrated that these principles could be applied to any situation in life with remarkable results.  Hidden Power for Human Problems, published in the 50's and in print ever since, explains this way of life. HPHP, his most accessible, least "mystical", most practical book was also his biggest success. I knew very little of this side of Uncle Fred when I knew him as a child.  By then, he had retired from the active ministry, although he still wrote and lectured.  He lived in the tiny community of Tweedy Lake, California, in the high desert not far from what is now a booming, if distant, suburb of LA, Canyon Country.  It was also directly on the San Andreas Fault, a fact that deterred my mother from buying property in the beautiful area.  He lived close to nature; one of the most magical memories of my childhood was helping him with the nightly feeding of the native quail, which then (1960's, before their habitat was decimated by developers) would blacken the skies in huge, wheeling flocks as we scattered the seed he kept by the bushel-load in the garage.  He was marvelous with children and I felt unconditional love for this jolly, humble man with the charming New Zealand accent.  He showed me how to plink away at tin cans (never a live target) with my older brothers' kiddie rifle, the only time I have ever fired a gun.  He was an inveterate hiker, and showed me how to appreciate the subtleties of nature in the high desert.  Later in life, he was not as mobile, but I treasured my visits to Tweedy Lake. Also like my grandfather, he had a regular radio program, and for years after Fred's passing I would occasionally come across a repeat airing, and learned what an influential thinker he was.  I have always had a soft spot for the truly spiritual, the true philosophers, and for that I thank the Bailes brothers.  (One of my brothers has an uncanny resemblance to photos of both Uncle Fred and my grandfather in their youth.  I wish he could access more of his inner life, as they did.  But that's another story.)

Katrina Diaries -- Prologue

Prologue: Gumbo Roots

Even though I’ve never been there, I know what it means to miss New Orleans, as the song says.

My father’s father, Joseph, was born there in 1895 to Anthony and Rose Laurea – Sicilian émigrés, a dirt-poor couple that spoke no English. Why New Orleans? Perhaps they hoped for social acceptance among their own former countrymen, as New Orleans was known for its stew of nationalities and races. They were to be disappointed.

Joe’s father Anthony, my great-grandfather, was a small farmer in the old country. Once in New Orleans, Anthony may have worked as a blacksmith. The urge for self-reliance remained: in the back yard of their humble and crowded home, the family kept a few chickens and raised some of their own food. Three other children were born in the United States: Pete, Josephine (nicknamed “Peppina”) and Lena. Joe and Pete inherited his father’s compact, solid build. The children grew up speaking only Italian, but despite never attending school, they gradually learned English

In the late 1880’s – the probable time of their arrival – the Laureas were one of many immigrant families from Southern Italy. Italian immigration had suddenly jumped from the low thousands in the 1870’s to the tens of thousands one decade later. In 1887, 47,622 Italians came to the United States. In 1890, more Italians settled in Louisiana than any state except for New York, New Jersey and California.

Many of the émigrés had been, like my great-grandfather, small farmers. At the turn of the century, over 40 percent of all male emigrants from Sicily, in particular, were agriculturalists; less than one percent were of the professional classes. The preponderance of farmers is not surprising: over 80 percent of the people of Italy depended on agriculture for their livelihood. In the 1880’s and 1890’s many Sicilian farmers impoverished by new American tariffs, established in part to protect California’s infant fruit industry, came to America and worked in that very industry (think of California’s early vintners such as Ernest and Julio Gallo).

The Laureas did not prosper in New Orleans, but did apparently earn enough money for passage back to Italy in about 1907, taking their children with them. The reasons for this move are not clear, but ethic tension was rampant in New Orleans before the turn of the century. A great deal of anti-Italian feeling was exhibited by the longer-established Creoles and other whites, occasionally erupting into lynchings and other violence. This bigotry, combined with disappointment over their lack of financial success and homesickness, may have motivated the return to Italy.

The open violence against Italians in New Orleans is little-remembered now. Xenophobic hysteria was common in many American cities crowded with recent immigrants. That hysteria occasionally gave way to violence in the 1890’s and Italians were counted among the victims. The most significant lynching of Italians in America took place in New Orleans on March 14, 1891, a scant four years before Joe’s birth. Nine Italians were acquitted of murder charges to the outrage of the prominent citizens of New Orleans. A mob entered the prison and murdered all nine of the Italian suspects. In a blood frenzy, the mob also killed two other Italians, unrelated to the original crime. One was publicly hanged before the cheering crowds outside the jail. Two other lynchings of Italians took place in New Orleans within the decade. Later in life, Joe rarely mentioned his New Orleans childhood to his wife or son. Perhaps the memory of such savage bigotry was too painful to discuss. (The photo below shows Joe at midlife.)

Joe and his brother Pete were not any happier in Sicily, however. Barely in their teens, they stowed away on a boat bound for the United States and eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri, a city with an Italian community better-established and more tolerated than in New Orleans. Still, happier traces of the Big Easy lingered with Joe. When he later opened his bar in Kansas City (a speakeasy during Prohibition), Joe would host weekly feasts of shrimp Creole for his patrons, which he cooked in huge pots at home, jealously guarding the authentic New Orleans recipe.

Partly due to this family history, as well as the legendary charm of the place, New Orleans has always held a place in my heart. I wanted to visit the place, get a feel for the streets my grandfather walked in his youth. He died long before I was born, and seeing New Orleans would have been a way to better know this man, a powerful and loving figure to my father, who in turn was a supportive and comforting parent himself. (The photo below shows Joe and my father, Tony at about 14 years old.)

I never got there for various reasons. At first, a student’s lack of money for traveling, and a later distaste for its hard-drinking tourist reputation, set New Orleans behind other, more compelling destinations: Europe, Israel, Tahiti, Mexico, and Honduras to visit my husband’s father. Recently I had moved it closer to the top of my list, especially if I could travel with Houston or another companion who knew and loved the city. Now I will never have the chance to see the New Orleans my grandfather knew.

In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, Houston alerted me to the dire situation in New Orleans. I turned on CNN and watched, horrified, over the next few days as good people, mostly as poor and marginalized as my family had been a century before, were faced with unheard of tragedy, loss and terror. Like so many, I initially felt powerless to help. A televised call for volunteers from the Red Cross changed my mind. Here I sat in the relative paradise of My Little Town on the California coast, in mid-life crisis with some financial security, no longer constrained by career or family responsibilities (except to my three slavishly devoted cats), and living a directionless and useless existence leading me further into depressing self-absorption. I could not stay idle and keep any shred of self-respect. My compulsion to volunteer was not diminished by the initial opposition of my protective mother (I could get eaten by alligators or catch a vile disease) and my Ojai gentleman companion (I could enjoy the experience so much that I might never return). Screw it, I was going.

The local Red Cross chapter returned my call the next day. I scheduled my training for the day after Houston’s long-awaited (and riotously celebrated) visit to My Little Town. Then I understood the careless blend of excitement, fear, and “tomorrow-we-die” conviviality of recruits due to ship out after Pearl Harbor. Damn it, these were my people, even if total strangers, subjected to the worst that nature could deliver, seemingly without help, without hope. I stopped crying in front of the television and began packing.

Next: Training and deployment (I’m going where?)

THINGS THAT SURVIVE DIVORCE (TTSD) #2: Casablanca

I don't claim to have a favorite movie, but if you put a gun to my head, I'd have to say Casablanca, even though "favorite" isn't quite right.  Yeah, this is everyone's favorite movie.  And I'm just another Woody Allen wanna-be.  Well, to a certain extent.  Still, before Soon-Yi's stepfather, er, husband, er (his daughter! his sister!) ...Allen had written Play It Again Sam, I had a complicated relationship with this movie.  First of all, I said "movie," not film.  It certainly is both -- and that's what makes it great.  But I didn't know that when I first saw Casablanca on the late show at about eight or nine years old.  (Yes, I am that old, we didn't even have videos then, gather near my rocking chair so granny can box your impertinent ears.)  My mom had hinted that it was a good movie, and special to her. My parents were both actors, though my mother had not acted in some time.   She also said, intriguingly, "Your daddy looks a little like Humphrey Bogart."  It was the first Bogart movie I remember seeing.  I realized immediately that my father looked so exactly like Bogart, that I had goose pimples.  More correctly, he looked like what a younger Bogart had looked like in, say, 1935, and transported forward to the mid-sixties.  The time-travel factor just intensified the ambient weirdness. 

Then Ingrid Bergman appeared.  My goose bumps got goose bumps.  She had my mother's round-cheeked beauty, her broad brow, her luminous skin.  Watching these clones of my now-divorced parents catch sight of one another for the first time "since Paris"  oh, boy.  It was strange and too intimate and I couldn't tear my eyes away.  The political stuff floated right over my head then, despite frequent historical asides from my mother, who remembered the war as the defining moment of her generation.  No, the romance had me from hello -- and I cried so hard at the end I had hiccups. 

At a rough estimate, I've seen Casablanca all the way through at least a dozen or so times on TV, video, small art houses (The Rialto!  The Nuart!) and grand movie palaces (The Castro!), and nothing can ruin it.  I'm like one of those annoying Rocky Horror types that talks back to the screen, and recites whole speeches.  Every time I notice something new. {Footnote, if I knew how to make one in this posting format:  One of the most recent times, I discovered, thanks to my neighborhood juggler friends, a juggler on screen for about 4 seconds in the opening market scene.  (There's your free trivia for a bar bet, readers.  The burning controversy is settled at last.  There IS a juggler in Casablanca.) } We've all seen the key scenes and lines in excerpts so often that they have become a part of the national culture and consciousness -- every man wants to tip up Ingrid Bergman's chin, gaze into her limpid, tear-filled eyes, and growl "Here's looking at you, schweethart."  Every woman wants to bravely bear Ingrid's heartbreak as she goes on to be "the thing that keeps him going" to the man who single-handedly was going to save the world from the Dark Side.  Or something.  We all want to share Rick and Renault's crisp, cynical banter.  The movie is such a treasure trove of Favorite Movie Lines that I herewith **take note, there will be a quiz ** declare that it is Off-Limits to entries in that category, and henceforth registered in the Favorite Movie Lines Hall Of Fame.

My parents got older (while I have stayed magically youthful, and don't ask about that funny painting in the attic).  My father gradually and gladly became synonymous with Bogart to smaller and smaller circles before he died.  He married another Bergmanesqe beauty (and if you read this, Gail, hugs and kisses to you!).  By the time Daddy was 40, the resemblance was striking.  He had always done marvelous impressions of anyone, getting the voice, the squint, the monocle just right.  After a certain age, Daddy just looked like Bogart doing everyone he knew at Warner's and half of MGM to boot.  He got a lot of work from the mid-70's to the mid-80's playing Bogart in dinner theater Play It Again Sam productions in all the tired venues between Lubbock and Atlanta.  Long before Lost In Translation, Daddy was Big In Japan, recording saki commercials in a trenchcoat against a foggy backdrop of miniature prop planes.  Scenes in Ricks for beer commercials.  These happy, if parasitic, opportunities dried up slowly after Daddy passed 55 (the age at which Bogart died) and eventually started looking like Bogie's grandpa.  But he was registered with a look-alike agency and would appear at the opening of an envelope, his silver hair dyed a ghastly shoe-polish black.  He and the other look-alikes also worked as extras on occasion, which may confuse future film historians. 

My wedding in 1995 was decidedly retro, and held in a supper club not unlike Rick's Cafe.  Daddy, naturally, wore his white dinner jacket and wandered around with a cigarette and scotch.  I forgot a lot of people would be meeting him for the first time.  He got a LOT of second takes from the groom's tables.  Finally, only his best friend's grandchildren called him Bogey in the years before he passed away at 74.  When I cleaned out the house, I found an original Warner Bros. script for Casablanca.  It's post-production, but probably from the 50's anyway.  A friend (he had many) probably scammed it for him.  It's a genius script, possibly the best ever.  Certainly some of the best dialogue and an inspired cast to bring it alive.  It's lost it's initial Freudian voyerism and now I live for the Bogart-Rains dialogue.  Still, it will always feel just a bit too close to a home movie -- and where was Sam when I was growing up, anyway?  Don't we all want someone to follow us around and play the soundtrack of our lives?

The year after Daddy died, we had our annual Oscar Party with a Casablanca theme.  About 40 or 50 people.  Tons of lovely authentic Moroccan food, silk tenting the ceilings, brass hooka-ish elements here and there.  We had a couple of Captain Renaults, the aforementioned juggler, a couple of miscellaneous burnooses (burnoosi?), two tuxedoes, and a lethal punch named after the Blue Parrot Bar (Sydney Greenstreet's) containing Blue Curacaou, champagne, and about six other things.  Several people loitered near the bowl, fingering straws and looking furtive.  It was the best of the dozen or so of the Oscar Parties I gave in SF; I don't think I'll do any more.  They have passed on to other hands, and it's only fun as long as you have enough geographical distance from Hollywood to prompt a cheerful irreverence.   

But "we'll always have Paris . . . " and I raise a silent toast to my father every time I see a Bogart movie, especially Casablanca.

Note: all photos are of my father from TV commercials in the 70's and 80's -- I told you he looked like Bogart!

Tuesday Recipe Corner: Fennel

I have been reading "Under the Tuscan Sun," and craving a visit, perhaps lifelong, to Tuscany.  As food is an integral part of the Italian experience, I feel very close to my childhood visits to my grandmother. Fennel was an essential ingredient around the kitchens of my father's family, I just didn't know what it was, or even its form.  It was like the elephant as perceived by the blind men: a snake (the trunk) a column (the leg), a rope (the tail).  Similarly, fennel seeds gave bread and Italian sausages their distinctive flavor, which bore little relation to the stalks and bulb when chopped into Grandma's garlicky olive salad, and the mild delicate fronds were something else again, sauteed with breadcrumbs and parmesean to top spaghetti and meatballs in the spring.  I knew the latter dish as "finnocchio" (Italian for fennel) and had no idea where to find it when I wanted to recreate the traditional dinner for Daddy's birthday in late April.  At that time, the early '80's, it was rarely available in the supermarket fresh.  For that matter, I don't know where Grandma got it, but knowing her, she was not at all above pulling it out of someone's yard.  Fennel grows like a weed in California, great bushes of it, reeking of anise.  I do not like the strength of licorice, but fennel's flavor, though similar, is milder, particularly when cooked, and a little greener, grassier.  It is as common in Italian cooking as celery is in America, an essential aromatic.  Once I figured out the finnocchio-fennel connection, and that it was all one elephant, my kitchen was never again without the seed, and I use the bulb often in salads: red onion, fennel and orange is a classic, or a caponata (replace the celery, or add an equal amount diced fennel).  It is heavenly with arugula, but so is everything.  Carl, a reprehensible ex-boyfriend, once complained of our frequent breakups that when we were apart he couldn't bear seeing the fennel in his kitchen and would throw it out, only to buy it again when we tried to get back together.  (May he choke on a fennel seed, bless his heart).

One of its most comforting preparations is in a simple soup.  Its assertive flavor make it a poor choice for inclusion in an all-purpose broth, but it can marry well with some other root vegetables.  This recipe is my version of one used at Greens in San Francisco, which blends it with celery root (also called celeriac).  I think of it as a basic Tuscan peasant soup, capable of endless variation.  Its richness can be enhanced by adding up to a cup of light cream, and/or the bread can then be omitted, so that it is entirely suitable for the first course of an elegant meal.  Alternatively, it can be topped with chopped bitter greens, the sautee'd "finnocchio" of my childhood, or diced pimento.

Fennel and Celeriac Soup

• 3 leeks
• 1 fennel bulb (about 1 pound), with greens, if available.
• 1 celery root (about 1 pound)

Trim all green from leeks, and set aside white parts.  Discard ragged outer greens.  Slice and wash inner light green leaves well.  Trim thick outer leaves and feathery parts from fennel.  Set aside fennel bulb and about half the feathery greens, and chop outer leaves and remainder of greens.  Trim top and bottom from celery root and pare skin.  Put pared root in a bowl of water with a little lemon or vinegar to prevent from browning.  Put in large saucepan or medium soup pot: the chopped inner leek greens, the outer leaves and half the greens from the fennel, and the top and bottom and parings from the celery root.  Add:

• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 bay leaf
• a handful of parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 cups water

Bring to a boil, simmer about half an hour, and strain.  There should be about 6-7 cups.  In the meantime:

Heat together in large saucepan or medium soup pot:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup water

until butter melts.  Slice the reserved leeks into thinnish rounds, quarter and slice the fennel bulb and the celery root.  Add to butter and water, along with:

• 1 teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet (optional)

Stir and stew very slowly for about 20 minutes, adding moisture as necessary.  Do not brown.  Pour the strained stock over and simmer, covered for 15 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly.  Blend in batches until completely smooth.  Allow to sit so foam settles out.  Reheat for serving, do not allow to boil.  Add

• cream or half-and-half (up to a cup)

at this point, depending on consistency, if desired. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper. 

While reheating, broil baguette slices, two per person, brushed with olive oil, until desired crispness.  Place in bowls and pour soup over, piping hot.  Garnish with chopped fennel greens and/or finely chopped arugula and/or watercress.  Pass freshly grated Parmesean cheese.

A good dessert would be broiled figs drizzled with honey.

recipes Food and Drink family history

How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?

My brother Michael has a daughter, Lilith, an extraordinary young woman who regularly makes us all proud as peacocks, though what we have to do with it is minimal; hers are gifts innate and natural.  Brilliant, beautiful, charming and poised, she attends an Ivy League college.  I can't wait to see her conquer the world or whatever portion thereof she chooses -- and yet I have the feeling (a strangely parental sensation, I'm told) that she's grown too fast, that I never took enough time to be the Auntie Mame in her life, someone to turn to when she wants to cut loose.  She gets it, I think.  After we shared a two-hour giggly high tea in a grand hotel, and I had regaled her with many a tale (obviously bowdlerized) of my adolescent adventures, ending some with the "do as I say, not as I do" wink, she asked me "Lisa, were you a bad girl?"  Oh my, yes.

Lilith played at Carnegie Hall the other day, her most recent triumph.  Another missed opportunity -- what fun we could have had in New York, I want to go there so badly I can taste it -- perhaps this fall, and we could see "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "Spamalot" on Broadway, something avant-garde off-off Broadway, lots of blintzes, ride on the subway, gallery crawl, giggle.  Anyway, here's her picture on stage.   My contribution to this celebrated occasion?  She is wearing the cashmere sweater I gave her for Christmas, so I made it to Carnegie Hall by proxy.  How?  "Purchase, purchase, purchase."  I've found my talent!

family history

Wiki Wiki Girl Girl Deux

See earlier Wiki post if you don't know about Wikipedia.  In a nutshell, it's amazing, and I'm having fun with it. 

Here's a thread started by Wiki'ers (men, apparently) who were under the impression that women don't wiki.  They thought the programming culture or the "masculine group structure" -- whatever that means -- scared away the girls.  (I suppose that there's lots of work for programmers at Wiki; I'm strictly about content.)  The wikigrrrrrrrrrrrls took note of the blathering and responded loud and clear: Girls Do Wiki.  The structure actually promotes collaboration, and according to the Venus/Mars model, women thrive in such environments.  There are women programmers.  I think some programming guys who actually didn't know any Real Girls, or were too scared to ask, started the rumor.

I found the debate when I Googled Wiki Wiki Girl (no quotes, shoulda had 'em) to see if anyone remembers that phrase.  In the late '60's or early '70's, Chevron had an advertising campaign with the "Wiki Wiki Girl" -- a gorgeous pseudo-Polynesian woman in a grass skirt hula-ing her butt off on top of a gas pump.  There may have been a contest involved.  I remember it only because 10 years later, I had my first full-time job working for the Wiki Wiki Girl herself, Irene Tsu, former dancer and now fashion designer.  I got the job because I knew her husband, photographer/director Ivan Nagy. (Pronounced Yvonne Nazhh, not that it matters.)   He had directed several dreadful movies in the early '70's my dad had acted in, and everyone had stayed in touch.  His was the biography I wanted to write in Wikipedia, which at this stage is left blank.  The only mention of him to date is in the biographical note of another woman he started seeing long after his divorce from Irene, and my departure from the job and both their lives.  In the '90's, he was Heidi Fleiss's . . . boyfriend ( and procurer?  pimp?  partner?) -- yes, the Hollywood Madam.  His involvement was shadowy and I believe no criminal charges were ever proved.  However, he appeared at great length in a documentary about her, and the film actually became less about her sinful exploits than about the seriously sick relationship they, well, appeared to enjoy.  I intended just to fill in his earlier life, list the films he directed, etc., because I have no direct knowledge of any of his later adventures.  But . . . since it's just us chickens . . .   I can tell you this. 

About 3 months before the whole Fleiss brothel was busted, my father got a call from Ivan, the first in several years.  After some small talk, Ivan asked my dad about his living arrangements.  He asked about the house Dad had inherited from his mother, which he was renting to students -- it had 4, possibly 5 bedrooms -- and whether it was vacant.  Ivan gradually elaborated: he was offering my dad free rent in a house, maybe my grandmother's or maybe a house in Hollywood, in exchange for a little watering, keeping the place up, and playing house mother -- "college girls" would be renting the remaining rooms.  The whole thing sounded so vague and half-baked that my father begged off.  Once Ivan hit the nightly news (and he and Heidi dominated the newscasts in LA for some time), the plan, of course, became very clear . . .

Back to the gender issue on Wikipedia.  Ironically, was that the first biography I worked on in a minor way concerned a female-to-male transsexual friend.  The authors of the entry debated at enormous length the policy for gender references in pronouns in such cases: retroactive or no?  Many of those involved in the debate, they made clear, were transsexuals, and felt that it would be wrong to refer to any gender but the chosen one, because they had,  to their core, been that gender from the start, but were housed in the wrong body.  Nothing concrete was decided for future cases.  In this case, the subject was contacted and he agreed, because of his activism as a lesbian before the gender change, that it made more sense to use a female term during that time.  This seems the logical conclusion for this biography; certainly no one can sensibly object if it makes the entry clear (and it would be hopelessly unclear if written without any gender reference or only the male) and the subject agrees.  I find it amusing that the initial Girls Don't Wiki thread started by the male Wiki'ers don't even go there at all.  Many genders Wiki.

Will you wiki too?  Ewww, this is starting to sound just too cute.

web family history

Tony on Tony

And now, for something completely different, here is a picture of my dad, Tony, age six, on his pony, also named Tony.  (Yeah, he sounds half-bright, but that was the name of Tom Mix's horse, and Daddy watched all the cowboy movie serials in the late 20's and 30's.)  Daddy was an Italian-American Prince and spoiled rotten.  Note the cowboy suit.  Future installments of this blog may include other paternal portraits and costumes at a tender age including a tiny tuxedo (I am not making this up), sailor suits, and the like.  In the background is one of the buildings on my great-grandparents' huge property in the formerly Italian North End of Kansas City, Missouri.  Great-grandma believed in having abbodanza room for children and grandchildren to live in the compound, as well as for the grape arbor, wine press, and extensive produce gardens, which provided tomatoes and herbs for her sauces.

family history