Where’s the Misery on Mount Misery?

Travel west in New Jersey on Rt. 70 to about mile marker 28 and you’ll see a sign for Mt. Misery Rd. on your left.  You may not have driven this two-lane asphalt before, but plenty of teenagers are reputed to take their dates down the creepy road that gets narrower and narrower as the trees form an overhead canopy.   

And then the kids begin to tell ghost stories.  In fact, many report strange tales like this one on chat rooms like AlienHub.com:  “As I was driving…I didn’t realize how deep I had driven.  As a result of my stupidity, we became lost, trying all different ways, but could not find anything that pointed us in the right direction.  That’s when I noticed my three-quarter full gas tank was now was empty to a point where the E-light was on.  We were all starting to panic a little.  Then we saw this huge, slow-moving object in the night sky.  

“This giant thing in the sky was quieter than silence itself.  My two friends kept telling me to go, but I was not about to jet away from this amazing experience.  So I stopped the car (but left it running, totally disregarding the E-light), and stepped out to get a better look.  It was breathtaking. It was even bigger than I had originally thought and it was moving towards the car.  

“The underside was beautiful.  Four bright blue lights and two or three white lights.  The shape of the object…kind of looked circular, but not flying saucer.  Whatever that thing was it was moving too slowly and too silently to be anything manmade.  Then it was time to leave.  Gas supply was running really low at this point. Eventually, we made it back to the main road, and started on our journey home.  Over the tree tops we were still able to see whatever it was [until] it finally disappeared.  I looked at my gas-gauge.  It was once again three-quarters full.” 

Weird New Jersey magazine has written of similar experiences.

 

 

Curious thing is that there is no mountain and no misery on this stretch of road.  In the 18th century, according to the Pine Barrens Tribune, French Huguenots settled in this part of the Pine Barrens.  They named it Misericordia, a place of mercy.  Fast forward to 1947, and the Pinelands Center summer camp was established at the end of the road.  The United Methodist Church of New Jersey owned and ran the camp, open to everyone regardless of religious affiliation.  The 150-acre site is surrounded on most sides by cranberry bogs and preserved forestland, including miles of trails in Brendan T. Byrne State Park.  It’s now a place for camping, retreats and a conservation center.

 

 Year round, the Center offers camping in contemporary cabins with electricity and water, outpost cabins that are a bit more primitive, and field camping.  Nestled in the Green Cathedral is an area for worship or contemplation.  And, there are a range of activities, from swimming and boating on the lake, miles of nature hikes.   

The Pinelands Center is at 801 Mount Misery Rd., Pemberton.  The main office can be reached at 609-893-3352, and their Internet site is at www.pinelandscenter.org.  It’s worth your time to take a look, but there’s no guarantee you’ll encounter any ghosts or UFOs.

Last Stop on the Underground Railroad

Imagine running for your life, hoping the man whose wagon you’re in was an abolitionist and not a slave-catcher, not knowing where you were heading except it was north.  Away from family, friends, the plantation.  And finally you’re out — free! — in Timbuctoo.

 

The place half an hour south of Trenton, in Westampton Twsp., was sanctuary to runaway slaves.  Beginning in the 1820s, freed and escaped slaves formed a town.  They survived there through the end of slavery in New Jersey, the Fugitive Slave Act and the Jim Crow era.  The last families didn't leave until the 1950s.  At its peak, Timbuctoo was home to more than 150 people.

 

But it wasn’t a total sanctuary.  In 1860 the “Battle of Pine Swamp” took place in Timbuctoo, as reported in the New Jersey Mirror, a local newspaper.  It involved armed residents of Timbuctoo preventing the capture of Perry Simmons, a fugitive slave living in Timbuctoo, by a southern slave catcher.

 

Today, Patricia Markert of Temple University and about a dozen other archaeologists are digging and cleaning the site to confirm that slaves, and a few immigrants and native Americans settled this area.  No one knows if the name, “Timbuctoo,” was chosen by the blacks or by the Quakers who offered them assistance.  

 

So far, Markert and the diggers have found bricks that were cast off from a nearby Quaker brickyard.  And bottles, tools and toys dug up from the ground.  Near the dig is a van that has become a temporary museum.  Ziploc bags sit where the van’s seats would be, full of categorized artifacts, waiting to go to Temple University for cleaning.  The National Public Radio profile reports a lot of those artifacts are bottles for household products, like Listerine and Vaseline.  Most of the brand names on the bottles are national, because white-owned local stores rarely sold to the people of Timbuctoo.  Residents ordered supplies by mail so vendors wouldn't know they were black.

 

The Westampton website notes the village was located on the North Branch of Rancocas Creek in Burlington County, making Timbuctoo easily accessible from the Delaware River.  And made it a strategic location for the Underground Railroad.  Settlers there had access to tidal waters and wetlands for fishing and hunting as well as fields for farming.  Two major brickyards nearby offered employment.

 

National Public Radio profiled the recovery effort, noting one local volunteer is 75-year-old Mary Weston, who lives just down the street.  She says, “My great-great-great-grandfather actually purchased the land for, what was it, $38 dollars and 50 cents?  He was one of the original inhabitants of Timbuctoo.”  In her home,  she shows off her favorite piece of Timbuctoo history: her family Bible.  “It was passed down to me from the 1800s,” says Weston.  “I keep it together with a belt, because….  I am determined that my children and my grandchildren will know a lot more about not only their family, but about their heritage, who they are, where they came from.”

 

Westampton's mayor, Sidney Camp, was instrumental in getting the dig started and frequently visited the clearing before he knew it was Timbuctoo.  “When I was having a bad day, I would come out here and just stand in the middle of this field, because it’s so peaceful and so serene,” he says.  “To come out now and see what I've been standing over for so many years — it's amazing.  It's indescribable.”

 

Westampton celebrates Timbuctoo Day each May.  During this town-wide celebration, guests are invited to explore the original village site; a Civil War reenactment by the Sixth Regiment U.S. Colored Troops; walking tours of the 19th century village; visits to the church’s burial grounds with graves of Civil War soldiers; and an archeological exhibit and music by local church groups.

Horrors in My Oregon Hometown

Forest Grove in the 1940s

Nicholas Kristof wrote a horrifying op-ed piece in the Aug. 14 New York Times, describing teenage racial bullying.  A classmate tells a Mexican-American girl, “We’re going to deport your ass [when Trump is elected].”  And they chant “Build a wall!”  The divisiveness is only part of my horror; worse, Kristof was writing about the small Oregon town where I grew up. 

His descriptions challenged my memories because I was a product of Forest Grove’s Central elementary school and Harvey Clark middle school.  (Clark was founder of the town’s Pacific University who, ironically, created the first school to educate Indians, mixed-breed children and orphans in the 1840s.) 

In the 1940s and ‘50s we saw no prejudice.  But then, Forest Grove had no blacks, no Latinos, no more Indians and — possibly — only a handful of Jews.  It was accepted knowledge that these people were not allowed to spend the night in town.  Mexican migrants could work the fields, but no one knew where they stayed.  I saw the first and only blacks when we drove into Portland 20 miles away.  Pacific had a number of Hawaiian students, but they weren’t “townies” so they didn’t count. 



Forest Grove's Pacific Avenue today.

While Mom was descended from over 200 years of New Englanders, Dad was German-American, which raised a tiny bit of skepticism during World War II.  This white utopia ended when my family moved in 1954 to the Los Angeles area, followed by another move to New Jersey “back East.”  As we all do, I grew up and married a Taiwanese woman.  My younger brother married a non-observant Jewish girl.  A cousin married a black, but she was a folk singer who ran away to Greenwich Village.  We had left the provincialism of that farm and logging town.  We had begun to see the world in all its beauty and diversity. 

Will Forest Grove ever be exposed to people who are “different”?  Oregon has its legacy of the black exclusion law enacted in 1844 that ordered whipping of blacks — 39 lashes once every six months — until they left the territory.  Today, African-Americans still make up only 2 percent of Oregon’s population, Latinos 12 percent and Asians 4 percent.   

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Vote

Elections seem to get more baffling each season, but this isn’t the first time New Jersey has run into some curious situations. 

Biting the Voter in the Neck?  One of the most controversial candidates was Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, who filed to run for President in 2004 and 2008 as an Independent candidate.  He was familiar to Jerseyans, however, as reported by www.LiveScience.com.  He had run for Congress in New Jersey as the Republican candidate in 1999, in Indiana with the Reform Party in 2000, and once again as Republican in Florida in 2001, and governor of Minnesota in 2006. 

Sharkey proclaimed himself to be a Luciferian, vampire, professional boxer and wrestler under the name of Rocky "Hurricane" Flash.  He founded the Vampires, Witches and Pagans Party in 2005, a party officially recognized by United States Federal Election Committee. 

During his 2006 run, when asked about violent criminals during a press conference, Sharkey told reporters that he would impale murderers, rapists and other dangerous offenders on the capitol lawn, just as Vlad the Impaler supposedly did in Romania during the mid-1400s.   

Honest Abe Never Carried the State  The Democrats met in April 1860 amid great turmoil to select their candidate for President.  Northern Democrats felt that Stephen Douglas had the best chance to defeat the “Black Republicans” and nominated him.  Southern Democrats considered Douglas a traitor because he wanted to let territories choose not to have slavery, and stormed out of the convention.  At a separate convention, southern Democrats chose then vice president John C. Breckenridge.  But troubles were only beginning, according to the Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia.

The Republicans met in Chicago and recognized that the Democrat’s turmoil actually gave them a chance to win.  They needed a candidate who could carry the North with a majority of the electoral votes.  To do that, they needed someone who could win New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania — four important states that remained uncertain.  Abraham Lincoln emerged as the best choice as the symbol of the frontier, hard work, the self-made man and the American dream.  His debates with Douglas in early 1860 had made him a well-known national figure.    

A number of politicians and citizens calling themselves the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell of Tennessee, a wealthy slaveholder.  They were for moderation, deciding the best way was to take no stand at all on the issues dividing the north and the south. 

With four candidates in the field, Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote, but garnered 180 electoral votes — enough to narrowly win.  Abe Lincoln failed to carry New Jersey, losing to Douglas in 1860.  (He lost again, four years later, to George B. McClellan.)  

A few weeks after the election, South Carolina seceded from the Union.
 

The states that Lincoln won are shown in red, Breckenridge in green, Bell in orange and Douglas in brown.  In 1864, Douglas won only New Jersey, Kentucky and Delaware.

 



 

Nominating the Birthday Boy  One of the unlikeliest of host cities for a party convention was also the scene of one the most unusual moments in convention history.  Democratic delegates attending the 1964 gathering in Atlantic City were greeted with the usual pomp and spectacle, but with one special twist, according to the History Channel website www.History.com. 

President Lyndon Johnson, never one to shy away from public adoration, had arranged for the final night of the convention to fall on his 56th birthday. His acceptance speech was followed with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” from the crowd, and topped off not just by balloons but fireworks.

There’s no record of birthday cake being served to the thousands of attendees. 

Oops, There Goes a Vote  Because of the 2010 Census Reapportionment, New Jersey lost one electoral vote, giving it 14 through the 2020 presidential election, according to the political website www.270towin.com.

New Jersey, one of the 13 original colonies, joined the Union in December 1787 and has participated in all 57 presidential elections.  Thanks to the density of our population, the state has more electoral votes per square mile than any state except Rhode Island.  Our 14 electoral votes make it a rich prize.  New Jersey has gone Democratic in the last six elections, after voting Republican in eight out of the previous 10.  Barack Obama won the state over Mitt Romney by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent in 2012.  

Back When New Jersey Women Voted.  Really.  The Founding fathers’ electoral college didn't do much for the Founding mothers, wrote Akhi Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar in a legal analysis, “History, Slavery, Sexism, the South and the Electoral College.”  

In a system of direct national election, any state that chose to enfranchise its women would have automatically doubled its voting power in presidential elections.  The era of universal white manhood suffrage in the early 19th century saw many other restrictions on voting.  New Jersey was the one state that had allowed women property holders to vote.  Women lost that right in the early 1800s with the introduction of universal white manhood suffrage.  

Under the electoral college, each state got a fixed number of electoral votes based on population, regardless of how many or few citizens were allowed to vote or actually voted.  As with slaves, what mattered was simply how many women resided in a state, not how many could vote there.

 

 

 

 

Greenwich Gathers for a Tea Party

A local monument lists the colonists who participated

in the “tea party”

On this Independence Day commemorating our own "Brexit," it's worth remembering an earlier break-up.

Everyone knows about the Boston Tea Party when the colonists dumped British tea into the harbor to protest King George’s taxes.  But did you know the little town of Greenwich (pronounced GREEN-wich), N.J., had its own gathering on the night of Dec. 22, 1774.  It was almost exactly one year after the famed Boston incident. 

In fact, “There were five incidents up and down the East Coast where they destroyed tea,” says Bob Francois of the Cumberland County Historical Society.  Charleston, Annapolis and Princeton also sabotaged imported tea.

On that night, a group of about 40 South Jersey patriots braved the cold to protest British taxation.  The villagers stole a shipment of tea, hauled it to the town square and set it ablaze to express their defiance.

“The tea that arrived in Greenwich came on the second attempt to deliver the shipment,” said Jonathan Wood, former president of the Cumberland County Historical Society.  “The first attempt was hindered by a group of Philadelphia patriots.  They said, ‘If you will turn the ship around, there will be no problems at all.  If you decide that you will not turn the ship around, you have never seen as much trouble as you are about to see.’  The ship simply turned around and went back to the European port.”

A year later, the British tried to deliver tea again.  This time, the Greyhound sailed four miles up the Cohansey River and hid its cargo in Greenwich, a peaceful settlement of Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians.  They intended to secretly hold the shipment in Greenwich until it was safe to move it overland to Philadelphia.

John Fea, associate professor of American history at Pennsylvania’s Messiah College, researched the incident through Philip Vickers Fithian’s diaries.  Fithian returned to Greenwich just before the tea burning and wrote, “Last night the tea was, by a number of persons in disguise, taken out of the house and consumed with fire,  Violent and different are the words about this uncommon manoeuvre among the inhabitants.  Some rave, some curse and condemn, some try to reason; many are glad the tea is destroyed, but almost all disapprove the manner of the destruction.”

The East India Tea Company, owners of the tea, weren’t happy and appealed to Gov. William Franklin for justice.  Franklin told Sheriff Jonathan Elmer to arrest the participants, some of them being Elmer’s own relatives.

Sheriff Elmer brought the men to trial, but chose a jury of sympathetic Whigs and his own nephew as foreman.  The verdict: “No cause for action.”  Gov. Franklin promptly removed the sheriff and appointed Daniel Bowen, the loyalist who had stored the tea.  The second jury also found no cause for action.  The tea owners and governor gave up.

The tea party participants went on to lead very public lives.  Most that took part in the burning enlisted in the Continental Army.  Four would give their lives for freedom.  Sheriff Elmer was elected one of the first two senators from New Jersey.  Richard Howell, in whose home they assembled on that night, became governor of the state in 1792.  Joseph Bloomfield, defense attorney at both trials, succeeded Howell as governor, and the town of Bloomfield is named after him.

“We don’t know a lot about what actually happened that night,” admits Fea.  “In Cumberland County, there were no Revolutionary War battles.  The tea burning was a major happening in our county, and even though it happened back in 1774 it’s still in the forefront and the locals really celebrate it.”

The lesson of the tea burning is important even if details are missing.  It’s a story of revolt.  The central characters are ordinary individuals rather than war heroes or politicians.  Fea says, “The tea burning is what the Revolution looked like in a local town.” 

Greenwich faded as a major commercial hub in the early 1800s, and its population now stands at just over 800 residents.  The buildings that once were businesses are now homes along Ye Greate Street.  The two-mile long main avenue’s course hasn’t changed since 1684. 

In its heyday, Greenwich had 11 taverns where people would gather and gossip.  It was a thriving port, and by 1701 was one of only three official ports of entry for New Jersey.  (The other two were Burlington and Perth Amboy.)  Foreign ships unloaded their cargoes that were then hauled to Philadelphia or Burlington overland or on smaller boats.

Today’s commercial life is largely limited to the Greenwich Country Store & Deli and Aunt Betty’s Kitchen.  Along Ye Greate Street is the Gibbon House, a 1730 replica of a London townhouse that houses the historical society. 

While time may have forgotten this south Jersey town, visiting Greenwich is like stepping pleasantly back into the 18th century.

Welcome to the New Age (Thank You and Move On)

I went into a RiteAid drugstore this morning to find those mini Bic lighters.  My mistake.  I had to interrupt a clerk chatting with an octogenarian lady about her health to ask where I’d find them.  She walked me to the candy and food aisle and there they were, three for $3.99.  And some good-looking chocolate to go with a wonderful Bordeaux I’d found.   

When I checked out, the clerk asked what year I was born.  “Why?” I asked.   

“We have to ask everyone.”   

“What?  For buying Ghirardelli chocolate?” 

“No.  The lighters.  Didn’t you see the sign on the door?  We check age for cigarettes, lighters, all that.” 

“Look at me! Do I look like a teenager?” 

“What year were you born?” This pit bull was not going to give up.

“1939.” 

Back story:  I needed to replace the insert in my favorite lighter, a Breitling watch promotional piece given to me by a niece who works at Tourneau.  When I went to an air show at McGuire Air Force Base last week the Air Police wanded me, along with the 10- and 11-year-olds I was with.  Then the AP (we used to call them Apes) asked suspiciously, “What’s this?” 

“A lighter.  For lighting cigarettes.” 

“I’ll have to take it.” 

“Why?” I asked. 

“We have jet fuel here.” 

I replied, “I think I’m smart enough not to smoke around jet fuel.” 

“We have jet fuel everywhere.”  And, poof, my lighter disappeared into his pocket.  Turned out all of us tourists and gawkers were stuck behind 100 yards of Jersey barriers, another hundred yards from the planes, which kept flying back and forth, from the left and then the right, upside down and right side up,  Very loudly. 

I hate to be a grumpy old geezer.  I should have been proud that the Air Force was protecting me against terrorists of all ages, and that RiteAid was shielding the health of geezers.  Still, I wonder what the immigration requirements are for moving to Canada.  The U.S.A. is becoming a very scary place to live. 

Upwardly Mobile

I worked my way up in the corporate world.  Literally.  After starting on the ground floor at the Western Electric factory in the Jersey meadows I spun off to the canyons and peaks of Manhattan.  My first office was next to a Xerox machine on the 5^th floor at an east side building, then gaining career momentum I segued west to division headquarters and a 9^th floor office.  After a decade, I had clambered up to the 23^rd floor at the parent company, followed by a shuffling of the deck that landed me on the 26^th floor of a midtown skyscraper on Park Avenue—ground zero for the captains of industry.           

Full Car:  My daily meetings with the bosses took me to Mahogany Row on the 34^th floor where the elite sat in their offices guarded by their gray-haired watchdogs.  I discovered then that I was spending more time traveling vertically than horizontally.  This introduced me to elevator situations.  

I was elevating up from the lobby one morning when a man rushed toward the closing doors.  The only other occupant in my car, a vice president standing near the control panel, vainly punched the button to hold the doors as they closed silently.  Shock and embarrassment crossed his face.  Then I saw his finger had been nowhere near the hold button.  “Sorry about that,” he told me, staring at the ceiling.           

Stinky Car:  I had a proofreader who came to my office monthly.  Malcolm was one of the most knowledgeable guys in the business, so good he could tell you whether a period was in roman or italic.  His brother was our corporate counsel and both had graduated Yale, but there the similarities ended.  Malcolm was about five-feet three inches tall, his clothes were tattered, he smoked Gauloises and he exuded an odor that triggered the gag reflex.  At some point, Malcolm was banned from the bank of elevators.  He suffered the ignominy of being ordered by the building guards to take the freight elevator.  He wouldn’t accept the insult, and after proofing our annual report he announced proudly he could no longer accept us as his client.  His career lurched downhill because of an elevator.           

I Spy:  I was chatting about elevators with Susan, my secretary.  “These rent-a-cops on Park Avenue can be mean,” I told her, and she answered that they always looked at her and smiled when she passed.  I told her she was being self-conscious, and that “They’re busy staring at the monitors to see that no one gets mugged in the elevators.”           

“How would they know that?” she asked.           

“Cameras.  You can’t see them, but every elevator car has a camera.”           

Susan’s face went white.  “Oh, my Gawd!” she whispered.  “When there’s no one in the car I pull up my skirt and straighten my pantyhose!”           

Punch Line:  One of my favorite amusements was to get on an elevator with a friend.  As the car filled up, I’d start a monologue, usually something about a girlfriend and a horrifying episode that had taken place over the weekend.  The story would build in intensity and people would stop talking to listen—to eavesdrop!—on my drama.  As we neared the lobby, I’d reach the climax with, “…And then she smashed her wineglass on the floor, reached into her handbag and pulled out a pistol.  ‘You’ll never say that again,’ she said, and then….”  As the doors opened, I’d step out and say, “I’ll tell you later what happened.”           

Skyscraper Legends:  New York is full of curious tales.  Ask me about the Amish guy and the elevator.  The colleague who was trapped overnight in an elevator with a Czechoslovakian cleaning woman.  Or about why there’s no 13^th floors in New York.  Or…but this is my floor and I have to get off.

Comfort Food Came from the Can

A curious thing took place at our dining room table sometime in the late 1940s.  Our meat-and-potatoes supper changed into something my mother called “creative cooking.”  Even though I was just 10 years old, and a boy at that, I sensed every woman was out to prove she wasn’t a boring cook.  When my mother wasn’t exchanging 3 x 5-inch recipe cards with her friends, they were promising each other recipes or were collecting recipes for a new church cookbook.  In fact, church dinners were a command performance that made me dread the experimental dishes — Mexican tamale pie or Italian sausage and mushroom casserole — placed in front of me.           

 

It’s clear now what was happening.  World War II was finally over, anything was possible, and miracles could emerge from the kitchen — amazing dishes like Indian curry that were previously unknown in our small Oregon town.   

 

I’ll never know where my mother learned about shrimp curry.  Her exotic dish consisted of one can of Campbell’s frozen condensed shrimp soup, thawed, heated, laced with curry powder, and poured over rice.              

 

Another night, her quick and simple entrée might be Porcupine Balls.  Leftover Uncle Ben’s rice was mixed with ground beef, shaped into balls, drowned under a can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup, and baked in an oven. 

 

Campbell’s was a staple in our house.  Condensed mushroom soup was poured over pork chops before baking.  Condensed tomato soup was served as a time-saving, nutritious spaghetti sauce.   

 

On special occasions — after church or when relatives came to visit — dinner started with cocktails.  Since my parents were teetotalers, cocktails consisted of a quart can of Campbell’s tomato juice, liberally splashed with Worcestershire sauce and a very small dash of Tabasco, and served up with Ritz crackers and onion dip.  The dip was a touch of class.  It meant buying a container of sour cream and mixing in a package of Lipton instant onion soup.  

 

This cozy tradition lasted until after I was married with children and began substituting wine for tomato juice. 

 

Memories of these meals flooded back when I found three metal boxes where Mom stored her recipe cards.  I had almost forgotten what a basic commodity Jell-O was in the late ’40s.  An entire section of one box — dozens of gummy recipe cards — were dedicated to gelatin salads.  There were Perfection Salad (gelatin with peppers, pimentos, chopped cabbage and diced celery) and Fruit Salad (gelatin with a cup of unnamed dressing, cherries, pineapple and marshmallows).  And there were Stuffed Eggs in Gelatin Mayonnaise, Shrimp and Swiss Cheese Gelatin Salad, Cranberry Orange Mold, and Crunchy Corned Beef Salad Loaf.   

 



Judy's recipe library.



Though Mom passed away years ago, her recipe box is an archeological treasure of how Jell-O sustained our family.  

 

As I recalled those meals, I realized this was my definition of comfort food.  Bland, often mysterious, but probably nutritious.  The period marked a transition from cooking with raw materials to using processed food.  The tin recipe boxes also offered an insight into how hard women worked to be inventive and to change food presentation after a long war and years of rationing.  

 

Before Julia Child there was Betty Crocker.  Before Rachel Ray there was an underground exchange of family-tested recipes.  The early ’50s was a time when a new dish could be invented and called Something-something Surprise.  Creativity lay in the naming.  There was Feathered Lemon Delight (fried chicken), Snip Doodles (cookies), and Snickerdoodle (coffee cake). 

Before Hamburger Helper, there was the slice of bread crumbled into a pound of ground beef to make meatloaf stick together and go farther. 

 

Before the Nabisco and General Foods snack foods, there were Mom’s Gizzies, a Christmas treat made in vast quantities with Wheat Chex, Cheerios, pretzel sticks, and nuts, all laced with Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and celery salt, and baked for one hour.  For kid treats, there was our all-time cavity-inducing favorite: Rice Krispie cookies made with marshmallows.

 

Pizza was another novelty first mentioned by my sixth-grade teacher.  I had my first taste of pizza — oh, the rapture — when I was 13 years old and had moved to New Jersey.   

When my wife, Judy, spotted Ming Tsai’s honey-roasted poussin on horseradish beet purée with soy butter sauce on Food TV, she told me to run and download it from the Web site.  Then, she cut back on one ingredient, added another condiment, or substituted an item.  



“This is not comfort food,” I said.  “I’ve never eaten a beet in my life.”  But at dinner that night the honey-roasted poussin was so mind-numbingly good that I grabbed my camera to record it for the cookbook we wrote for our children.  Creativity was alive and well in the 21^st Century. 

Often, she and I went back to Mom’s old tin recipe boxes.  It still held comfort food for a new generation.  In fact, it’s time for me to make another few cubic feet of Gizzies for snacks before a baseball game.  And I have the strangest craving for raspberry cookies, almond crescents and lace cookies when holidays approach.  Our children and grandchildren demand them.

 

Letter from Taipei

 

No one says, “See Taipei and die.” Naples, yes. The capital of Taiwan, not really. Dying while on vacation is not a good slogan, but it’s a distinct possibility.              

In May 2006, six years since I had previously visited Taiwan, the pace of traffic and people in Taipei increased exponentially. Scores of dusty scooters swarmed in packs of mechanical insects like a Ridley Scott movie. Crowds of shoppers were thicker and more erratic as they darted around stalls. Sounds were louder and more intrusive. (The irritating, repeating melody in the street made me demand, “Can’t anyone shut up that ice cream truck?” I was told that was the trash pickup alerting people to bring their garbage down to the street.) Live rock bands were amplified over the heads of hip students ambling through Peddlers Alley in Hsimenting.               

“Be careful,” my host Ming-tse Chen warned, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from harm again.              

I’m cautious about crossing streets in London and Paris, but in Taipei the pedestrian needs another set of eyes to spot scooters driving against traffic, zooming onto the sidewalk to park or dodging to the head of the cars at a stop light. The Taipei Times reported a 74-year-old man was run over and killed by a scooter during my visit; an 80-year-old woman was run down the day before.               

There’s an edge to being outdoors that I’ve never experienced in Europe or New York. The cab driver who picked us up coming back from dinner near the Taipei 101 tower had a DVD player on his dashboard and was watching soft core porn. We told him to turn it off. He answered defensively, “I’m not watching it,” but complied. Weaving in and out of traffic, he clipped a scooter a block further on and continued driving.              

I pointed at cars driving at night without headlights, and asked Ming’s daughter if there wasn’t a law about headlights. Nancy had just received her Master’s degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia. “Probably they can see okay,” she said. “They don’t think they need headlights.” But what about me when I crash into a darkened car? The last time I drove in Taipei I only had to watch out for ox carts and pedicabs.              

Today, this is truly the city of the quick and the dead.              

Sidewalks, except on the main thoroughfares, are about eight feet wide, with half of that space filled with scooters parked handlebar to handlebar. The walkways are often a foot or more above the street, and between shops the sidewalk can make a sudden drop of a step or two. Looking down from the rooftop of Ming’s house across the Hsin Tien River from Taipei I notice the sidewalk has a two-foot-high drop-off at the corner.              

I’m not a nervous person, but I began noticing things. The balusters on Ming’s staircase are wide enough apart that a curious child could crawl through. And, at six feet tall, I had to duck my head going down staircases.               

There’s no smothering life preserver over every aspect of living in Taipei. Quite the opposite. I’m expected to be twice shy when I’m once burned. This is why the people of Taipei are very, very alert.              

It's not that no one recognizes dangerous situations. For example, friends refuse those single-use chopsticks from China now because there’s a bleaching agent in them that poses a hazard. An issue of the China Post reported legislative action to prohibit shoddy and dangerous PRC imports that are “dumped” in night markets like Shihlin Yesheh. And, the law requires seat belts when sitting in the front seat of a car — even in a taxi with the driver watching DVDs.              

I don't want to break my neck on a sidewalk in Taipei, and nothing could be more ignominious than being run over by a cabbie watching a skin movie. But daily life here has impact, noise, and elements of confusion, conflict and chaos.              

I can almost see the dice roll when I step out the front door. Taipei is a pinball machine with the pedestrian in play.               

Over the chaos stands Taipei 101, currently the world’s second tallest building, looking like a serene scepter from a Buddhist temple and just as other-worldly.

Take Me Back to the Ball Game

Early baseball game played at Elysian Fields,
Hoboken (Currier & Ives lithograph)

Ready for an argument?  Tell your buddies that Abner Doubleday did not invent the game of baseball in Cooperstown in 1839.  The first official game, you say, was played by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J., on June 19, 1846.  The New York Base Ball Club defeated the Knickerbockers 23-1.  That’s how the City of Hoboken reports the first officially recorded match played under Alexander Joy Cartright’s rules, and he was an umpire. 

Well, no.  A story in the New York Morning News reported on a game on Oct. 21, 1845, between the New York Ball Club and a Brooklyn team.  New York won 24-4.  So there!  

But, wait a minute, the same news story refers to earlier games played there.  It stated, “A friendly match of the time-honored game of Base was played yesterday at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken.”  There was a rematch on Oct. 24 at the Star Club on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn.  (New York won that game too, 37-19.)  If you go looking for the Elysian Fields, the area is now occupied by a Maxwell House Coffee plant. 

What the heck?  The game probably evolved from a number of enthusiastic players and fans in the mid-1840s.  According to Dr. David Q. Voight in a three-volume history of baseball, the game probably came from the 18th century English game of rounders.  Rounders was also played by soldiers at Valley Forge when they weren’t fighting the Redcoats.   

So let’s establish our history by the rules of the game.  A New York Times story in 1990 reported, “Box scores for the two October 1845 games, played with eight men a team, follow the categories of cricket, reporting only the number of runs and ‘hands out,’ or number of times a hitter made an out.”  Cricket lost its popularity only after the Civil War. 

There’s been little serious historical research until recent decades.  So there’s still room enough for lots of argument. 

As for General Abner Doubleday in 1839, well, he was a cadet at West Point  when he was supposed to have laid out the first baseball diamond.  And he never took credit for anything having to do with baseball.  This poses a problem for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  Historian and author John Bowman said, “They want to play it both ways.  They want to be known as serious historians of the game, but they can’t undermine their tourist business.”   

And Cooperstown has copyrighted the phrase, “Birthplace of Baseball.”  So there!