Mary Ann’s Friday Night Casserole

There were two kinds of Fridays in our house: Pay Day Friday and Casserole Friday. We loved Payday Friday. Dad would come home from his job at Mare Island with a wad of bills. Sometimes he’d let us hold them. Then everyone would hop into the wood-paneled Ford station wagon and head for A&W, or the family restaurant Palby’s, for a big night out. Ahhh, A&W … sitting in the station wagon parked next to the scratchy-sounding order-sign-machine-thing. My family ordered burgers and root beer — in those fancy frosty mugs of course — however, I always ordered a fish sandwich and grape soda. And yes, they all made fun of me. Except for Coleen, who also preferred the fish sandwich. And she believed you weren’t allowed to have a burger until you were an adult. She finally had her first Big Mac at the ripe old age of 10. Tracy had to wait till she was 11.

Now for Palby’s: if you never lived in Vallejo or visited the bustling Solano County metropolis with its abundance of 1970’ish restaurants, you might’ve missed Palby’s. Sucks for you because Palby’s was awesome. Palby’s was on Highway 29 between Vallejo and Napa in the area that’s now known as American Canyon. Palby’s was like a freaky dinner theater for kids. Look out the window and there were peacocks. There were seals. But we didn’t eat them. I preferred the deep-fried shrimp myself. I recall my little sister, Pooh, always ordered the ribs and proceeded to happily get the sauce all over her face. Thinking back, Palby’s seemed like a Winchester Mystery House to kids because there were all these different areas with trippy things to see. Or maybe there was just the lobby and the main dining room and I had an over-active imagination.

Sometimes on Payday Friday, Dad and one or two of us kids would just cruise over to Munchie’s on Sonoma Boulevard for 10-cent hamburgers. Munchie’s was a burger joint in a cool, round building that sold cheap hamburgers and fries, and I just liked saying “Munchies.” Sometimes we’d just grab 300 tacos from Taco Bell cuz all they really had back then was tacos.

But, if it wasn’t a Payday Friday, and you didn’t make plans to get in trouble and stay after school — or better yet, offer to babysit for the neighbor’s heathen kids — you were going to experience Mary Ann’s Friday Night Casserole. God have mercy on your soul.

Ingredients:

No rules apply!!!

Check the cupboards for stray cans of stewed tomatoes, cream of mushroom soup, deviled ham or anything else that resembles vomit. Next, go to the fridge and grab any and every leftover you can find saved in old margarine and Cool Whip tubs — these are important casserole ingredients.

Leftover examples:

Pork ‘n Beans
Kentucky Fried Chicken Cole Slaw
Canned Spinach
Taco Meat
Chopped-up Fish Sticks
Creamed Chip Beef Sauce
The last slice of Olive Loaf luncheon meat that will never be eaten
Macaroni and Cheese
Spam
White Rice
Filling for Stuffed Bell Peppers
Bread Heels
Chicken Pot Pie
Deviled Eggs
Creamed Corn

Directions:

Throw all of the ingredients you found into a 13 x 9 casserole dish. Feel free to add canned tomato sauce or a packet of onion soup mix to make it fancy.

Bake at 350 degrees. I’m not sure how long you’re supposed to do this. Just hang around the oven to make sure nothing explodes.

Serve to your happy family. Well, they were happy before dinner. Now they hate your guts and are secretly flipping you off below the table. A few of them might be dry heaving into their towel bibs. You will definitely want to plan a huge dessert for later in the evening (maybe a nice Jello Mold).

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

Remember making wishes as a kid? There were all kinds of things we could wish on. One of my favorite ways was to pick a dandelion and blow all those fluffy little seeds into the air. Unless Dad was around and would make me stop so I wouldn’t spread potential weeds all over the lawn. I remember wishing on shooting stars or the first star I saw at night. Or throwing pennies in a fountain. Unless Grandpa B.K. was around and made me stop throwing money away. When we rode the school bus and went over railroad tracks, we’d cross our fingers and touch the metal window frame, and raise our feet off the ground. I don’t know why – to ward off bad luck or something – and then we’d make a wish. Hopefully we wished the bus wouldn’t crash since they didn’t have seat belts back then. Do they now? I haven’t ridden in one in quite a while.

Anyway, I loved making wishes. I still do. I’m sure the wishes now are much different than when I was a kid. What was I wishing for back then? A toy? A candy bar? A rabbit in a hat with a bat? Whatever it was, I just always felt like some magical force was out there looking for opportunities to make my wishes come true.

You could always count on at least one time a year to make a magical wish … by blowing out the candles on your birthday cake. And there was another time of year you had a chance to make a special wish:  on Thanksgiving. After carving the turkey at our holiday feasts, Dad or Grandpa or an uncle would set aside the wishbone. This thing:

Okay, that’s actually a chicken wishbone from last night, but I didn’t have a turkey wishbone hanging around. Each Thanksgiving, two of us had a chance to battle it out over that wishbone in the hopes of breaking off the bigger half, and having our wish come true. We had to take turns every year, because there were four of us kids in my family, and lots of other cousins around waiting for their turn, too. My chance came up every third year or so. Somehow, we NEVER forgot whose turn it was in the current year. Of course, the wishbone didn’t have lots of time to dry out, so a few Thanksgiving wishbone competitions didn’t pan out … there were just two of us pulling on a rubbery thing that some poor turkey sacrificed.

So what do I wish for these days? World peace? Maybe. But I can’t tell you, or the wishes won’t come true. I told someone once that I wished I had more time and motivation to write weekly posts for this blog. I think we all see how that turned out.

In a Land Before Cell Phones

When I set the alarm on my cell phone last week the night before Daylight Savings ended, I noticed that it had automatically corrected for the time change the next day. Pretty cool. I love how cell phones do all this stuff automatically so I don’t have to worry about.

Man, what did we do before cell phones? I’ll tell you what we did – we slept in an hour later the first day of Daylight Savings, on purpose, and then told our teachers or bosses we forgot to set our clocks forward.

There were other advantages of not having a cell phone back in the day. You could go to parties that raged ‘til dawn and tell your parents you were spending the night at your best friend’s house. You just had to call your parents once you were safely at your friend’s house and let them know you were there. Only you weren’t actually calling them from your friend’s house, you were calling from a pay phone down the street from the party. (I never did that, Dad.) There was no caller ID on rotary phones, so your parents didn’t know where you were calling from. And they couldn’t call your cell phone to check in on you — because you didn’t have a cell phone — and they didn’t have a cell phone to follow some tracking app of where you were.

You could easily ghost someone back in the day, too. When they called your house phone, you just had your sibling answer the phone and tell the person you weren’t home, and then you pretended you never got a message. And you just kept doing that every time the person called, so your sibling looked like a jerk, not you. Today, everyone KNOWS your cell phone is glued to your hand, so if you ignore a text or a call, you’re the jerk.

Prank calling people was one of the highlights of most slumber parties I went to as a teenager. Can’t do that anymore, because everyone can see who’s calling them. I imagine you could use a blocked number today, but I don’t think teenagers these days even know about prank calling.

Remember before cell phones and all this automation, when you had to call a business? Let’s say you needed to ask about an error on your bank statement. Well, you called the number, and a human answered. An actual human. A human who listened to your question, wrote down the info, and if necessary, transferred you to another human who would help with the issue. And that other human already knew who you were and knew about the issue. Today? Forget about humans. You’re gonna talk to that recording of a woman (or man) who says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that” when you type your account number into the phone keypad, or say your name into a recording, or scream “REPRESENTATIVE” at the top of your lungs. And guess what, even if you eventually reach an actual human in another state or country, and give them your whole life story, you’re gonna have to repeat it all over again to the next person because nobody filled them in. Let me just say I’m avoiding checking in on a payment credit issue with my health insurance provider, because the thought of calling AGAIN and talking to different computers AGAIN and getting cut off AGAIN and having to call right back AGAIN and getting put on hold AGAIN and never even getting an answer AGAIN is too much stress.

I’m just gonna go make a prank call. Probably to my health insurance provider.

Family Leftovers Recipe

I think you may remember this fancy little book:

Yes, it’s the one I make fun of often. Is it a cook book? Joke book? Hard-copy version of ipecac syrup? I think it’s all three. And I scan it every so often to pick recipes to ridicule when I can’t summon any ’70s memories worth writing about. I’ve looked through this book a dozen times, and for some reason, never saw this recipe:

 

What the … ? And the poem above it? It’s the basic premise of Friday Night Casserole – except the ‘serve to your friends’ part. I’d like to keep my friends. Anyway, how did I miss this? Maybe the pages were stuck together with bile, or tears, and just recently dried. In the past, I probably just scanned the page, saw ‘potatoes’ or ‘onion’ and figured, “this recipe is fine,” and kept on flipping through the book to find others. But it’s not fine. Sure, meat, potatoes and onions is okay, but this recipe wants you to chop them up and then add milk. Milk. Yep, just checked again, it says ‘milk.’ Okay, I see the ‘or cream’ part, but still, that doesn’t make me feel any better. This recipe shouldn’t be called “Family Leftovers,” it should be called “Milk Soup.”

Thank God Mary Ann never made Milk Soup. Especially with the milk we drank growing up. But she definitely saw this poem somewhere (or wrote it).  “Fill up a dish with odds and with ends.” Yep, that’s actually the definition of Friday Night Casserole.

See, I found this entry in the dictionary:

The Boob Tube

Our first TV set I remember as a kid was one of those big brown cabinet boxes on four legs. This one:

That’s me and Tracy sitting in front of it. All those times Mom told us not to sit too close to the TV, and just look at where they propped us. Anyway, I am apparently gorging myself on candy from my Easter basket, along with the candy in both mine and Tracy’s rolling-toy-basket-things, while eyeing the candy in her basket. Hmm. I wonder why my Mom was making Friday Night Casserole on Easter Sunday …

In later years, that TV had rabbit ears on top that one of us kids often had to adjust and hold for my Dad when he was trying to tune in “Hogan’s Heroes” or something. And of course, we had to get up from where we were sitting on the floor to turn the TV on, to switch between the three only channels or to turn it off.

Once we moved to Napa, we got cable which gave us a few more channels. They were mostly local stations from San Francisco or Oakland, and gave us a few more options, but we’d always complain that “there’s nothing on.”

When I was in Junior High, we got HBO, which was awesome, because we could watch actual movies that actually played in the theater recently – or not-so-recently as was often the case. Anyway, to get HBO, you had to attach an A-B switch thing to your TV. You’d have to switch to ‘B’ and put the TV on a certain channel to watch HBO. I remember watching the movie “It’s Alive” about 40 times, because back then it was scary-cool, and plus, it was about the only movie playing on HBO for about three solid months. The A-B switch was also a ‘lock box,’ so if our parents were heading out for the night, they could ‘lock’ the switch so we couldn’t turn the box to ‘B’ and watch R-rated movies on HBO. Or so they thought. Even with that lock thing on, we could push that switch hard enough towards ‘B’ to tune in HBO and catch moments of scary or racy flicks like “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and “The Omen.” Of course, we had to take turns standing by the TV to push that switch towards ‘B’ and hold it in place. But that was okay, we were kinda used to doing a similar task, the one where Dad needed us to keep our hand on the antenna so a local station wouldn’t fade in and out.

Yeah, TV was a lot of work back then. Plus, you couldn’t just grab a remote and scroll through 500 channels to find something to watch. You had to find the TV Guide, flip to the current day and then scan through the listings to find out what to watch. And if you wanted to watch your favorite sitcom, you had to make sure you could dedicate 30 entire minutes to being in front of the TV, at the exact time that show came on. And the thought of watching one of your favorite movies any time you wanted? Well, that was just make-believe.

Before I left for college, video cassettes came out, and holy crap, you could go to an actual store stocked full of all the latest movie releases on tape. Well, some of them. But you had to own your own video player, which back then cost about a million dollars. My Dad, being the tech-gadgety guy, obviously went out and bought one. But he bought a Beta player, which at the time was fancier than standard VHS, and there was a smaller choice of videos to choose from at the store. Like five.

If you didn’t have a video player, you could rent one at the store. In college, I remember going into the big, popular liquor store where you could pick up a six-pack of Coors Light or California Coolers, AND grab a video cassette player and a few movies. So you or one of your roommates had to put down like a hundred-dollar deposit to rent a big, bulky video cassette player, along with all the necessary cables and plugs. Then you hauled it home, hooked it up to the TV and watched your movie. Then the next day you had to unplug that thing and haul it back to the liquor store. Which was no big deal since you had to pick up more alcohol anyway.

These days you can find just about anything on TV to watch. Literally. Anything. But even with hundreds and hundreds of channels available, we still complain that “there’s nothing on.” Well, at least nothing we want to actually watch.

Jay and I finally stuck it to the Man and cancelled our Cable TV. Hundreds of useless channels at hundreds of dollars a month was getting old, and besides, all we ever do is watch our favorite shows that we’ve taped or binge-watch Netflix. So we switched to Hulu Live TV since it’s one of the few choices for our area that includes both ABC (gotta practice “Wheel of Fortune”) and the Golf Channel (Jay’s best friend) for a decent, low price. We’ll start binging our way through Hulu shows now, too, I imagine, but we’re still working through Netflix.

Last night we were binge-watching “Arrested Development” and the mom, Lucille, did something my Mom used to do; a fancy skill my sisters and I inherited. We’ve never seen anyone else do it. My mom would close her left eyelid completely–usually while laughing, or while saying or hearing something funny–and her right eyelid wouldn’t move. With this superpower, she could just drop her eyelid without affecting the other one. And my sisters and I can all do it. It’s kinda like winking, but when you wink, you have to scrunch your eyelid. And if you try to lower one eyelid, you can’t help but kinda squint the other one. (You just tried it, didn’t you …)  My sisters and I still do it, sometimes when talking about Mom, but usually when we just want to indicate “yeah, whatever.” It’s our secret code. Umm. It was our secret code.

Anyway, I saw Lucille do this last night on TV and I immediately wanted to show my sisters. Back in the day, I would’ve only been able to call them and tell them what I saw on TV … after waiting till after 7:00 pm to save on long-distance charges, and then walking into the kitchen to dial 10 digits into the rotary phone, three separate times, and hoping their lines weren’t busy, and that they were home to answer the phone. Today? I grabbed the remote, rewound the show, paused it on the frame were Lucille was dropping her eyelid, took a picture with my phone, then attached the pic to a group text and hit ‘Send.’

Gotta love modern technology; it helps us accomplish so many important things.

Creamed Corn Bake

When I was a kid, my Mom made some crazy budget meals. I guess they were the result of culinary skills she learned from a few home economic classes in high school circa 1960 (and from whatever her Mom put on the table after tweaking Betty Crocker recipes). Mary Ann (Mom) was the Penny-Pinching, Coupon-Cutting, Bargain-Hunting Queen of Northern California. Hey, with four growing daughters in a one-income family, she had to do something. Plus, we had one canine and two feline mouths to feed, not to mention the occasional, short-lived hamster. Even though she often made budget meals, Mom was an excellent cook. She prepared delicious roasts, mouth-watering chicken dishes, a lovely ham at Christmas and fancy, delectable appetizers at parties. But when she had to stretch a dollar — and man could my Mom stretch one — we’d sometimes sit down to dinner and wish to God that we could send our plates to the starving children in China. Though we usually gagged our way through it, I sometimes crave the comfort of one of the dishes we had after the monthly trip with Mom to the Blue Chip Stamp store, or after returning from the city dumps with Dad. However, the dish highlighted today is not one I crave, or ever craved.

Our family sat down to dinner every night, and we each had our designated spot at the dining room table: Dad at the head (best viewing spot to see “Hogan’s Heroes” during dinner), Mom to his left, then Melissa, the youngest, next to her (for easy wipe-ups). On Dad’s right was my oldest sister, Tracy, then me, and to my right at the other end of the table was my younger sister, Coleen. This all worked out great. But damn, did I hate sitting next to Coleen on Creamed Corn night. Well, we all hated sitting at the table on Creamed Corn night. But Coleen goes on record as the world’s most exaggerated gagger when it came to creamed corn. I hated to see it … the tiny beads of sweat on her little forehead, the way that blue vein bulged at her temple, and the constant LOUD gags and partial vomiting that occurred right next to me. I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t rescue her … no way in hell was I gonna offer to eat her portion of creamed corn. And so it went. After about 20 minutes into the gag-a-thon, Dad would usually be at the point of gagging himself, and would talk Mom into letting Coleen off the hook. Eventually Coleen was able to substitute another yummy vegetable dish on Creamed Corn night (like Green Bean Casserole). But here’s what the rest of us ate:

Creamed Corn Bake

Ingredients:
2 cans of Corn (the store brand is just fine for this, and will likely save you at least 20 cents)
1 can of Creamed Corn (see above)
1 can of Cream of Celery Soup (again, save yourself the dime and use the store brand)
Saltine Crackers – crumbled

Put the canned ingredients into a ceramic baking dish. Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes. Remove the dish from the oven, and crumble the crackers on the top. Bake another 10 minutes or until the crackers turn into mush and ooze into the corn.

Serve with barf bags.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! (Revamped)

My Mom practically invented recycling. Most people think the big recycling craze just started this last decade or so, but Mary Ann practiced the art of recycling way back in the ‘60s.

The most obvious recycling event at our house happened every August with hand-me-down clothes. I don’t remember buying that many new clothes during grade school as I was always getting someone else’s clothes. I was the runt in my family. Even my younger sisters eventually outgrew me. But mostly, I inherited my older sister Tracy’s clothes. That was fine with me because I thought she had the coolest dresses, and I was lucky to get them two years after they had gone out of style. I also got my cousins’ clothes. Of course after grade school, once I had outgrown the hand-me-downs, Coleen and Melissa got them. But at least by then the clothes had come back into style.

When Tracy and I were toddlers, my Mom made some of our clothes. They were pretty cute for ’60s standards, and always matching. Tracy and I are practically Irish twins, and Mom usually dressed us as actual twins.

See.

 

Mary Ann made us identical clothes through our early grade school years. I even remember being in a ‘fashion show’ when I was in fourth grade and Tracy was in fifth. We modeled my Mom’s designs: polyester peach elephant pants with peach and blue halter tops. And she had us wear big straw hats and sunglasses. Move over Heidi Klum. Did I mention this fashion show was held in our grade school cafeteria? We were famous for five minutes, then went home smelling like creamed corn.

My Mom couldn’t help but be resourceful. Each year after birthdays or Christmas morning, Mom would quickly snatch up the discarded bows to put in her package-wrapping stash for the next big event. I’m guilty of this today. Well c’mon, I’m not gonna throw out a perfectly good bow; I just take off the used tape so the next person will think they’ve received a fancy new one.

Anyway, Mary Ann reused everything from coffee cans to Cool Whip containers, and she had a big stash of plastic bags. I don’t remember plastic grocery bags when I was a kid, but I certainly remember clear plastic produce bags and bread bags. She would not throw those things away. In fact, she would rinse them out and carefully set them out to dry, by sticking them up on the louvered kitchen window. They came in handy for all kinds of things: storing homemade cookies … packing picnic lunches … making homemade snow boots.

Mom would build up a plastic bag supply before we took a winter trip to Lake Tahoe or somewhere else to play in the snow. Why bother with buying the kids snow boots or galoshes when you have 300 perfectly good plastic produce bags and Wonder Bread bags? Mom would outfit us all in two pairs of socks and our sneakers and then put about five plastic bags over each foot — securing them with leftover rubber bands from newspaper deliveries.

You probably think I make this stuff up.

Nope.

 

A little hard to tell above, but those are some plastic bags over our shoes.

 

 

I’m on the left in this one above. My plastic bags are already covered in snow and frostbite is setting in so I’m trying to build an igloo for shelter. You can still see through Tracy’s and Coleen’s plastic bags pretty well. Coleen is looking at my Mom as she holds up an ice trophy for “Best Homemade Snow Boots.”

Our fancy plastic bag snow boots would last about an hour until each layer had ripped through appropriately and our feet would get wet and cold. Then we’d retreat to the brown wood-paneled station wagon to thaw out and have some sandwiches — packaged in recycled plastic produce bags.

Thankfully Mary Ann never put two and two together and tried to make our clothes out of plastic bags:

 

  “Dress up Baby as a loaf of Wonder Bread” by Mike Mozart is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Save

Halloween, the Zodiac, Werewolves and Other Creatures

Halloween was my favorite holiday when I was a kid. I loved it more than Christmas. It was that cool time of year when the leaves would fall from the trees on windy evenings and the breeze still had a hint of warmth. I guess it also had to do with the fact that on Halloween night I could trick-or-treat and get CANDY, CANDY and more CANDY — especially since every other day of the year our parents warned us never to take candy from strangers. I loved dressing up and loved creating my perfect costume. When we were little, my Mom would make Halloween costumes for us. Here’s me and Tracy in the late ’60s:

“Help, I’ve lost my sheep! And my dignity.”

In later years, Mom would sometimes buy us costumes from the store — probably K-Mart, and most likely a Blue Light Special. Little girls in the late ’60s and early ’70s had about two costume choices: nurse or witch. I chose the nurse. There were little candy pills that came in the little plastic nurse’s bag. Hand-me-downs were also a part of Halloween: Coleen and Melissa would be wearing those Little Bo Peep costumes a few years later.

Once I became a lot older (at least 9 or 10), I would pride myself in making my own costume. I wasn’t your typical girly-girl who wanted to be a Princess or Fairy or Bride for Halloween. I was immensely proud of a Bum costume I designed once. I used a pair of my Dad’s old pants, an old shirt and tie, and a sailor’s hat. Hmm. Apparently I was a bum from some ’40s Hollywood movie. I rubbed used coffee grounds all over my face to resemble a five-o’clock shadow. “Brother, can you spare a dime? Or a Snickers?”

When I was in elementary school, there was a super dry spell in Halloween festivities for children in the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a crazy serial killer named the Zodiac on the loose. During those Zodiac Years, no trick-or-treating was allowed in Vallejo. I hated the Zodiac. I was too young to understand what was going on — all I knew was some crazy person had ruined my favorite holiday. Of course if Halloween fell on a Saturday night, we could have our own party around the TV when this Bay Area classic came on:

“Creature Features” was an awesome horror movie show that played on Saturday nights. There was a cool, somewhat weird, host named Bob Wilkins and he would talk about the scary movies they were playing that night. These were usually “B” movies (maybe “C”) that aspired to be as bad as movies like “War of the Gargantuas” or “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” You probably noticed Bob in that opening clip, wearing his Buddy Holly glasses and puffing on a big cigar. In hindsight, I bet that thing was full of weed, because he was just way too mellow. I know you’re gonna click on that again just to hear that awesome, funky ’70s theme song.

Anyway, during the Zodiac Years, all kids were banned from the streets and had to go to school cafeterias or community centers to celebrate Halloween. Trick-or-treating around a cafeteria just isn’t the same once you’ve experienced the real thing outdoors, especially when that nasty corn smell is still lingering in the cafeteria air from lunch time.

We’d parade around the cafeteria in our costumes getting candy and snacks. Oh, and there was bobbing for apples, or as I like to call it, “Hello, Hepatitis!” What were those adults thinking? Hey guys, let’s grab a huge, rusty pail from the backyard scrap pile, fill it with water from the hose and throw some apples in it. Then let’s have the kids dress up like dorks with crazy makeup all over their face, run around the block begging the neighbors for candy in the cold, then drag them and their runny noses over to the big, rusty water pail full of apples and stick their faces in it. Then let’s have them bite at the apples with their candy-corroded teeth long enough so that all their spit mixes together in the water. If one of them actually snags an apple in their teeth, they WIN!! They win an APPLE!!

Even as a kid I knew there was something terribly wrong with bobbing for apples. But there were also other dangers lurking around in Halloween goodies. My Dad made us well aware of the potential razor blade or cherry bomb or “drug injected by needle” that just might be hiding in our mini Three Musketeers bar. When we got home from trick-or treating during the Non-Zodiac Years, we had to line up and pass our bags over to Dad for official inspection. Dad would check for pin holes and the like in our candy wrappers. Many times he would have to taste test our candy to be sure they were safe for us. He had to taste test A LOT of our candy. Well, he didn’t want a cherry bomb to blow our cheek off.

One time I didn’t listen to my Mom and Dad’s lecture telling us not to eat candy at night and I snuck lots of candy from my trick-or-treat bag right before bed, and proceeded to eat most of it. That night, I had the dreaded “eating-candy-before-bedtime nightmare.” About werewolves. Dancing werewolves. If you missed that post, click here, or here (I tend to write about those werewolves quite a bit, apparently).

I don’t eat candy before bed any more. And I sleep with a gun loaded with silver bullets.

Top Ten Ways You Know You’re A True Napan

I love Napa. I was lucky to grow up there. Even though I don’t live there anymore, it’s still home. I visit friends and family there when I can to get my “Napa Fix.” So much has changed over the last few decades, yet it feels exactly the same to me whenever I go back. Once I drive into Napa and see the mustard growing in the vineyards, I know I’m home.

When I was a kid, all the tourists passed by the actual city of Napa and headed up valley to the wineries. They missed out on a lot of cool stuff. Now they flock to Downtown Napa, with all of its new restaurants, wine bars, boutiques, hotels and a bustling riverfront. But there are so many other beautiful places in Napa. Just drive away from Downtown in any direction and you’ll see.

I can’t wait to go back. Besides, I’m overdue for some malfatti. Which brings me to my Top Ten List.

Top Ten Ways You Know You’re a True Napan:

10.  You snuck into Kay-Von Drive-In in somebody’s car trunk. Or you snuck in under the fence. Or you simply paid to get in by cramming as many people in the car as you could.

9.  You call the country club the Country Club. (I don’t know what the “Silverado Resort and Spa” is … )

8.  You have your own personal Rebob story. It probably involves either one of your friends trying to scare the crap out of you, or you trying to scare the crap out of one of your friends.

7.  You cruised the “J” on Friday and Saturday nights, and waited all year for the big Cruise Night. And you found your friends somewhere along Jefferson without the help of cell phones.

6.  You went to the Big Game every year at Memorial Stadium, and your life depended on who would win.

5.  You headed to the Lake many summer weekends in an overcrowded car stuffed with friends, Doritos and beer, blasting AC/DC and Journey all the way. Or you went up with the family in your station wagon. And you saluted the Old Man With the Pipe on the way up.

4.  You walked Downtown on the weekends and met up with friends (usually at the Clock Tower — officially known as the Paul R. Gore Clock Tower. Paul was the Dad of a few of my high school friends). You probably grabbed something to eat at the Woolworth’s counter, or at The Fox & The Grapes, or at the deli next to Mervyn’s. You stopped in Partrick’s Candy (now Anette’s) to smell the chocolate. You browsed Brewster’s, Mervyn’s, Merrill’s and Carithers. Sometimes you’d see a movie at the Uptown, when they had intermission and cartoons, too. You hurried past the Connor Hotel, but slowed down at the deserted Fagiani’s long enough to peek through the front door window. If you dared.

  “Napa Clock Tower” by Will Murray (Willscrlt) is licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US

3.  You know the exact two spots in town to pick up malfatti. And you likely took a big pot to the back door of The Depot back in the day to pick some up from Clemente and his family.

2.  Depending on which generation you fit into, you either partied at the Tucker Bag and Rainbow Bridge or you hit Alfredo’s on Tuesdays for Nickel Beer Night. And you probably hit whatever incarnation the popular Downtown hotspot was at the time (either The Oberon, Main Street Bar & Grill, or Downtown Joe’s). Maybe you played volleyball at Tom Foolery. You probably even stopped in Henry’s … if you were in-the-know.

1.  You know the difference between a Napan and a Napkin. A napkin, by definition, is “a square piece of cloth or paper used at a meal to wipe the fingers or lips, and to protect garments.”  ‘Nuff said.

Save

What Day Is It??!!

I think I’ve mentioned I love Friday the 13^th. I’ve always loved Friday the 13^th. When I was a kid I simply loved Fridays. Which is strange, because that often meant Friday Night Casserole for dinner. But Fridays after school were also the start of the weekend, and when it was a Pay Day Friday we were able to pick up our favorite fast food or go out to dinner. And then we’d sprawl out on the living room floor to watch our favorite prime-time lineup: “The Brady Bunch,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “The Partridge Family”:

So when I combine Friday with 13, I can’t go wrong; 13 has always been my favorite number. I don’t know why. It’s just awesome. And I’ve won my fair share on the roulette wheel betting on 13 Black. It’s also a baker’s dozen, and you can never go wrong with one extra donut, amiright.

Some people freak out and think Friday the 13^th is totally unlucky and scary. Probably because of scary movies. One time after the original “Poltergeist” came out, my sisters and I pulled a prank on my Mom, figuring we’d freak her out when she woke up on Friday the 13^th. After she went to bed the night before, we placed dining room chairs on top of the kitchen table and scattered a few around the room. And we opened up a bunch of kitchen cabinet doors. We taped this note to the dining room table, and by the reply she left, you can tell we didn’t scare her one bit:

Anyway, I always look forward to Friday the 13th being a lucky day. They don’t happen that frequently. The last Friday the 13^th was in May. And that was the exact day Jay and I received a letter in the mail letting us know we were chosen to be “Wheel of Fortune” contestants. True story; stay tuned.

So don’t sit home like a scaredy-cat on Friday the 13th. Get out there. Go buy a lottery ticket. Ask that special someone out on a date. Send in an audition tape to “Wheel of Fortune.” The next Friday the 13^th isn’t until October, so today’s your only chance for another 10 months. Well, if you’re Irish, you have St. Patrick’s Day coming up. You know, luck of the Irish and all that. Plus all the alcohol. So essentially you have another lucky day in just two months.

Of course, if you’re planning a camping trip this weekend at a place called “Camp Crystal Lake” you might want to change your plans.