Play, boy

Me and my brothers really didn't have much ideas about sex, growing up in our strict Catholic household during the 70s. We certainly had no clue how we were made, nor did my parents ever enlighten us about it, with the exception of one strange hallway conversation between me and my mom in my teens and long after Health Ed classes had already clued me in, along with my own experiences. She asked me if I had any clinical questions, because she likes to pretend that she's a doctor, which is strange enough to deter any child from inquiring.

Children were also seen as a nuisance. Over and over, the adults around us quoted the same trite sayings, like "Children should SEEN, and not heard", and if we counteracted with superior logic, they ganged up on us, sometimes physically. They often kicked us out of the house, whether we liked it or not, and locked us out of the house for hours. I suppose it was to "build character", or they needed a vacation from child rearing, because most of our parents shrugged their shoulders and said "It was the thing to do" noncommittally, when we asked them why they got married and had kids. Oh. Great answer.

They were horrible to us and often really bad company, so after awhile, we learned to stealthily avoid them whenever we could, mostly to avoid their choking cigarette smoke and nasty drunk behavior. Fine! We don't wanna be around you anyhow! And we really didn't. We could disappear for hours, without any adult interferences at all. It was freeing and also wildly dangerous, given the amount of horrors out there in the world, but I guess they figured that the country gentrification of Rockland and our close proximity to the family farm on the two surrounding lots would be enough to quell most dangers, and they were right. Heck, our street wasn't paved by the county for snow, and we had a joint mailbox at the head of the lane for the houses. We were effectively off the radar. We could walk for miles and still be nowhere.

But, there were still plenty of ways for kids to get in trouble, because we tried most of them. We tiptoed around this one rundown cottage on the block that we called "The Shack", a place perpetually darkened by the shade of some towering pine trees, and haunted by a murder of crows. We rarely saw the people who lived there, nor did we want to. Our parents told us in hushed tones that they were this thing called "renters", because they were po' white trash who moved around all the time."That's why you see their kids outside all the time, running around with bare dirty feet and their faces streaked with mud," my mom said to us in a regional accent so profoundly colloquial, people outside of her small environ in the Bronx have trouble with it.

"See?" she pointed at them one time, as we drove past slowly to the end of the land to dump some leaves, or turn around. "They're no good. That's why their mutha feeds them McDonald's all the time." The kids did indeed look down and out, morosely unwrapping their cheeseburgers on the front steps of the small house. This, from a woman who would conscript me into the workforce by signing me away to the same corporation when I was 15. But, our parents did that all the time: blatantly judgmental hypocrisy that was extremely obvious. Still, they weren't totally off base. 

We never knew who they were in school (did they even go to school?), and they never played with us, which was a really bad sign. Even the inbred farm kid who couldn't speak well from retardation rang our doorbell to play outside. They were weird. They were two dirty blond hair kids, with an unfortunate hair color that matched soiled dishwater, a boy and girl of about the same age. The girl looked glumly at us in our car, with one white skinny shoulder exposed from the slipping of her worn baggy shirt. I never even knew their names.

Which is, of course, why we found torn pages from an old Playboy magazine around their house. My grandmother was over, visiting with my mom in the kitchen, and in a rare sign of adult solidarity (she actually liked kids), she pushed us to play outside so they could talk alone. It was intriguing to us for its' rarity, which kept us in close orbit. We did a cursory circuit of the woods at the end of the lane, and snuck around the gravel driveway of "The Shack", which was devoid of rundown redneck cars during the day, for once. And there it was: water-damaged from the rain and torn into pieces, but we immediately knew what it was. It was part of a "Playboy"! No way! My dad sometimes had a magazine or two rolled up and stuffed into an old paint can in the garage, but as we got older, he got savvier and changed his hiding spots.

Anyway, we had no idea what it was, but "nudies" were coveted kid-material. We got stupid over the giddiness of violating the shanty borderlines, and did a blatantly un-kidlike thing to do with our haul: we sat out the front steps of our house, trying in vain to piece together the grainy flesh-colored pieces. It was like a bad jigsaw puzzle. What the heck is this piece? Wait! No, that goes there. What is that? I think it's a ladie's private parts, I don't know. In the midst of our find, we had let our discretion go out the window, right under the noses of two very clever and highly experienced New York City women. We were doomed. After a few minutes of shrieks, muffled giggles, and stage whispers, the totally unexpected event that made complete sense happened: my grandmother had crept down the creaky, carpeted wood stairs to surprise us with the whoosh of a front door opening. AGGGGH....

We were stone-cold busted, and we knew it, but this was grandma; the lady with the incredible meatballs and warm talcum powder hugs. We had to try, so we did. We pleaded with her not to tell mom. We gave her sad, puppy eyes, and we begged for mercy...to no avail. Each and every one of us had to stand in front of my mutha in the kitchen, while she called our friend's parents to deliver the bad news: we were caught with a porno mag, and we all got punished. Uh oh. This was bad: no allowance, no dessert after dinner, no t.v., and we're were all grounded. Fuck.

But, it wasn't all bad. To this day, I relish the touch of a human man over some photo, any day of the week. Pictures are great and all, but they ain't nuthin' like the real thing. A photo don't talk back to you when you need it, or hold you close on a cold winter's night. Only yo man does that for you, girl. Get me on this one? You can have your Photoshopped mistresses, boys. This girl's aiming for the real thing: an actual man who loves her back. Happy hunting. It's a jungle out there. Rowwwrrr!

Around the Way: New Jersey Diners

Cocktails and eats, from way back when.

The only really late night game in our town was either White Castle, or quietly stumbling around your parents kitchen in a quest for drunk food. Jersey, a scant ten minutes away by car, had it so much better: the all-night diner. And the great thing about diners is, the menu is long (for any type of craving) and the food from most places is actually really, really good. Most of the family joints were Greek owned and operated, so you could count on a certain type of quality.

Passing by this empty building one afternoon on a bus back from the city, I felt a nostalgic sadness for a bygone late night life that I never had in Rockland. I bet it hit locals hard to see their go-to joint close down. I am happy to see the Hudson Valley emerge as a happening fine dining kind of place, because with the kind of produce we have here, it's the perfect marriage of locale matched with interest. Enjoy!

Food, glorious food: 

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/food/. 

Food: Farming

By now, we've read the articles and seen the news stories about GMO Frankenfoods that threaten our health, and contribute to a lack of biodiversity that is the agricultural form of extinction. Monsanto controls seeds and food production, Tyson muscles farmers through their production schedules, resulting in horrible food factories that don't even feel like farming to the farmers they pay, and the old lady who wants a pear out of season (the same one who clips coupons and haggles for a bargain), is the same person who eats produce that's traveled further than she will ever travel in lifetime, having been flown in exclusively for her consumption all the way from Chile. It's a bizarre mindset that needs to change, and it slowly has.

I've posted items on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Illuminations/371196022892113), with sayings like "Growing food is like printing your own money", and how collecting rainwater is now illegal in some states, to illustrate the growing separation between food production and our day-to-day lives. Do you want to cede that power to a huge business conglomerate? Would they have your best interests at heart? Of course not. Their executives aren't paid to do that like your family doctor is, because they're paid to sell you stuff.

Into the growing debate come visionary doctors who speak out, like Dr. Joseph Mercola (http://www.mercola.com/). It's in this very climate that I've begun to see the land around us as a huge opportunity for change. When I walked by a corn patch growing in front of a modest home last week, it reminded me that I grew up surrounded by farms: the small one next door to our house, my mother's humble garden, the little orchard that used to be part of the farm next door, and fruit trees in such natural profusion, that I still find apple and cherry trees growing right by sidewalks in town (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/nature-edibles.html, and http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-harvest.html).

We have a chance to redefine our access to fresh, local, in season and affordable foods by supporting local farms, farmers, and producers through frequenting nearby farmer markets with locally made goods. Which brings me to the next motto that's gathered steam: you have three opportunities to vote every day when you decide what to eat. 
We can't always make the best decisions, for a variety of reasons (economics, availability, poor health, etc.), but thinking precedes action, and by questioning our mindsets, we've already started down the path towards change.

What will you choose to eat today?

Lovin' It

Make no mistake—as an American, I love American food. I grew up eating hamburgers, and my first "real" job was at a famous fast food joint as a teenager. I stood by the counter watching my mom co-sign the job application, so I could work for the biggest fast food chain on the planet at 15 years old. Labor laws at the time required parental consent; it was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life. 

I only lasted 3 or 4 months as a cashier, because it was a nightmare for me to work there. I really wanted to cook on the line in the back. I learned to cook as a child, and I loved making food. It would've suited me better as a shy kid, but as a beautiful girl I stood out, so they put me up front where people could see me. The heavyset woman who worked as a day manager immediately noticed me. She looked right at me, then pointed me out in front of a group of other new employees during orientation, "You're working the counter." It didn't take long for grown men to start slipping me their phone numbers on napkins from the self-serve stations.

Periodically, the networks would shut down from power outages and computer blips, so I did the math for orders on those same napkins while a line stretched out the door. The "managers" were skinny pimply teens barely in their 20's, some as young as 18 or 19, who used their petty power-trips over employees as an excuse to abuse them, creating the same working class dynamic we grew up with at home at work.

But, I got a paycheck and leftover food when I worked the evening shift after school. Any food left on the line at closing time was either thrown out or taken home by employees. I suggested donating the leftovers to a local homeless shelter one night because the waste sickened me, and I got a vague "Yeah, that's a good idea" answer by the same female manager who assigned me to the counter on my first day. She'd been forced to work that night after working a day shift, because she kept repeating it to us so she could play the victim to the hilt. She was so dysfunctional and stressed out that actual compassion and awareness from a small skinny teenager with big eyes and a soft voice must've shocked her. She gave me a hard look, which told me I was already on her radar for abuse. 

After a particularly busy lunch rush, I didn't have time to re-stock bags, so she gave the counter girls a passive-aggressive lecture in a condescending tone about how perfect bag sizes were for certain meals that was clearly directed at me, and I knew it. She gave me the look again to drive the point home; that I was actually the wasteful one (not her), because I used bags that were "too big". Great. More game-playing and power struggling. I knew this routine front-ways, sideways, and backwards. She wasn't going to fight me directly because she couldn't win, but she could do this petty pissant crap. The clock was already running out on this job. I needed to get out of there fast.

The more targeted abuse quickly began. This ugly blond kid thought it was funny to watch me struggle with garbage bags that had to be tossed over a tall fence around the dumpsters, so he routinely assigned me to cleaning the floor. I heard him laughing in the back room, telling another manager that he sent "the human mop" to mop up the floor. His crony joked, "Oh yeah? What does that kid weigh? Like a 100 lbs. soaking wet? Can she even lift those bags?" The manager snickered, "I know, I know, isn't' it great? Wait, wait, she's gotta throw them over the wall. I told her she 'had to' do it." I became their entertainment for the night. He scared me because he was a psycho, but I was already used to fake "tough" guys. As heavy as the bags were, I did it until every one of them went over, even though it took me several tries, with trash spilling onto me from the bags that didn't make it over the first few times. When I finished, he was actually impressed, though not to my face. "Yeah, she did it! That skinny 'mop' did it! She's a lot stronger than she looks." Right, punk.

My mom had to pick me up at night, because I was too young to drive. She ordered tea and laughed at me while I worked, relishing that I had to serve her as she mocked me. "Haha! I can't 'get you' to clean at home and now you have to do it here! So ironic." She would smugly sit at a table as I ended my shift, making a show out of sipping her tea while I busted my ass at a horrible job after a full day of school.  "Uh, Marie. You missed a spot," she tapped her fingertip repeatedly on the table, "here, where I spilled sugar. Don't you 'have to' wipe it up? I'll complain to your manager, if you don't clean it up." Like most working class families, our "joking around" was a release valve that had real menace underneath it, because the stakes were always that high.

My mom still has the same compulsive disorder, so seeing this dynamic played out elsewhere must have been proof to her that her behavior was "normal". It was certainly socially acceptable. After all, this was a world-famous "restaurant". If I had problems here, then it must be me. It couldn't possibly be a company as "successful" as this chain, right? But that was part of it, too, and I knew it. Then (as now), if I serve as the voice of reason in my family, they run for cover. Hiding behind a corporation making billions of dollars is a great tactic for covering up a lot of bad.

Still, I love burgers and sometimes I get a craving for them. Occasionally, I'll go to a fast food joint for their shakes or fries 'cause it just hits that sweet spot, ya feel me? Since I'm still working on my own now (as then), every penny counts, and cooking meals at home is not only healthier, it's cheaper, too. There's a best-selling series of books that show you how to re-create favorite fast foods at home, so one day when I had the fixins', I looked up a recipe and did it. The result? Glory in a sandwich. We don't need huge conglomerates that don't have always our best interests at heart, because we have each other, my friends. So, here's a link to a site with a recipe that gives you the "know-how". Now you know, too, on the house.  
Enjoy :)

http://www.cinnamonspiceandeverythingnice.com/homemade-big-macs/