The things that spring to mind when the Sunday morning Bloody Mary at the cafe reignites what should have been extinguished...and paragraphs fall victim valiantly...nice actual pic too...the rest? That's between the author and that elixir avec salade.
Ballantines. Ha! You're taking me back down the loving road of my youth. For a few Summers, the big big (RARE as the day is long) Summer gathering of the Clan actually happened. No negotiation. That designated Saturday was it. Period. Collectively, my Dad, his two younger brothers, three sisters and their husbands/my other uncles , my gaggle of cousins, Nana, Grampa, my great Uncle Matt of incredible founding fathers' sideburns fame (one of three Uncle Matts), my great Granpop (my Grandpa's dad who pretended to be deaf when Nana would yell at him.), and a bunch of great Aunties still would be unrecognizable to me, WOULD TAKE OVER AND OCCUPY a pavilion at Valley State Park in idyllic Upstate New York. Freeze-tag, frisbee, softball, horseshoes, the deadly Jarts, catching little orange newts in the woods with my cousins. Multiple grills cooking spiedies, kielbasa,burgers, hot dogs,tons of salt potatoes, giant burlap sacks and sacks of little-neck clams. Now taboo open vats of macaroni salad and potato salad and big jars of Lithuanian pickled everything(s) and a thousand pies, cakes and the jello with grape eye-balls or carrot shreddings and cookies and strange Old Country sugared somethings,giant garbage can sized tins of chips and pretzels, covered tacky multi-colored picnic table-clothed picnic-tables. My Uncles would scoop-herd up all of the childrens and lead us through the wooded trails down to the combination lake and cement-bottomed swimming area. Man oh man, State Park was cool. I imagine it still is. We all arrive at the swimming area, gaggle of kids with questionable supervision. The swimming area was some kind of seamless connection to the actual lake. Even at the time, this was a strange but some kind of wonderful WPA idea. My vague understanding of this kingdom can only be related by some kind of silly solitary Lithuanian/Polish dance from the ancient Baltic era. Christ on a motorcycle bike on fire, you have to pee. The dark brown wooden box-huts, the kind of little boy gotta pee waiting line with twenty other little cross-crissed legged dudes squeezing their tiny weenies holding it for mercy hut. Phew. Back to the mythological body of water that you should have whizzed in, hectares of water with pebbles-in-concrete smooth algae-covered bottom with natural lake water all around.The only possible explanation of the slippery algae pebbled gentle slope expanded from a foot deep A few times, a quiet summer blur when I was a small person, Mom would bring my little baby sister and me to State Park, it had the wood signs with yellow paint inlays lettering designating and directing to the vast environs of the Park's picnic spots and softball fields and the collective acres and acres of picnic magic spots. Us kids would be twitching like baby kangaroos to go swimming. PULEEZE. The most vivid memory, collectively, was swimming or moreorless wading walking from a foot deep all all all the way out until your head would be under water. Under foot is a magical environ of cement with pebbled rock and a thick layer of algae. The water itself was a deep emerald lake green. Swimming with all stages of polliwogs was a science class come to life simply by opening your eyes underwater. Wow, catching and bring home some polliwogs was a boy's dream come true. All Uncles would immediately gravitate toward the super-deep-end. Giant laddered diving springboards lined up across from the canoe and rowboat rental boathouse where all the powerfully cool big people waited in line for a dive. My Uncles who all smoked cigarettes in a remarkably cool way and a few of my big cousins close to their age would duel with ever increasingly complicated and dangerous dives. Heroes were made and lost. Shivering and wrinkled we'd return to the picnic area, telling stories and spilling our captured polliwog's water. Poor bastards those polliwogs, destined for a brief life in captivity sometimes only until a trip and spill in the parking lot being loaded into the station wagon. Never had one become a full-blown frog. The tables were piled with food, the grilling was in power-mode. Mmmm-smoke. And always. Always always giant ice-filled tin washtubs and coolers packed Eagle brand quart glass bottles of a dozen colors and flavors. Delivered to my grandparent's house weekly, the original recyclable, there wasn't a word for it then. And in those In those tubs were mountains of cans of Genesee, Genesee Cream Ale, Utica Club,Carling Black Label, Matt's Premium. And Ballantines. Ice cold cans of Ballantines.
Spiedies are a traditional marinated meat skewered and cooked over fire served in a slice of Italian bread. No condiments. Found originally only in the Binghamton, NY area. The annual Spiedie Fest is fun for the whole family. http://www.spiedies.com/. The author falls firmly in the original Lupo's camp, but Salamida State Fair Spiedie Sauce is respectable enough.
