Making The Most of The Holidays

Here it is, just a few days before Thanksgiving. We're on the heels of another holiday season when the year seemed to start not all that long ago. While it's great to look ahead and know that memories will be made and joy will be shared, there are a lot of great memories stored up in our heads from the past. When you get older and family and friends go away, you really do have something to be thankful for. You should be thankful for those memories of times past, the experiences that came with them, and those that are yet to be created.

It doesn't seem like it was long ago that we had three generations of family members gathered around the Thanksgiving table for an annual feast - make that bi-annual with Christmas - for a feast that lasted from around noon until late afternoon. Italians know how to do food, with my grandmother going the extra mile in cooking everything from pasta (ravioli and rigatoni), meatballs, sausage and braggiole to the mandatory turkey and stuffing and whatever was thrown in between. For some odd reason, the salad was always served last, just before dessert. We didn't mind. It was all good. My lovely Irish wife was familiar with Italian dinners from her two brothers-in-law's cooking, but even she was surprised at how well Grandmom stuffed us to the gills at her first dinner with us.

Then the inevitable happened. Time started to take its toll. Family members started dropping like... There's a better way to put that; they started to pass-away one by one. Time slips away, and soon, almost everyone's gone. My brother, sister, and I are the survivors of our immediate family. Between distance with my sister living in the South and my brother being with his wife and family, we don't see each other on the holidays.

This Thanksgiving Day, we'll be spending the day at my in-law's house with my wife's sister and her husband. My wife and I are always happy to spend good times with them and other family members and enjoy their hospitality. It's good for her in as much as we tried to split holidays each year between families, we found ourselves more with mine than hers. Now she gets some make-up time, although her family has seen many depart like mine and there's no making up for that.

Why do those things matter? Because I can sit here and think back to a time that was and remember a dinner table lined with family members who aren't here to share those holiday dinners anymore. Everyone reading this has or will experience that sense of loss. But don't think about that. Do yourselves a favor and enjoy every second of the time that you have with each other. Savor those moments. Let bygones be bygones and don't let foolish words spoken years ago rob you of any joy. And put the phones away! Declare a moratorium on devices for maybe eight hours so you don't let them rob you of the precious moments; controlling them instead of them stealing your joy. Violators' devices face the maul hammer. Make the most of it. Time is short, then its gone.

HOLIDAY MEMORIES...
...My grandfather roasting nuts in an old 1920s era gas oven in the basement of their home on 17th street. No pilot light, you turned on the gas and lit it quickly or you'd get a nice "whoosh!" from the built-up gas igniting.

...Conversation. Everyone stayed in the living room, dining room, or kitchen. No one ran to the sanctuary of their own room once the dinner plates were cleared, and if someone watched TV, we all did and still talked all day.

...Everyone showing up before noon and not leaving until evening. No rushing to dinner and out the door.

...Two things were always available to drink at my grandparents: a bottle of wine for the adults and a few quarts of Frank's Ginger Ale for the kids or adults who didn't drink much wine. We didn't guzzle the soda like kids do today. You drank it from maybe 6 or 8-ounce glasses or jelly jar glasses (remember the Flintstones glasses that Welch's sold their grape jelly in?) and made it last. My grandmother learned to save from experience during the Great Depression - right down to those jelly glasses.

...Wresting in the living room of my grandparents' house with my brother and cousin while my grandmother would yell that we were going to hurt each other. We almost never did (I remember one of us hit our heads on the marble coffee table once), but we did get to imitate our favorite wrestlers from Saturday morning TV. Never broke any furniture either.

...A full-course dinner as found in most Italian homes. Macaroni (none dare call it pasta), meatballs, sausage, and bragiole, turkey and stuffing, and then the salad (salad always came last, and always with vinegar and oil, no bottled dressing). Bread fresh from the former Lanci's Bakery on Jackson St. was always on the table.

...Along with the walnuts, chestnuts, and brazils, cheese from Cilione's (also on Jackson St) was on the table before and after dinner, along with bottles of Jacquin's Anisette and Blackberry Brandy. My grandmother would never let a holiday go by without stopping by the State Store to get bottles of both.

...My grandparent's neighbor Pete always knocking on holidays to say hello and to give my brother, sister, and I a  half dollar; and we looked forward to getting those Kennedy heads, always checking to see if we got a silver one.

Street Entepreneurs

I've noted in a number of posts here in this blog the hard-working men and women of South Philly who made their living doing everything from running the local candy store to collecting rags from a horse-drawn cart. All of us know folks who made their money honestly and worked their entire lives without complaint. At least I never heard them whine. They earned their living and did it without fail, day after day.

But on the street, there are always "entepreneurs" who strive to make a buck however they can. As you read this, you may be thinking that I'm referring to the local street pharmacists who stand on corners or make deliveries to the neighborhood junkies to keep them from going into withdrawal. They're out there along with a host of people who need to learn what working for a living truly is like.

A number of years ago, I met a certain salesman on Oregon Avenue, trying to sell me something I got a day later for free. This guy failed to sell me his product the minute he opened his mouth. A good salesman should know his customers. For some odd reason, this guy thinks my name is "Mazucca" and calls out to me, asking, "Hey Mazucca, you use Fusion razors? I got a load if you need them." I've had a number of guys on the street try to sell me everything from unbreakable drinking glasses (well, he said so, but wouldn't bang the mouth of the glass against his tailgate when I asked), pot, paper-thin shirts, whatever. But the first-ever time I found a neighborhood razor salesman.

Anyhow, the very next day, by way of the US Postal Service, what did I get in the mail? Yeah, you got it. A free Gillette Fusion razor. Pretty nice razor too, it has five blades to make sure I get all the stubble. A plug for Gillette, I didn't nick myself at all when shaving with the Fusion, so you got my vote for the razor of the year. That was then. Gilette lost my endorsement when they started the toxic masculinity commercials. I now shave with an electric razor made by a Scandanavian company that probably has them manufactured in China, paying workers pennies a day. 

Getting back to these "salesmen": I met them on a Wednesday, got my freebie on Thursday, and on Friday, my brother too got one in the mail. Maybe every male in the tri-state area males did. Or at least should have. So where did this guy get his load of Fusions? Maybe stole a load from the local post office or knew someone there who swiped them. Maybe they fell off the truck and landed at his feet, similar to the late Joey Coyle and his bags of cash. Who knows? But somewhere in South Philly, some knucklehead bought a Fusion or two at a deep discount, only to get one free the following day. Whatever happened to honest salesmen?


AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

   ...The guys who used to try to sell you a VCR (or computer, or TV), but wouldn't allow you to open the box. "Bad for business, selling products in open cartons" they'd tell you. If you were foolish enough to buy them, I hope you enjoyed your carton of bricks. I've heard of a few guys who paid a hundred or so for them. My mom told me a few of her co-workers at the now-gone Holiday Inn at 10th & Packer were taken by this scam. They thought that she was a fool for not buying at a steep discount. That was until they opened the boxes and the blood drained from their faces.

My "favorite" scam was the guy who approached me while I was working in Center City in the early 90s during the clean-up after the Penn Mutual fire. He said he had a camcorder to sell. I asked to see it, expecting to find anything but electronics. "Can't open the box man" he told me. Said it was an 8mm VHS camera. "Which one?" I asked, "8mm or VHS?" "Yeah", that's the one" was his answer. He said he had to unload them quickly, the School District needed to clear their inventory and needed the cash. I could believe the school board was strapped for bucks, but since when does the Board of Education need to move inventory using street vendors? He got no sale from me that day.

Cartoons in the Afternoon (and in the Morning too!)

Long ago and faraway, there was a time when kids had a vast selection of cartoons to choose from when they came home from school. When you turn on the TV today, where are the toons? With the exception of the Cartoon Network, and The Simpsons, The Family Guy, and King of the Hill (the last three more adult-oriented), there isn't much in the way of cartoons today.

Up through at least the late 70's - and probably later than that - the Philadelphia stations that fill the afternoons with their judge programs like Judge Judy and Divorce Court (Channel 29), and "talk" shows (Channel 17 with their Maury and Steve Wilkos shows) once had the hours from 2:00 through 5:00 dedicated to entertaining kids. Parents knew when their kids came home from school, they were able to sit down to watch harmless programming. At least in those days it was harmless. With so many people beating the politically-correct drum today, many of the toons that we knew and loved will never be seen on-screen again short of maybe YouTube. I understand that some are racially-insensitive, but some of the World War II-era cartoons were produced partly with a propaganda element and have some historical value, at least to those who understand the era. They would go over the heads of younger people. Add to that lineup the now-defunct WKBS, Channel 48, and they had their choice of many cartoon shows. They may not have gotten their homework done after school, but at least they weren't getting an eyeful of trash.

For the kids yet too young to go to school, there were programs in the AM too. Channel 6 - then WFIL TV - had both Sally Starr's Popeye Theater and the Happy the Clown programs. (It was alleged that Happy was a nasty fellow who would berate the kids during commercial breaks - obscenities included - then come back on the air full of smiles for the viewing audience. I've heard that from a few folks, but one source, a late friend of my mother's, was very reliable. She said she took her kids to be part of the peanut gallery one fine day, and would never bring them back). I don't believe the other two VHF stations had kids programming, but for at least an hour, the young ones had something to watch besides Good Morning America in the a.m. or two-and-a-half hours of Action News starting at 4:00 p.m. It seems we're being overloaded with the news lately, especially when they sometimes include things that aren't really news.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

... Dr. Don Rose, the DJ from then-popular AM top-40s station WFIL, keeping kiddies occupied during commercial breaks with his cornball quips on Channel 48. Along with various cartoons, this station also broadcasted the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies of the 30s and 40s.

... Looney Toons filling a good part of the afternoon on WTAF-TV, Channel 29, and Tom and Jerry on another.

... Wee Willie Webber, the uncle-like moderator of programs on WPHL-17. That channel had shows like Astro Boy, Ultra Man, and George of the Jungle.

... Saturday morning cartoons. Every one of the big-three networks had them, going through noon. Now they're long-gone. For kids, it was a big thing when they announced the new cartoon line-ups every September.

What old afternoon cartoon programs did I miss? Which were your favorites? Let me know in the comments.