The Miss Florence Diner

We spent the holiday weekend in the area around Northampton, Mass., attending the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival (more on that later) and seeing some of the local attractions. When we travel we're always on the lookout for old diners. The Miss Florence Diner, in Florence, Mass. (on Rt. 9, just west of Northampton), has been in business since 1941 and was accorded landmark status in 1999 when it was added to the National Register. I had first been here in 1995 and was curious how the place had fared since. The Miss Florence didn't disappoint. With a typically voluminous diner menu, the food was tasty, plentiful, and quick. And as you can see from the pictures, the atmosphere was authentic diner, right down to the tableside jukeboxes (which worked). So many old diners have closed their doors, unable to keep pace with the national fastfood franchises. I just hope the Miss Florence can survive the current economic climate and keep its doors open.

Scrapple: The Other White Meat

After watching Super-size Me! a couple of years ago and reading Fast Food Nation at about the same time, we earnestly tried to remove McDonald's and its competitors from our family's list of dining choices. We've done a pretty good job, limiting ourselves to only a handful of family visit each year. Occasionally we'll break down and agree to a trip through the Golden Arches as a treat for the boys . . . or we'll be out in suburbia and have no other options. The other day we stopped by McDonald's after the boys' fall baseball afterschool activity. It was late and we were in a generous mood. An old fan of Big Mac's, I was indulgent and ordered one. It tasted great, particularly the tangy essence of the "special sauce" (mere Thousand Island dressing). But within an hour my intestines were tied in knots like my kids' double-knotted sneakers and I was longing for the couch and some Tums.

Hearing about my gastrointestinal agony, a friend offered a finger-wagging remonstrance and admonished me about the cartilage, fecal matter, and "god knows what else" that might be in the burgers. What one forgets, however, is that being from the South, I'm hard-wired to have an affinity for highly processed meat products. Bacon, for example, is the most perfect food in the world. I could eat bacon every day if my conscience - and arteries - would let me. Sausage, country ham, pork shoulder, pork chops, pork bbq, pulled pork sandwiches, and pork tenderloin are all delicacies on par with the richest foie gras or caviar.

I should note here that having grown up just minutes from Smithfield, Virginia, site of Gwaltney's main processing plants, I was doubly inclined to avail myself of the world's porcine delicacies. Driving along Route 10 near Smithfield one couldn't avoid encountering the truckloads of hogs, destined for the abattoirs of the Gwaltney corporation. An old friend, himself an enthusiastic connoisseur of bacon, would regularly drive the Route 10 bypass to avoid passing near the plants. One time I asked him why, thinking that it might be the pervasive smell of slaughtered pigs which prompted his reluctance. "No," he replied, "It's not the smell. I just want to keep thinking that bacon comes from a happy, magical place." Fair enough. I guess it would be nice to believe the fantasy that bacon was like manna from heaven, without the reality of freshly gutted oinkers traveling from the kill floor to the "disassembly" plant.

Indeed, I do love pig. But I draw the line on some pork products, like scrapple, pictured at left and below. A friend who visited the South back in the summer encountered fried scrapple on a breakfast menu at a diner. He asked me, "What's in scrapple?" My reply: "Everything but the squeal." (The reality of scrapple is this, taken from a typical store-bought package: pork skins, pork livers, pork tongues, pork hearts, corn meal, salt, spices.) Blanching, he was glad he hadn't tried it, along with a few other southern delicacies that one encounters in bars, "juke joints," and cinderblock convenience stores: pickled eggs, pickled pigs' feet, scrambled pig brains, deep-fried chicken's feet, pork cracklins (essentially deep fried pieces of pig fat), pig ears, and smoked pig tongues. Neither I nor my parents ever sampled these piggy treats. However, my grandmother still enjoys a scrapple sandwich for lunch, while my dad's younger brother and his wife swear by fried scrapple sandwiches for breakfast fare.

Of course, the South doesn't possess a monopoly on utilizing every part of its slaughtered animals, as I've witnessed during trips to some of the City's more traditional butchers. Ottomanelli's has the largest beef tongues I've ever seen proudly displayed in its windows. Faicco's, the West Village's famous Italian market and "pork store," has hearty displays of tripe and various organ meats in its cases. But there's something to be said for pulling up to a low, cinderblock building in your F-100, walking in past the Miller Lite neon, through the pool tables to the bar, and asking for a pickled pig's foot from the big jar on the counter. Add a cold Meisterbrau or Milwaukee's Best to your order and you've just tossed your testosterone on the table for all to see, without having to pull out an NRA card or brag about the new NASCAR-themed La-Z-Boy now sitting proudly in your double-wide.

Chinatown with the Kids

Last weekend, while my wife was still in the hospital, I took the kids down to Chinatown in lower Manhattan, just a few subway stops from our home. Chinatown is hardly a new or exotic experience for us, since we go down every three or four months to visit our favorite restaurants and markets to pick up favorite food items, including some wickedly good steamed pork buns from a hole-in-the wall place off Canal St. This time, however, we were trying to complete my third grade son's summer break assignment on China and the manifestations of Chinese culture in New York City. So obviously a trip to Chinatown was in order. This time, however, we went with a camera and a different perspective. It was fun, and we noticed things we hadn't seen before, like the herbalist selling traditional remedies and potions and the shops selling red lanterns and other symbols of good luck. As always, the seafood stalls were enticing, while the dragon fruit, pictured below, were quite pretty (although I'm not sure how one eats them).

Of course there were the usual stalls along Canal St. that sold the knock-off watches and Gucci handbags. Although the city has tried to crack down on the sale of counterfeit merchandise - and there's noticeably less, particularly in handbags and luggage - one can still find plenty of fakes for sale. And the tourists still come to buy this stuff, despite admonitions from the city to eschew patronizing the sellers of fake goods.

Normally we'll eat at a fun restaurant that has good dim sum. Joe's Shanghai and New York Noodletown are favorites, particularly the soup dumplings at Joe's. But this time the boys were clamoring for McDonald's and I was too tired to put up a fight or remind them of what I had read and seen in Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me. So I caved in and we joined the tourists who favor the predictability of the Golden Arches over the potentially confusing - albeit delicious - multi-page menu at the Golden Unicorn.

A Fishy Fourth

On July 4th our family - including several cousins, an aunt and uncle, and several small boys that no one wants to claim - converges on Virginia's "Eastern Shore" for a day of visiting and over-eating. If you're not familiar with this area, think of the lower portion of the Delmarva peninsula. If that doesn't jog your memory, you might recall the story of Misty the pony, and her place in the lore of Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. Portions of our family - including Drummonds, Silverthornes, Kilmons, Rues, and Justises - have called Accomac County home since the 1630s. So for us, the annual return is also about returning to one's roots in America, a perfect raison d'etre for our July 4th reunion. (This house, built at the beginning of the 20th century by my great-grandfather, was home to my grandmother and grandfather from the 1960s to the 90s. The wide front porch had a glider at the left end and a porch swing to the right. A daybed under the left window was my father's favorite post-lunch napping spot. Behind the right window there's a parlor with french doors. I remember spending long summer nights here, sweltering in the heat as large fans circulated the humid air.)

The high point of our 4th is a visit to the little Methodist church in which my father was baptised. For about 120 years the congregation has held a seafood feast to celebrate the occasion. We dine on crab cakes, clam fritters, ham, chicken, baked beans, cornbread, and lots of iced tea. (Too enamored with the crab cakes and fritters, I always eschew the salad, dinner rolls and mac-n-cheese.) Then we retreat to the huge porch of a cousin's large, turreted Victorian home in town and spend the afternoon chatting and dozing. Sometimes we take a drive around the countryside, pointing out the various homes and burial grounds that form the tapestry of our family's history in the area.

The town of Parksley itself is quite interesting. Although there are many communities on the Shore that trace their origins to the 17th and 18th centuries, this town was founded when the railroad came through the area in the 1880s. Until the early 1960s this was the primary lifeline for the community. Numerous family members boarded trains here to seek their fortunes elsewhere . . . and some returned at the end of their days to lie in the family plot at the town cemetery. When the Shore was connected to Virginia Beach and the mainland by bridge in 1964, the railroad quickly lost its position of importance. Today the rusty tracks do little more than bisect the Shore, paralleling Rt. 13 most of the way. The little stations that once dotted the route have either been demolished or converted to other uses. The town has at least tried to capitalize on its rail-centric past by starting a railway museum complete with old cars, including some cabooses and some beautiful Pullman cars. This July 4th as we sat on the porch just across the street from the museum and rails, my father and his younger brother recounted occasions when they would walk into town from their little hamlet back on the Bay to greet family members arriving by train.

Eat Out Often

Living in New York City, one has seemingly limitless options for take out or dining out. The restaurants here literally cover the full spectrum of gastronomic possibilities, from diner fare to haute cuisine. As a parent with two little boys, however, options are limited. You don't waltz into Nobu with your 1st and 2nd grader and expect a warm reception and a prime table. Still, even when one factors in the "family-friendly" requirement, the choices are pretty amazing. My kids naturally prefer pizza, but they're more than happy to dine on Chinese, Thai, the food bar at Whole Foods (particularly the chicken caesar salad), and the occasional foray into sushi territory. To them, eating out is a common experience. If only I had enjoyed such choices as a kid growing up in Virginia in the 70s.

Eating out in the early 70s for my family was a rare treat, usually enjoyed only on Sundays after church or during vacations. Instead, we would eat at home, enjoying my mom's pot roast (seasoned with one packet of Lipton Onion Soup), fried chicken (skinless!), or [insert your favorite southern Sunday meal here]. If it could be breaded and cooked in the Mirro electric skillet - a wedding gift, circa 1961 - or dropped into the pressure cooker for "faster" cooking, my mom would try it. I stood for hours - at a respectable distance, lest schrapnel from an exploding Revere pressure cooker end my life - watching the pressure cooker steam away, the safety valve on top hissing and dancing, as a chicken, potatos and carrots heated. (On weeknights the fare was a bit simpler, primarily because my mom worked. Easy preparation was key. Today we have Rachael Ray; in 1973 we had Betty Crocker's Easy Meals and Spam Hawaiian Style - slices of spam grilled in the electric skillet, served with canned pineapple slices and cinnamon. Yum-O.)

Eating out, therefore, was an adventure. There was a McDonald's nearby, one of the old ones that had the twin golden arches impaling the building, left and right, in a statement of space age architectural hedonism. But my father refused to eat at McDonald's. To him it was too noisy and too greasy. It also violated his rule about tablecloths and restaurants. If a place didn't have tablecloths, we didn't go there. For several years our only other option was Shoney's Big Boy, which had tablecloths, and damn good iced tea, thus keeping my father happy.

I'll always remember the sign on the door - a little decal placed by the American Restaurant Association - proclaiming "Eat Out Often." To me, ever lamenting the infrequency of our dining excursions, this was a cautionary phrase. I thought, "Hey, Mom and Dad, we need to eat out more often; it's good for the economy." "Eating out helps defeat the Commies." "Eating out bolsters the capitalist state, keeps these people employed, and staves off the dictatorship of the proletariat." This was the retail equivalent of the Bible's shortest verse: "Jesus wept." "Eat Out Often." And there was the chubby Big Boy statue out front, sporting the trademark red and white checked overalls and lifting a hamburger over his head . . . a diner's "statue of liberty" proclaiming a mom's freedom from kitchen drudgery. (And hey Mom, it saves wear and tear on that KitchenAid dishwasher!) My dad could feed our family of four for about $5 and have us home - courtesy of the 1972 Ford Gran Torino station wagon - by 1:15 on a typical Sunday. Why, we'd just barely begin tucking into the roast or chicken had we skipped Shoney's.

By 1976 and the Bicentennial, however, the novelty of eating out had dimished a little with a proliferation of nearby dining choices, including a Pizza Hut, Burger King, another McDonald's, KFC (with the spinning bucket atop the sign), and Shakey's. Not that my father ever deigned to eat at any of these fine franchises . . . we were still dining at Shoney's.