IT’S HEATING UP

It is heating up, here in Vallejo. Yesterday was warm enough for me to quit work early. I remember my parents telling me this story about when they were newlyweds. After my father returned from Korea, a battalion aid medic, he was transferred to an Army base in Texas. He and my mother lived off base in a small house with one bedroom and no insulation. Now here is where I think the laws of physics come in handy. On hot nights, too many to count in Texas, Continue reading “IT’S HEATING UP”

ON FOOD AND COOKING

Years ago I dated a charming woman who took me home, for Sunday dinner, to meet her parents. Upon hearing that I had been a chef, her mother immediately scrapped the mac and cheese idea and put out her best meal: Turkey, stuffing, gravy, the works, in July. I remember that she sat nervously, watching me as I took in my first few bites. Now I am going to Continue reading “ON FOOD AND COOKING”

PATRIOT OR LOYALIST?

Perhaps the first lesson of etiquette that I learned as a young man, after put the napkin on my lap, or don’t cry over spilt milk was the proper use of the fork. I remember my mother, whom I sat directly across for the dinner table. Demonstrate the proper way to cut my meat. Fork in left hand, knife in right, pierce the meat with the fork and cut off a small bite with the knife. Then set the knife down, transfer the fork to your right hand and take a bit. Rinse well and repeat. (She did not say the last, it just seemed to fit in my head.)

 

Being the curious young toddler that I was I asked the inevitable: Why? Continue reading “PATRIOT OR LOYALIST?”

The Beginning of the V-Town Social Club

I moved to Vallejo in the summer of 2002. This is not to say that this is my first time here. My father, just a teenager in the early 40’s, moved here with his mother, my grandmother, and his brother during the early part of the war. Her sister, my father’s aunt, who had moved here the year before, convinced her sister to close up shop, pack up the boys and ‘Go West.’ “There are jobs to be had on Mare Island,” she said, “good jobs.” My father’s father, my grandfather, was a late draftee in the war and came to Vallejo later, sometime in 1946.

 

The house where I now live, and happily call home, is where my father’s aunt resided since 1946. The house built in 1942, Continue reading “The Beginning of the V-Town Social Club”