Remember those crunchy breadsticky thingys, the sesame rounds, or the oblong townhouse crackers shaped like flattened capsules all wrapped up, by twos, in cellophane. I love the cracker basket and who in their right mind doesn’t? They hold something for everyone after all. I don’t think anyone needs a reason to like crackers but my fondness, I am certain, begins with my childhood memory of inexpensive family restaurants and sit down pizza joints that bring cracker baskets to the table instead of bread. Not gourmet varieties, or even homemade, but good old plain Jane everyday crackers, be it Captain’s wafers, or saltines, and especially any kind that comes two-to-a-pack. But very quickly he found he didn’t have to–the Irish would do all the talking and all he had to do was listen. He’s very much an introvert when it comes to strangers and it didn’t once cross his mind when he impulsively bought a one-way ticket to Shannon, that he might have to talk to people. He doesn’t know if it is jet lag or if he is afraid, but he has knots in his stomach. Stanley sleeps away his first two days in Ireland. The tea bread, sweet with currants and speckled with tiny pieces of crunchy toasted walnuts, cures Stanley’s speech impediment, the salted butter slathered over it acting as a lubricant for his tongue. FitzDermot’s twelve children, ten of whom are old enough to be out on their own. The FitzDermot Bed and Breakfast is much larger than it looks from the street, and on most nights it is near capacity–the tenants being Mr. FitzDermot’s heavy Irish brogue as they sit and converse in the tiny living room of the old house. Not in a God-awful way, and no more difficult to understand than Mr. The little bit of lemon in the tea is wonderful, but something about citric acid causes Stanley’s tongue to become clumsy. The smoke smelled like Sunday morning bacon - and slow cooked pork. I was sure that one Saturday we’d see a line of fire trucks, the red glare of emergency lights, firemen unfurling their hose to do battle with a five alarm, sirens blaring.īut week after week, the cloud of smoke billowed across the avenue without a fire truck in sight. One was Zeb’s barbecue, a shack I spied from the back window of the station wagon as I was ferried to Saturday morning art lessons. His hands make him appear well, like a folkloric hero, his hands are big enough to palm a turkey, thick and calloused and more heat resistant than a fireman’s glove. But even as we were tucking into ketchup-mild barbecued chicken, tiny outposts of smoke, fire and mostly pig, had long-since migrated north. Spice was reserved for vacations south of the Mason Dixon line. This was the logical extension of my mother’s Midwest, the pot-roast, chicken-and-dumplings-tuna casserole Midcentury Midwest. If there was smoke it was liquid, if there was fire it was a heated oven. Growing up in suburban 1970’s Indianapolis “barbecue” meant baking a chicken and basting it in a bottled sauce. We prefer change we don’t see, change that slips on like a comfortable pair of socks that go unnoticed throughout the day, not a constant reminder like a fancy necktie. We understand that change is inevitable, we just don’t like it sneaking up behind us and yelling BOO. Midwesterners like pork and we like beef, even chicken but we do not like change.
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