11 posts tagged “family”

Cori’s excellent reminder that “Memorial Day isn't about hamburgers, beer, and friends -- it's about remembering what it took to ensure that we could have hamburger, beer, and friends” got me thinking…

Our parents used the mantle above the fireplace in the Ancestral Betz Home in Camden, NJ for immediate family pictures – nearly the entire space was filled with various school portraits of my brother, sister and me.  (The only exception was at Christmastime, when they’d come down and the Nativity would go up.)

In fact, there was only one picture that wasn’t one of us children, a faded sepia-colored photo of a young sandy-haired man in a dress-shirt uniform.  That man was my mom’s older brother.  My uncle Franklin, a man I never met.

At the time of America’s entrance into World War II, my uncle had had signed a contract to play baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies.  But when the war started, he enlisted, volunteered for submarine duty and was assigned to the USS Herring (SS-233) as a motor machinists mate.  The submarine had successful tours in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

On its last patrol, The Herring had torpedoed four Japanese vessels, but was sunk off the Kuril Islands on June 1st, 1944, losing all hands.  My uncle was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.  He was 21 years old.  The Herring was never recovered.

My mother didn’t talk much about her older brother – mostly saying that he knew how to make everyone laugh – but you can tell that she looked up to him so much (mom was a teenager when the war started) and thought of him often.

One story she did tell was that her mother had come to them one morning and said that she knew that Franklin had died because she had seen him in a dream crying out for her amidst flames and steam.  So, no one seemed very surprised when the “Navy Car” pulled up to the house to inform the family some weeks later.

So, while I certainly plan on enjoying this holiday weekend, I will spend a little time saluting the sacrifice of my uncle Franklin, who I saw every day in our living room and would have loved to have gotten to know.

Oh, nevermind…

This weekend, the Beloved and I are heading off to Ohio for a wedding in her family.  We arrive in Cleveland late on Friday and drive off to umm – errr – some other place in NE Ohio for the wedding Saturday morning.

I was thinking about it this morning.  I haven’t been to Ohio for at least 10 years.  Should be interesting.  I’ll post this song from Over The Rhine (who are from the Cincinnati area), which is truly one of my favorite songs ever.

It’s pretty much going to be all family time, so I don’t know that there will be much of a sight-seeing report on our return, but we’ll see how it goes.  I promise I’ll play my Scrabulous turns when I get back.

Today is my dad’s birthday.  He would have been 87 today.  It’s hard to believe that he died almost 10 years ago, and that he’s been gone the whole time I’ve been living in San Diego (since 2001).  That got me thinking about him and though I don't usually do the "Things on Tuesday" group, I ended up considering what he would have loved and loathed if he’d had a chance to visit us here this week for his birthday.

Things he’d loathe:
-- The crowded traffic.  Though he might like the tendency to use freeways over roads with streetlights, which is more common in NJ where we lived.  He could swear up a storm about the so-and-so traffic lights.
-- Streets with Spanish-derived names. "Caminito what?  What the hell’s a Via del la Valle?"
-- Starbucks coffee culture.  “We’re paying what for a cup of coffee??  Let’s just go to Dunkin Donuts”
-- That there are no Dunkin Donuts in San Diego.  See above.
-- People walking around with Bluetooth ear-pieces.  I have to say, this acorn hasn’t fallen far from the tree there.

Things he’d love:
-- Watching a baseball game on a high-definition tv.  Though to be honest, he could also swear up a storm at the so-and-so Phillies…
-- Watching the hummingbirds dive bomb our feeder (and each other) while relaxing on our patio.  He always enjoyed sitting and relaxing with his family.
-- That there are Law & Order episodes on around the clock in all different varieties.  My folks loved themselves those police/court procedurals.
-- Evening at Powerhouse Park in Del Mar, hanging out and watching the sun set into the Pacific. That was one of my mom's favorite things to do when she was here, and I think he'd have loved it, too.
-- Seeing that I’ve reached a point in my adulthood where I am happy and healthy (if not quite wise-enough).
-- Getting to know The Beloved – which is the thing he'd love most.  She and I didn’t know one another when he died.  He would have loved her, too!

Happy Birthday, Pop!  I miss you all the time.

The Beloved arrived in Berlin right after my meeting ended and the following day, we caught the train down to Munich.

Of course the first stop in the train station was to get a hot leberkase sandwich.  It didn't disappoint.

Munich is an interesting contrast to Berlin.  The heart of Bavaria and more oriented towards tourists, I’m sort of glad that I wasn’t there when the weather was better and there were tons of tourists around.  We stayed in the Isator neighborhood – just outside, and a short walk to the Old Town center.

The Old Town is dominated by the Frauenkirche – a massive brick medieval church, with twin onion-topped spires, and the Rathaus (city-hall) with its 19th century Gothic revival architecture (and the largest glockenspiel in the world).

 

 

As with most places we decided that the best way to get to know a town was to wear down a little shoe leather.

The Theatinekirche is a gorgeous rococo church along Ludwigstrasse.  I hope this pic of the dome captures it a little.

We DID manage to come across perhaps a distant cousin while on our meanderings.  Seems that cousin-Dieter (do you think he was on Sprockets?) is doing pretty well selling fancy men's clothes.

Nacwolin’s post the other day got me thinking (she’s been doing that a lot recently) about how Christmas family dinners and gatherings are often used to retell stories that often teach children and new spouses the history and traditions of the family.  I think it’s a great way to keep alive the memories of relatives that have passed on – for example, the Beloved knew my mom, but never had a chance to know my father, who passed away in 1998, so I always tell stories about him.

It got me thinking of the Ancestral Betz home in Camden, New Jersey and the Christmases that we had there while I was growing up.  I think that they were pretty “normal” by most standards of the day – we had my mom’s side of the family** (lets just call them “the E’s”) over on Christmas (for ham) and the Betz-family over from Philly around New Year’s (for turkey) nearly every year – and stories were often passed around for hours at each.  The Betz’s were typically more boisterous than my mom’s family – my father’s family had some hard-drinkers, while the E’s were tee-totaling Methodists.

Decorating was always a big deal.  When I was a child, the tree would go up the weekend before Christmas, but remained unadorned.  My folks would decorate the tree while we were sleeping – providing a dramatic change on Christmas morning.  My brother, sister and I would wait at the top of the stairs, anxiously awaiting the “all-clear” to come downstairs.  What anticipation!

One of my most lasting memories is not the tree, but the decorated mantle.  The Nativity was front and center, framed by greens from the bushes from our lawn.  On either edge, there was a red, rotating tree.  They rotated due to a red incandescent bulb underneath that generated heat, which escaped out the flaps in the heavy-paper tree-cone.  They were special because they were the very first Christmas decorations my parents bought when they moved in to the ABH in 1952.  By the time I was around (the youngest), 20-30 years of use had torn the caps, and seams and some of the flaps were gone and one of them didn’t rotate anymore, but they were (and still are) my most vivid memory of our home at Christmas. 

Sadly, I think they were trashed during the time when my mom moved to my sister's after my father died.  I would gladly put them up here at the Aerie, scotch tape and all.  I may have to troll on eBay and see what I can find...

**(I almost included their name, but somehow posting my mother’s maiden name seems like a bad idea…)

It’s a quiet holiday morning at The Aerie this morning.  We started by having a baked breakfast strada** that the Beloved made with ham, cheese, bread, and eggs.  Yum.

Right now, we’re in that lull between breakfast and all the prep work that we’ll need to do to get the Bird in the oven.  I pulled down some sheet music for “We Gather Together” – I wonder if I can get that under my belt before we start dinner.

To say that I’m thankful this year would be the most ridiculous understatement that I can think of.  The Beloved and I (and Eutaw) are together, we’re happy and healthy.  We successfully sold two properties and were so fortunate to find this home which we love so much.  Our jobs are going well and we have wonderful friends and family.  And I, of course, am blessed with the best vox neighborhood.  Period.  So yes, I’ve been thankful this whole year – in fact, I should have started Tuesday to count my blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 

**When I was talking to my brother this morning, I was telling him about our breakfast and he suggested that we add some “CHiPs” to it so that we could call it an Erik Estrada.  Clearly, that will be on the menu for Christmas morn.

There was the scent of panic at The Aerie this past weekend.  A successful Thanksgiving dinner was teetering in the balance.

Probably the one drawback to the kitchen in our home is that when the previous owners remodeled, they put in great cabinets and granite countertops, but they left a small wall unit oven and microwave.

Now, living in San Diego, we grill a lot, so a small oven isn’t too much of an inconvenience.  The looming problem was that with Thanksgiving on the horizon, we realized the oven was going to be too small for the Bird (not to mention any side dishes).

We considered what it would take to replace the oven --- tearing out cabinets and essentially re-re-modeling that side of the kitchen.  For one meal a year, that seemed a little extreme.  Fortunately, my very smart friend Sharon (who visited with us right before the fires a couple of weeks ago) suggested that we get an electric roaster that could hold a big Bird.  Brilliant, we thought – perfect solution.  The kitchen stays intact, the oven can be used for side dishes and the cost was ~$50.  Sweet.

One of the Beloved’s favorite meals is roast chicken, so Friday we engaged our new Nesco 18-qt roaster on its maiden mission.  The aroma of cooking chicken was intoxicating.  The anticipation was building.  Finally, we removed the cover and …

… panic.

B: “Where’s the crispy skin?”
S: “It looks like stewed chicken.”
B: “Where’s the crispy skin?”
S: “It smells good…”
B: “There’s no crispy skin”
S: “I know.  There’s no crispy skin.  That’s not good.”
B: “We’re crispy skin people!”
S: “We’re crispy skin people – my GOD!! What about the TURKEY!?!?!?”

Yes, little did we know that while the roaster did an excellent job of cooking the chicken, there was a MAJOR drawback – the constant condensation (which keeps the meat moist) prevents browning.  Crispy turkey (or chicken) skin is not so much a like-to-have.  It’s a have-to-have.  It’s a the-whole-reason-you-cook-the-thing-type-of-have-to-have.  In fact, my mother once cooked two smaller turkeys for Thanksgiving rather than one large one with the sole purpose of increasing the crispy-skin-to-turkey ratio.

Slightly panicked, but undaunted, we set out for another crucial experiment this Sunday.  We did a practice turkey run.  It was supposed to roast for 3 hours.  With a half-hour to go, I removed the turkey (moist, but with pale drab non-crispy skin) to a pre-heated grill for the remaining 30 minutes.

SUCCESS!!  That was enough time (maybe could have used a little longer) for the skin to crisp-up and the meat remained moist and tender.  Woo hoo!

Crisis averted and panic-level down.  Bring on Thanksgiving!

Wow - either the QotD has gotten better, or my ideas for posts have gotten worse… but my idea this morning was to write about Dia de los Muertos.

Jen had a good post yesterday about Halloween and how we should let people have fun with it, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown more fond of Dia de los Muertos.  Last year, I wrote about it some – and won’t repeat myself too much – but I’ve really grown to appreciate the way in which both life and death are commemorated in this observance.

For these days (All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day) the dead are remembered and join with the living in their favorite activities – eating, drinking, dancing, and generally having fun.  It is a great way to contribute to the oral history of the family by telling some of the favorite stories of those that had passed on.

Last year, I thought about my mom a lot as she had just died the year before.  This year, I’ve been thinking about my dad and what I would place at his commemorative place – I think it would be bowling paraphernalia, a radio to listen to Phillies games on, a roast turkey dinner, a couple of cans of Miller Lite, and probably a roll of duct-tape.

For me, I would want to have some tennis gear, my Eagles hat, maybe some of my scientific papers, and a bottle from the family vineyard (we're not related, but I like to pretend that we are).  And of course we’d need a little music (these guys hang out on our side table this month).

Oh, and I’d be sharing the turkey with my dad.

What about you?
 

This was such a strange past week with fires, and the evacuations of our home and the clean-up.  It makes you think about a lot of things.  But this past week is also worth remembering for a number of personal reasons, too.  Last Tuesday would have been my mom’s 83rd birthday, so that got me thinking.  And today (the 30th) marks the two-year anniversary of her death.

So this confluence of fire and home and family got me thinking of one of my mom’s favorite stories to tell on me – and this seems like the right day to do it.  Mom would lean back and say, “Oh Stephen, do you remember that day you almost burned the house down?”

The Ancestral Betz Home was a corner row house in Camden NJ.  It had a ground level basement and a one-car garage.  The garage and basement had side-by-side doors that led onto the sidewalk (so you could quickly get from one to the other) but no connector.

Besides my dad's trusty Plymouth Fury (actually, that car was a piece of crap, but I will use nostalgic license to decide it was a good car), mom would save our newspapers in the garage that would ever few months be picked up by this really old guy in a beat up station wagon because he could recycle them.  Now this was the 70s – there was no green movement.  This was the equivalent of picking up aluminum cans off the street to get the deposit back.

Now it was the summer and I was a kid (maybe 7 or 8) and I used to like to play with “punks”.  Does anyone else remember these?  I don’t know why we played with them.  Probably because you had to use fire to light them – and fire was cool.  And that they smoked for a long time – and, of course, smoking was cool. (Remember, it’s the early 70s).

Anyway, one day I was playing with some punks in the garage, and got bored and set the punks down and left.  Did I set them down on the concrete garage floor?  No.  I set them on the months-old stacks of dried newspapers.

Of course, a few minutes later my brother and I notice the aroma of smoke.  We rush into the garage and discover a conflagration quickly getting underway (the garage was right under the kitchen which was plumbed with natural gas – so yeah, bad).  My brother (6 years older than me) and I decide that we should form a bucket brigade between the sink in the basement and the garage.  Our bucket: a 24 oz plastic cup of the 7-Eleven variety of that era.

We do not make much progress on the fire.

A few moments later my sister (who is ~20 years old at this time) rushes in and screams, “What the hell are you morons doing?!?!  Put the fire out with the hose!”

Yes – in our panic, my brother and I missed the obvious solution of turning on the garage faucet that already had a hose attached to it.  Opting instead for transporting and throwing cups of water on the blaze.  With Barb’s keen direction, the fire was out quickly and no damage was done.

In my nostalgic haze, I recall that we all sat down later, discussed my poor decision making, brainstormed on ideas to prevent such a thing happening in the future, reviewed basic fire safety, and then went out for ice cream.

And if you believe that, I got a Plymouth Fury to sell you.

My sister is visiting this weekend from the East Coast -- she got in Thursday night.  All week, I'd been sort of going over in my mind options on things that we might do.  She'd been here to San Diego before -- about three years ago, and we'd done the mandiaotry Sea World and Zoo combo then.

I have to say that I have been vociferously berated for having lived here for almost six years, without having been to the Wild Animal Park.  Never quite made it.  And it seemed like every time I considered it, it was something like 104 degrees in Escondido -- uh, thanks, I'll go to the beach again if that's ok with you...

No such problem today -- so we set off and had a great time!  The park really features two things that you can do -- one is walk.  And walk.  And walk.  This park is on 1600 acres.  There's a LOT of ground to cover.  The natural savanna style habitats practically ensure that any animals will be as far from the walking paths as possible, but so it goes.  The park is also a Botanic Garden, so at least the plants can't leave their exhibition space.

The other option is an elevated train ride, which actually gets you a lot closer to the animals than most of the paths -- plus, you are no longer walking.  It was really quite good.  We saw running giraffes, baby rhinos and all sorts of animals that probably don't taste good (except for the ostrich, I think) very close.  Good clean fun for the whole family.  I completely endorse it.

The other animal on active display was the modern Homo sapiens (typically in a family unit).  From my own perspective, I would like to ask two questions: 1) Are parents un-able or un-willing to actully demand and receive acceptable social behavior from children aged 6-10? or 2) Are modern American children of that age more sociopathic than I recall dimly from my own childhood?

Despite evil children though -- great day and a great place.  Why'd it take me six years to get there....