Recently I came across the videos of this wonderful 93-year-old grandmother, Clara Canucciari. Her grandson is a film maker and he has put together these documentary videos, which show Clara teaching us recipes from the Depression. Sprinkled with her simple and lovely stories of slices of life during that time (in one episode, she speaks of having to leave school because she didn't have stockings), she provides a hopeful picture of the life lead during those lean times.
We can all learn lessons of self-preservation and how families thrived from those times as they apply to now. Plus, Ms. Clara's recipes are really quite easy and delicious. There are a lot of potatoes and pasta and legumes, and sometimes all combined in the same dish. Rib-stickin' stuff. Food that stays with you. Every culture has some type of cuisine that meets that criterion. It has to do with creativity, hard work and hopefulness.
I am the daughter of parents who lived through and during the Depression. My mother less so, as her age puts her entering this world at the end of the Depression. My father, born in 1907, was a real product of the times of Prohibition, Depression and life on the Lower East Side of New York City in the first part of the 20th Century. My siblings and I always discussed at least getting my dad on tape telling his stories. The interesting thing about his stories is that until he was in his later years, starting in his 80s, he only gave us little snippets of his life.
"$1.50 for a frankfurter! What the H....! When I was your a
ge, we used to go down to Nathan's at Coney Island and get a frankfurter and a root beer for a nickel."
"What the H.... is this...$20 for a pair of dungarees (jeans, and that was during the mid-70s)? Here's $5.00."
I found out that I used too much toilet paper (we got detailed instruction on how to take one sheet and fold it). I know, too much information.
We were schooled that showers were only to last three minutes, and no more. I am an expert at taking the fastest shower in the world, still. My college roommate used to ask how I got all the shampoo out of my hair in that short amount of time. But like a rat who is waiting for the shock at the end of the experiment, my siblings and I learned to finesse the art of the fastest shower because, at the end of three minutes, my dad would shut the hot water off. How's that for motivation?
My mom talks about "sleeping sufficience," which means, to her, sleeping foot to head, and with five people in one bed, it meant someone fell out of bed at some point.
Like my good friend Bob said the other day about all the stories we share (in our case, about our time at Manhattanville): "You can't write this stuff." My parents have and had some amazing stories. Funny stories. Touching stories. Of family and laughter and sorrow and somehow, survival.
As Dad neared his 90s, he opened up even more with his stories. Since my siblings and I felt he wasn't going to be with us too much longer, we talked a lot about getting his stories on tape. We never got there, as he left us at the age of 92 in 2000. But before that, he shared anecdotes I had never heard before. And yes, we need to write a book.
Here is a taste of the stories that my dad told me, not too long ago. A lot of policemen are involved in these stories. I think (okay, I know) that some of the things my family did were just a little bit illegal in those days. But I like to think all of those policemen really had a good time with my family...
They lived on Delancey Street, all 10 of them: Grandma, Grandpa, Dad (the eldest), and his six siblings. During the winters, they would have to chop ice off the floor of the tenement they all lived in.
My dad and grandpa owned a speakeasy and ran bootleg whiskey during Prohibition. My dad used to hide the whiskey under a blanket in his car (one of those large black affairs with big windows and a running board). One time, a cop (gotta call them "cops") suspected there was something amiss under that blanket and chased my dad on foot, running after my dad's car (which, as you can imagine, reached a top speed of 25mph) and jumping on the running board. Another time, my dad had a batch of whiskey for the speakeasy (located in the Bowery). He asked Grandpa where he should put the whiskey...there was a cop there and he chased my dad up the stairs and they jumped from building to building. My dad outran him.
Another cop was named Chew Tobacc'a Joe. He ran the streets of the Lower East Side and kept order by hitting the bums on the soles of their feet with his nightstick, to wake them up.
My poor Aunt Ruthie was stopped by another police officer who had been engaged to give her a hard time: one of my father's and my Uncle Leo's practical jokes. Although she had the family reputation as the best driver, I don't think she ever drove again after that.
In the midst of/after all the illicit and fun activity, though, my dad worked at whatever he could get. All his life. During those early days, though, in addition to being a hansom cab driver in Central Park, fixing automobiles in the Bronx, and other odd jobs, my dad was also a participant in the WPA. He helped build Laguardia Airport.
With the mettle of their souls and strength of their bodies, they built not only the city but their characters. Not only the city, but the country (see the photographs of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and the other WPA photographers).
When President Obama talks about the fact that "We are not quitters," I believe he is looking at the big picture. There isn't one of us on the planet that is programmed to be a quitter. Everyone of us has the DNA to go forward and create from seemingly nothing. If we are here on the planet now, we are all the product of someone who had to survive. We ain't quitters. Never have been. And so we shouldn't start now.
My dad wrote me a lot of letters during the time I was in college (and since I was the first kid in our family to go to college, he was pretty darn proud), and in all of these letters, as well as in our phone conversations, his advice to me everytime was, "Keep on punching." Use what you got to make something soul-satisfying. Through Ms. Clara's cooking, and my dad's life, we learn a little something about the things that make us live. Not just thrive...but live. And keep on punching.
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