MIGHTY MEATBALLS AND EGG PHOOEY YOUNG

At such a young age, I had not yet formulated my personal beliefs about religion, magic, or esoteric mysticism, but on that day I knew I experienced some sort of spiritual awakening. Was this the product of some sort of magical otherworldly sorcery? Or was this the divine intervention of the actual hand of God reaching down into that small, grimy, sticky brown tiled floored, bustling Manhattan pizzeria?  Though I had only existed on the planet for seven years, in that time I had already consumed thousands of meals. Yet none before it had awoken my tastebuds and stimulated my senses like that one had. Be it delivered by black magic or heavenly delight; I knew wanted more.

After just one bite, I wondered why mom was still toiling tirelessly in the kitchen every night making her usual bland dry meatloaf, humdrum broiled chicken, or those scary little exsiccated crunchy salmon croquette logs, when we could be dining on this amazingly delicious miracle manna every day?  There I was, a sheltered second grader losing my epicurean virginity with my first gastronomic orgasm. You see, that is how much I enjoyed the scrumptious pleasure of my first miraculous Meatball Parmesan Hero sandwich.

Sure, I’d eaten plenty of bowls filled with spaghetti with meatballs before. Mom frequently served her little dense mini meat marbles that sunk to the bottom of her brownish-red dried-blood-colored mild marinera, served over a pile of soft store-brand noodles that always tasted like they stayed in the pot long after Al Dente climbed out, toweled off, and showered.  And there was also the spaghetti and meatballs that my parents always ordered for me at Connie’s, one of the two reasonably priced restaurants dad could afford to occasionally take the whole family out to. But I always rushed through my meals there, because after I cleaned my plate I was allowed to throw a coin in the bar/restaurant’s jukebox to play my favorite song on the machine, What’s New Pussycat by Tom Jones. And of course, I had certainly already eaten many sandwiches. But most were bland slabs of luncheon meat or leftovers slathered in mayonnaise and plopped on boring white bread or annoying crunchy stiff toasted rye with seeds that wedged in between my teeth like homeless squatters encamped in an abandoned building.

But  no, no, no… that day things were very different. In that little pizza joint that I had never been to before, and never visited again, I was served life-altering perfection.  A delicious fresh crispy outside soft inside long roll with lush aromatic red sauce and mountains of gooey rich cheese poured over moist unctuous jumbo meatballs. It sounds funny, but mom called the shots over most everything I ever ate, and I had never had anything like that before. That meal changed forever how I looked at food. There were other options outside of what was in mom’s cupboard and freezer. It was no longer just substance, it was now, in the right circumstance, a source of intense pleasure to be savored and appreciated.

Maybe it was the uniqueness of that day that made that decadent sub sandwich so memorable. I’ve since learned that situation and company can improve a meal tenfold. But that magnificent meatball sammy made me almost forget about the misery of the actual purpose of that day’s trip into the city.

You see, this was the first time I was old enough to really remember spending the day with just my dad. Being the youngest of five, there was not a lot of alone time in general. And with Dad’s work life having become extremely difficult, tenuous, and stressful the previous few years, there was not a lot of time for one-on-one bonding with the bratty obnoxious baby of the family.  There is photographic proof that as one of the leaders of the Boy Scout troop my three older brothers were in, he once took wee little Dan on a day-trip to a campsite in the woods, but I have no actual memories of it. Just the pictures.      

So maybe it happened before, but the first time I can ever recall spending the entire day with just dad, was that Meatball Parm Hero day, when we went into the city together to visit the eye doctor where I got fitted for my first pair of glasses. Although I was not looking forward to becoming the fifth ‘4-eyes’ member of the family, had I thought about it, it would have seemed pretty inevitable. Luckily the day started out better than I expected because I got to stay home from school even though I was not sick. That was an exciting first for me. Since dad wanted to leave after rush hour, while everyone else was chaotically running around with their morning routines, we had a leisurely early morning at the house. 

I had heard stories of my older siblings sometimes going into the city to help dad pick up stuff or run errands for work, but this kind of trek was new to me. The optometrist visit ended up not being so bad. I got a brief reprieve since the glasses would not be ready for a couple of weeks. And it was nice to have a doctor’s visit that did not end with getting a shot. 

Afterwards, I spent the afternoon hanging around Jalofsky And Sons (SP), the place dad had recently started working out of, after economics and changing demographics forced my grandfather and him to have a messy time begrudgingly closing their long-running family business. During a day of new experiences, this was another spot I had never been before. It was on the southern edge of the down-at-the-heels Bowery, right around the corner from frenetic Canal Street, near the base of the Manhattan Bridge. I think dad had me rubber stamping some envelopes but mostly I just sat around kinda’ bored. The best part was when he let me wander around the sidewalk just outside the doorway, though beforehand he did sternly warn me to ‘not go around the corner!!!’ I stood fascinated at how huge the bridge seemed from that perspective.

In between the doctor’s visit and dad’s work, we went for lunch at that aforementioned little pizza place. Dad had me hold one of the restaurant’s few small tables while he went up to the bustling counter and ordered. He came back with two sodas, another very rare treat for me in those days. When the long, luscious sandwich was ready, dad picked it up from the counter, sat back down across from me, tore off a third of it, put it on a torn piece of the wax paper it had come wrapped in, and slid it in front of me with a giant handful of napkins. This was not how things were done when mom was around.

I still remember savoring each and every bite of that sandwich. We never ate anything like that at home. I thought about how lucky dad was that he went to work every day and could enjoy food like that. I don’t remember one word of our conversation or even if we chatted at all. Dad had a tendency of talking ‘at’ his kids, not ‘with’. When I was a lot older, I always enjoyed going out with my parents and their friends, because then I could hear how funny and entertaining my dad really could be. 

I did not realize at the time that dad’s workplace was just a few short blocks away from Joy Garden on Mott Street, the only other reasonably priced restaurant the whole family ate at with any regularity. I liked the food there too. My absolute favorite was roast pork Egg Foo Young. I mean, it was yummy, but it was no magical meatball hoagie.

In those years after I got my glasses, a third restaurant was added to the short list of places we occasionally ate out at. A closer to home cheapie but tasty Chinese place opened near The Drake movie theatre that took a fourth of time to get to than heading into the city. With all the long hours dad was working, time was becoming more important than taste. 

Those were the days my behavior was transitioning from little kid obnoxiousness to preteen smartass. One time at that ‘new’ restaurant, after my constant complaining finally got on my short-fused Dad’s nerves, he barked “if you don’t like it, leave!”  He was speaking rhetorically but I was at that age of testing boundaries and took it literally. I got up and started walking home. It would be a grotesque understatement to say this did not go over well. I was about halfway home when our family car screeched up onto the curb next to me and dad jumped out and tossed me into the backseat yelling “no one walks out on me!!!”. At least I was smart enough to not say out loud, “then why did you tell me to”.

That night was the most furious I had ever seen my dad get… and I have seen him get pretty wound up. But even though he occasionally blew up and yelled at us, the truth is all of us kids knew dad loved us. He never hit or spanked us. Actually, he usually left mom to be the real disciplinarian except for those rare times when he exploded. He constantly self-sacrificed and busted his butt to keep us safe, happy, and fed. But he was of that stoic generation where feelings were never discussed, and father/child relationships were far from the warm hands-on ‘friendships’ they often are today.  And though I usually keep it tightly under wraps, much to my chagrin, I definitely inherited dad’s hair-trigger over-reactive temper.

Dad somewhat mellowed as he got older, and now at 96 his shouting days are long behind him. But age has not stopped him from still being feisty as hell. Only now the blow-ups are more like angry frustrated slightly muted rapid-fire machine-gun shots versus an all-out nuclear explosion. 

When I was visiting my family this past weekend I thought of that meatball sub, as I watched dad plow through a take-out order of veal parmesan eaten directly from the metal tray it was delivered in. Growing up, not only would we have NEVER had take-out (except on some sort of special occasion), but mom would have made sure it was served on plates. Watching dad, I had food envy. His meal reminded me of that hero sandwich of yore and made me regret ordering a plateful of snooty-sounding Penne Rustica instead of an old-school meatball hero. Luckily the next night I was able to recover when I had some of my beloved Egg Foo Young. I guess some things never change.

They have repeatedly heard all the old stories, but I do not think my father’s large collection of grand-kids and great-grand-kids ever saw him when he was really all wound-up and furious like in the old days of my childhood. They’ve witnessed his occasional short-burst annoyed and blustery behavior, but mostly just know the slightly cantankerous guy that, with a wry smile and glint in his eyes, loves teaching little kids to say “phoooey”.

It’s a bit of a head-trip seeing my once tall and sometimes intimidating dad as a rail-thin shuffling nonagenarian old man.  But watching him still occasionally flash his temper and eat Parm or Foo Young reminds me he is still the same guy from my memories. I’m not trying to rewrite the facts of my youth with rosy retrospection. There were good times and bad. And while I might not have ever been buddy-buddy best friends with dad, we did have a loving healthy father-son relationship. And I am blessed with plenty of good memories. Including the one where I spent the day with dad and ate my first culinary transformative Meatball Parnassian hero.