TWO MEATBALLS & MASHED POTATOES, twenty-five cents

Lunchtime did not loom large in my imagination during my youth Justifiable perhaps given the likelihood of all too familiar contents in my paper bag or lunch pail. I don’t recall seeing a single cafeteria, serving what I imagined to be delicious lunches. In the small two room schoolhouse in New London, Connecticut, I am sure there was none; there was barely room for the four grades of children crammed into its old walls. Give the economics of the Depression era I would not have been allowed to eat in a cafeteria anyway.

Life and lunchtime changed when we moved to Alameda, California in my junior year however. In our own small enclave surrounding the high school, there was a bakery, a coffee shop, a music store which allowed you to listen to records before buying, a few small shops, a movie theater and J.C. Penney, where I began working to earn money to spend at these stores.

And among these stores, a mere block and a half from the school, was the Alameda Delicatessen, advertising two meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy, and all for twenty-five cents! This was the era when gasoline was less than a dollar, but twenty-five cents was still a bargain. My feet wore a path to the deli each day at noon, and in spite of ridicule from classmates, I ate there daily for the remaining two years of high school.

Sixty years later, at a class reunion, a much admired former classmate, who had been a professional baseball player and then scout, confessed that he too had gone to the Deli every day of his high school life, and had eaten meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy and paid twenty-five cents. He too knew a bargain when he saw it.

The large Swedish company IKEA, sells plates of meatballs and gravy to hundreds of people daily. They even sell bags of meatballs you can keep in your freezer for people longing for a meatball fix at home. Costco sells huge bags of meatballs as do a lot of other stores. If people didn’t love meatballs no one would go to the trouble. A local food editor last week did a whole column rating the quality of the meatballs sold at various stores in the area. Whole Foods got the best rating, and it went downhill from there, with some poor company rating no stars. And speaking of Stars, which is the offering at your last cocktail party which got the most action? The large cauldron of meatballs in spicy sauce, right?

Countries around the world have their own version of the meatball. In my husband’s Danish family they are called frikadellar, and are served with mashed potatoes and gravy.

But I have to say, none of these meatballs can hold a candle to those twenty-five cent meatballs at the old Deli which has long ago closed its doors. They are still the best meatballs I ever ate.

THE DIFFERENCE

Old R.O.T.C. photo circa 1944, and yes, that is me, front row center, the only girl. It was a serious time, and everyone still here was gung-ho to go. I really wanted to be a WAVE, but my father wouldn’t hear of it, so I settled for an ROTC uniform. So many of our classmates had already gone to war, and more were leaving as their names came up. Dr. Advice, who had not yet become Dr. Advice, would leave for training soon at Coyote Point, and then out to sea in the South Pacific. Some couples rushed to get married, several girls while still in High School, and one boy, a good Catholic, convinced his girlfriend that they needed to get married before he left because he wanted to have sex before he left in case he didn’t come back.

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And there were plenty who didn't come back. Thinking back to that time, I remember those fresh beardless faces who were so eager to join up, but didn’t make it home again. My father, a career Navy man had been gone for nearly five years when the War finally ended in August 1945. He was at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, though we had no way of knowing this.

The point of departure and arrival from the West Coast was the Golden Gate Bridge; the first and last thing of home they saw, and the tears fell unashamedly from war weary faces as they stood at attention on the decks of battleships, destroyers, carriers and cargo ships passing slowly beneath the bridge when on the way home.. At one point during the War the San Francisco Bay was covered with a mind boggling number of ships, all awaiting orders to ship out. You had the feeling there were no other ships left, and yet on the other side of the Bay over in Richmond, Henry Kaiser was building a record number of new ones daily. He got the Government contract by convincing them he could not only build great ships, but do it faster. He got the all time record by building one in 4 1/2 days.

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High School over and the War still on, many of us decided to delay college for a few years and went to work. My family being involved with the Matson Line, it was where I gravitated and I was hired as a mail girl at $95 dollars a month. I lived at home and thought it was a fortune! The job was mundane except for the mail being delivered to the upper echelons, and I delivered mail up and down the Embarcadero and also to the American Hawaiian Steamship Line offices where the handsome young pursers checked in upon arrival back from sea. I was promoted to receptionist status which meant I saw them first!

V-J Day came on August 15, 1945, and all Hell broke out all over San Francisco. People spilled out of stores and offices along Market Street, cars and buses stopped where they were, and the cable cars expelled tourists who were getting more than they bargained for in their San Francisco holiday. It put New Orleans Mardi Gras to shame. Horns honked and blared, whistles blew, confetti flew all over us, either thrown by those of us running madly up and down the street or out of upper windows of buildings. People poured into the area from all the side streets to join the the joyous celebration. You were pushed, shoved and hugged and kissed by any and everyone who was nearby, and you did the same. The screams of “The War is over! The War is over!” filled the air while people shook their heads in disbelief, that after all this time it was finally over and all our boys would be coming home. Bottles were passed hand to hand, and I remember someone shoving a bottle of apricot brandy into my hands shouting “Keep it—the War’s over!”

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Oak Knoll Naval Hospital

The War was over, and now a new phase began—that of recovery. There was a huge rush of weddings and people a few years older than their classmates enrolled in colleges and applied for jobs–any jobs. We were among the newly married, and I volunteered to work at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland where returning veterans recuperated. We read to those without eyes, wrote letters for those without arms, made dish gardens of succulent plants for them to watch grow, and simply talked to those who just needed to talk. I worked mainly in the burn unit.

At my real job as a dental hygienist I answered the phone one day to hear a very nice young man’s voice saying he needed an appointment. I did a mental picture of him because of his voice and pictured him as rather tall and good looking, a returned veteran perhaps needing both tooth cleaning or perhaps a filling. As it turned out, we extracted all of his teeth and made dentures.

His appointment day arrived and I looked up from my desk to face a frightening apparition. His face and hands were massively burned with pieces of his face and ears actually missing. He was from the Mid West but would not contact his family or friends. He was a loner at the hospital, sitting by himself by a window whenever I saw him. He had been a tail gunner on a B-17 Bomber which had crashed and burned over Okinawa. I learned that he had liked chocolate cake so I made him a chocolate birthday cake. It was his 22nd birthday—a year younger than I.

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Part of an unfinished column War Correspondent by Ernie Pyle, who died on the island of le Shima on April 17, 1945:

“And so it is over. The day that it had seemed would never come has come at last. But there are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men…..Dead men by mass production….We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousand. That’s the difference.”

GENERATIONS

“Reflections of the Past” watercolor painting by kayti sweetland Rasmussen

Our seven year old great-granddaughter’s birthday occasioned the gathering our clan in Southern California this weekend. She will be attending the same neighborhood school where both her parents and their best friends, plus a number of other family members and friends went not so long ago.

It was especially strange to me as being in a military family, I seemingly moved with the seasons. When we met, at the age of 16, my future husband asked how many schools I had attended. I was in my junior year of high school at the time, and answered “twelve so far.” After graduation I counted three more.

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A group of our family stayed in my daughter’s lovely home for the weekend, and as we all called out our good nights, I was reminded of the old TV series “Little House on the Prairie”. Their closing scene each week was the sound of each family member saying “good night” as the lights went out in each room of the large house.

As I heard each of my family in turn say their “good nights”, I thought of how nice it is to be the progenitors of these delightful people.

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Painting is of grandson Matt at age 13 hearing the girlhood stories of his great-grandma Leita.

MESSY PIANO TEACHER

A piano teacher lived next door to us in Southern California when I was a freshman in high school.  The only reason I remember her is that my grandmother told me that she was an artist, and that all artists are messy housekeepers.  She pops into my head occasionally when I clean house.  I don’t think my grandmother ever set foot in her house, but she was absolutely sure her house was a mess because when she spent so much time playing the piano she couldn’t possibly be cleaning her house.

Well, I am and always have been an artist, and the health department has never called an impromptu inspection.  My mother-in-law lived just around the corner for many years, and she never complained either.

The nicest thing about the piano teacher was her two daughters, who being 2 or 3 years older, knew the latest hairstyles as well as being able to teach me the two-step.  Now I had taken dancing lessons for most of my childhood, but this was a whole new method.  We sent for diagrams from Arthur Murray, set them on the floor and followed the colored footsteps.  It was great, but there was no one to dance with, and we never went anywhere you could practice, so we just had Arthur Murray in my bedroom.

This was the period when I discovered boys.  Oh I knew about them of course, and had even had a boyfriend in kindergarten, but this was the year someone actually came to call on me.  He didn’t really come to see me, but I just happened to be climbing the old fig tree in our alley, and this is the way he rode his bike on his way home from school.  We would just stand talk, he would scuff the dirt with his toe, and I would pick a fig now and then for him.  Not an especially hot romance.  But then a boy actually came to the front door and my mother let him in!  What do you do now? I thought.  So we made fudge.  I’ve made a ton of fudge since then, but none so nervewracking.

Occasionally I mowed the front lawn in order to catch a glimpse of the boy across the street.  He was a senior, and a football player.  His nickname was “Shifty-hips” Parton, which was a moniker to be reckoned with.  I wore glasses, and one day he spoke to me and insulted me by telling me I ‘looked intelligent’.  From then on, I tried to never wear my glasses.

And oh yes, the messy piano teacher tried to teach me to play the piano, but it was too late.  I had discovered boys.

 

LOOKING BACK

No, don’t look back.  Things were never as good as they seemed at the time.  Some of the friends you chose in high school did not continue to be the friends you would keep or would choose to keep after you became a “thinking” human being.  However, in contrast, some people you chose to overlook at the time became dear as the time passed.

Class reunions give occasions to reevaluate your friendship scale.  Being easily impressed, one friend I chose because she was voted the prettiest girl in my senior class, and I thought the glamour would rub off on me.  It didn’t.  We were both military “brats” which gave a certain point of departure, she being army and I proudly proclaiming my navy heritage.  Her chin was permanently pointed toward the sky, and she obviously saw her father as at least a 3-star general instead of his lower rank.  I on the other hand, was well aware that I was not the admiral’s daughter.  However, I did choose her as my maid of honor when I married, and she certainly dressed up the receiving line.

We corresponded from time to time throughout the years, and I was delighted to see her across the room at a subsequent reunion.  But when I approached to greet her she looked uncomprehendingly at me, checked out my name tag, and effused “Oh Kayti!  I didn’t recognize you!”  I didn’t know whether to be insulted or pleased to think that I had perhaps changed for the better in her eyes.

Some high school friendships do continue and become more precious as time goes by.  Dr. Advice was fortunate and blessed to have a number of that sort.  He made the acquaintance of his dearest friend at the tender age of 5 when they shared a naptime mat in kindergarten.  They were also neighbors a few houses apart.

  They shared their affection and confidences throughout their lives until sadly, fate decreed otherwise.  His longtime friend departed too soon, and left gaping holes in the hearts of his family and friends.

At reunions, you table hop, laugh and compare notes from the years in between–it’s compulsory behavior.  As the years pass you’re afraid to ask the inevitable question: “whatever happened to…..? ”  You realize that though the stories you tell may begin on a jaunty note, in spite of your good intentions, can turn a little sad at the end.  You only think you have control of the story you’re telling.