The Last Great Bastion of Breadmaking Badassery

Unless you've been here I guarantee you've never seen anything like it.

Villa's Bread is part hidden hometown gem, part testament to generation after generation of back breaking work, and part time machine. 

Walking through the bakery door is like stepping over a cement threshold into a portal linked to a simpler era or peeking behind the curtain to see the wizard, but the wizard isn't wearing an emerald green velvet jacket; in fact, today he's sporting a red, black and white skull patterned do-rag and sneakers so covered in bread flour that it's impossible to refer to them as any color except off-white. 

And our wizard? He's talking a mile a minute...about bread.

Many of you reading this probably know that the "wizard" to which I am referring is actually my dear old friend Joe Villa, who posted on Facebook two weeks ago that his family's bread business was celebrating its 100th year anniversary on January 1 of 2021. And, naturally astounded and curious, I wanted to know how a business, situated on a residential street in Glens Falls, behind the family home, during this difficult age of instant gratification and gross UPS-delivered consumption, could possibly have made a go of it for that long. Well, the wizard invited this naïve Dorothy over and I learned all about their exceptional business today.

Here's how:

PIETRO

100 years ago, Pietro Villa, who is Joe's great-grandfather, came to America from a town in Italy called Popoli. Popoli is a town in the province of Pescara which is within the Abruzzo region. Per Joe's father Pete Villa (also called 'Pancho'), the area is a hilly sort of wine country and Pietro's family, the Italians from which they are descended, owned the only large sized wood fired oven in town back in the 1800s. Townspeople would stop by Pietro's house when they had a meal which required a more modern touch than a plain old open fire, so even back then, the Villas were baking for the people. 

When Pietro came to this country, he settled in New York city and ran a small grocery store. It would have been a very decent living except that in the early 1900s in NYC it was commonplace for wiseguys and goodfellas to demand a rather lofty percentage of what you earned in exchange for protection and Pietro began looking for a job where his paycheck was mostly his own. Eventually, he relocated to Clifton Park and worked as a horse and carriage long hauler but he missed being in a business which catered in food and people. Hearing about a bakery for sale, Pietro traveled to Glens Falls and bought the bread bakery from the Spinelli family for what is rumored to be a tidy sum of $3,000.00; pulling $1500.00 in cash from each of his front shirt pockets. Prior to the Spinelli family running the bakery the property had belonged, originally, to a German immigrant family who ran a bakery and a one room schoolhouse next door. The one room schoolhouse, which was added onto and made into living space, has, for 100 years, served as the Villa family home. The oven, in the standalone bakery building on the rear of the property, dates back "at least to the Civil War". 

THE OVEN

To be clear, this is not retail space. It's deemed "wholesale" and this production is hard work and sweat and physicality within a building, that from the outside, looks like granddad's garage or hobby shop. There is so much to see upon entering this inner sanctum, and because I have arrived at the wood burning hour, it actually takes a minute (or three) for my eyes to adjust to the haze in the air. It's a smoggy combination of ash, soot, and humidity. This silly girl expected to smell bread but, in fact, despite being Covid-cautious and wearing a cloth mask, my nose instantly fills with the same sharpness that my husband, a retired firefighter, used to come home reeking of when he had just gotten done with a multiple alarm all-night fire. So, to me, Villa's smells like danger and lactic acid; feverish heat and Abruzzian pride. 

As Joe expertly shovels white orange chunks of torridity, muscles flexing and eyebrows raised to his hairline because of the passion with which he speaks, he explains their standard for at least 50 percent humidity in the bakery in order for the dough to "perc" or rise properly. Then, he talks about how the weather affects output due to fluctuations in this humidity. He talks about humidifiers and the chemistry of breadmaking which is all metrically important, but meanwhile, I am cognizant of a few other things as I glance around, writing notes as fast as I can. First, I am dressed all wrong for this place. I am wearing black pants, black boots and a black winter jacket. Everything in this bakery is absolutely bathed in white flour, even "Smitty", who is man number three on the Villa bread totem pole and takes direction like an affable private in the Army. Also, despite the fact that it is 25 degrees out this morning, I am the only person with long sleeves on. Joe, Pancho and Smitty are dressed for a fine August day and it's easy to see why, in spite of the fact that it's January. In front of us is a 24 inch scorching hot open mouth leading to a king-mattress sized platform of sand, chunky firebrick, and what remains of today's inferno, now reduced to briquette sized bits of blazing coal. 

The second thing I notice is that there is nothing in this oven. The bread is sleeping in wooden racks, under flour sacks, waiting for their precise moment of placement. First, the coals have to be dragged out of the kiln, into a fireproof bucket. Second, the bricks have to be watered down, coaxed to the perfect temperature using a specially drenched mop that, when put into the roasting hole, does not burst into flame. Finally, when the heat is just right, Smitty and Pancho race the doughy loaves to Joe in an assembly line style, and each yeasty bundle is shuttled in via the longest wooden handled paddle anyone's ever seen, approximately three at a time, until all one hundred are nestled side by side like newborns in a nursery. We peek in. It's quiet for the first time since my arrival. Then the oven door is shut, a timer is set and we wait.

You might find this a queer analogy, but this bakery, for me, has all the feel of an old school firehouse. There is a dedicated crew working on less than an average night's sleep. Everyone has a job, clearly according to rank. Smitty agrees with my firehouse analogy as he sweeps glowing coals off the floor that missed the fireproof bucket and follows with the constant arranging, collection and disposal of the ashen refuse. He is methodical and careful not to drop anything that could possibly set something else unintentionally ablaze. Where Joe is grandiosity and stories; big movements and imposing tools and poles; Smitty is mostly quiet and maybe even a little wary of the flames. Joe is the Lieutenant. Pancho is the Chief. Smitty is the firefighter. Together, they use their bodies and old fashioned hard work to form the culinary staff of life.

Like a firehouse, there is a brotherly banter, salty talk, and an undeniable feeling that keeping the hours witty and quippy while you are at work is a necessity or else you might remember that you are in a small, dimly lit building that can't be good for your lungs because the air quality is not just poor...it's absent; and if you don't have good music on the radio and Adirondack Red Wing memorabilia on the wall and stories about people who come knocking at the door on Christmas Eve looking for 15 loaves of bread as though it just falls out of thin air and not as a result of the unbelievable amount of effort of people and not machinery, it probably wouldn't feel quite as jolly. 

PROVOLONE, BUTTER and GARLIC

The bread bakes for 25 minutes. We reminisce about school days. Pancho talks about having had polio as a child (which explains his rather John Wayne-like swaggery totter) and how he used to get summoned to the office regularly at St. Mary's School, starting at age 10. Promptly excused from classes in order to head home and help bake bread, he laughs good naturedly at the memory, satisfied with his lineage and the life that was, in many ways, chosen for him. He always knew this would be his business, and despite having a diabetic condition which doesn't allow for regular consumption of carbohydrates, he is quick to tell me, eyes smiling through the floury lenses of his glasses, that his favorite way to eat Villa bread is with salami, hot peppers, and provolone. 

Fascinatingly, all three employees have diabetes. This seems like an unnecessarily cruel joke that mother nature has played on these bakers of bread. Their shared affliction pings my heart. Having three breadmen who can't eat bread at will feels like taking the homeless and requiring them to count money for a living. When they allow themselves an indulgence (which might be more often than a doctor would advise), Smitty likes his bread hot and plain or with butter. Joe enjoys his in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, garlic bread grilled cheese, hollowed out boules filled with soup or chili, and cut into slices broiled with sauce and cheese like mini pizzas. He also mentions grilled PB&J. I haven't had breakfast. I am hungry and intrigued. 

Today, they are baking something called a double loaf. Raw, and pulled from beneath a chalky sack, it's easily the size of my grandmother's decorative round sofa pillows. It will be even bigger when it emerges from the oven. Something about this makes me happy. The double is specially made for a man who has season tickets to the Bills and who stops in to get his lucky loaf before he departs for each Buffalo home game. Another 100 loaves have already gone in and out before this early morning batch, 200 in all on a normal day.

When Covid-19 hit and bread was scarce in 2020, Villa's was almost back to the good old days when 700 to 800 loaves a day was their average. Local stores couldn't keep it on the shelves. They asked for two deliveries a day. It was a heyday of sorts for a short while, but once national store-brand production caught up with local demand, the Villas quietly returned to their regular output, no fanfare. No parade for helping us get through a very tough spot, but the Villas are used to discreetly helping those in need behind the scenes. Ramping down was understandably difficult. Anticipating demand was tricky. The pig farmer who gets their leftover bread had a we-baked-too-much glut for a few weeks until communication improved and grocery buying leveled out again. 

CHANGE

Several things have changed the bread-baking landscape in our area. First, there are fewer "house stops"; mostly just older Italians who gleefully and habitually buy their daily loaf of Villa bread and those who are confined to home. Pancho fondly recalls the days when bread was delivered door to door, and although a loaf has never been cost prohibitive, the Villa family has, since their inception, routinely supported a few families' bread needs due to disability, fiscal hardship or both. Pancho's father (Joe's grandfather, also named Joseph), having had a wooden leg himself, knew that although he struggled, he was luckier than a lot of people when times were tough. And, the irony of a second generation bakerman with a leg of wood shoveling splintery skids followed by loaves of bread in and out of a hole filled with fire all day is not lost on me. It had to require unbelievable bravery, strength and conviction. 

An entire band of merry men used to be employed in order to run a bakery putting out 800 loaves of bread a day; Pancho and Joe can remember upwards of ten employees at times, but Joe, Pancho and Smitty are a triangle of three today. They've lost all the (now defunct) Grand Unions, the small Mom and Pop markets that used to be in town; the larger, yet still family owned markets like Sokol's and Lewis's are gone. No more Cooper Street Price Chopper, no more mini-Choppers. 

That list there, it gives someone like me palpitations, but today no one seemed overly concerned by the economic ups and downs. "I think it's from breathing all the flour, but we're all nuts in here," Joe chuckles. I pressed them about who is set to inherit the business since Joe appears to be the last in line. There is no clear answer. He has nephews who are in college and a brother who is a school teacher. Pancho says when he's 80 he might think about slowing down. I didn't ask when that was but I presume it's sooner rather than later. 

A gentleman I recognize from church stops in at 8:00 am. He knows the bread is coming out of the oven and pays Pancho for about 10 loaves which he will ship to his sister in Texas. Another man, speaking mostly Italian peppered with broken English, enters with what appears to be his son. The son is silent and wide eyed. The Italian man asks Pancho for "bruciato", meaning bread that is burned on the bottom. Hands gesture. I feel like I'm in mid-century Italy. I'm so touched by this I feel my throat constrict but I swallow down hard on my emotion because I am wearing mascara and I have a white floury face now and I don't want to appear kabuki when I leave. 

The Italian customer is masked, so it's hard to tell, but based upon his stance and the twinkle in his eyes and the lyrical language he is spilling forth, he is absorbing the surroundings like a sponge. Pancho lets him choose two fresh from the oven beauties and bags them for him. Exiting with a lilt in his voice that suggests this is the highlight of his day, he yells (that he'll be back) "Tomorrow!" The third person that comes inside is Joe's lifelong friend. He is going to be a new father, literally any day, but he is cool as a cucumber. Babies, brotherhood, bakeries. He has worked here before when they needed help. He grins and shrugs and says he will work here again.

LA BELLA LUNA

I ask the men what their best business practices are. Pancho says, with all seriousness, the ability to get out of bed. They begin at midnight to do this job, first making the wood fire from all the pieces that Joe cut the afternoon before and starting to bake prior to the sun coming up for the first round of pre-7:00 am deliveries. Joe can't seem to pinpoint a best practice, I think because he does so much and it's all vitally important, but we think back to his athleticism in younger days and he is grateful for having had experiences that built his strength as a young man. He skated and ran and skied. He also raced motocross. It's easy to see he misses all of that. Admitting it would be nice to have more than a couple weeks' vacation after working the same job for 35 years, Joe tells me what I already know...that Villa's only shuts down in July and December, harkening back to a time when Pancho was in the Navy and when businesses in the city closed after Christmas for some much needed rest. 

With all the middle of the night activity, and the Italian heritage, and the fact that I am sitting in a bread bakery, we can't help but reference the movie Moonstruck. "La bella luna!" Joe hollers. I declare that Joe is Ronny Cammareri, angst included. He smirks and shows me he still has both hands, despite the fact that they cramp regularly due to the work. 

Plus, he listens to Ozzy, not opera. 

One last thing that reminds me so much of the firehouse, is that these men have used their bodies in physical jobs all these years and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to do this every day. They admit to being pretty beat up. The knees, the shoulders, the back, the hands...the lungs...the eyes...human skin and bones can only take so much. They covet and appreciate their down time. It gives their muscles and respiratory systems a well earned break, although breaks are few and far between. Really, they are the last great bastion of breadmaking badassery. There is a enormous price which these three men pay for keeping all of us, all of our holiday tables, all of our Sunday dinners and football games and relatives in Texas in the best Italian bread you've ever tasted. 

And for that we should be humbled, forever in their debt, and honored to grace our homes and bellies with their product. 

#mushroomtumbler

Parlor?

Perhaps you have also, but in recent weeks I've gotten notifications and invitations from friends who have decided to jump over to a social media platform known as "Parler". I don't know if it's a less pestilential place to interact, but I really like the name Parler.

It sounds like parlance...like a speech or formal debate. That's clever. I definitely enjoy a good one. 

It sounds like French speak...like "Parlez-vous Francais? Baguettes, Lacoste, Brigitte Bardot, La Tour Eiffel, et Notre Dame? Oui, oui! 

But, really, in my nostalgia-seeking ear, it sounds like "parlor", or the "formal living room". The parlor used to be a space kept spotlessly clean and used primarily for conversation and the reception of guests. My Mom used the word "parlor" to refer to our front room just to the left once you stepped inside the door of my childhood home. See, this is how my mind works. One minute my cousin asks me join a new social network and the next thing you know, gimme three steps like the old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, and I'm back in 1977. 

So here goes...

Things you might find in a parlor: 

the good furniture, sometimes covered in plastic;

if you're rich or have a grandmother that taught music, a piano;

family portraits and photo albums (definitely the school variety, maybe staggered along a wall with those of your siblings and perhaps the white satin covered book marking the occasion of your parents' wedding);

a thick carpet recently vacuumed so that there are absolutely no footprints or marks, save a backwards line where the Hoover was meticulously dragged out of the room and handily unplugged;

crystal decorative pieces like vases, candlesticks, or candy bowls;

encyclopedias, and other books that suggested the guest was in the home of learned people (no paperbacks or copies of Sports Illustrated or the TV Guide; they were in the "den").

My mother dreamed of wallpapering our home's entryway and "parlor" with colonial gold pineapples because the spiky tropical fruits are a universal symbol of welcome and hospitality. I remember standing next to Mom in Frasier's paint and wallpaper store; me on a step stool, both of us thumbing through enormous book after enormous book looking for a freaking needle in a haystack; ummm, I mean looking for pineapple wallpaper. 

Personally, as a small girl, I preferred the velvety flocked designs and would excitedly solicit, 

"How 'bout this one, Mo-om?" 

while rubbing my sticky seven year old hands all over the cherry-colored luxurious patterns, never mind what kind of non-pineapple fruit they had embossed in their furry Liberace-like loveliness. But no, Mom would shake her head and shudder, barely glancing over at what I'd found, as she knew that much to her decorating dismay, and despite her unwavering example of all things 1970's colonial, like eagles and revolutionary war soldiers and rusty plaids and olive greens, I'd turned out to be a really tacky little kid who thought the Solid Gold dancers were the pinnacle of sophistication and class. 

Anyway, after what seemed like hours of hunting; I, slightly buzzed due to the paint fumes and the heady smell of pre-pasted vinyl, sat resignedly on my paint splattered step stool and began offering giggly hellos to anyone walking by. Mom, finally satisfied with the task at hand, held aloft and with conviction a huge black-handled book that we would be signing out on our honor and taking home to lay next to the wall for a fortnight so that she could see it in the light of the morning and the dusk of the evening, just to be sure it was suitable for our "parlor".

You might have already guessed, but it was. 

Another item, if you are truly old school, that you might have also had in your parlor, were ceramic ashtrays. If you're old enough, you definitely remember when people still smoked freely and unquestionably indoors. 

Our green household ashtrays were kept on the bottom tier of our mid century two-tiered end tables, sort of out of view, but readily accessible should a guest pull out a pack of smokes or a pipe while seated in the parlor. The ashtrays were in the shape of leaves and had divots in them where a cigarette could be set to rest in case the smoker didn't feel like holding it aloft and gesturing with it like Sinatra on stage in Chicago.

Finally, my childhood parlor had three windows that formed a sort of half circle on the east side of the house and when I make hubs drive by the old place this time of year and those very windows are dark and unlit instead of bedecked and adorned for the holidays, I slap the dashboard and become rather sputtery and indignant because it's the ideal spot for a big Christmas tree. Crikey! Why don't they have one? (Real Christmassy of me, I know, but I can't stand a perfect tree window - or three - going to waste this time of year.) Hubs just drives. He knows better than to argue against an exclamation like that (insert eyeroll here, I know I am ridiculous). 

The parlor in my current home is where we usually sit for early morning coffee, reading, writing (I'm here right now) and non-distracted visiting with guests. One cousin affectionately calls it the "old lady" room because there is precisely not one modern object in here; instead we have soft watercolors and birds and Victorian style cherub prints. Recently, I laughingly referred to it as the Miss Havisham room because it could truly be a spot where the clocks stop and if someone dropped you here fresh from a Rumpelstiltskin-style snooze, you would be hard pressed to determine whether it was 1950 or 2021. 

That, you see, is on purpose. 

Bottom line, I adore this parlor and to circle back to the idea that started this whole thread, I don't know if I would like the other Parler. I like wallpaper that says welcome and hugs and face to face interactions and the smell of good hot coffee and flouncy furniture and even an old ashtray if you please; all with a big Christmas tree in the front-facing window. 

Can you find me a social media site that feels like that? If so, I'd consider visiting that Parler. 

Stumbling by Mahov

On our walk this morning, hubs and I found ourselves strolling up on Mahov’s house. The man, the myth, and the legend was out front shoveling, wearing a nondescript pair of navy nylon ski pants and a black wooly winter hat that covered most of his face.

To the average onlooker, Mahov’s just a big bear of a guy chipping away at ice on the driveway but to me, seeing one of the town idols from my childhood is still a rather monumental treat. He glanced sideways at us with that same smooth yet slightly squinty glance that as a ten-year-old I’d behold through the smudged Plexiglas; a glance where he surreptitiously scouted where to pass the puck and a glance that in a fraction of a second said to his opponent, go ahead, check me and I’ll make you forget what day it is.

I’ve never known what to say or do when I see pedestal-worthy athletes around town. I immediately feel tongue-tied. I look at my toes like they’re suddenly novelty items. My fingers curl and uncurl repeatedly within my mittens. I get what hubs calls the itchy-buggitchees where I start speaking too fast and I do weird things with my neck and shoulders. On this day, I peeked to see if Mahov still had the big red C for Captain sewed on his chest, and as I did so, stumbled clumsily on a deep rut in the road. Meanwhile, hubs, completely nonplussed, struck up a bit of conversation asking Pete if he was the proud owner of this new stretch of ‘waterfront property’ growing larger and larger due to all the melting ice.

They laughed together. Mahov said yes, in fact, he was buying a boat.

I’m grateful for hubs’s grace and ease for I am neither graceful nor easy around Mr. Peter Mahovlich.

You see, Mahov is a hockey God. Nostalgically, he represents, for me, a uniquely specific capsule of time…the time when my hometown built an arena and we banded together as a community to support all things hockey. When I see his face I see, in almost a sped up cinematic display, some of the best years of my life.

Ned Harkness, former NHL coach and hero to the town of Glens Falls, jockeyed hard so our little piece of hometown heaven could procure the Adirondack Red Wings, which in 1979 was the AHL affiliate of the NHL parent club Detroit Red Wings, and served as my personal initiation into the world of professional sports, a love of all things Canadian, and my ongoing acquisition of hockey related vocabulary. Just like movie lovers who rattle off lines from the very quotable “Slapshot”, hockey slang is a language all its own shared by casual fans, riotous revelers, and radio and television commentators; as well as pond and pro players alike.

Before we had hockey, famous folks were just people in magazines and on TV to a ten-year-old kid like me, but after the Civic Center was built, and the Red Wings started leasing apartments and houses in Glens Falls, my friends and I began seeing celebrities upon the streets of our city. We’d come to school with stories of who we’d seen and where, breathlessly told at the coat cubbies while shedding our parkas and collectively rattling names off with that faraway star struck glint in our eyes. I have to tell you, the AHL guys were pretty easy to spot. The married ones and their fox fur-coated wives worked out in the early mornings at the Nautilus. The single players danced at the local bars but they also came and talked to us at our schools with their accents, sometimes Canadian, sometimes Eastern European, sometimes Massachusetts or Minnesota; tossing back their feathered hair dos, scuffing the heels of their wooden clogs, and flashing their snowy white dental plates. Near the end of season one, which led to the playoffs, we saw that many sported superstitiously driven facial hair and even the townspeople refused to shave, catching on to the belief that a fresh face might bring bad luck.

As time went by, the team and their training staff mixed and mingled very freely within our habitat and every unattached female this side of the Hudson between the ages of 18 and 25 would head to “Heritage Hall”, a social gathering place within the arena, open both before and after the games. Those on the hunt for a hockey husband would stand around trying not to appear overly excited while holding small plastic cups of chardonnay. They wore tall, wine-colored stack-heeled boots with tightly tucked in dark washed and white stitched designer jeans, applying and reapplying their strawberry flavored Kissing Potion in the arena’s cold cement-walled bathrooms while we preteen girls looked on, wondering which of them we’d see sitting in the wives’ section (lower section JJ) next season, bundled together like a group of silken lemurs, chatting animatedly amongst themselves and trying not to catch the eye of us regular folk seated on the outside of their immediate vicinity.

Pete Mahovlich, Dennis Polonich, Claude LeGris, Al Jensen, Mal Davis, Greg Joly, Teddy Nolan, Jody Gage, Brad Smith, Dave Hanson, Rich Shinske, JP LeBlanc, John Ogrodnick, Danny Bolduc, these are the names I typed in without referencing anything but my own gray matter. I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast but I can tell you with about 90 percent certainty this was much of our regular roster in the inaugural season of 1979/80.

Their posters were on my wall, torn from the center of the programs we bought and brought home every weekend. Those particular black and white faces, some smiling, most serious and stoic, were what I looked at each night instead of counting sheep. I find it interesting as I reflect on the amount of money we spent on glossy programs; money that could have been used on milk or bread or a fix for our old garage that listed so badly to the left we couldn’t risk parking a car in it…but no, we bought thick, stat-heavy and photo-filled programs without thinking about it. It’s just what we all did. I imagine that being in the stranglehold of inflation, not that far removed from odd/even gasoline, the hard-working types who paid to go to Red Wing games felt like these tickets, these programs, these bags of popcorn, these sno-cones and these waxy paper cups of soda poured over gobs of ice… these were investments in our future.

We did it FERDA game. We did it FERDA fun. We did it FERDA players and if you are playing along with the hockey slang, you, like Mahov, might have said, we did it FERDA town. 

Through My Lens

I took Photography as an eighth grade elective. 

With an eye for beauty but no significant talent in the areas of drawing and painting, I wanted a way to express myself that didn't require me to put pencil or paint or cray-pas to paper anymore.

Photography it was.

My teacher was Mr. Barili, a tight-lipped, toneyed, Ralph Lauren oxford-outfitted gentleman with a thirty dollar haircut and a snazzy signature that looked like it contained more creative skill and imagination than my last twelve assignments combined in Mrs. Rowland's seventh grade drawing class. I coveted his extravagantly fancy felt tipped fountain pen, clipped securely to his shirt pocket. He repeatedly brandished and tapped it on completed prints drilling into our heads the finer points of photographic composition. Punctuating his thoughts, he'd relinquish its inky blackness to his polo-pony'd pocket with a self satisfied sweep suggesting he knew, without a doubt, precisely about what he was speaking. 

No sooner did I land on my assigned hard metal stool in that class when it was announced that we would all be responsible for buying our own 35 mm cameras. Handouts were provided with details about what model was required and where to go to make the purchase and the approximately 2 days' time we had during which to procure them; no excuses, no assistance, no subsidies, no kidding. 

Also, no camera, no class. So, as you can imagine, we lost more than a few kids on that day. 

I went home that night and tried selling my father on the idea that I (we) needed to buy this piece of art equipment and, swallowing hard, steeled myself, expecting an outcome wherein I would be lined up outside the guidance office the next day, dropping Photography along with half the class and adding a crap-tastic study hall to my already very vanilla, non-riveting schedule. However, Dad, purveyor of all of my required equipment throughout the years, thought a fancy camera was a solid investment in my education and happily agreed to take me shopping that night, despite the fact that this was 1982 and money was super tight and this particular photobox was going to be close to a hundred dollars. 

I'll always remember the occasion and how having the camera changed me. 

We went to Caldor which was in the local mall and had a decent "sporting goods" section which included a variety of cameras. The silvery Pentax K-1000 boxes were stocked high and deep because, I'm sure, every middle and high school in a 40 mile radius was requiring this particular model of its art students back in the day. I spied a well to do classmate and waved. She waved back and both of us scanned the camera selections on either end of the display, tucking our chins into our turtlenecks, me biting my thumbnail and half hiding a grin that said 'my parents do for me'...and 'look how special I am'.  

Close to my birthday, my father and I agreed that this would be my present and, picking one up, I scuffed slowly, cradling it to my chest all the way to the checkout counter like a baby. 

On my actual birthday, I would receive the accompanying zoom lens, also no cheap ticket.

I began to see the world through my camera lens that year. I wasn't super proficient either at loading film, which we had to practice again and again with our hands hidden in soft black velvety bags, unaided by sight, in an effort to repeatedly force the act into our unconscious, tactile second natures or at developing film, but I loved the preciseness of the mechanical part of it as much as I loved finding things to shoot. The chemical funk of the darkroom reminded me of red wine vinegar and made me crave tomatoes and leaf lettuce while the boys in my class clumsily groped all of us unsuspecting girls, out of sight of the teacher and, ensconced in the bloody red light luminescence, huddled improperly and devilishly close.

Our assignments rarely included the objects I preferred to snap. I wanted to click close ups of single and unique facial features. I liked the messy menagerie of a foul afterparty mess divulging an underaged alcohol blast. I got down and dirty with textures like mammoth sized bootprints stamped deep in frozen mud, bouncy wavelike treads on a rubber truck tire, and the curious peeling of rosy translucent 12 year old female shin skin after an unfortunate and accidental motorcycle tailpipe burn. 

Barili wanted trees, flowers and foods. 

I wanted life 

as art 

as life. 

I think I earned a B in Photography that year. Mr. B never saw or drummed his pen nub on any of my decent work. I only gave him what he asked for...subjects befitting an overprotected twelve year old's perspective. I remember submitting a print of an inflated surgical glove when he asked for a picture of a hand. 

I also remember he wasn't amused. 

The class might have taught me how to frame an objet d'art but I truly taught myself to look at everything twice that year as a result of being behind a monocle. I learned that when you look hard enough, the regular can be divine. I picked up that no two artists see things exactly from the same vantage point. The more I squinted and paid attention the less I quit writing off the everyday as ordinary. 

Dad was right. The "solid investment" he made in my education taught me how to flip everything on its head in order to get a better look at the light and the shadows.

Like a camera. 

 

Edit: Mr. Barili was (and probably still is) a fantastic photographer. His work was unbelievably complex and grand and I am sure he would have loved to have offered those of us who wanted it a more challenging curriculum. I don't fault him at all for not asking us for shots worthy of publication and I always wished I could have taken additional classes from him. 

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Bright Green Jackets and Bright White Lights - a Tale of Two Givings

Hubs and I parked the Prius in one of our usual spots today in order to take the min pin on one of her jaunty city walks. We can stroll merrily in our own suburban neighborhood well enough, but our doggy diva prefers sidewalks and front porches with big wooden steps upon which she can hurtle herself into the arms of one of our assorted daily well-wishers; and if she's lucky, receive a doggy treat. 

Trust me, she is often lucky.

As we parked today, we saw a fellow wearing a day-glo green parka standing outside of a Jeep jostling an immensely large clear mug of liquid. The jacket's color suggested either extreme skier or mad scientist or perhaps just someone who was also planning on strolling and preferred the sort of textile driven visibility that would most certainly lower the odds of getting hit by a car. 

Hubs remarked on the man's very obviously displayed cylinder. "What is that? Chem lab?" 

The gray haired gentleman expertly poured cloudless liquid from the beaker into another receptacle, a simple yet beautiful vase. Then, from the hatch, he brought forth with flourish, a giant bouquet of safe-in-plastic autumnal hued flowers. As Hubs leashed the min pin, I watched from my parking lot vantage point while Mr. Green Jacket, the amateur florist, arranged the browns, oranges and golds in a pleasant pattern; smiling and smoothing their ochre and auburn heads. 

Walking toward him, I remarked that the arrangement could not be more lovely. He blushed, thanked me, and remarked that he hoped that the recipient would love them as much as I did. I assured him that they would be a total home run. Someone was in for a gorgeous grace-filled surprise.

My heart sings in moments like this. My right hand floats chestward as if possessed during such occasions and I clutch lightly around my neck and at my clothing. It's as if I hold myself because I sense the crescendo of my heartbeat. My heart is a red balloon filled with gratitude and it will float out of my collar and up to the sky if I don't hold the feeling tightly.

And so I cradle it and breathe in love like the warm draft of a woodstove on a wintry day.

I am snug, and pleased with the world. As we cross Hubs, with a light hearted wisecrack, makes it known to the flower arranger that he's upstaging all husbands with the flowers; making them look bad. With a phosphorescent wave of his arm, the almsgiver of blossoms yodels the name of the nearby shop where he purchased them. Smiling, we express our thanks and walked on.

It is the time of year where all of the Halloween and harvest pumpkins are being discarded below the curb, primed for the street sweepers. The carved ones have taken on the appearance of shrunken heads. Others are solid and in one piece. I beg Hubs to grab some of these discards for the squirrels in our yard who, after I split them open, feast upon the seeds and fleshy bits with the excitement of Romans at a banquet. I love when they wring their little hands as though they can't contain their ecstasy of being offered such a delicious prize. 

Forty five minutes later into our walk, we see fluorescent flower man ushering small children at a cross walk near the neighborhood school. Hubs and I smile widely at one another. That explains the jacket. Rosy cheeked from the cold, he grins, eyes crinkled behind his glasses, listening intently to the little ones recounting their days. He sees us. We wave. He waves back with mittened enthusiasm. 

Tonight, on our evening walk, with the min pin bundled and darting into leaf piles, Hubs and I notice how many homes are already decked out for the holidays. It's quite dark so we can peek into windows as we stroll past; trees festooned in garland and lights; icicles, snowy white and electrified, hanging from garages and walkways; blowup St. Nicks and North Poles, some tall, some small, all carefully tethered to the cold ground and whirring gently from the fans inflating them for our collective delight. 

Turning onto one of my favorite streets, I see a home lit from top to bottom; 'Griswald-like" in appearance. A charming little tree stands squarely placed in the middle of the lawn with an illuminated sign set to its left. Initially, I thought it was a prop; maybe a giant letter to Santa or a copy of the naughty list, but upon closer inspection, it was a fervent request...a plea for those walking by to please "Be an Angel" and select a tag off of the giving tree**. As I'm sure you are aware, plucking a tag off a giving tree obligates one to benevolently buy for the recipient and return that special something in a prompt and elvish fashion.  

In our many years together, Hubs and I have grabbed tags off many a church giving tree, workplace trees, and even at Walmart in years past when we walked in three days prior to Christmas and saw that half the tags were still hanging unclaimed, but this was the first time we'd seen a tree like this on a regular city street in front of a regular city house. 

But this is no "regular" city house because the thoughtful people in this house recognized a need and took on the task of showing up for and shining a light, quite literally, on the plight of those who are hurting this holiday season. 

This is a house of "Why not me?" instead of "Why me?" 

This is a house of "I can," in place of "I can't."  

This is a house of "I will do" in lieu of "I could have done..."and as I read the wishes of the children on those tags, the whole scene touched me so that I felt the red balloon start filling up in my chest again.   

Hubs is used to my tears. He knows me. He sees first hand how I am touched day after day by the beautiful things which I am blessed to witness...ordinary people lifting one another up and creating opportunities for connection in a world that has been advised to avoid those around us, even the most vulnerable, in the name of safety.

One of my friends told me, via phone from across the country yesterday, that she feels as though she is stuck in a Jell-O mold; just wiggling from side to side from an occasional jolt in the biome. Truth be told, I've been known to enjoy a cup of the cherry goo, especially with fruit, but after hearing her analogy, I no longer have the childlike urge to suck it through my teeth. I've literally lost my taste for it just like I've lost my patience for rules and the regulations and the tamping down on all that we love as humankind, even though I know it's supposedly good for us. 

Safe for us. 

Responsible of us.  

So, I un-looped a tag off the tree with the hopes that by the time this child is old enough to know what Christmas dreams are, we will be back to our natural, regular routines; methodical and commonplace; the return of our ordinary days and our ordinary selves. 

And a sense of divine gratitude for each other.

I hope that the flowers meant for the crossing guard's special person have a starring role in the center of his or her Thanksgiving table. 

May blessings rain down like glittery white icicles on your holiday and on you. 

With big red balloon love,

Me

**P.S. The address for the giving tree is 16 Garfield Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801 if you feel moved enough to want to send a toy to a needy child. (Deadline for receipt of gifts is Dec, 18, 2020, thank you.) 

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The Avon Series - Blog 1

My first Avon product encounter was purely by chance. Walking home from school with my best friend in 1974, I unintentionally stepped on something under a bunch of orange, crunchy fallen leaves that caused my foot to roll slightly and being a little kid who liked finding random objects, I curiously picked it up.

I remember it was a small plastic cylinder, kind of like a Chapstick, which we had in my house, but larger and the color of a dark night of rain; fancy in its appearance. As I turned  it over in my hand, my friend decided we should show it to her mother. We lived in the same apartment complex, but Teri's building was nearer to school than mine, so her place would be our first stop with an item of such grand importance. This was back in the days when kids found something of value and quickly ran home so that they could turn it over to the first available adult, otherwise if you hid it in a pocket it glowed there like red hot contraband and would burn your hand if you fiddled with it.  

Rose, my friend's mother, identified the valuable object right away as an Avon "Demistick". She popped off the cap and expertly twisted up what was left of the solid milky looking fragrance. There was very little left in the tube, clearly this had been discarded, street-side, on purpose. As Rose tossed it in the trash, she explained that this was not an unusual item for a lady to have in her purse or coat pocket. Since nearly all of the women in our apartment complex were Avon customers, Rose naturally had a Demistick or two of her own. Grabbing a new one from the medicine cabinet, still packaged in its small box, she sat us down in the living room so that she could show it off. In my mind's eye, I see a navy colored label showcasing a female figure, Greek or Roman, mythical in appearance. The goddess may or may not have been wearing a toga. As a five year old, this seemed like an unbelievable treasure. 

"Moonwind," Rose said peering at the label on the bottom of the stick. Teri and I looked at one another and she went on to explain that names of all of the Avon perfumes were redolent of far away places or romance. Teri and I observed excitedly as she first dabbed some on herself; permitting each of us to test the grown up scent on our wrists and behind our ears. We lifted our little arms to our noses in order to inhale our newly spicy bouquet.

Rose game me that Demistick, probably because I was so enamored with it and the one I'd stumbled upon was not useful. I carried the Moonwind Demistick to my apartment and placed it in my red patent purse which was used for carrying my small sized identification and books and candies for church each Sunday. I don't recall applying it but I liked taking it out and drawing in its incensy goodness.

My mother got her first visit from the Avon lady almost immediately following my discovery. Ringing the doorbell with her small valise of items, she was a bit like a traveling sales Mary Poppins. Makeup, fragrance, and jewelry would pour out of what seemed like too small a case to hold all of the goodies which Mom and I were encouraged to admire, hold, or sample. 

Flash forward to November 2020 and I have begun selling Avon at age 51. 

I am the Avon Lady. 

Needing a little something special for myself, this seems very comfortable and natural. That early childhood introduction led to a lifetime of Avon during which I've received dozens of cherished gifts, and, when I was old enough, selected products of my own which have brought me an abundance of happiness.

Tune in for more Avon stories, which I plan to chronicle here and on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/valbucciavonlady.

Enjoy these cool photos I found of vintage Demisticks. Do you remember them?

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Ports and Payots

I have to keep reminding myself that my neighbor is sick.

He has cancer. It's a cancer that he has been battling and which initially gets knocked back by the medicines his care team offers; but then the disease becomes smarter and stealthier and the medicines need tweaking so that they can once again sneak up on it by surprise and trounce it into a prolonged chokehold.  

I wonder how my neighbor, who is the same age as my father (a survivor of the same cancer, thanks be to God) keeps the faith in a situation where either the cancer or the treatment has to win and there isn't an odds maker in Vegas that would be able to give you a smidgen of reassurance which'd make you want to take the action on this. 

Today, I was pulling dead flowers out of my front garden when he came driving up in his car, fresh from a two hour treatment, zipping up his Patriots windbreaker over top of a gleaming white gauze pad which sits over top of the port in his chest. The port, for those of you who haven't taken Cancer 101, is where the chemo goes in. 

Chuckling, he flipped back his ball cap to show me and my other neighbor, both of us outside on a good weather day for yard work, how he had just become a new member of the 'bald head club', popular with guys of a certain age on our street. He explained how his hair was tumbling out, not by choice, and how he was in style now; his normally thick and healthy white follicles gone in favor of a shiny baby pink crown which he kept touching, self-consciously.

He speaks, we laugh, we listen. His countenance is so jolly it shames me. It shames me because today is my first full day off the couch since September 8. I've been sick myself, but with something that I will eventually overcome. It just takes me a while because I am compromised in multiple ways these days...and I'm a bit of a dweller...and I'm completely strung out on anxiety. But alas, I am me. 

As I sprawled out on my living room couch this past month, watching the best and brightest days of Autumn pass me by sunrise after sunset like my Fiddler on the Roof record stuck in a bad groove, I have been watching my neighbor in his Patriots windbreaker maneuver his lawn tractor, week after week, cutting and bagging his leaves and grass. From my vantage point I spy him carefully assembling his Halloween decorations, filling his birdfeeder, and piloting his car on daily errands with his wife. But me? I mostly sat, ordering things online that I don't require but which amuse me during my prolonged downtime: new storm cloud colored walking sneakers; a vintage oxblood Aigner leather clutch that reminds me of 8th grade; and clearance priced tank tops from Duluth Trading Company for next summer or southern travel, because, heavy on the spandex, they girdle my middle aged belly better than any other brand at the moment. Even deeply discounted they are too expensive but I don't care. As our left side couch cushion becomes permanently imprinted with my ass, an extra few dollars to cradle my guts seems inconsequential. 

But every package that arrives is proof that I cannot drive, cannot shop in a store like other normal (albeit masked because of the pandemic) folks, cannot walk without assistance, all due to an unforeseen complication from a recent medical procedure. The typical high that one might get from the receipt of a package has, for me, turned into more of an exercise in despair; and all the while I convalesce I repeatedly spot the neighbor, far sicker than I, going about his business.

His hair immediately brings to mind my Aunt and her fight with multiple myeloma which, I am sorry to say, she did not win. Let me just pause to affirm that "sorry to say" sounds like the weakest, most inept way to convey how the hole that she has left in our collective family's heart and lives has changed us all, and not for the better but I don't know how else to impart it properly without taking thirty paragraphs to do so. 

My Aunt Rene (pronounced REE KNEE) lost her hair in the same way that my neighbor is losing his, from treatments which were meant to kill the rapidly growing cancer cells that ailed her, but which also killed the rapidly growing hair on her head and caused her confused scalp to sigh and willingly release all of her long gray-streaked locks in clumps. Rene used to have a particular way of tucking her hair behind her ears. Having had surgeries as a little girl in the 1950s, she had small patches of scar tissue both in front of and behind her ears and I don't know if was purely habit or a purposeful move for vanity's sake, but she used to leave a wisp of hair in front of each ear as she tucked the majority of her tresses behind her for an easy, casual look. As her hair started falling out, those wide front of the ear pieces, almost like the side locks on the most devout of Jews, stayed stubborn and strong, while she started finding their wooly sisters and brothers on her pillowcase, on the back of the couch, and blocking the drain of the bathtub. She called me the day of our family reunion and asked me to bring down clippers and a scarf. I knew what was coming, and I did what she asked. 

That day I shaved her head. As our family gathered and milled about outdoors, we sat on my Uncle's couch and I tried my best to make her comfortable by telling her things like how perfectly her noggin was shaped and how she absolutely did not need to cover it with a scratchy wig or some sort of soft bandana, and how it looked nothing like Darth Vader's dome when we got that spooky peek of his giant, soft, peachy head sans-helmet in one of the Star Wars movies. She giggled wearily and played along, as we both tried to make one another feel less awkward about the fact that I was shearing off the last pieces of her pre-cancer identity. Upon finishing, I flicked hair off the couch onto the floor where someone would sweep it up later and as she rummaged her hands about her head, we looked at each other with a sense of relief. However, the humid August air hung with an atmosphere of collective sadness for having shared the experience. Eventually, the hair went in the trash. The more that I think about it now, I wish we'd saved it, like the soft precious pieces folded away in our baby books. 

Anyway, today's experience got me blogging again. I hadn't the energy nor the enthusiasm for it in the last 6 weeks but seeing my neighbor up close sparked something in me and I swear as I hacked at and pulled the dead grass from the ground level of my stella d'oro day lilies, I felt just like I was pulling hair from the scalp of the earth. I could hear my Aunt whispering, in my ear, with my hair style so similar to hers; a big hunk of silvery gray hanging down in front as I pulled my garden gloves off and tucked the rest of my very long argentate fall behind my shoulders, "you'd better start to write again."

And I did.  

 "Payot": Hebrew word for sideburns.  

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