The Nonni List

I woke up this morning with my Great Aunt on my mind. 

She was bold and opinionated with us kids and although she could be gracious, helpful and kind, she was oftentimes picky, difficult, loud, intractable, and argumentative around the adults. She had her own exceptionally well defined ideas about things, including the fact that she would never, under any circumstances, eat with a three-pronged fork.

Yes, you read that correctly. 

Someone gave Nonni a three pronged fork.

WHAT?

Holy shit. Get Nonni another fork before she launches that one!

It was made clear to me as a child that Nonni and her preferences were a two sided coin: first, you always knew where she stood, and that was good. It was then up to you whether or not you wanted to challenge her and invoke the wrath of God. Second, her elder standing within our family and the sheer size of her brood made her appear Queen-like, so despite her eccentricities, very few within her 'court' messed with her.  

I mostly watched Nonni from behind couches and curtains. It wasn't until high school that I began having long talks with her and wishing that I might also boldly declare whatever and whenever I wanted to; that I might be more of a staunch and prickly stickler about things.  

Whereas my Moo Moo used to tell me that her sister Flo had no right to be so discriminating and high-handed, I nonetheless regarded her quizzically from my vantage point. I wondered how it was that a woman from a tiny town, with nine children, living one tiny hiccup above the poverty line (and let's be real, by today's standards, pitifully far below it) could possibly have so many fist-upon-table pounding requests and requirements of this life. 

I have only recently begun to understand her.  

She was first-born in a family with two working parents and five active children. Her siblings, birthed one after another in rapid succession, all had something particularly special about them whether it was the unique position of being the only boy, or the chatterbox or the beauty or the one who would follow in her mother's footsteps and become another nurse in the family. Grateful to move away from home and start her adult life, Nonni married a handsome but domineering Italian. Al vigorously exercised all the clout in their home and although he loved her dearly, he maintained order by striking furniture and other unfortunate objects in plain sight, suggesting she might be next. Working directly across the street from her home in a woolen mill was convenient as she lacked a car but it also narrowed most of her meanderings to a two or three street radius, within which other family members also worked and lived.

When your world is that small and your young body is constantly growing babies and nurturing children and you don't have the luxury of a partner who provides an audience for your dreams and admiringly solicits your opinion and you don't travel anyplace outside the dwellings of family and friends, you learn to be fastidious and fanatical about the things you can control...like your notion that light colored fur coats are the most sophisticated, or that blue frosted cakes are prettiest. Or, what singular brand of tomatoes you use in your sauce, what fabric you prefer for your undergarments, what side of the street is best to walk on, or the only type of fork you will bring to your lips. 

Today I started a "Nonni List"; a small but significant tabulation of beliefs I won't compromise on, ideals that I have a solid scrupulousness for, physical things that I prefer and will travel elsewhere to procure. The exercise kind of excites me. The idea of "no compromise" makes me feel a bit tipsy. I will commence with one or two easy items and then maintain it as an organic, ever evolving page in a notebook which I can return to as needed. 

Have you really taken inventory of who you currently are, you know, besides those inane Facebook questionnaires? Maybe it's a midlife puzzle I'm looking at, and a burning need to start putting it together now that I have all the corners and edges in place. Maybe my more recent musings about Nonni have made me realize that we have limited time in which to make obstinate declarations and cocksure pronouncements before someone starts ordering us cases of Ensure and takes our driver's licenses away. Anyway, I'm looking forward to free flowing ideas and seeing what emerges. 

Thanks, Nonni.

#mushroomtumbler

Squirrel Survival

The squirrels got peanut butter sandwiches today.

It's bitter cold and they are looking a little skinny. "Lucky", the one with only a nub for a tail, is always first on the scene in the early morning and she reminds me, as she sits atop the empty bird feeder 30 feet from my kitchen window, that it's time to eat. 

I spread pb on white bread and cut the pieces into squares. Four pieces of bread makes 18 squirrel sandwiches. Keeping the cat and the min pin at bay, I open the door to head outside in my bare feet slipped into old army green suede clogs, kept side by side on a mat for such journeys, and I make my way to the back of the yard near the fence line. I breathe ice through my nostrils and hug one armpit, my bare fingers pressed against my shabbily dressed body. My other hand holds breakfast for my backyard visitors. I make clucking sounds with my tongue. "Lucky" watches me from a tree branch about 10 feet from the ground where I am setting out half of the sandwiches. It's a good time to thank God and the universe for all the comforts I have in this life. I'd last about an hour in this outdoor wasteland of an icebox if I were suddenly turned into a squirrel. 

"Leonardo", "Donatello" and "Michelangelo", the aggressive trio, come a little later in the morning. They chase "Lucky" around the tall pine trees so fast that their bodies and tails turn into swirly ashen barber poles from where I stand. I drink my java and watch their antics. I am glad "Lucky" is such an early bird...or early squirrel, as it may be. The trio repeatedly tag team and eventually chase her off as they forage for whatever is on the menu, their little gray hands moving in rapid circles as they either devour or cheek-pack their sustenance. They remind me of Scrooge counting money. 

Then there's "Bart" who is dark as night and, I'm guessing, a baby summer squirrel from last year. He showed up for the first time in the late fall, inky black, super tiny and fluffier than most of my regular beady-eyed crew. At first all he could do was run and hide from the Italian gang but now he bravely tries to hold his own. I usually put his feast about 15 feet away from the others so he can eat in peace. Some days he makes it in time, other days he sniffs the ground where it was and sits on his haunches tentatively scanning the perimeter of the yard. I try not to feed him twice because I need him to figure out when to show up and meet his own needs. 

I collect uncarved, discarded pumpkins from the roadside in early November to split and use as weekly treats for the hunter-gatherers. I always hope they can store the seeds someplace but mostly they seem to bury them and then I get weirdly placed pumpkin plants in the summertime; they grow about an inch tall until they are mowed over by hubs cutting the grass. Offering the pumpkins as early winter food is a useful exercise until everything starts freezing. I can see faded orange iced over pumpkin guts back there. "Bart" digs for them sometimes. 

They interact like people. I make up stories in my head as I watch them. "Lucky" is a traumatized loner but she keeps on coming back knowing there is usually something special here for her. The trio has consistent companionship. Their meanness is only a survival instinct. Members of a kind of rodent mafia, I don't hold it against them. "Bart", poor little guy...still learning how to find his food and defend himself. I root for him daily. 

I splurged and bought a bag of walnuts for my oatmeal at the grocery store on Friday. However, I saw the forecast this morning and snow is coming, so it will get relegated and I will eat my Quaker cereal plain this week. 

My friend Amy told me that a member of her family crafts little wooden picnic tables that nail onto the trees. I sip my coffee and wonder what the woodworker's squirrels are named. 

#mushroomtumbler

These Are a Few of My Favorite Clothes

 

Did you have a few special pieces of clothing growing up? You know, items that you loved so much you wore them to bits? Maybe you or a nostalgic parent kept an item or two packed away someplace for old time's sake. Have you ever thrown something precious out or given it away only to have such regret later that you don't know how to process that loss? Well, the clothes are long gone but the memories remain. 

Before I knew anything about designer labels, I had a few favorite items of clothing in my childhood wardrobe, and by wardrobe I mean a two-doored light yellow painted piece of wooden bedroom furniture in which I hung clothes and lined up my slippers, boots, sneakers and shoes pair by neat and tidy pair. (It did not lead to Narnia...just sayin'.)  

I was a super lucky kid. My mother made a lot of my clothing when I was small and although I outgrew things pretty rapidly from year to year, I had quite a few items that I cherished. Regrettably, I don't know what happened to them. 

If you're like me, you wish you had those treasured frocks today, if only to run your middle aged hands over their textures and picture yourself as the little pip whom they once fit perfectly. 

One favorite item of mine was a red calico quilted jacket with a close-cut hood and chunky brown wooden toggle closures. Toggles were new to me (I'm guessing from pictures that I was 6 when this was my autumn overcoat) and I remember trying valiantly in a mirror to steady the little red loop and work the toggle through it; but reflections make things appear backward and my fingers were too tiny and impatient to manage the task. I remember loving the color of the coat and the softness of the hood against my head and face but I think what I liked most was that someone needed to rescue me from it when I was captively buttoned. I'd stand at attention while Mom's gentle hands freed me, basking in the warmth of being babied, just a little, during an age when I was a "big girl", more than accustomed to dressing and undressing myself. 

Another favorite item was my one piece terrycloth short romper that was held perfectly snug across my flat eight year old body with a thick piece of elastic, like a soft blue hug. It took no more than thirty seconds to slide it on, grab my rubber flip flops and skip out back to our sundappled yard on a hot summer day, where I could find shade under a tree with my Barbie and her swimming pool, the water heated to a pleasant-for-fashiondolls temperature while I picked pine needles and scooped dirt out of its placid blueness so that Barbie's blonde hair didn't get grody. 

Mom didn't sew my denim gauchos with the matching vest or my cream colored gauzy western shirt festooned with sepia brown thunderbird appliques on the shoulders or the oxblood leather knee high zip up boots with the crepe soles and funky braids down the sides that made me feel so grown up, but those were all favorites too. 

It's so easy now to just press enter and order outfits and I, for one, admit to doing that far too often. Lately, though, standing in front of my closet and grabbing the same old combination of raggedy, patched jeans and a long sleeved tshirt, I'm beginning to feel very strongly that less is more. Maybe it's because I'm middle aged and loathe anything that requires a lot of fuss, or maybe it's because I returned mostly to simple black, blue, grey and white basics a few years ago; but when you have just a few standards, some reliable go-tos, and a single closet of predictable well made items and you really love each one, less clothing actually is more enjoyable. If they have a story behind them (like the jeans you wore when you saw a certain concert or the leather jacket your husband bought you for your 20th anniversary) even better.

I just wish, for old time's sake, that I had one more piece made by my Mom with love...maybe something where I'd need her kind and careful assistance when it comes to the buttons, just so I can feel like her baby again. 

#mushroomtumbler

 

You Really Got Me

My husband doesn't get my attraction to David Lee Roth.

His eyebrows are bushy. His mouth is muppety. His leg splitting martial arts displays are a spectacle. He crows, blusters and struts, accented by slippery smooth spandex, silvery swords, swashbuckling belts and swirling ribbons.

It's an understatement to say hubs doesn't appreciate Dave's flair for the theatric like I do. 

As a long time lover of his campy style and provocatively androgynous dress, I know he's no puritan. 

He's about as romantic as a slap on the ass. 

His live, carnal, strategic placement of a bottle of Jack Daniels: stage front, crotch high, thumping and splashing onto the faces of young fans huddled together with their red throats unhinged, looks, to me, like a warbler feeding a nest full of hungry baby birds. 

I find that poetic. My husband finds it repulsive.

Repulsive or resplendent, DLR represents a slice in the pie of my life. Whether in a 40 year old photo with abs for days and lush leonine hair, or guest-starring as himself on the Sopranos with a fried yellow perm and a sun capsule tan, or in a modern day snap wearing a foppy plaid suit, sporting a crew cut which would make any other 66 year old look like a sentimental jarhead, I see those eyes, that jaw, that swank, and get sucked right back to a time when things for me were 

damn 

near 

perfect. 

Dave appeared during a year when I was newly hormonal. I felt fine, moderately attractive, on top of my game and reigning sovereign over friends, extra-curriculars, and school. My family was in tact. I was discovering and owning my own rather bold clothing choices. I wore bubblegum lip gloss which alternately melted and solidified in my pocket.

It was a time when I was encouraged to voice an opinion. 

I was pleasantly surprised and emboldened by how much of an opinion I had to voice.

I had my own money to buy my own music. 

And what I bought most was Van Halen.

After sports, dance lessons, dinner and homework, I would lie on my back on the bedroom floor with my preteen frame comfortably sunken into three inches of thick purple wall to wall shag. Boom box by my shoulder, I'd plug it in preparing to make phone calls to friends and tape music from the local radio station. 

It was about the most content I'd ever been.

Back then, people would call Y96 FM and request songs. The DJ would announce the requests on air, sometimes with a dedication including an actual recording of the impassioned, phoned-in plea. If you listened often enough you could tell who was going out with who, who coveted who, and who had the most diverse musical tastes in our small town. Once in a while, someone would mess with a steady couple by calling and asking for a suggestive song to be dedicated to one of the betrothed. On one particular night, I was lucky enough to be listening when that happened. 

After twenty minutes of mushy ballads, the DJ announced a request for "Eruption/You Really Got Me", specially sent to a girl from a boy who had no business sending it to her because, well, damn, because she had just requested Andy Gibb for her boyfriend three songs earlier! The DJ chuckled during the intro, calling it a gutsy move. Sensing a little drama, I rolled over propped my hands under my chin and pressed "record". 

I knew the Kinks' version of "You Really Got Me". I'd had a British Invasion education imparted by my Beatlemaniac mother; but this...this was different than the tinny, mono, sneery Ray Davies track. What were those sounds in "Eruption?" Was it classical? Was it rock and roll? What the hell? The guitar was raw and squawky and it sounded like...well, it wasn't so much what it sounded like but more what it felt like. 

It felt like stepping off the side of a building into a complete and welcome free-fall. It felt like release. It was seductively somatic in a way that was untapped and unnamed. When the first four notes for YRGM played, I was awash in its raunch factor, and rent asunder by the gritty assuredness and nastiness of it all. 

Completely unprepared, after a lifetime of being good and following rules and showing up for everyone and doing my best and never being late and always eating my vegetables, a dormant sprout broke through the wet soil in my belly and a pair of black rebellious wings unfurled across my back. 

I shakily pressed "pause" when the song was done. I rewound the tape and played it again. Lying back on the floor, I studied the patterns that my Raggedy Ann lamp made on my ceiling. Had I not noticed before their resemblance to musical notes? When it was over I rewound it yet again. I got on my feet and looked in the mirror attached to my dresser. I turned to the side during the passionate caterwaul of Eddie's finger tapping and regarded my young, promising figure. I casually flirted with my reflection. Then, as Dave wore and tore through the chorus, my scalp became electrified. Shaking my hair and coaxing it forward over one eye, I undid the restrictive leather band and flung my navy blue digital watch. As it bounced off the side of the bed, I decided I didn't care what time it was, not now or ever. All that existed was me and that song.

This was not the Sonny & Cher we listened to in our living room. This wasn't even my Grease soundtrack with Olivia Newton John owning her own sexuality in those black leather pants. This was all me. 

Me and Mister David Lee 

and the whole tight pants'd package of Van Halen. 

I went to bed that night knowing every squeak, every line, and every nuance to that two song coupling. 

And I wished the girl it had been requested for was me. 

Upon waking, the rhythm drummed through my head like a heartbeat. When I walked the hall at school, it was to the cadence of Alex's drums. I wasn't an 8th grade kid with braces and a velour Izod. I was an acrobat, a magician, a superstar, a minx. I bought the Van Halen debut album as soon as I could that week and dove in like a starving man who'd been offered a bag of donuts. Then I quickly and enthusiastically followed it up with Van Halen II. 

Hallowed be thy Van Halen name. 

Obsessed, I John Hancock'd notebooks, lockers, letters to friends, and the knees of my jeans with the VH symbol (beautifully and coincidentally, Van Halen and I shared the same initials). I owned that signature. The perfect upright linear symmetry of it stacked against the wild molecular abandon of the notes that it stood for felt exactly like me. 

It represented who I was. After all this time, I suppose it still does.

Diver Down was released in the Spring of 1982. One of the wealthier kids in school heard me describing VH's stellar remake of "Oh, Pretty Woman" and he chimed in, mistakenly referring to the Diver Down album as Dow Jones. 

I laughed. Poser.  

I indoctrinated everyone I could. I called the radio begging for songs from Fair Warning and Women and Children First. They are somewhat darker, but they still felt like liberty and breathing room and the vertiginous first hit of a fizzy soda up the nose. 

One friend had an attic bedroom (and permissive parents) and we wrote the lyrics to our favorite VH songs on the walls. I wonder if the words are still there 35 years later, and if not, what killjoy painted over them. 

When the 1984 album was released, I thought the single "Jump" was a load of crap. I still can't listen to it. Too candy-sweet, too watered down for the masses, and way too synthesized, gah! It's like being forced to hold a cheek full of apple Jolly Ranchers when what you desperately crave is wintergreen Skoal. 

Quarter sticks of dynamite replaced bottle rockets. Car rides with boys replaced my bicycle. Black concert tees with long white sleeves replaced those pastel heat pressed ones with the glittery rainbow decals selected off the wall at the local mall. Cherry satin lipstick replaced the bubblegum gloss. In every photograph from that time, a cynical sneer replaced my smile. 

I was breaking out. 

My parents were breaking up. 

Ironically, so was Van Halen.

Therefore, as the front man of the band that best represents my coming of age, Dave is not just a rocker I can't turn away from. He is part of my DNA. He is time in a bottle. He is the capricious carefree feeling of standing on the shore yelling "here comes a big one!" before that wave, bigger than expected, sucks you under and drags you out deep, plunging sand down your suit and salt behind your eyes. 

He's the rainstorm before the hurricane. 

I see Dave this way because my life took a big old shitty turn during the Van Halen break up. They mark a space in time for me like some people might mark other significant events, you know, like before this or after that. 

But as I grew to accept my parents' divorce I also grew to accept post-DLR Van Halen, which many of us Dave fans call 'Van Hagar'. It's a weird parallel, but the parallel is mine. 

I heard "Unchained" one day during a particularly stressful time that included doctor-assisted attempts at baby making and my fingers started moving like digits possessed, tracing the VH pattern on my leg, air-drawing my old initials. The song offered me a sense of being unyoked...emancipated. My husband bought me an iPod and I downloaded the whole catalog.  

So here I am, now, at age age 51 and as John Denver says, they (continue to) fill up my senses. 

Van Halen sounds like safety chains breaking off a boat trailer, the scratching of lyrics by lead pencil on an attic wall, the snick of a Bic lighter wheel repeatedly turning before it gives rise to a flame, and my footsteps running down exactly 13 stairs while my Mom cooks dinner and my Dad takes out the trash. 

Their harmonies smell like the metallic lemonessence of Sun-In hair lightener, the piney diesel of a joint, the powdery innocence of baby oil smoothed in circles on my suntanned teenaged stomach, and the comingling of a dozen different musky perfumes as we girls assemble on a Friday night ready to storm the auditorium doors for the school dance.

Their voices taste like tangy grape Bubblicious gum, like the spicy endorphin rush of a jalapeno pepper, like a combination of half coffee, half milk, and three big spoons of sugar thrown back in an unholy hurry immediately following my 5 am paper route. 

Van Halen feels like comfortably worn rainbow flip flops and inky designer Jordache so tight they are a hundred groping hands around my thighs; my palm curved around the perfect smoothness of a glass bottle of Coke while someone dances up on me exhaling on the bare back of my neck. 

They look like a boy cradling my face, telling me how pretty I am while we speed dangerously down the highway in the back of a truck with no cap. 

So, I write this for my husband. Now he knows when David appears, I can't help but invite to the table my pre-adulting rebel self. Maybe he can see the positive in that. 

Because, hand to Jesus, having her nearby feels amazing. 

Side note: I've seen Diamond Dave, AKA the Ice Cream Man, twice in concert. The first time he performed solo (in Saratoga, where he splashed his JD all over the girls in the front row) and the second time he fronted the inimitable Van Halen (in Boston, Mass). Both nights were bucket-list items for me; pure heaven. I know St. Peter is supposed to meet us at the gates but I hope when I get there, Eddie Van Halen is behind him, all hair and smiling that binky-mouth grin, beckoning me inside. 

#mushroomtumbler

The Avon Series - Blog 2

This morning I woke up thinking about my friend's Mom, "Ginnie".

As I stagger out of bed and down the stairs to make my coffee, I know precisely why she is on my mind. I have an important task at hand but I've got no experience with said task. I know I'll be asking questions and making mistakes before I am on the right path. 

Questions and mistakes make me uncomfortable and overwhelmed. 

I want to do things right the first time. I don't want to look stupid.  

And then, I take a breath and think of Ginnie and the impression she made on me. 

Her youngest child and I have been friends for most of our lives. As kids, we were on the same softball team. When you play second base and your friend plays shortstop, you develop an understanding and rudimentary skills based upon simple drills. She runs to cover third, I run to cover short; she makes a move, I back her up. I run to the ball, she runs to cover second; I make a move, she backs me up. If you're lucky, life on the field naturally extends to life outside of sports and I always felt we had each other's backs. 

After high school, we lost touch as friends so often do, although I once caught a glimpse of her at a David Crosby concert. She was scurrying to her seat, close to the front of the stage, and when I hollered, she saw me and smiled, nodded in my direction and flashed me a peace sign in a blur of magenta tie dye shrouded in sensamilia. 

After college, I got hired by a well known insurance company that seemed like a safe bet. On the first day of orientation, I sat with 40 others in a conference room to learn about company history and expectations. After two hours of corporate jargon, we were offered a break and a dozen smokers scrambled from their seats like racehorses out of the starting gate. One of them was my friend's Mom, Ginnie.

I hadn't seen her since my softball days but admittedly, she is hard to miss. With an orange pixie cut, bright coral lipstick, dark crimson nailpolish, a slim figure that would have been model-perfect for the late '60s, and a crushed velvet jacket in a shade of eggplant that suggested she wrote her own fashion rules, Ginnie stood out; a kaleidoscope of color among the rest of our drab business attire. We were mostly in our twenties, "dressing for the job we wanted" per the Harvard Business Review. I wore a yellow blouse and a black fitted jacket with heels. I had my curls shorn into a stark crew cut. I look at my albums from that time and shudder at my snapshot which now comes across as part bumblebee, part buzzsaw.

I approached Ginnie, (re)introduced myself and we sat alongside each other during training whenever possible. She was easily 25 years older than I, but she had a schoolgirl buoyancy. When asked by the trainers if we had any questions, she always had five or six. She raised her hand repeatedly and requested that the presenters slow down, for she didn't write as fast as they spoke and she was surely missing half of what they had to say. She didn't mind that it was clear she needed extra time and extra help. She demonstrated, for those of us who felt insecure or like we had something to prove, that it was better to be comfortable enough in your own skin to throw that glittery manicured hand in the air and ask for what you need as a way to be successful. 

Concerned about my image, I was competitive and worked relentlessly to make a good impression. Ginnie used to visit my desk, encouraging me to slow down, to stop drinking so much coffee, to take a break when one was offered. When making a point she had a way of crinkling her brow, pursing her lips, twirling her long chunky bejeweled cross necklace into a silvery choker and then offering whatever suggestion she felt you needed to hear, her downstate accent creeping in especially when she was feeling feisty. 

While we had been trained to end calls quickly, I could hear her chatting about bagels and long weekends over our divider, knowing her minutes per call ratio were going to be, as usual, the longest on our team's printed list, handed out weekly. She'd disagree with the 30 year old manager who crouched like a vulture on the side of her desk, directing her to quicken her pace. She made no bones about suggesting to others that they stop taking themselves so seriously. 

The big colorful cross necklace she wore was costume jewelry from Avon and when it came time for me to say goodbye to that particular job, she hugged me so tightly it made a lumpy impression upon my chest. Once in a blue moon I see someone strolling by wearing that very same pendant and I think about Ginnie and her unabashed fearlessness when it came to asking for what she needed.     

Remember her daughter, the one I played ball with? When Ginnie passed away, I sent a letter. She sent one back. Then her father passed away as well. We started going to lunch. One day the daughter shared that she had gotten a tattoo in honor of Ginnie and wouldn't you know? It was a copy of that very same Avon cross I grew to associate her with...the one that reminded me to stay true to who I was. I express how cool I think this is. Like a flash, I think about how questions and uncertainty are okay. I think about asking for what we need. 

Then sitting across from me, the daughter admits she is attracted to women after a lifetime of setting those feelings aside. 

She has questions. 

She is uncertain. 

And when she, like a shortstop makes this move, I, on second base back her up.  

Friends

Dear Reader, this is a simple Facebook post I wrote last week. Since it's gotten so many likes and shares, I decided to slap it on my blog. Thanks for being here.  

No matter where in Glens Falls you lived, no matter what your parents did for a living (or if you even had parents), or how smart you were or whether you spent half your day in in-school suspension; whether your cool factor was to the moon or in the negative, if you went to the outdoor parties, you'd eventually be among a backslapping, hugging, hanging, singing, laughing bunch of friends.

We were who we were and in those moments no one's backstory was more important than a moment of understanding or shared experience. The empathy, the admiration, the respect, the way we couldn't wait to see each other again, and even our shared sadness...it all blossomed, it all came about because of a foundation that began as a single night in the woods.

Cheers to the millionaire's daughter holding hands with the boy from the poorest street in town. Cheers to the kid who never said anything in class but who had a place and a say in the crowd. Cheers to the times, because our outdoor gatherings were just "something kids do". When I think of these days, when I see the photographs here, when I look upon faces I haven't looked upon in a while but I can still see you sitting on a log in your CB jacket or flannel shirt, with the shadows of a 5 foot bonfire on your face, a cup in your hand and Boston playing on someone's car radio, my heart is full.

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. 

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