Of Cycles and Bacon
I got to ride on my dad’s Harley-Davidson yesterday. I’m fairly sure that Marc, assured of my certain demise, spent the afternoon checking our insurance policy for any death-by-motorcycle exclusion clauses. I am not sure whether he was pleased or disappointed by the answer. Meanwhile, I found that one has only one thought while one is on the motorcycle, and that thought is “wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” This is an activity I can definitely get behind. I now feel that I must own a motorcycle at some point in my life. I don’t necessarily want to learn to operate it; I just want someone to drive me around on it. I occupy the Bitch Seat with pride and have learned and mastered the subtle nod one gives to fellow riders as they pass by. “Yes,” says the nod. “We are all riding motorcycles.”
In celebration of father’s day, we’re hanging around with my parents in Pennsylvania this weekend. As is tradition in this part of the Alle-Kiski Valley, father’s day weekend also means Ethnic Days. Ethnic Days is ostensibly a celebration of the rich heritage of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Slovak immigrants who founded and populated the riverside town of East Vandergrift, where my grandmother was born and raised and still lives in the house her father built when she was three. When I was a kid, Ethnic Days was to me somewhat on par with Christmas. I spent all day running up and down the street at each booth, trying and sometimes succeeding in winning stuffed animals. One year I won a Star Wars sleeping bag *. In the evenings, old guys with accordions would show up and the street would be covered in sand so everyone could polka.
* Note to Self: Find out if that thing’s still around here somewhere.
Ethnic Days was fueled by the women of East Vandergrift, most of them daughters of immigrants and members of my grandmother’s generation, who would spend weeks toiling in the church basement’s kitchen getting ready for the weekend. The food – especially the kugel ** – was fantastic. Eventually, though, as it happens, the church ladies got older and some died and the others didn’t have the energy to shred 2,000 pounds of potatoes (and can you blame ‘em?). Ethnic Days went on, but there wasn’t a lot of “ethnic” left. Rather, it became a yearly gathering place for the myriad local white-trash slimeballs who slithered from under their respective rocks to stand on the streets of East Vandergrift resplendent in freshly-shaped mullets, spiral perms, and tiny, midriff-bearing shorts that read “princess” across the backside, except of course that most of the word – presumably ashamed to be displayed thusly – retreated betwixt ample buttocks to hide itself.
This year, though. This year. Some brave women of the community have stepped forward and volunteered to spend those countless hours in the church basement making actual honest-to-god real damn authentic Eastern European food, and I am woozy with anticipation over the prospect of proper kugel, pierogi, and haluski. My grandmother, who has for the most part abandoned most of her culinary efforts in favor of being eighty-six years old (again, can’t blame her), summoned me to her house yesterday to help prepare a kugel so that we can spend the day today sitting on her porch in the 90-degree heat eating dreadfully caloric food, drinking beer, and watching the dirtbags go by. I can’t wait.
** Ingredients for proper kugel:
- potatoes
- milk
- six eggs
- black pepper
- one pound bacon, fried in one stick butter OR one slab lard
- one box of salt
posted by Kate at 11:50 AM link/comments
