?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Berrien Hills Golf Club

Posted on June 18, 2006

This past weekend, we revisited the Berrien Hills Golf Course, known in a former life as the Berrien Hills Country Club.

I wrote about the Club on March 14 as it faced financial demise and decided to cancel its 2006 summer season. Since then the club was sold to an investor who made it into a public golf course. And last week’s local newspaper said the investor was also re-opening the dining facilities, which would be open to the general public too.

Earl and I had always enjoyed dining there when it was the Berrien Hills Country Club, even though we arrived at the door long after its heyday. We liked the view from the dining room, we liked the bartender, and we liked the food. For our weekly Friday night on the town, it was more than adequate.

So, after reading the recent newspaper article, we decided to give the Berrien Hills Golf Course another try. We went on Friday evening, arriving around six. The entrance to the place was planted with flowers, which was a good sign. As we opened the door to the club, we saw the main dining room was in great disrepair. A bad sign. But we walked around to the bar and found it intact. We also found it empty.

“Are you serving dinner,” I asked? The three waitstaff persons all nodded their heads. “Is it a buffet,” I asked, remembering how the club went down at the end. Three heads shook a collective “No.” “Great,” I said. “Can we pick our own table?” The “Yes” nod returned my question.

As the only patrons in the place, we chose the best spot, the corner where two windows converge and there is a spectacular view of the golf course grounds and the St. Joseph River. We ordered our cocktails and hoped others would soon come in. We asked questions about the unusual things on the menu. Finally, after a couple cocktails, we ordered dinner.

By then some other guests had arrived, and the waitstaff was put to the test. It was clear they were new, so new that they had to recruit the salesperson in the pro shop to help take dinner orders. Clearly, this was a work in progress. At the same time, Earl’s pasta and my salmon arrived looking quite edible. We ate and listened to the tables around us, as the bar is small and prone to being noisy. We weren’t sure if the other diners were previous members of the Club or if they were outsiders like us. I only know it was busier last Friday night than I ever saw it when it was the Berrien Hills Country Club.

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The Short of It

Posted on June 17, 2006

At five feet tall, I’m short. I guess I’ve always been short; but since both my legs reach the ground it’s something I’ve never really paid attention to.

That is, until Earl came home a couple days ago, having been to Walgreen’s to get some photographs developed. There was quite a collection, dating back to last Thanksgiving, and it was fun to recall about our activities of the past few months.

That’s when I noticed my shortness. There I was, standing with my aunt and uncle in front of a bakery in Sacketts Harbor, New York. Both of them clearly were a head taller than I. There I was, standing with my good friend, Noreen, at Hoover Dam. She is the taller one. There I was, standing next to the peonies in my backyard; and, yes, I was taller, but not by that much. I looked at some of the photos Earl has of the two of us in his office; and, even when we’re sitting down, he’s taller.

It’s my understanding that people shrink as they age. So it’s possible I reached my full height potential back in sixth grade and have been on the way to being shorter ever since. Even if I only hang out with people in my age group and they are shrinking too, I’ll never be basketball material in the senior Olympics. And someday I’ll probably have to get a taller stepstool to reach the top shelves in the kitchen cupboards.

In the meantime, I will at least be able to wangle my way into the front at the upcoming Fourth of July Parade . . . right there with all the kids.

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The Scent of Things

Posted on June 16, 2006

My friend Judi and I are reading Younger by the Day by Victoria Moran.) It’s a compendium of 365 daily suggestions to make one feel youthful, regardless of one’s age. Yesterday’s suggestion was about the power of scent and how it can take us back to times past, people remembered, situations that were special. The daily admonition was to take time to smell things . . . not just the roses, but everything.

So today I started smelling, and it was a revealing activity. I woke to the scent of Earl’s mild coffee as he placed a mug of it on my nightstand. It’s my daily alarm, as he knows I’m not a morning person and he tries to make waking as pleasant as possible. Sometimes it actually works.

Next, I smelled the various lotions I apply to my body parts. Then I smelled the orange juice that accompanied my vitamins on their journey to my stomach. I can’t say any of this was very exciting. In fact, it took the scent of roses on my way to the health club to reinvigorate me.

This year, my garden’s roses are amazing, and I plan to revel in every single one. I plan to sniff the peonies one more time before they fade, and I hope to remember to step outside when our lawn mower man comes each week so I can smell the scent of newly mown grass.

The health club itself has its own smell, and it isn’t the odor of perspiration. Rather, the club is located near a factory and it emits the scent of burning marshmallows — really burning marshmallows — much of the time. I’ve wondered what it actually is, but I’ll probably never find out.

I’m reminded that, years ago when my two sons were little, I used to wear Shalimar as a perfume. Then I didn’t wear it for quite some time. But when I rediscovered the scent and began applying it once again to my ear lobes, both of my sons on separate occasions remarked that I smelled like they remembered I did in their youth. That’s the best testimony to the power of scent that I can ever find.

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Buffalo Wings

Posted on June 15, 2006

I was introduced to Buffalo wings about fifteen years ago, when they arrived — unheralded — in Mundelein, Illinois. It was a tiny, A-frame shack that offered them, six to a serving, noting they were direct from Buffalo,NY.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I ordered a serving anyway. Waited for their delivery at my table and wondered what I was doing. I must say I wasn’t duly impressed at the time, as I thought they were merely chicken wings with a fancy name and requiring a lot of hands-on attention to eat. My fingers and my face bore proof.

But on our recent trip to upstate New York, Earl and I visited the mother lode of chicken wings, and I was duly impressed. The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, claims the title of “Original Home of Buffalo Chicken Wings” that has spread not only across our country but also internationally. Imagine creating a dish that bears your city’s name for posterity.

We ordered a plate of twenty with medium sauce, although the options ranged from a plate of ten to a bucket of fifty with sauces graded from mild, medium, hot, spicy, and — if you dare! — suicidal. We chose medium.

While we waited for our order we read the giant menu and quizzed our waitress. Her name was Brigid and she said she had no idea how many wings the Anchor Bar served each week; she did acknowledge, however, that the tasty wings were one reason she worked there. She also said it seemed as if tourists, as opposed to locals, ordered them. As for the menu, it divulged the story of how the chicken wings originally came into existence one Friday night in 1964. It seems a group of the owner’s friends arrived late in the evening, thirsty and hungry. The tap could satisfy the first need, but it was left to Teressa Bellissimo, the owner’s wife, to think on her feet in the kitchen. She threw some wings in the deep fryer, slathered sauce on them, and sent them out for consumption. The rest is culinary chicken history.

Let it be said that Earl and I finished our plate of twenty wings in record time and agreed that they were delicious. We also agreed it was worth making the detour off our charted route. I mean, it’s a long way from St. Joseph, Michigan, to Buffalo, New York, just for chicken wings. But if you’re in the vicinity — which means within a couple hundred miles of downtown Buffalo — we recommend you stop in and see for yourself.

Or, failing that, consider visiting the following websites where you can order your own wings for delivery at home. Go to www.anchorbar.com, www.buffalowings.com, or www.madeinbuffalo.com. Tell them Earl and Anne sent you.

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Cemetery Sadness

Posted on June 14, 2006

This is Flag Day, when Americans celebrate and show respect for our flag, its designers, and makers over the past two hundred plus years. So on this day I want to honor three men I don’t really know, but whose graves I visited in the past few days. Each grave bore an American flag.

I don’t even remember their last name now, but it doesn’t matter. What I remember is that the last name was the same. What I remember is that all three are buried in the Military Cemetery at Sackets Harbor, NY. What I remember is that they were all young.

It’s the ages that stuck. Two of the men were seventeen and eighteen respectively, and they died in the Korean War in 1950 with the ranks of Private and Private First Class. They were brothers in the same family, and they died less than two months apart.

The third grave, the one in the middle, belonged to their father who died two years later. Perhaps he died of a broken heart, having lost his children in one chilling summer. Perhaps he would have died if they had come home, but we’ll never know. According to what the tombstones revealed, he was born in 1910, served in World War II, and saw his sons serve in Korea. He died in 1952 at the age of forty-two, within two years of his sons’ deaths.

For this reason, these graves struck me just as personally as those ancestral graves my aunt and I spent an entire day visiting. I’m not sure why, but maybe it’s because a gravesite with its birth and death dates reduces us all to our basic elements. We are born; we die. What we do in-between cannot be ledgered on a tombstone; instead it has to be engraved in the memories of our family and friends. I hope those three who sleep beneath the tombstones in Sackets Harbor are remembered fully and faithfully.

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Cemeteries

Posted on June 13, 2006

One of the main purposes of our recent trip back East was to visit all the relatives buried in various cemeteries across the North Country of New York State. My mother and stepfather are buried there. So are my grandparents and great grandparents. My only uncle on my mother’s side and all the great aunts and uncles I knew, or knew of as a child, rest in peace too.

Over the weekend, my Aunt Alice, my Uncle Dick, Earl, and I roamed the cemeteries on Tug Hill in Lewis Country amidst a chilling drizzle that cut to the proverbially thin bone. We’d dressed for summer, but she deserted us. Instead, it was as if October had come to scare us away. But we stood against the chill and persevered because we’d all come hundreds and hundreds of miles to make this cemetery pilgrimage. It was now or not, and we were not to be diverted.

In the driving drizzle, we visited the cemetery in Lowville, New York; the one at New Boston; and the one in Copenhagen, finding various special relatives in all places. I revisited my parents’ gravesite; Alice revisited her parents’ site. I was interested too, because I had lived with those parents, as my grandparents, in the early nineteen fifties. In a way it was coming home for both my aunt and me.

We roamed the countryside, talking of how our nineteenth century ancestors walked in from Canada and made their lives in Lewis County. Tradition has it that this part of New York State reminded them of Ireland, and that’s why they settled here. Today, one is unsure what held them, since there are no longer original settlers to tell the tale. Instead, it’s left to hand-me-downs. Which means, we’re equally unsure why we return from time to time, but we do.

Maybe it’s because this is where our lives really began, regardless of where we were born. Maybe it’s because we want to know more about our forefathers and foremothers. Or maybe it’s just because once in a while my aunt and I want to strengthen our own connection by visiting relatives we have in common and silently remembering our legacy to them. Regardless, it was a wonderful day.

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Upstate New York

Posted on June 12, 2006

I’ve been gone from the blogging scene over a week. In fact, I’ve been gone from contemporary society equally as long, as Earl and I drove to upstate New York to visit the area where my early relatives settled, created their large families, worked the land, and remembered the Ireland of their birth.

Every time I make this pilgrimage, it’s a mesmerizing experience. It catches me in that space between the tick and tock of time, holding me to my past and yet not really relevant to my future. Still, part of the person I am in the present. I wonder if my aunt, with whom I’m sharing this particular visit, feels the same.

For the past couple years, Earl and I, with my Aunt Alice and Uncle Dick, determined to make this journey sometime or another. We weren’t particularly specific about when, as we all had to be up for it at the same time. This year, the stars aligned so we made our plan. It meant that my aunt and uncle would drive from Denver, Colorado, to our house in St. Joseph, Michigan so that the four of us could travel eastward to upstate New York together. It also meant 750 miles on top of the 1100 my aunt and uncle had already driven.

But we are a hardy group; and we set out across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York to check in two days later at Ontario Place Hotel in Sackets Harbor, NY. This was our base from which we met relatives, explored early nineteenth century battlefields, and quietly reveled in being together.

Being together is one of the hallmarks of my ancestral family, and I attribute this to our Irish heritage. It is still on display today and evidenced by an upstate relative’s understanding of the situation. In genealogical terms, Gertrude McDonald is my first cousin once removed, while her children and I are second cousins. But we got to talking about this, and she insisted that in the McDonald family we were all just cousins. The once removed and the seconds and thirds are not considered. I’ve spent enough nights in her house to concur. It’s only the academic in me that defines the degrees of relationship. Put me in a family reunion and I don’t care.

However, our visit wasn’t the stuff of family reunions — those are held every August. Rather, they were the connections of one branch of the family tree with another. The remnants of the James F. McDonald limb with the Henry McDonald limb, James and Henry being brothers born at the end of the nineteenth century. We are their progeny in the twenty-first century and upstate New York is what it is because of our family and others like it.

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Out of Range

Posted on June 6, 2006

Anne will not be blogging until the week of June 11, as she is out of Internet range, believe it or not. Please consider reading some of her other Ten Minute essays.

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Big Sexy Hair

Posted on June 3, 2006

My next door neighbor, Clara, is eighty-years-old and she has big sexy hair. Only it’s Big Sexy Hair. The capital letters make a big difference, since I’m talking about a product by that name that Clara swears by. Or she would, if Clara used four letter words.

Along with discussing such topics as the stockmarket, her continued support of President Bush, the price of gasoline, and the idiosyncrasies of the other neighbors on our road, we are always discussing our hair. So when Clara discovered BSH she immediately told me about it. “It gives you volume,” she said, and volume is something we both lust for.

When we walk out of the hairdresser’s our hair has it, but after we wash and style our hair at home it’s gone. Now I realize the hairdresser is a professional and she uses a variety of products to create her miracles. Nevertheless, you wouldn’t think it would be so hard to do your own head. In fact, in this pursuit Clara and I have purchased things that resemble whipping cream, petroleum jelly, and cooking spray, only to store them at the back of our cupboards and wait for our descendants to rediscover them many years from now. Their shelf life will still be intact.

I must admit when Clara first told me about BSH, I was skeptical. But this is the first product she has liked in our six years of research. And, at fifteen dollars a can, Clara would readily comment if it didn’t work. Which meant Big Sexy Hair made Earl’s next grocery list. I’ve only tried it once, but so far I’m satisfied with the results. My hair does seem to have more volume and stay in place better too. And, if I can get used to gels and foams, I’ll get used to the idea that BSH is the only hair product I’ve ever used that looks like oven cleaner.

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Language 101

Posted on June 1, 2006

It started when I called the New York State Insurance Fund, that guardian of worker’s comp and disability insurances in the State of New York, to get help filling out two required forms. The forms themselves were a stumbling block; otherwise, I would never have had to spend two hours on the telephone getting the necessary information in the first place. But the gentleman who tried to help me was the utmost of stumbling blocks, even though I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and hoped he meant well.

This gentleman clearly had a thick mid-Eastern accent, the type you find when you call your credit card company for help and learn it has outsourced its customer service department to India or Pakistan. He also had an attitude, one that I interpreted as “I talk, you listen.” I mean, he even felt the need to explain that a quarter is three months of the calendar year. He didn’t know it, but I have a Master’s Degree for pete’s sake.

I wanted to ask for someone else, maybe even his supervisor, as he ranted on and on about what the law was and what I had to do, without ever answering my original questions. So it took every ounce of my patience to attempt communication in an effort to be culturally sensitive; in the end, maybe he felt the same frustration, as he finally transferred me to someone else who was most helpful.

I realize this person was doing his best — at least I hope so. At the same time, if most of the customers who seek help speak English as their first language, it seems incumbent that someone answering questions speak the same language clearly. This doesn’t mean that person be native-born; on the contrary, I have no problem with the general theory of outsourcing. But I do think it’s appropriate for the company representative to understand English idiom and respect intelligent women who ask a lot of questions.

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