ON BECOMING AN EXPAT: The Beginning

From infancy through young adulthood, I lived just west of the center line of the Great Northeast Corridor of the United States, that stretch of a few hundred miles along the Atlantic coast that starts in Boston, cuts through New York and Philadelphia, and terminates in northern Virginia just past Washington, DC. I LIVED there. It wasn't just my home. I never strayed. I knew nothing of the rest of the civilized world except for what I heard and read, saw on the television or in the movies.

In the first place, our family never traveled much when I was a kid. Dad's lunch counter required his attention seven days a week. When we did vacation, we went down the shore, the Jersey shore if you didn't get the idiom. I don't remember a single night in a strange bed that wasn't in a relative's house or down the shore.

And the personal histories of my family discouraged any incentive to travel in order to return to the lands of my genealogical roots. My paternal grandmother Dora and her brother Sam told stories of waves of antisemitism culminating in pogroms in their native Ukraine, of risking lives to rescue the Torah from burning synagogues, of walking with all of their belongings in pillowcases to Milan in order to take steerage to the New World. We never knew any of Dora's five husbands, the last a cousin so we can assume that his story matches hers.

Mom's Russian progenitors apparently lived more comfortable lives. Bankers led the family. Still, they were Jewish bankers. Some chose to remain, the 'home' base for a family network that facilitated its members' desires to emigrate, not unlike today's new Americans. Gino, our favorite pizza guy when I was a kid, told of how his family in Italy put together the money to send him to New York. A cousin took Gino in, taught him the business, and put up the money for Gino to open a shop in Flemington, in what was then rural Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Gino brought over other cousins to help in the shop. Business boomed. Gino opened a second shop, staffed by the cousins he had trained, allowing for additional cousins to be brought over. That's how Grandma Rose's family operated.

Nothing in these stories created a desire in me to retrace the steps of ancestors who left their native lands so willingly.

Then one day in 1970, I climbed into my VW Beetle and embarked on a road trip sufficiently epic to merit a Ken Keyseyish novel if only I had the talent.  My intention was to travel to Atlanta to visit a friend, then on to Dallas to visit a cousin. I had no plans beyond that. But in Dallas I met Cathey, who was born in New Orleans, raised in three different Texas cities, and who attended college in Mexico and did the backpacking-in-Europe scene years before. I was to spend the next forty years (and counting) with. Cathey. . On that one trip, I left Dallas for Indianapolis, returned to Dallas with one of Cathey's sisters, drove to New York with Cathey, to Boston and back to New York with another friend, with Cathey and friends to Chicago and San Fransisco, to Los Angeles and back to Dallas. After a side trip to New Orleans, Cathey and I found our way home, to my home, then our own first home together in northern New Jersey.

I'd been bitten by the wanderlust bug and Cathey was a carrier. With such a start, how could I not consider the unthinkable, the idea that living out my life within a few miles of my birth would not satisfy my soul?

2004 BURGMAN 400 SPARK PLUG CHANGE

No, there won't be a video. Changing the spark plug was a relatively simple operation except for the fact that it was the first time that I took off any of my plastics. If you want a video tutorial, they're all over YouTube. I watched one before I got started AND I took my laptop into the garage and punched up the service manual. You can't be too prepared.

And being prepared meant knowing that the fasteners holding the plastics together are likely to break when you mess with them. That's why I went to a dealer and picked up six before I started. Worked out well. Four broke. While I was buying parts, I made certain that I had all that I needed for my next oil change. And of course, I bought the plug, an NGK CR7E. The manual says to replace the plug every 7,500 miles. It's been a bit over 6,500. Close enough. My intention is to change the plug at every other oil change.

The object of the exercise is to remove the left side leg shield to get at the spark plug. So, first I pulled off the left side floor mats. Underneath are four Phillips screws and about six of the fasteners. There are a couple more fasteners that attach the leg shield to the under cover at the back and the lower front leg shield at the front. Once all the screws and fasteners are off, work off the shield. It's fairly sturdy plastic, bit it IS plastic. So be firm but be careful.

The workspace is tight but ample. The plug is seated in a deep well, so all that you see is the cap and the lead. After you pull the cap, making certain to scrape your knuckles in the process, you can just see the top of the plug. A 5/8 deep-well socket works, and if the plug is tighter than you expect, there's another chance to crack a knuckle.

The plug looked clean but lean, no visible wear but white with no color. On the edge of being problematic. I'm going to throw some injector cleaner into my next tank of gas to see if that opens things up a bit. And I'll keep the plug for an emergency spare after I give it a few swipes with a wire brush.

You'll never have a better chance to give the shield, the mats, and the deck under the mats a good cleaning.

Need I say it? Reverse the process. You can start the plug by hand, tighten it hand tight, then tighten it up with the socket wrench. Don't torque it down all the way - finger tight plus a quarter turn is the norm. Fit the leg shield on making certain that all of the tabs are positioned correctly in their slots. I turned in the Phillips screws first, then popped in the clips from back to front, then laid in the mats.

Voila. About one-half hour and two scraped knuckles and done.

DEMISE OF THE TIMES-PICAYUNE: ADAPT OR DIE

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has ceased daily publication. It’s a sad commentary on the current state of affairs.

I know. Every major city considers its daily newspaper unique, a treasure. Rightly so. But New Orleans is a special case. Seriously. There was a time when I would have pooh-poohed the concept. No longer.

The Southern Woman That I Married (TSWTIM) is a New Orleans native, born in the Touro Infirmary. Although she was raised in Texas, her family maintained a foothold in NOLA and she was a frequent visitor throughout her youth. My first visit with her was over 40 years ago. Subsequent visits have taught me a great deal about why NOLA holds a special place in the hearts of its residents as well as people around the United States and throughout the world.

You know about the French Quarter, its clubs and its architecture and its crazies. You know about the blues and the jazz music. And then there’s the food. Oh, yes. The food. From iconic oyster bars like Casamento’s to great neighborhood eateries like Mandina’s and Pascal’s Manale to some of the finest restaurants on the planet like Antoine’s and Commander’s Palace, the dining experience in NOLA is unique and satisfying. Put it all together and there’s no doubt that there really is no place in this country that’s quite like NOLA.

Believe it or not, this brings us back to the Times-Picayune. If food is a quintessential ingredient in the life of the city, the Picayune has been an active participant in that food scene for decades through its publication of recipes and restaurant reviews as well as the essential Picayune’s Creole Cook Book – the original edition, not the abridged version that’s touted on Amazon. It’s a valuable resource for TSWTIM, the more so because it was given to her by Uncle John, a New Orleans native and something of a God-like figure in the family, with an inscription that touts TSWTIM as the best cook in the family.

Perhaps another reason that NOLA is such a special place is its timelessness in the face of a changing world. The Mississippi River, though constantly changing and challenging, is an ever-present force. If the dives in the French Quarter have gotten seedier, the rough-edged coffee and powdery beignets at The Morning Call remain the perfect early morning antidote for a night of revelry, even if it has moved from Decatur Street in the Quarter to trendier digs in Jefferson Parish. And now, though the Times-Picayune still exists, it has been forced to change as well, from a daily publication to, basically, a weekend rag.

Who am I to criticize? I’ve purchased a Kindle, changing my daily reading habits forever, taking the food out of the mouth of the dour woman behind the counter at my local used book store. But just as the Kindle isn’t a book, doesn’t feel like a book or sound like a book when I turn the pages, so breakfast several times a week won’t be the same in New Orleans without the feel and sound of the Times-Picayune playing accompaniment. I figure that in the not too distant future, I’ll wake up in the morning, put on my wifi, voice activated goggles with the heads-up display, and stare blankly at my morning ‘paper’ while I’m slurping my morning coffee.

Adapt or die.

They promised me flying cars. Where are the flying cars?

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

A Passage to India it's not. And it's not meant to be. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is two hours of fluff, popcorn-munching, grinning, totally predictable fluff. It's meant to be. A director with the chops of John Madden doesn't assemble a cast of some of the most accomplished actors on the planet - Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson - without being clear about the mission. Let's go to India, hang out together, and have some fun.


Story line? Simple. For various reasons, but mostly out of some form of desperation, a group of British retirees are tempted by the adverts to move to India to live inexpensively and...well...exotically. The Hotel is a disaster. But so what? As the young Indian co-owner of the hotel predicts, "Everything will be all right in the end. If everything is not all right, it is not yet the end." And in the end, everyone gets what they want, or at least what they need.  

Predictable? You bet. But as easy-breezy as the cinema gets these days. And if the wrenching poverty of a major Indian city is glossed over, if a visit to the home of an Untouchable doesn't evoke the smell of raw sewage, deal with it.

Honest fluff. Can't beat it. 

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject?

Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville. So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience.

This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post.

On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look for it. The paint on the small wooden sign is peeling and the screen door looks like it was lifted from somebody’s hunt camp. But when you walk in the door and down that funky hallway to the pit in the back to make your order, that wonderful wood-smoke, Texas-beef smell fills your nostrils. There’s a single chopping block and a young man ready to chop/slice up your order. We went for a link of sausage, a half-pound of brisket (fat), and three ribs. They offer lean brisket, but well- marbled, greasy brisket is why God invented simvastatin. Our order was weighed and placed on a few sheets of butcher paper along with a few slices of thick white bread and a plastic knife.  Yep, a knife. No fork. You’ll eat with your fingers, lick ‘em off, and like it.

We walked out of the pit and into the cafeteria, a simple, rectangular room with standard 1950s folding tables and chairs. Communal seating. We ordered pickles, onions, potato salad, and a couple of beers. All in all, $20.00.

Before I review the food at Smitty’s, let’s head over to Kreuz Market, our stop on our way back from the ranch.

 

Smitty’s is tucked away mid-block, in town and off the highway. Kreutz is visible from the highway, as stand-alone as a suburban drug store, surrounded by a huge parking lot. Smitty’s interior looks as if the décor – if you can call it that – was put together with yard sale purchases and simply dusted off every now and then. Kreutz could have been built yesterday, with kitschy signs (We Shoot Every Third Salesman and the Second One Just Left.), electronic games in the entryway, all varnished wood with booths and tables. It could have been built on a freeway exit last week. That same Texas barbecue smell permeates the place, though, and you take that same walk to the pit in the back, but there are multiple stations instead of just the one.

Same order – sausage, brisket, and ribs. Same butcher paper. Same plastic knife. Same sides. Same price.

Now for the payoff. Smitty’s versus Kreutz.

The sausage was a wash, smoky and spicy and dreamy in both places. If you’ve never had authentic Texas pit-smoked sausage, you’ve missed out on a treat. You can treat yourself in either place.

Kreutz won the rib war. The ribs were the right size, moist and just this side of falling off the bone, smoky meat that melted in the mouth. Although it may be that the ribs at Smitty’s were a bit small and a bit dry because we arrived closer to 1:00 PM than noon and therefore received the end of a slab at the end of lunch service, it’s still the case that they were a bit small and a bit dry. And I simply have never had a better set of ribs than I had at Kreutz that day.

On the other hand, Smitty’s served up the better brisket, sliced just the right thickness with just the right marbling and moisture. For some reason, the slices of brisket at Kreutz were thicker at the bottom than the top and the top, above the line of fat, was a bit dry. Good, better than good, but not perfect.

As far as the sides go, Cathey preferred the more traditional potato salad served at Smitty’s. I didn’t care. The roll of paper towels at the tables were a nice touch over the napkins at Smitty’s. Bread, pickles, and onions were on a par.

All in all, an exercise in the picking of nits. Great barbecue. Can’t go wrong.

IT'S ROMNEY

While I was on vacation, Santorum failed to close the deal. He was too scary even for the Republicans. Of course, saying that Romney closed the deal may be overstating the case. His inability to garner more than 50% of primary voters in any state until the sideshow geeks were the only opposition left standing would be troubling except for the fact that Republicans are herd animals.

Herd animals stand on the sidelines while adversaries for top dog duke it out, then fall in line docilely behind the winner. It would seem that the herd scenario is being played out by the Republicans, but there may be a caveat or two to consider. Can Romney run away from Romneycare, from the perception that he’s just another effete, privileged Massachusetts liberal in Tea Party clothing? Will the Tea Party rally back to him? Does the Tea Party matter anymore?

Don’t be silly. Of course the Tea Party matters. If nothing else, the Tea Party has pulled the Republican Party hard right and taken the national conversation along with it.

Anybody but Obama. That will be the subtext – and in some cases the explicit message – to every bit of advertising, every speech, every Fox News commentary for the next five months.

Will it be enough? Predictions will have to wait just a bit longer. Right now? Too close to call.

BACK FROM VACATION

Howdy Folks!

I'm back from my sojourn in Mexico and Texas, I'm organizing my thoughts and I'm writing away. You'll hear about the Mexican silver-mining town of Guanajuato; about barbecue in Lockhart, Texas; about visiting a west Texas ranch; about my nephew's wedding party; and about anything else that strikes my fancy.

Stay tuned.