Humble Beginnings

I was born in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. Although a person might call him or herself a "New Yorker" from having lived in NYC for a time, I'm in fact the real McCoy.

One day when I was about four, and my brother six, Mom was strolling us down the street. Chances are I had I box of delicious, sugar-laden Trix cereal my hands and was happily munching away on them. This was before Mom turned all health food on us, replacing junky cereals with incredibly boring puffed corn, puffed millet, puffed rice -- and my nemesis: "Uncle Sam." I was tortured as a child with Uncle Sam cereal. How many kids do you know who enjoy eating cereal made of bran and flaxseed?

But I digress. So anyway, on this one fine day Mom was struck with a revelation. She looked up at the sky and thought, I know there's more to life than this. Her relationship with our dad had been on the rocks for a while, and the time had finally come for Mom to do something about it. And I'm not referring to marriage counseling.

My parents divorced when I was five. Mom moved our family of three to Poughkeepsie, NY, a small city about an hour and a half away. She wanted us to be out of New York, yet close enough so my brother and I could visit our father on weekends. Poughkeepsie fit the bill. It was okay for a start, but it never felt like "home."

We lived in Po-town for two years, until Mom found a house to buy in the beautiful artist's colony of Woodstock, NY. Woodstock, the "most famous small town in America," had long been a magnet for creative types, which was part of the reason Mom was drawn to it. The other reason was she went to the Woodstock Festival in'69 with my father and had an amazing time. The whole spirit of "Woodstock" appealed deeply to my mom, and she had a desire to live there ever since.

The remainder of my childhood -- from seven years old through graduating high school -- was spent in Woodstock. "Home Sweet Home" was quite rustic indeed. Our house/shack/dwelling was located half a mile up a hill, accessible via a private dirt road that had no shortage of pits, potholes and trenches that loved devouring all varieties of automobile. Our house was originally a one-room hunting cabin built in the early 1900s, and then was expanded on the cheap in 1950s. It had never been equipped with central heating -- a fireplace and wood-burning stove were its sole sources of heat. The house had its own well, and early on Mom instilled a fear in us kids that one day the well might run dry. To avoid this horror coming to fruition, early on we learned to ration water at all times. That meant no dallying about in the shower, no leaving the water running while brushing your teeth, washing the dishes using as little water as possible, and -- no flushing the toilet after "just" a pee. Or two. Or even three. The toilet was flushed when it was in dire need. What was "dire need"? When unanimously, it was considered gross.

The plumbing system in the bathroom was old and temperamental. The toilet would clog if we did something as simple -- and seemingly benign -- as flush toilet paper down it, so all refuse was placed in a nearby wastebasket. My brother and I were glad Mom didn't make "emptying the bathroom garbage" one of our chores.

Recycling was a way of life for us long before it was considered fashionable and/or a socially conscious thing to do. In our household garbage was separated into five categories: burnable, glass, metal, compost pot and chicken bowl. My brother and I took turns burning the garbage in a specially designated "garbage burning pit." Mom emptied the bathroom wastebasket, but we had to burn it. Carrying multiple bags over to the pit, sometimes one would topple over and the icky contents of the bathroom garbage would spill out in all their glory. Ugh! The glass and metal garbages were periodically brought to the dump. So as not to take up unnecessary space between dump runs, metal cans were prepared for recycling as follows:

#1: The can and lid were rinsed;

#2: The label was removed and placed in the burnable garbage;

#3: The other end of the can was taken off;

#4: The can was flattened by stomping on it;

#5: All pieces were then placed in the metal garbage.

Organic waste not suitable for our chickens to eat was placed in the compost pot (e.g. coffee grounds, nut shells, banana peels). The compost pot was emptied every morning, hopefully before it started to smell and became a source of attraction to any flying or crawling critters.

The "chicken bowl" was for edible treats our chickens considered exciting and scrumpdillyicious, like melon seeds, rind, and assorted vegetable trimmings. The chickens went positively gaga when the contents of the bowl were thrown into their coop. Whoa, now! Control yourselves, please. This is not the second coming of the Christ -- it's just some spinach stems and potato peels from last night's dinner.

Life for us was hard in winter -- it was always a battle to stay warm. To keep the stove cranking out heat, we had to feed it lots of wood and give it plenty of attention. Sometimes the fire wouldn't last until morning, and we'd wake up to a house that was 50 degrees. It was so hard to get out of bed on those mornings! Even when we got the stove roaring and the main living area up to a decent temperature, the front room, back workroom, and kitchen were still chilly. "Chilly" as in you could see your breath. No wonder my favorite seat was right in front of the stove.

Another place you could see your breath was the bathroom. That's how I became, thankyouverymuch, an expert at peeing while hovering above the toilet. (The fewer occasions my delicate, bare bottom had to come in contact with an ice-cold toilet seat, the better.) And taking showers in our frigid bathroom? Not fun at all. In an attempt to make it more bearable, one winter I came up with a seemingly great idea: scoop some hot coals from the stove into the ash bucket and bring it into the bathroom with me! My trick was ingenious -- the bucket of hot coals heated up the bathroom nicely, while creating a steam room of sorts. For a while I lavished in my wintertime shower taking, until the day I accidentally leaned my delicate, bare bottom into the metal bucket as I was stepping into the shower. Yowch! Mom always warned me to be careful about not burning the toilet seat, but geez -- she never warned me to be careful about not burning my butt.

"Getting up the road" was a constant wintertime plight. Looking back, Mom was a bit out to lunch regarding her choice of vehicles. Obviously a four-wheel drive jeep or similar vehicle would stand the best chance of getting up a steep dirt road throughout the snowy and icy winters, but no -- Mom opted for dinky (but cute) Volkswagen beetles. Many a time I held onto my seat for dear life as she gunned it up the road in her light-as-a-feather VWs, back-ends weighed down with cinder blocks or bags of cement for added traction. When the car wasn't able to crest one of the road's two steepest rises, bordered by a cliff on one side and a deep trench on the other, and Mom had to back down and try it again... I'm still afraid of steep dirt roads. Even in the summer.

Returning home with Mom one evening after a big grocery-shopping trip, our road was especially treacherous. Mom knew not to even attempt the steepest hill and called it quits halfway. We trudged home each carrying a bag of groceries, but guess who had to go back and get the rest? I took the essentials: a flashlight, some rope and a sled. Yup. I tied the remaining bags to the sled and dragged it home. With sheets of ice under the snow, it was a no-holds-barred tug-of-war with that loaded-down sled. I'm still here and the sled is not, so that tells you who won.

Our humble abode had a TV, but no cable service -- an antenna on the roof was our sole source of reception, shoddy as it was. The antenna would rotate with any gust of wind, diminishing reception. My brother and I became experts on how to deal with this ongoing annoyance: one of us would go outside, climb the ladder propped against the house which led to the flat part of the roof, walk over to the antenna, and begin to slowly rotate it. The other would shout out commands from the window below: "Turn left! Keep going... keep going... a bit more... okay! Stop there! The picture's good! You can come down now!" As a two-person task it worked fine, but when my brother wasn't around and I was the only one home, it was a bummer. After three trips up to the roof and then back inside after rotating the antenna a little each time, if the picture was still a mess of static, it was just so... exasperating.

Excitement for us was waking up in the middle of the night because our chickens, housed in a coop outside my bedroom window, were making a ruckus. Usually that meant they were being terrorized by raccoons. One night when I was the only one home, commotion in the coop wouldn't let up so I had to get up and find out what was going on. Spying around outside with a flashlight, I put on a brave front. I spotted two reflective eyes staring at me through the darkness -- the eyes of a raccoon, belly full after having feasted on two of our chickens. Poor birds. All that was left were feathers. They were our pets. We never ate our chickens, only their eggs. Damn raccoon, you killed Hearts. I hate you for killing Hearts!

I ran into the house, quickly returning with the biggest kitchen knife I could find. I spotted the raccoon again. It was inside the coop, clinging to the wide mesh fencing. Grasping the knife with steely determination, I raised it into the air. Visions that I would soon be reenacting the shower scene from Psycho filled my head. Before thrusting the knife deep into the raccoon's flesh, first I gave it a trial "poke." When I felt its soft flesh give, there was no way I could go through with it.

Another time our chickens met with an unfortunate end due to a non-raccoon related incident. Mom was given a new how-to book on identifying wild mushrooms, inspiring her to go mushroom hunting in the woods. At home with her basket of specimens, one was identified as "Amanita Muscaria" -- deadly poisonous. Won't be sautéing that one for dinner tonight. When Mom finished identifying the mushrooms she tossed them into the compost pile.

Next day, all of our chickens were found dead -- they had eaten the poisonous mushrooms out of the compost. It was a sad day indeed. I was especially crushed, because those chickens were a special breed that were supposed to lay pastel-colored eggs, but they died before they had a chance to lay any. We went back to keeping hearty, brown egg-laying hens after the mushroom incident, and our chickens were confined to their coop.

Oh, how my mom loved mushrooms. I helped her impregnate these specially designated logs with shiitake mushroom spores. (Drill hole in log, insert treated plug, gently tap in, seal with wax.) In the spring and fall, the morning after a good rain I would check the logs to see if any mushrooms had sprouted. Harvests were rare, and when we got one it was thrilling indeed. I would run inside screaming, "Mom! Mom! The logs! You have to see the logs!"

Mom also loved puffball mushrooms. She was always on the lookout for giant puffballs growing on people's front lawns. In the event she spotted one, she would pull over and knock on the person's front door. "Excuse me, do you want that mushroom on your lawn?" Of course they didn't. Score! Mom would then traipse over to the mushroom and triumphantly remove her bounty.

Throughout my growing up, it was country bumpkin living during the week, with visits to NYC every other weekend to see my father. Excursions to Chinatown and Canal Street, meals at eclectic restaurants, shopping in the City's endless array of stores, and sneaking into clubs to see many a cool band were some of the fun Big Apple activities that added variety and culture to my otherwise rustic life.

My Woodstock upbringing has given me an appreciation for everyday things many take for granted. Like the heat that comes out of the radiators in my apartment -- what a luxury. It pours out steadily all winter long, and I don't have to do a thing. Except pay my rent.

And laundromats -- love them. Think I'm kidding? Think again.

The Loathsome Laundry Process

When I was a kid growing up in Woodstock, doing the laundry was a quite loathsome process. Our washing machine was located in the "back room" of our house (a no-frills workroom with concrete floors and no heat). The entire process took about two hours of continuous, labor-intensive work. You know that old saying, "You learn something new every day"? Well, today you're going to learn about a laundry process you never knew existed in supposedly modern times.

 

Step 1: Fill machine with five buckets of water lugged in from kitchen. Pour in some detergent.

Step 2: Separate laundry into various piles. The laundry won't actually be rinsed, so the purpose of the piles is, "What's going to show the dirty water the least? Is it the whites, or the jeans and socks?" The first pile to go in, logically, is the whites/undergarments.

Step 3: Put first pile in and turn dial on machine to "Heavy Soil" mode, which takes approximately five minutes.

Step 4: After wash cycle ends, pull wet clothes out of Wash Side and slop them down* into Extractor Side (the extractor spins out extraneous water). *Consciously try to avoid splashing water on yourself while doing this.

Step 5: Press wet clothes firmly down into Extractor and close lid (thus starting extraction process), making sure to hold hose coming out of machine into a bucket. Tip: if you don't hold down the hose, the extracting water will jettison out all over the floor, most certainly adding to your misery quotient.

Step 6: Dump bucket of water obtained from extraction process back into Wash Side of machine.

Step 7: Put next pile of clothes in and set dial to start those clothes "washing." Repeat Steps 4, 5, 6 & 7 for each pile of clothes.

- For laundry-time in winter or inclement weather: While each load is washing, hang damp clothes from previous load on the many crisscrossed clotheslines set up in back room.

- For laundry-time in pleasant weather: The clothes need to be hung on the outside clothesline located down a ways from the house. Walking this distance carrying the basket piled high with damp clothes will be rather strenuous. But don't despair -- it means you're nearing completion of the laundry ordeal... this time.

Step 8: When all loads are done, empty water from machine by the bucket-load and toss outside into the woods.

After the third or so load went through the cycle, the water would already be noticeably dirty, but I kept going and going until all of the loads were washed, usually about ten in all. By the time the last load of jeans and socks went in, the water was murky grey and foaming, with who-knows-what breeding within its depths.

My brother detested doing the laundry more than any other household chore. Despite the unpleasant process I agreed to trade chores with him and do it when it was his turn, because younger sis was in fact a smart little cookie. My secret agenda: if I always did the laundry I could put all of my clothes in first, and thereby they would never have to set foot in the swamp-like water my brother's clothes went through.

You might ask, "Why didn't your mother just bring you to a Laundromat?" That's a very good question indeed, right up there with "What's the meaning of life?" To answer for Mom, I guess she figured, "We do have a washing machine, it does work, so why not use it?" (Yeah, easy for her to say -- she wasn't the one dealing with that formidable process every couple of weeks.) And if you're wondering, "Why that particular washing machine?" the answer to that is rather straightforward: it used less water than other models available at the time, which suited our water-rationing lifestyle.

But there is a pot of gold at the end of my childhood laundry-toiling rainbow: it has instilled in me a delight for doing laundry at the neighborhood Laundromat. It's so pleasant and easy: you toss in your entire load, pour some detergent on top, feed the machine a few quarters for its trouble, come back in half an hour, and presto -- your laundry is done. If only all things in life were that simple.

Brother: I can't believe you made me wear dirty clothes!

Sister: [recovered enough from laughing to speak] Oh, they weren't that dirty. And anyway, you never noticed. [More laughing]

Brother: It's not funny! You're cruel. My own sister made me wear dirty clothes that were supposed to be clean!

Sister: [still cackling] At least when I did the laundry your clothes came out the right colors. Remember that one time you did the laundry and all of your underwear turned pink?

Brother: Oh yeah. I must have put a red shirt in the load. It was embarrassing changing for gym class when I was wearing pink underwear....