Old Chicago

Headline in Thursday's paper: "Block 37 in continuing difficulties". That block's been empty, across the street from Daley Center, since sometime in the early 1980s at least. I worked in an elegant old building on Block 37, before the block went down. My job lasted an unusually long time because I was the last person in the company who knew how to open the old safe on the fifth floor. That building had some elegant marble staircases, and happy humming offices on its third floor; Gaper's Catering was on another floor, and a huge competent grocery store used the ground floor and the large bright basement floor. Every year, for a few days in strawberry season, candymakers used to sit in the decorated windows dipping fresh strawberries in chocolate while the passersby flooded in to buy them. A system of Personal Shoppers survived from the early part of the century; the names of the cheerful people who answered that phone were retained as one "Miss Belle" reached retirement age and another "Miss Belle" began.

There were more basements below the one that the shoppers knew. The one that shoppers knew sold Tide and bread and ham. Below that, there was a level with capacious doors that opened onto an old Chicago street way below present street level, and the doors opened onto a large Lazy Susan arrangement next to freight elevators. You could bring your produce in the standard Chicago-size truck/trolley right in those doors, onto the big wooden Lazy Susan, and after the product was unloaded, helpers would revolve the wooden staging around so the horses could pull the truck back out onto the street again.

Going up to the fifth floor was something to be cautious about; there were lofts nearby that stored not only produce and coffee but recent releasees from County jail. People joked that on release from the jail, the address of those lofts was passed out, to supply quick housing, short-term.

The head bookkeeper on the third floor was Dorothy, she'd had that job for years. She could remember when they used an IBM system to hold punched cards in a large room that stretched the size of a soccer field. I don't think in the beginning that the cards went into a computer, I think they were handled mechanically. Around 1975, Dorothy retired, spry and sassy, with silver hair.

The location was wonderful for me, because at lunchtime I could spend an hour with the tract books and records in the County Building. Wills and court cases were sent to the warehouse when they aged, and their indices were all downstairs in the County building. I did a lot of research for one group, to find out the original contents of the old Clarke house that was moved from south to north, and later from north to south again. It's surprising how much stock in electric railroad companies was held by early residents. It was also surprising at first to me that in more and more cases I researched, where pious families had a father or mother who "just left", all the details including all addresses and testimony from years like 1905 could still be found in the old divorce cases. Keep the truth so close in the family that only the court know, not the grandchildren?

Six AM, noon, and six at night

My grandfather Hanna lived in Ivesdale, pop 250. One of his jobs was ringing the Angelus bells three times a day in the church across the street from his home. He used a railroad watch, and he used to phone up Albinger's hardware on the old-fashioned party line to talk to Gus Albinger; they would solemnly check their watches every day to be sure the Angelus was rung on time.

My grandmother Sloan in her old age used to aggravate her daughter by sitting on the bench outside the telephone building with her crocheting or her quilting, sitting for hours in the sun. Her favorite prayer was the Angelus, and after she died, her three daughters promised each other to try to say it as often as they remembered at the right times, to remember her.

When we were in Holland, we would interrupt our traveling round -- once we got off a train -- to follow the ringing bells to local churches; usually we could hear a Mass. Drove everybody nuts having to chase after yet another church; and these little daily Masses were very short, luckily!

The Angelus is all antiphonal -- one voice says the first line, one responds. The Hail Marys are too, of course.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary
And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.
Hail Mary ...
Behold the handmaid of the Lord
Be it done unto me according to his Word.
Hail Mary ...
And the Word was made flesh
And dwelt amongst us.
Hail Mary ...
V. Pray for us, o holy mother of God
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Pour forth we beseech thee, your grace into our hearts, that we to whom the birth of Christ was made known by the coming of an angel, may by His passion and death be brought to the glory of his resurrection, through Christ our Lord thru whom all good things flow.

Whoops

Of course, I meant to use Hello to put this shot into my profile. I wonder if that ever works?

On the other hand, Hello can add a picture to this blog, so here I am to say Hello.

me, warm in the sun at Wellfleet

All Day in the Oven

Oh yes, it should be thawing already. Did you put it in the bottom of the refrigerator this morning? It's gonna leak as it thaws, have the right tray under it. I used to set out a big one down in the cold room, and if you started this morning, that would work fine. If it's in the refrigerator and when you feel it on Wednesday night, it's still really solid, find something as safely cold as the cold room (but not quite as cold as where it's been) because it's really a chore to handle a big one on Thursday if most of it's icy. Can be done...

What's the whole day like, the old-fashioned way? Like this. I used to start really early, when serving time hours had to be like two pm dinner. Then wrapping a big one in a tinfoil tent, completely, allowed me to set the oven so much higher, like 425 and even 450. The point is, the cooking time's gonna depend on the weight of the bird, the temperature of the oven, and what time you absolutely have to be serving dinner. Have the bird out of the oven and cooling almost an hour before you sit down with the candles lit, because it needs to cool 20 minutes before carving.

So whenever you decide you should be up, you stand around with your coffee and use two goodsize heavy skillets to make the dressing. Slice up quantities of onion and celery, tear up bowlfuls of stale bread, and use actual Crisco in the skillets. Lightly saute onion, and any peppers or mushrooms you decided to use, and the celery, in both skillets; salt and pepper, and add sprinkles of Poultry Stuffing spice; keep spooning out veggies into a mixing bowl that has some of the bread crumbs in it, stir 'em up. In the breaks, fill a tall saucepan for the back of the stove with water, toss the pieces of celery, celery leaves, and onion that you don't chop for dressing, or reserve for appetizers, into the water as it heats, and salt it. Put a couple of carrots in it, too. Layer more breadcrumbs into the mixing bowls that the sauted veggies are going into; and when your supply or your patience has run out, start toasting breakcrumbs in the skillets, to absorb any scrap of oil or onion, and keep adding and stirring with more Poultry Seasoning, until at the end both skillets are clean and empty, and the mixing bowls are full and fragrant. More salt and pepper, probably.

Also in the breaks, you've staggered over to the sink with the trayful of turkey, balanced it in an immaculate sink, rinsed it thoroughly with cold water, and gotten the brown paper bags it was sitting on out of the way. Grapple through both cavities, front and back, to retrieve the giblets, rinse them separately and very well, and toss them into the tall saucepan which is now ready to simmer very low all day. Usually you rub some salt into the inside of the empty, cold, turkey now. Put it back on the tray, lug it over to the mixing bowls, and stuff until the mixing bowls are both empty. It's amazing how much bread stuffing goes into a big turkey. Long long ago, we used to be directed to lace the thing closed, or fasten its legs together, but really that's not necessary. Put tinfoil over the rack in the roasting pan, square up the stuffed turkey in place; put tinfoil over the top fastened onto the bottom pieces. At the very end, you'll probably have bent this top cover in and pulled it up to let the breast brown for an hour or so; and if your temperature is going to be higher than 330, let the tinfoil be a securely closed cover.

It's easier to make the pies next, because if you use the pastry recipe I do, you can roll the crust out without really totally messing up the counter space; but baking them will require the oven to be at 425 for at least 15 minutes before the crust can allow you to turn the heat down, remember.

Making the bread dough for rolls is going to mean dusting the counter with flour, for the first time, -- of course, it'll happen again a few times before the rolls are shaped and rising. Use a sweet recipe for good rolls; butter the top after you put it into the mixing bowls to rise, and cover them with damp tea towels.

Put sweet potatoes in a large saucepan to boil, and sit down to have a cup of coffee. What other vegetables were fresh and pretty? Cauliflower; beans; corn; broccoli; none of these have to be steamed or boiled this early, unless they're part of a presentation that has to be arranged and baked later, like the sweet potatoes.

Essentially, when you've come this far, you're free for hours. Setting the table, preparing appetizers, all fit in when you feel like it. The bread dough gets punched down, and rises again; the sweet potatoes get peeled and sliced and set into an oven dish. You do not have to put brown sugar and cloves (well, yes, you need cloves) into sweet potatoes; be sure to salt and pepper them. The pies come out of the oven and get cooled. If you whip cream for topping now, it may need a piece of wax paper over it in the refrigerator.

Shaping the rolls to rise is due to happen about three hours before sitting down to eat, or so; I like the kind that require three little buttered balls of dough in each slot of a muffin tin, or the fat ones with a buttered top and sesame seed on them; or twisted strips that rise on a cookie sheet. They can bake after the turkey's out, no problem about the high temperature then. Yes, the kitchen's going to get pretty warm, I leave the door to the back porch open all day.

Peeling enough potatoes needs that whole counter again. Make sure the pan they're boiled in is big enough to mash them! No, I didn't make cole slaw usually; we adore those cans of jellied cranberry from the store, why not? Check the gravy boats and butter dishes.

People have come in, been served drinks or served themselves, woken up from naps or been put down for them; the day's been smelling better and better. And the kitchen is warm!

When the turkey is resting, take it out of the roasting pan, back onto its tray; rinse the tinfoil by pouring giblet broth over it to take the drippings into the roaster pan; then rinse the rack, the same way. You can get tinfoil and rack out of the way, unless the rack's got quite a bit of turkey left on it. Pull out the neck from the saucepan and take all the tasty meat off, to toss into the roasting pan. Add flour to the dripping in the roasting pan, stir and brown, and then add more giblet broth and more flour that's already been stirred with cold water, expecting to use a huge amount of gravy altogether. With the roasting pan simmering on the stove, turn up the oven for rolls. Start taking stuffing out, putting it into serving dishes, and when you've got gravy, put gravy into that stuffing, too. Find whoever's going to carve, and supply really sharp knives, as well as the big spoon for stuffing you missed; scout the platter that the carver uses for "discards" for scraps that go into the gravy, simmering over there. One platter for white meat and one platter for dark? If it's really big, maybe a couple more platters. Is there a volunteer to mash the potatoes? Don't forget and leave the sweet potatoes in the oven too long! There's always fresh parsley in the garden for the platters. If not, some tiny leaves of kale.

Getting all the meat off the carcass allows you to dump it before the platters are served, and remember to put the last tiniest scraps into the gravy too. You diced the other giblets, and somebody ate the heart. Saving the wishbone is fun. Basketfuls of rolls can be covered with napkins. Having all the saucepans and mixing bowls cleaned and put away while the potatoes are being mashed means a clean kitchen for after dinner. The rolls only need about 15 or 20 minutes per pan, and several pans went in at once. Gravy bowls and butter, and sit down.

What a lovely day.

Wintry Gardening

My foetid hellebore may have gotten a fungus -- blocked its little airways. Remember how big it was, and how rampantly it was growing? It held its green bells right through our cold spring. But in about September it crumpled up and went black, mostly. I hold out little hope for next year.

The other two groups are doing wonderfully. To think I felt I could never grow hellebore in Illinois!

Time to take down the teepees that the scarlet runner was one. Next year, the teepees may be on the south of the house. Maybe the bean'll grow up the ramp?

Chrysanthemums are still full of color. The newer one, the light orangey one, is done having new buds, but the big spread of pink-maroon is still right there.

Long Distance Runners

Claims lately in the news, based on twenty years of research, maintain that homo sapiens developed as long distance runners. That pleases me a whole lot. Many fragments of our earliest history make better sense if you think of a bunch of sixteen-year-olds pelting along, racing off to whatever's over the hill.

• Mammoth Trumpet was published by the U of Montana for some years. They devoted most of their print space to establishing that America was populated (North and South) a lot earlier than Clovis times. Sure, think of tribes running half the day -- they get over a lot of territory.
• Alexander's armies borrowed the shield wall, hoplites, and the darting infantry probe, and met great success. So much easier to picture the armies at full stretch, overrunning Galatia.
• The Romans spread all over France so easily -- thudding along to acquire the next town. I tried this out on Joe, and he pointed out that England was safer for a long time because of its winding curling pathways. But the Roman engineers and the pounding Roman feet are fun to think of.
• Some highways in Illinois are described as old Indian paths, and they're as straight as the road to St. Alban's. I always wondered why strolling Indians didn't take byways, wind around to visit pretty streams. Sure, it wasn't strolling people that really wanted the straighaways.