So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

Did you use real salt pork? That's a critical ingredient. Some philistines use bacon as a substitute, but that's the bunk. Got to be a big chunk of real salt pork or nothing.

I used usual unsmoked supermarket-bacon. That's the thing between the beans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Next time, ask the guy at the meat counter for "gepökeltes Schweinebauch." It'll look like this:

Note that there's much more fat and much less meat than bacon -- that's the key. The fat cooks off into the sauce as the beans bake, and really gets down into the flavor.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Thanks, Lizzie!

 

[BlueTrain]

I'm sorry you folks had a tough time with your papas. I was very close with my father who, as the saying was, had a tough row to how. My mother had a stroke around 1950, before I had even started school, and had to take care of her hand and foot until she died in 1959. He worked two jobs to afford a housekeeper some of the time. We were very close but we didn't go out back and play pitch or for that matter, any games. He worked all the time. He kept a huge garden and he was a mechanic when he wasn't being a truck driver. I was able to spend time out of school with him at work. That probably rarely happens these days. I was also pretty close to most of my uncles and even traveled and went camping with them. My own father never had time for stuff like that.

I saw other fathers, unrelated, too. The father of one of my best friends was very nice to me but could be very mean to his son if he didn't jump when he said to. The father of another good friend was sort of a rough individual but was never mean to anyone, although I often saw him coming home drunk--sort of walking. Both he and his son wore extra thick glasses but neither of them were the sort that you would make fun of for wearing glasses. Nowadays it seems like everyone wears glasses and nobody makes fun of you for wearing them.

By the way, that neighbor, the one with the extra thick glasses (and the drinking problem) was a linesman for the power company and used to wear riding breeches and high laced boots. I really don't remember anything about his hats, though. But I thought the breeches had a certain style but even then they were a little old-fashioned. The other friend and his bather father, on the other hand, both wore Orlon polo shirts. I never wore anything like that.

 

[vitanola]

Throwing dishes was the least of his habits -- I can remember him threatening my mother with a knife. I got back at him, though, when I was about three -- I took all the cigarettes out of his pack, dunked them in Clorox, and then put them back in the pack. I think, and without exaggerating, that I was trying to remove him from our midst by any means necessary. Didn't work, but it wasn't for any lack of trying.

When we had tripe, it was never an ingredient in anything -- we simply had it boiled and slapped down on the plate like a big lump of wet honeycomb rubber. To add to the culinary delight, it was usually served with a wad of wet boiled spinach.

Great Gravy! Plain boiled tripe? This explains some of my Bohemian grandmother's attitudes toward "Yankee Food". Tripe is one of those dishes which must only be prepared by someone who has plenty of time to cook. I cannot imagine a lady (or man) who works a regular job being able to make it into anything at all palatable on a week night.

My grandmother used to make a dark brown soup with tripe, flavored with dried mushrooms, carrots, celery, tomato and a very dark roux.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother, alas, was never known for her culinary skill. She once accidentally dropped her copy of Fannie Farmer in the soup pot, and that was the best thing she made all week. She boiled just about everything, and when those plastic "Banquet Bag" things came out, she was fully in her element.

She did, however, make decent finnan haddie, which is a dish nobody can mess up. Slap the fish down in the baking pan, punch a hole in a can of condensed milk, pour it over the top, and stick it in the stove for ten minutes. Better than tripe any day of the week.

 

[skydog757]

We were a single income family for many years, up until I was about eight (my brother was ten). My mother was our primary (almost exclusive) caregiver and totally managed the household and finances. My Dad was the breadwinner. Their arrangement was that my Dad could hunt and fish to his heart's content, he just had to be home for our family meal which was centered around his timetable. On the rare occasion when Mom would get sick of having us around constantly, my Dad would take us with him for the day. Going with my Dad meant going to the places that he always went; there wasn't a bait shop, boat launch, gun store or hardware within our county that I didn't know by heart. There usually wasn't much for me to do, so I just grabbed a pile of comic books to while away the time before I jumped into the Pontiac Catalina. He was a very good man, but my Mom let him be a boy for as long as he wanted to. He was a caring man, but had no idea how to express it. He grew to be a wonderful Grandfather.

 

[BlueTrain]

I suppose all of us have our standards set by our parents and perhaps our grandparents as well, if they are around. It doesn't matter what the family of our aunt and uncle who live right across the street do, all that counts is what we do at home. Then everything you do thereafter once you leave home (as soon as you finish high school!) is measured against what it was like when you still lived at home. All of the reasons for doing something--or not doing something--have been set by then. That doesn't mean you'll do anything the same way by any means but you'll have a good reason for doing it differently, if you do. They may even give you good reasons to leave home in the first place.

One trivial thing that is beginning to disturb me is the way people say "back in the day." What day was that? To my way of thinking, today is just as good as yesterday. Not so sure about tomorrow, though.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I got the problem, to be a thoughtful human, lifelong. But, I seemingly learned to avoid, that my basic problem influences me too much. I think, I'm now on a better way, than years ago.

It's just important to me, to distract myself, everytime I get to thoughtful. It got no sense to think every time about past things. Thirty years of deep thinking were enough.

 

[MisterCairo]

It should be "back in my day". We all have our memories of "the way things used to be".

Hindsight of course is 20/20 and usually viewed through rose-tinted lenses. Non-prescription, of course, because your vision is already 20/20...

 

[BlueTrain]

We said the pledge of allegiance when I was in grade school. It was not yet 50 years old when I first did that. It didn't exist when my grandmother was born. Do we really need such a thing? I wouldn't fight for a flag. Now there are flags on army uniforms., something they didn't have when I was in the army. I don't think there was a morning prayer in school. I am Christian but I don't understand prayer.

We had a dress-up day once in a while but otherwise we just wore "school clothes," which for me were rather ragged. I have no idea what other students thought of the teachers (never asked) or what the teachers thought of us (never asked). But there were a few teachers I really liked and went to visit after I finished school when I was in my hometown again.

I also didn't worry about going to public places either in spite of the red scare of the 1950s. I remember the good things, too, because there weren't that many of them to remember.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Pledge of Allegience became a compulsory-classroom thing around the time of the First World War, and was quite controversial during the 1930s because it was considered by some to resemble the compulsory Hitler-heiling and swastika-salutiing of Nazi Germany, and by others to be an act of idol worship. The Supreme Court ruled against compulsory saluting in schools in 1943, and it's been illegal ever since. We said it in our classroom up until Junior High, followed by the singing of "My Country Tis Of Thee," but you couldn't legally be disciplined for refusing to participate. However, this was never made clear to the kids, so there was a great deal of pressure to keep your mouth shut and go along with the crowd.

Protestant prayers in classrooms were common until the 1940s, but began to disappear due to strong opposition from Catholic activist groups who considered them to be indoctrination, long before the Supreme Court ruling of 1963 banished any form of public prayer from the classroom. Most of the controversy stemming from that ruling was fomented by Birchers and other hard-right organizations, not actual religious groups.

 

[MisterCairo]

I'm starting to see all sorts of "generational" differences. It's funny, because you always think "I'm fairly young, those people are from an older generation". And then you meet someone who doesn't remember the Cold War (or even know what the term means), weren't alive when "the wall came down", and so on.

I remember reciting the Lord's Prayer in school, standing for the national anthem in movie theatres, and so on. Oh, and the time when you needed a kid to program the clock on a VCR. Now try telling a kid there was a time when cell phones could only make and receive phone calls, watch their minds blow...

 

[MisterCairo]

Supreme Court ruling of 1963 banished any form of public prayer from the classroom.

Ontario public schools had prayers well into the 80s. Now if only we could muster the political will to abolish the Catholic school system, so we could, among other things, be in compliance with our obligations under international law.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Back in the Day," seems to be one of those phrases that takes much of its meaning from the context of the conversation. In general, it refers to a "prior time period" when something / some tradition / some method / some standard was better or worse. While most of the time, it seems to be used to refer to a time when thing were better "back in the day, we could leave our doors unlocked at night," I've also heard it used to reflect a negative past as in "back in the day, there were no safety standard for how we built these things."

As a devout agnostic (I have never practiced religion), I have no problem with things like the Pledge of Allegiance including a reference to God or swearing on a Bible in court, etc. as I see those things as cultural traditions and a reflection of the Judeo-Christian heritage and philosophy that is part of this country's foundation and spirit. Force religion on me, and I'll fight you; but to me, the things that people get very worked up about are just cultural and historical touch-points.

I would image (don't know) that if I lived in an Asian country like, say, Japan, there would be cultural references in their public institutions, holidays, etc. that reflect Asian religions and I might have to partake in some actions like standing for a prayer or swearing on a prayer book that would, IMHO, be the respectful thing to do even though I didn't practice the religion.

 

[BlueTrain]

I sure don't remember standing up for anything in movie theaters.

It must be hard being an American and not being a Christian. For that matter, it was hard enough being Roman Catholic in a lot of places, it being a foreign religion and everything, you know.

 

[BlueTrain]

Maybe that's why I don't like "back in the day," because the way I remember it, it wasn't a better day at all. I have worked hard to have a better life than my father but mostly I've been lucky. Luck, good luck at least, is always indispensable.

 

[Fading Fast]

Maybe that's why I don't like "back in the day," because the way I remember it, it wasn't a better day at all. I have worked hard to have a better life than my father but mostly I've been lucky. Luck, good luck at least, is always indispensable.

Again, my Dad would say things like, "back in the day, we really had it tough" / "back in the day, nobody worried about 'your feelings'" / "back in the day, you were lucky to have a job, any job." But I agree, today it seems to be used, 99% of the time, to reflect something having been better in the past.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That may be the way Older Folks use it, but to the kids it simply means "when I was in grade school."

 

[LizzieMaine]

I sure don't remember standing up for anything in movie theaters.

It must be hard being an American and not being a Christian. For that matter, it was hard enough being Roman Catholic in a lot of places, it being a foreign religion and everything, you know.

It depends on where you were living. In the ethnic neighborhoods of Boston and Brooklyn, being a Protestant meant being a distinctly untrusted minority. Religious and sectional tensions between Catholics and non-Catholics ran extremely high in Northeastern cities in the years before the war, to the point where street violence was not uncommon. Followers of Father Coughlin, organized under the banner of "Catholic Action," would stand on street corners selling Coughlinite newspapers -- and would often assault pedestrians who declined to buy, especially if they looked Jewish, while police officers, who might very well be Coughlinites themselves, looked the other way.