Month: August 2021

Frustration

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

Frustration can take many forms. You can be frustrated with inanimate objects!, like when your computer won’t allow you to do what you’ve done hundreds of times, or you can’t get reception on your cell phone, or when a light bulb burns out just as you sit down besides your favorite reading lamp to finish a great book. You can be frustrated with people in your life, like folks that stop in the middle of the aisle in the supermarket, or the guy driving in front of you who stops for no reason, or when somebody doesn’t understand what you are trying to explain to them. We all must contend with a certain amount of frustration in our lives, but it just seems to me that my frustration level is on the rise as of late! It’s probably just me, but it also may be the world we live in. Here’s my beef.

I guess my number one frustration today is the way our world seems to be sliding back into that horrible year 2020! We all lived through a year with little or no social contact, brought upon us by Covid-19. For sure there were folks acting like nothing was different, but for most of us who didn’t want to get sick and perhaps die alone in the hospital, we did what we had to do to stay distant and safe. Then, when the first and then the second Covid Vaccines were approved for emergency use at the end of 2020, Susie and I did everything we could to secure the vaccine. We made phone calls, stayed on line for hours and days at a time, and eventually we did it! By the middle of March, 2021 both Susie and I were fully vaccinated, having had our two shots and waited the required 2 weeks for full protection! We were ready to live our lives again!!

For the first time since we left for Florida in January 2020, by the middle of March, 2021, Susie and I were back in our two weekly haunts, Charlie’s and Angelos! Yes, masks were still the order of the day, and there was no bar service and folks were still social distancing, but we felt for the first time in a year that we were getting our lives back! We were enjoying old routines and seeing friends again! Thank God For Science!!!! We were so optimistic that the worst was over, and that Covid was retreating from our shores! America had won!

That was then, but then politics reared it’s ugly head! Suddenly the Covid Vaccines were not the savior of our country, but the scourge of mankind! Suddenly stemming the continuing speed of this insidious disease was not smart science, but rather the limitation of personal freedoms and an affront to all that was sacred to so called patriots! Suddenly wearing a mask to protect yourself and others was akin to the Nazis killing millions of Jews and others during World War Two! Suddenly the salvation of our lives that Susie and I had seen when we were fully vaccinated was slipping away. Numbers were growing, hospitalizations were growing, and people were dying. Yes, I am surely frustrated that so many Americans have answered the call to turn this crisis into a political side show. I am frustrated that they have done everything they can to drag us back to 2020! Sorry, but that is one huge frustration for me right now!

Our oldest son is frustrated that so many people are still not vaccinated! He’s frustrated that numbers of Covid cases are rising, and that masks are being worn again. Mostly he’s frustrated that his three kids…our three Grandkids…who at 7, 5, and 2 and are too young to be vaccinated, are still living under a cloud!

If you disagree with what I’ve written above, please don’t send me your arguments, documentation, or any other propaganda about people having a personal right to do as they choose, because frankly, I DON’T CARE!! Don’t bother sending me any form of communication that will attempt to change my mind, because I won’t read it! Unfriend me on Facebook, take my number out of your phone contacts, do whatever you want, but DO NOT THINK YOU CAN CHANGE MY MIND!!!

When I was a kid, we were all scared about getting Polio and either dying or spending the rest of our lives living like a science experiment in an Iron Lung! Thanks to science (and our folks making sure we had a Polio Booster every year), that’s not something my kids have ever had to worry about. Enough of these bullshit theories that this vaccine will change your DNA, or that Bill Gates will be able to track your every move once you are vaccinated. The reality is that these vaccines will save your life. They will keep you out of the hospital, off a respirator, and out of the morgue. You will not die alone. If you think anything else, then I’m truly sorry for you and I wish you well, but frankly, you are screwing with my family’s well being, and that pisses me off!

The Automat

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 6 Comments

Have you ever been in an Automat? Do you even know what an Automat is? Well, let’s turn to Wikipedia and see what they say…..

“The first automat in the U.S. was opened June 12, 1902, at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia by Horn & Hardart. Horn & Hardart became the most prominent American automat chain. Inspired by Max Sielaff’s AUTOMAT Restaurants in Berlin, they became among the first 47 restaurants, and the first non-Europeans, to receive patented vending machines from Sielaff’s Berlin factory. The automat was brought to New York City in 1912, and gradually became part of popular culture in northern industrial cities.”

The listing further goes on to state that in New York City there were eventually 40 Horn and Hardart Automats, with the last one closing in 1991. Automats were prominent in New York City when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s. In fact, when the Metropolitan Opera was located at 40th Street, there was a basement level Automat on 7th Avenue, between 40th and 41st Street, and we went there a lot. It was a place to get a quick cup of coffee, or for a little kid to get a bologna sandwich!

If you’ve never been a little kid, with a handful of nickels, looking over what you could get in an Automat, then you probably weren’t a kid in NYC at the same time I was. It truly was the quintessential New York experience from back in the day. So much so, that in the 1962 movie ,That Touch of Mink starring Cary Grant and Doris Day, Doris Day’s best friend (played by Audrey Meadows of The Honeymooners fame) worked behind the scenes in a local Automat that was prominently featured in the film. Here’s a clip from that movie that gives you an idea of what an Automat looked like.

The two things in the Wikipedia quote above that surprised me were, (1) that the first Automat opened in Philadelphia and (2) that it was basically a copy of Berlin Automats using the machines that dispensed the food as produced in Germany. Who knew. As I said, the Automat seemed like the quintessential New York Experience! My personal relationship to this blog, and why the Automat will always hold a special place in my memory, centers around a story that my cousin Jeanne Pratt and I have laughed at many times over the 60 plus years since it happened to us.

My Mom’s parents were visiting New York from Chicago. This time, they also had my Chicago cousin Jeanne with them (the daughter of my Mom’s younger brother). One day, my Grandparents, Jeanne, and I were in Manhattan. We could have well been at Radio City Music Hall seeing the movie and show – something my Grandma liked to do. At some point in the day, we stopped in at an Automat. My Grandma always seemed to be picking up strays, and this day in this particular Automat, she picked up, what we used to call back in the day, a bum. He was dirty and smelly, and my Grandmother fell for his story that he’d been a famous brain surgeon, but when his wife died, his life fell apart, leaving him to beg on the streets. I think my Grandma was the only one to buy his rap.

She invited him to sit at our table, to the dismay of myself and Jeanne (she was probably 10 at the time and I was 8), who were not buying his tale of woe! Immediately, she dispatched my Grandfather, “ Go get him a cup of coffee Bill,” and off he went to one of the famous Automat coffee dispensers. Jeanne and I looked at each other, as the story unfolded as he drank coffee and regaled my Grandmother. I have no recollection of how we finally got to get away from him, but I’m pretty sure my Grandfather left with a few less bills in his pocket, at the insistence of my Grandmother!

While we don’t see Jeanne and her husband Walt that often as they live in Connecticut and Florida, and we’re in Jersey, the once or twice a year we’re together, invariably one of us will bring up the “Automat Incident.” Some 60 years later, we still both laugh, and shake our heads, and just acknowledge that, “That was Grandma!”

The List

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

Are you a list person? I really wasn’t/aren’t, but after almost 42 years of marriage, it’s a skill I am starting to understand, thanks to the love of my life, my Susie!

Susan Lynn Johnson D’Elia is most definitely a list person, and has been from the first day I met her way back in 1977. I don’t know if this is something that comes from her former life as a Registered Nurse, or something borne out of her slight OCD tendencies, but my wife has been a huge proponent of making lists for as long as I can remember. She loves making lists of things that need to be done, and then gets great enjoyment when she can cross completed items off that list. There are two steadfast rules, however for Susie’s lists. #1 is that nobody but she can place items on her lists (and most surely not me with my chicken scratch penmanship), and almost as important, NOBODY but Susie crosses things off one of her lists!

Over the years, there have been many, many lists. I don’t recall if I knew it at the time, but I’m pretty sure there was a list pertaining to our wedding. I’m sure she had a packing list for our honeymoon, and I know for a fact, we have long had a list for the things we were going to do when we win the lottery! Now that list has changed over the years (like we no longer have to have “Buy a House in Ocean City” on our wish list), but you best believe that there still is a list! Once the kids were able to write, she started them on Christmas Lists, which she still asks them for today!

Of course, there are the day to day lists, like our weekly meal planning, our grocery shopping lists (which Susie has organized by the aisle in our local Shoprite, so we zip through the store), jobs around the house, and that sort. There still are the long range lists too, like projects we want to do around the house, but not things we can accomplish right now. As always, she feels very accomplished when she crosses things off the “To Do” lists, and even more so when she gets to rip a completed page off her clip board, and throw it away!

Oh yes, Susie has a dedicated LIST clipboard. It’s a small 5 by 7 clipboard that is loaded with the mini size legal pads, and thanks for our Cousin Walt’s gift, always has a pen at the ready. As I write this, the lists on the clipboard include our meals list, a shopping list (two really…one for Shoprite and one for Costco), her long term to do list, and a list of various things we want to do this week, broken down by days. My wife is nothing if not organized!

But I have to agree, she is 100% right about lists. They help you stay organized, make sure you get done the things you want to get done, help you stay focused during a project, and at our age, help you remember that thing you just had on your mind, but forgot by the time you go to do it! She has even got me making lists, and I have to agree that there is a great sense of accomplishment when you can cross an item off! Sometimes, I even tell her to write a task we’ve completed on a list, that wasn’t on the list, so we can have the pleasure of crossing it off the list!!

This whole discussion of lists was started because on September 14th I am having my second knee replaced. Two years ago, my left knee was replaced, and in September it will be my right knee’s turn. I mentioned to Susie the other day, that I felt much more organized two years ago, and that I didn’t feel that I had as good a handle on the tasks I must accomplish before the surgery this time around. Her answer, “Make a list of the tasks, put them in order, and cross them off when you’ve taken care of them.” She was right! Sitting down, going through the paperwork from Dr Zabinski, writing tasks down, and putting them in order was the perfect way to wrap my head around the tasks. Lists are a great way to get organized and to really feel like you are prepared, and now on the fridge is a nicely printed out list with 13 things that MUST be done before September 14th! I feel organized now, have a handle on what I have to do when, and even have 4 items checked off already!

Thanks Susie for your lists! They do work…