Category Archives: Winter

Pancakes

Something about winter makes me crave pancakes. Usually, they’re a weekend food. But some years, like this year and last year, I’ll eat pancakes every day. Last year, I’d get up fifteen minutes early every morning so I could make pancakes before going to work. Not only would I eat pancakes every day for breakfast, sometimes I’d make pancakes for dinner. Then when spring came I just stopped eating pancakes altogether. Until winter rolled around again this year….

It must be the fat; many animals crave fat in the cold dark months. Squirrels eat nuts (also full of fat); I eat pancakes. When I make pancakes myself, they tend to have even more fat: I just took one off the frying pan, and when I cut it with my fork, the fat glistened in the light. Mmm.

For some people, pancakes are an excuse to eat maple syrup, another winter food. But I don’t use maple syrup on pancakes. Sometimes I put some fruit in them — this evening, I added frozen cranberries grown in Freetown, the next town north of here — but I never use sweetener of any kind in or on my pancakes. It’s not the sugar I crave, it’s the fat.

There’s nothing like biting into a pancake hot off the griddle, the wheat flour providing just enough sweetness, the springy texture, and above all the lovely taste of hot grease. It doesn’t even matter what kind of grease: I’m protecting my arteries so I use olive oil, not butter. The pancakes still taste wonderful to me. My partner Carol gets her winter grease from fried squash seeds. I am not as fond of squash seeds as she is, but I suppose everyone has their own preferred way of ingesting winter grease.

Early spring will bring odd foods like dandelion greens and fiddleheads, foods that seem so unappetizing right now, but in a few months, as days get longer and warmer, I know I will crave them — the bitterness of dandelion greens, the slightly itchy texture of fiddleheads. For now, just give me pancakes.

Winter beach

Drove to Horseneck Beach for a long walk today. I had a desire to walk down the beach and pick up a few shells and not think about anything but sun and sand and waves. A brisk westerly breeze kept me walking quickly until I drew near to the Westport River where the beach was somewhat protected by a low rise of land to the west. I slowed down and started looking at the beach.

A different mix of shells from the beach at Fort Phoenix: Most of the clamshells appeared to be Atlantic Surf Clams, and I don’t think I saw any quahogs. (I saw one clammer working the beach, and I would have liked to have asked her what she was raking in, but she was too busy.) I also found a good number of Blue Mussel (Mytilu edulis) shells, which we haven’t found at all at Fort Phoenix. I picked up two or three clamshells that I couldn’t identify; after looking at the “Marine Organisms Database” on the Web site of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole, I believe the shells are either Transverse Ark (Anadara transversa) or Blood Ark Clam (Anadara ovalis), both of genus Anadara. It must be a somewhat different ecosystem along Horseneck Beach.

At one point, I saw a Great Black-backed Gull floating on the sea with something quite large in its mouth. I looked through the binoculars to see what the gull was carrying. It was a sort of pinkish color; the gull had to open its bill quite wide to hold onto whatever it was, and at one point it dropped the thing into the water, but quickly snatched it up again. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was, and the gull’s eye glowed a brilliant, mysterious red in the setting sun. At last the gull flew ponderously up into the air, and I could see that it was carrying a Horseshoe Crab with the long tail dangling down. Off the gull flew, presumably to drop the crab onto something hard to break it open.

But mostly I just walked, and didn’t think of anything at all.

Memory fragment

Yesterday I was driving to the health food store — dark, cold drizzle, damp and raw — and I had a sudden flash of incredibly vivid memory:

…driving from our house on Manila Avenue in Oakland, up Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, shaded by palm trees, past the bright open buildings, early morning sun washing everything with that characteristic pellucid northern California glow…

I shook my head and said to myself: Why did I think of that? I rarely took that route to work; I usually drove up through the Berkeley hills. And why remember a fairly trivial part of my commute at all?

I tried to remember the rest of that drive up Telegraph Avenue, but my thoughts moved on before I could… I guess it was just one tiny fragment of memory dropping into awareness at an odd moment.

Sunday coffee

The cold returned last night, and a raw damp wind. Snow showers at eight in the morning. Uniformly gray sky. As I walked to the church this morning the bank thermometer said 29 degrees. My glasses fogged up as soon as I got inside the damp church. My mood was damp and gray.

After the worship service, some of us were chatting in the Parish House over coffee when two men passed by whom I had not seen in the worship service, not seen before. This happens sometimes in an urban church. I introduced myself, partly challenging and partly welcoming: Hi, I’m Dan. The tall man, quiet and shy with stooped shoulders, said his name; the shorter man, bluff and hearty said his name. It turned out they were from the homeless shelter across the street, so I welcomed them and said, Now you know, I have to invite you to come to the worship service first next time. They nodded, asked what time it started, and that formality was out of the way. We chatted for a bit. They kind of wanted me to let them get out, but they were kind of glad to chat.

Walking home from the church the bank thermometer said 26 degrees, the wind now damp and bitter. I saw a man walking towards me with his face covered by a scarf, the way he was dressed he might have been homeless. I was just past where the Franciscan friars live; the friars leave their worship space open from early morning to late at night; perhaps this man was headed there. We don’t let everyone in, at any time; we do not have a resident community to supervise our building; on Sundays we have to worry about the children of our church community. But at least we let a couple of men take cups of coffee on Sunday morning. That’s maybe as much as we feel able to do, but it was enough to lighten my mood.

Memory

At one time, I went to this one Dunkin Donuts just about every week. It was along Route 62 in Bedford, a stretch of winding state highway in suburban Boston choked by strip malls. From the Dunkins, you could see a faceless chain motel down the road one way, a fair sized shopping plaza across the road, another chain motel next to the shopping plaza, some smaller building with professional offices, a car wash. My sister had once been a chambermaid in one of the motels. In winter, when the trees had no leaves, you could glimpse the backs of small anonymous suburban houses. I don’t ever remember seeing any people around those houses.

I used to take my laundry to the laundromat in the shopping plaza. One end of the plaza was occupied by a high-tech company, made into offices and R&D space. On the other side of the laundromat sat a crummy Chinese restaurant, and on the other side of that sat a couple of big-box discount stores. I had no interest in the discount stores and the only reason to go into the Chinese restaurant was to sit at the bar and have one of those huge bright potent drinks with an umbrella, but I never felt the urge to get drunk while waiting for laundry. So I’d walk across Route 62 to the Dunkins.

This was always on Sunday night, because that’s when I liked to do my laundry. I’d sit there at the counter, nursing a decaf coffee, and maybe eating a chocolate honey-glazed doughnut. The waitress wasn’t ever talkative, and I’d usually be the only customer, so it was either read or stare across Route 62 at the shopping plaza. I’d sit there reading a novel, I was trying to read one great novel a week.

One Sunday, there were actually two other guys sitting at the counter when I walked in. They were staying at one of the motels while doing business at one of the high-tech firms nearby.We wound up talking. Actually, I wound up talking to one of the guys, because the other guy spoke nothing but Turkish.

“He really likes Dunkins coffee,” said the American guy. “Coffee is a big deal in Turkey. They grind it really fine and leave the grounds in the bottom, it’s like drinking sludge at the bottom of the cup. Mostly he hasn’t liked the coffee here in America. But he loves Dunkins coffee. We’ve been over here the past two nights.” He turned to the Turkish guy and said something. The Turkish grinned, reached under his stool, and showed me a pound of Dunkin’s coffee. The American guy said, “He likes it so much, he’s buying some to take back to Turkey with him.” After that, they went back to talking in Turkish.

That was the only conversation I ever had in that Dunkin Donuts. Not long after that, I was in the laundromat and some guy walked in, dumped a whole bunch of clothes into a washing machine, and then took off the rest of his clothes except his boxer shorts and stuffed all them into the washing machine, too. We were the only two people there at the time, which felt a little funny. About a month later, I moved into a rental share house with a washing machine and dryer, so I stopped going to the laundromat, and stopped going to Dunkins.

For years after that, I’d occasionally drive past that Dunkins. Somehow that Dunkins managed to encapsulate something about that year of my life and I’d feel this momentary twinge. Vague memories would drift barely up into consciousness as I drove by, but they’d disappear and I’d be quickly past it without ever stopping to go in again.

Memory

What you’re about to read is a mixture of memory, hearsay, fact, and speculation. Believe it at your own risk.

The first year I was out of college, I worked for the fine arts department of my alma mater, in exchange for a pitiful salary, a chance to work with the sculptor, and studio space with access to all the clay I could desire. The foundry master, the sculpture professor, a few others, and I used to go to Dunkin Donuts a few miles up the main drag. The waitress got to know us so well, even to the point of knowing where we’d sit, that when she saw us coming in she’d had our coffee and doughnuts at our places before we sat down. I’d get a coffee, sugar no cream, and a chocolate honey-glazed. I don’t remember what the other guys got.

This was back in the days when Dunkin Donuts was a place where you’d want to hang out. A big counter snaked through the center of the store with a space in the middle where the waitress worked, you sat on a stool facing the waitress and the counter on the other side. Think white patterned Formica countertops with metal edges, dark red vinyl stools. It was all very companionable. In my memory, the sun was always pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front and side of the place.

The Dunkins we frequented stayed open 24 hours a day. Seems like all Dunkins stayed open 24 hours a day back then. There was a regular crew of people who would start drifting in sometime after midnight, and stay through the wee hours of the morning. My friend Johnny H. was one of them — he was still in college, and he’d bring his books and sit there and study. I remember going in once late at night (as a sculptor’s apprentice, I kept really odd hours) and seeing them sitting around the counter. They were nearly all men. They all seemed to know each other. They each kept a pool of loose coins on the counter in front of them, and when they ordered another doughnut or cup of coffee the waitress would just slide out the right number of coins. It looked like a companionable scene, but I never stayed, I was always headed back to the studio to work.

Anyway, Johnny H. used to tell me stories about the different characters who were regulars. That’s what they called themselves, “regulars.” Maybe it was a pun on the way you order coffee at Dunkins: “Gimme a coffee please.” “Regular?” “No cream, just sugar.” I don’t know.

Johnny H. told me this one story about a memorable night at Dunkins:

The regulars all drifted in, chatting with each other and with the waitress. On this one night, conversation veered from the normal topics, and some of the regulars got to bragging about themselves and what they could do. One of them was a phone phreak, that is, he knew how to make long distance phone calls for free. He had a little black box, a gizmo that would fool AT&T (this was back in the days when telephone service was still pretty much a monopoly) into putting through your call without charging you. Then another one of the regulars said he had an Uzi submachine gun. “No you don’t!” “Oh yes I do!” “Prove it.” So he drove off, allegedly to get the Uzi submachine gun — a thoroughly illegal modified assault weapon — but nobody believed he would be back.

Some of the regulars, fascinated with the phone phreak’s little black box, went over to the pay phone in Dunkins and used it to make some prank long distance calls. Maybe things were getting a little out of hand at this point. Then the second braggart came back with his Uzi submachine gun. He really did have one. God knows where he got it. As Johnny H. put it when he told me this story, you really never knew with the regulars. Some of them were into some pretty strange stuff. Nowadays, I might call them “marginal” or something like that.

Next thing you know, the guys with the little black box decide they’re going to call the White House. By now, it’s maybe three in the morning. They call directory assistance or something to get the number. Someone answers the phone (I imagine it was a sleepy-eyed Secret Service agent). They say, hey we don’t like the President — remember, this would have been in the Reagan years, after the assassination attempt that put Reagan in the hospital and left James Brady in a wheelchair for life — and we’ve got an Uzi submachine gun here, and we’re going to kill the president. Then they hang up, and start to laugh. Then the guy with the Uzi walks out to put it in his car.

The Lower Merion Township police are waiting outside Dunkins, and they arrest him and the phone phreak. According to the way Johnny H. heard the story later, any time a call came in to the White House, it was automatically traced. Any threat against the life of the president was taken very seriously indeed. The call was just a joke to the guys who made it, but whoever answered the phone at the White House probably had the FBI on the line within seconds after they hung up, and the FBI called the local cops, who were there before the pranksters could walk out of Dunkins, still laughing. The phone phreak, said Johnny H. later, was back at Dunkins within days, minus his little black box, but they never saw the guy with the Uzi again.

Carol and I just walked up to our neighborhood Dunkins, which is open from four in the morning until midnight. Can I help you? asks the waitress, and I get a small decaf no cream no sugar and an old-fashioned. “Hey,” says Carol, “I don’t see those Dunkins doughnuts anymore.” She asks the waitress, don’t you have those plain doughnuts with the little handle on them? But the waitress clearly doesn’t know what Carol’s talking about.

These days the waitresses and waiters (really, they’re just cashiers now) at Dunkins hide behind big orange and brown cabinets. Who can blame them for hiding back there with all the crazies in the world? No more counters where the regulars can sit around facing each other and the waitress or waiter walks down the middle. Yes, there are a few tiny unsociable tables stuffed in the back corner of the place with those chairs that are designed to be uncomfortable so you won’t want to sit for long. Hardly the place where you’d want to spend much time. Starbucks has taken over that niche of the coffee market; you go into a Starbucks and you want to sit for hours and relax; but at Dunkins it’s obvious they want you in and out as quickly as possible.

Just as well. If I were a faceless corporate beancounter at Dunkins, I surely would not want a bunch of phone phreaks and the like sitting around in my stores, even if they did leave their piles of change in front of them, waiting to spend it, even if they were pretty interesting human beings. But I sit here eating my plain donughnut and drinking my small decaf no cream no sugar (always order a small at Dunkins because a large comes in a styrofoam cup that makes the coffee taste kinda funny), I do wonder what happened to Johnny H., if he still stays up through the night and into the early morning, if he still talks with all kinds of strange and wonderful people.

Winter vista

Walked across to Fairhaven this afternoon. High thin clouds had already covered the sky; the harbor and the sky were both gray. I was hoping to see sea ducks on the harbor, but aside from a few Buffleheads I saw few waterbirds. On the way back from Fairhaven, I stopped at the north end of Pope’s Island, stood for a while on the expanse of asphalt parking lot between Fairhaven Hardware and Dunkin Donuts. Through the binoculars I could see a raft of sea ducks far up in the harbor, black-and-white specks bobbing in the water almost to Interstate 195. I moved the binoculars to the old brick Fairhaven Mills building, nearly a hundred years old. Home Depot wants to bulldoze it and erect another big-box retail store that will last maybe twenty-five years before it has to be demolished. Carol and I snuck up to the top floor of the mill one afternoon last month, imagining what it would be like to have an office, or a store, or an apartment in that big, vast space; the tall windows with their views of the Acushnet River and the harbor, the skylights giving the space an open roomy feeling. The New Bedford City Council quickly voted to give Home Depot the permit to destroy; they have witnessed how the mallification of North Dartmouth sucked the life out of downtown New Bedford, and they must have thought, if we’re going to suck the life out of the downtown at least we can keep the tax dollars in the city. I moved the binoculars down the the wetlands sandwiched between the interstate and the harbor. With the binoculars, I could see that Phragmites, or Common Reeds, dominated the wetlands; a non-native species that offers little to the rest of the ecosystem while pushing out native flora and fauna; thus degrading the overall ecosystem. The dull tan stand of reeds offered little contrast to the dreary gray waters of the harbor. On late December days like this it’s hard to feel much hope. No leaves on the trees to soften the cityscape; no falling snow to gently cover the worst of the city’s ugliness; just dreary gray sky, dreary gray water, no sea ducks to watch diving, the only people in sight stay mostly hidden inside their cars, the only sound the rush of traffic on U.S. Route 6 behind me. Whatever hopelessness I feel is probably just a cold coming on, or a reaction to the short, dark days. These short days wear on you, we have a long way to go before spring comes, but at least by this time of year the days can only get longer. Then five Common Mergansers swam out of their hiding place among the docks of the deserted marina to my left, swimming away from me, warily looking back to see what I would do; the dull reddish heads of the females appearing bright against the grayness of the day. When they got a little farther out, they began to dive, staying under for long periods of time as they hunted for food, or perhaps dived just for the sheer joy of it. I stood watching them for a while until the damp cold sunk in. I walked briskly towards home. By the time I got there, I was warm and far more cheerful.

Swans

I walked across to Pope’s Island today, and over to Fairhaven. A skim of ice covers the quiet backwaters of the harbor on the Fairhaven side. And on the water by the Holiday Inn Express parking lot, two big white graceful birds: a pair of Mute Swans swimming side by side. I also saw dozens of ducks and geese; the inland waters must be freezing over, driving the waterfowl to the estuaries and bays, where the salt content keeps the water mostly open.

The swans had the usual arrogant way of swimming that Mute Swans seem to have. They know they’re pretty so humans won’t touch them; they know they’re bigger than any other animal on the water. All the ducks and geese were fairly shy, and swam warily away as soon as I got too close; but the swans didn’t care where I stood. If they were human, I would have said they’re show-offs.

Waterfowl list for birders: 40 Canada Geese; 2 Mute Swans; ~12 Mallards; 56 Scaup (prob. Greater); 38 Bufflehead; 1 Common Merganser.