The Designer Burger (or How to Turn Ground Beef into a Cash Cow)

“A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much. “   Evan Esar (American humorist)

The hamburger, that simple, basic, culinary symbol of American egalitarianism has in recent years gone through a makeover.  What started as a simple ground beef patty resting greasily in a bun has gone designer.  It’s like the kid who goes to Hollywood gets famous, lets success go to his head and then forgets where he came from.  Like that kid who’s traded his Wranglers for a Gucci suit and scorns his old friends, big time chefs are trying to turn the hamburger into an uppity snob.

When I was a kid a hamburger was something that was featured at diners and drive-ins.  People who claimed even a fragment of taste never went to a fine restaurant with the intent of ordering a burger.   If it was even on the menu it was on the kids menu or buried at the bottom of the dinner menu to satisfy the occasional riff-raff who darkened the establishment’s doorstep.  Sometimes it was disguised as something called a diet plate which usually consisted of a burger patty sans bun with some cottage cheese and a couple of canned peach wedges on the side. 

Some years back a restaurant in San Francisco paid homage to the ground beef patty. Hippopotamus Hamburgers on Van Ness Avenue featured an array of burgers on a menu that was creative if sometimes a little misguided (the Sundae Burger with ice cream, hot fudge and a pickle comes to mind).  My parents took me there on a few occasions.  As I recall I usually ordered the Island Burger or the Chili Burger which as the menu described came “covered with chili and beans (it’s a gas).”  The menu even presented a little social commentary.  For example, for 110.69 you could get the Liberationburger described as a “Whole male chauvinist pig – sliced thin – and laid on a water bed by a California girl – presented with bunches of wild organics.”  What I would like to know these many years later; was there some sort of prurient double entedre in that 69 cents or is my dirty little mind working overtime?  I suppose we’ll never know since The Hippo closed in 1987.  But the Hippo Burgers with all the extras from beans to chocolate sauce were still at their core, basic burgers. (For an interesting look at The Hippopotamus Menu follow the link).

Which brings us to today’s top shelf designer burgers.  A few weeks back we found ourselves at a place called Burger Bar.  Located inside downtown San Francisco’s Macy’s, Burger Bar is a big deal apparently for the fact that it’s run by renowned chef Hubert Keller, of Fleur de Lys, one of the haughtier “dining experiences” in San Francisco.  Burger Bar calls itself “the ultimate burger experience.”

Here’s where I have to digress.  When exactly did going out to dinner become a “dining experience?”   Yeah I know, restaurants are trying to couch a meal at their place as being something extraordinary and unforgettable.  If that’s the case we have those at home on a regular basis when my two year old grandson Jackson chows down.  Jackson’s act usually includes smushing food into his face and tossing food overboard from the highchair when he doesn’t like it or is done eating.  Finished with milk?  The sippy cup gets a toss over the shoulder.  The dogs love it.  Like canine groupies they gather around Jackson knowing that sooner or later food magically falls from the sky.  But a restaurant dining experience?  Meh.

But back to burgers.  The starting price for a burger at Burger Bar is $9.75; which gets you the burger, the bun, lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a (one) pickle.  The scam, err, I mean allure is that you get to “build your own burger.”  And like any construction project, building your burger here is fraught with cost overruns.  The menu is divided into sections to allow you to select the various components for your “burger construction experience.”  There is the “dairy” which lists the cheeses, the “garden” with various veggies, the “grill” for grilled add-on, the “pantry” for condiments and the “Hubert Keller retirement fund vault” where you leave your hard earned money (okay this last is a cynical lie). 

Cheese runs about 75 cents unless you opt for blue cheese which is 95 cents as is pepper jack.  Huh?  That’s 20 cents extra for a few slivers of habanero in a 75 cent slice of jack which in the final analysis is just too much jack for some jack.  Bacon runs $1.15.  Okay so except for the jack cheese these add-ons aren’t too terribly outrageous (although $9.75 for the bare bones, so to speak, still seems just wrong).  But then you come to a (one) fried egg which runs $1.95.  A random scientific survey of shoppers -- well, I asked my wife -- revealed that a dozen eggs costs about two bucks or just about 17 cents per egg.  Items from Hubert’s pantry run from .45 for Dijon mustard to two bucks for guacamole.  I bought some avocados at the local super yesterday at 5 for a couple bucks; just sayin’.  Salsa is .95 which is bottomless at any Mexican joint and doesn’t cost one centavo extra.  But where Hubert is really raking in the green is, appropriately enough, in the garden.  Sprouts are .55, baby spinach .80 and sliced cucumber .75. 

If architecture isn’t your game you can get one of the pre-fab burgers, like the American Classic which is as close to the everyman burger as you can get there.  There’s the Surf and Turf Burger; the ruination of two stand-alone classics, hamburger and lobster, accomplished by putting them together under one bun.  If you have deep pockets, for 60 dollars you can get the Rossini which comes with foie gras and shaved truffles.

But Hubert isn’t the only chef to shove a silver spoon in the hamburger’s ass.  And the burger is no longer buried in the bottom of the menu.  Why would it be when a chef can command 15 to 20 dollars or more for ground beef by throwing in some highfalutin add ons and a fancy name?  In San Francisco for instance there are:

                The Zuni Café which offers a 6 ½ ounce burger for 15 dollars.  Would you like fries with that?  That will be 6 dollars sir, and that means your burger meal costs more than a double sawbuck.  Zuni’s burger isn’t offered on the regular dinner menu.  It’s available only after 10 PM which caters to the post -performance crowd from the local opera house.  You have to ask yourself just how good can this burger be if you can eat it while dressed in your going to the opera duds?  Any self-respecting burger has to carry the veiled threat that it will deposit an unhealthy splotch of grease on that tux. 

                Serpentine has a 12.50 burger described in a review as being just a thin patty of beef on a buttered, griddled bun.  The review goes on to say “you could make a burger like this at home if you wanted but eating one at Serpentine’s bar makes you feel like a real local.”  Seriously?  If I want that local feeling in The City I’ll just go to a dive bar and get an Old Crow on the rocks for 3 bucks.

                Absinthe’s 12.50 burger includes additions of “fatty trim.”  Whadyamean additions of fatty trim?  Fatty trim is supposed to be part of a burger’s genetic code.  Does their chocolate cake come with “additions of chocolate?”  Along with “fatty trim,” the Absinthe burger comes with onion, lettuce and a (one) pickle.  For 1.50 each you can get mushrooms, cheese, caramelized onions, heirloom tomatoes and a fried egg (Absinthe is leaving some money on the table.  Keller is getting a buck ninety-five for his eggs).  The fries are hand cut and run 6 bucks.  That kind of money for a burger and fries might just compel me to get a triple shot of the restaurant’s namesake.    

You may have noticed a common thread here that those kinds of prices would me drive me to drink.  Is it because I’m a tightfisted old bastard?   Well sure that goes without saying but I have a hard time swallowing an overpriced Hamburg steak without some alcoholic pain relief.  But beyond that I can get a much better burger in nearby Pinole for the price of Absinthe’s hoity-toity hand cut fries at a little hole in the wall called The Red Onion.  

The Red Onion is just an old fashioned little burger joint that offers burger joint food at burger joint prices.  I suppose Johnny Yee doesn’t extort his customers because not only does he serve an honest burger, he’s just a greasy spoon owner who doesn’t have his name on the Food Network marquee and his location, literally in the shadow of the Pinole Valley High School stadium light standards, is a gold mine in itself.  Let’s consider his bacon cheeseburger; a 1/3 pound patty with a quarter pound of bacon, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato and their house dressing.  It costs a mere 9 cents more than those hand cut fries from Absinthe.  You get it to take out and by the time you’re home the grease is oozing through the side of the bag and if that sounds revolting then you don’t understand that the secret of a good burger is fat.  Without it all you have is a disc of sawdust.  Ah but do you want the dining experience (there’s that term again) of feeling like a local?  Then eat at the counter.  No it won’t be the same as eating the stuck-up-burger at a pretentious bar with a banker on your left and some trendy douchebag in a suit on your right, but it will be a dining experience (there’s that term yet again) that harkens back to when a burger was a damn burger.  You can’t have a martini but a nice thick chocolate malt isn’t a bad substitute.  And what better atmosphere to savor a good burger than sitting at the counter of a little joint, watching the fry cooks work their flattop magic and  listening to the sizzle of several patties and pounds of bacon while the crew, a few old timers and kids from PVHS share some banter.   

And so today I went out to The Red Onion and ordered a double cheeseburger with a side of onion rings.  Mind you this was strictly in the interest of honest reportage.  My wife asked me to pick her up a regular hamburger.  By the time I drove home I was literally slavering from that smell of beef, onions and grease.  I removed the soaked wrapping to find the burger as it’s supposed to be, two patties of medium rare beef on a plain bun oozing orange American cheese with grilled onions spilling from the edges.  It was big and messy and unpretentiously American and it was simply called a double cheeseburger.  And it was better than The Chef Ima Bigshot Bombast Burger with ridiculous extras like Sonoma blue cheese, French goose liver, olive tapenade, poached quail eggs and fried froufrou.  And did I mention that my two burgers with onion rings came to total of 12.50? 

You might ask if I've ever had a designer burger and  I’m glad you asked me that question.  Yes I have and on more than a few occasions.  They were good but they weren’t memorable.  They aren’t the kind of burger that you just gotta have when you need a burger fix.  They don’t inspire a pilgrimage.

I doubt that the trendiness of the designer hamburger is going away.  Americans are too hooked on the notion that if it has pretention and it costs more than it should it must be good.  But that’s alright.  This is America and in America choice is, well, the American way.  And I’m confident that since the good old fashioned burger has been around since the turn of the 20^th century it will be around long enough for me to keep getting it the way it was meant to be until the day my arteries are as solid as concrete. 

A Story of Strength and Grace

My wife came home from a trip yesterday.  Her trip wasn’t to a tropical paradise or the happiest place on Earth.  No, far from that it was a trip to a little corner of hell called cancer; specifically renal cell carcinoma or kidney cancer.  Like what happens on many trips she came home with a souvenir, a small incision on her left side.  And, as what also happens when we take trips she left something behind; a kidney and a string of lymph nodes (the pathologist report is still outstanding on the lymph nodes but the surgeon said that his inspection showed that they were clear.).    

This is her third such trip, the other two being breast cancer which resulted in a couple of lumpectomies and a short stint of radiation treatment.  That’s really more than most people deserve but luckily she has always made it a round trip.

Cora was diagnosed in early December when back and abdominal pains sent her to emergency.  The E.R. doctor explained that instead of the kidney stones we'd hoped for there was a tumor and she would have to see a urologist as soon as possible.  A week later a CT scan came out negative, no surrounding organs were affected.  Surgery was scheduled for mid-January.  But this story doesn’t concern itself so much with cancer as it does with Cora’s strength, grace and dignity and of changes in perception about life as we’ve grown older. 

If you had been around Cora for the past month, you wouldn’t know that she was living in the shadow of cancer.  She went through her daily routine, kept the holiday season and was as cheerful as always.  The only indication that anything was wrong was during those pensive moments when she would sit in silence, staring at nothing in particular.  She never talked about it unless the subject was broached by those who found out and then she only asked one thing; pray for me.  I think that the only time that she looked really resigned was as she was being wheeled to surgery.  It was the first time I’d ever seen her look vulnerable.

For years I’ve maintained some things about Cora.  First of all, she’s the strongest person I know.  Now physically she can’t lift shit unless some emergency pressed her to do so and then she would probably hoist a ’57 Chevy.  Her strength comes from her dignity, her steadiness and her faith.  All of this is rather foreign to me which is really no surprise since I’ve had a penchant at times for being the biggest dickweed on two wheels (according to the dictionary of urban slang a dickweed is “a completely self-absorbed, useless asshole with shit for brains”).  And the fact that she’s remained with my dickweediness for 30+ years is a further testament to the fact that the woman is a certifiable saint; a rock that would humble the great Gibraltar. 

Cora is not the ship that navigates through rough seas.  Somehow she is able to be the ship surrounded by a cocoon of calm sea in the midst of the tempest.  She’s been the shopkeeper of the household’s supply of cool and calm.  The roof is leaking; I’ll cuss and spit and she’ll go to the Yellow Pages and find a roofer.  We have an expensive household project before us and while I hem and haw over the expense, I’ll come home one day and find the project done and done.  When the local Toyota plant shutdown in 2010 and my job was in imminent danger of disappearing and  my stomach was in knots and I thought life as we knew it was done she was the one who went on as usual and told me not to worry, “we’ll be okay.”  She was right of course.  I was laid off, got severance and a better job.  She's stared cancer in the eye three times without blinking while I, in frustration over a broken ankle launched my crutches across the room on more than a few occasions.  To use a sports metaphor, she’s been Joe Montana in Super Bowl XXIII who, when the 49ers needed an end of game 92 yard drive calmed the huddle by saying to his teammates, “Isn’t that John Candy in the stands?”  I’m the QB who goes into the huddle and says, “Boys, we’re fucked.”

She’s the selfless woman who decided to spend our thirtieth wedding anniversary making a meatloaf, driving it to our daughter and then helping her with the two babies; who cooks dinner for the whole family and then holds the youngest baby while everyone else eats.  When I broke my ankle she drove me to work every day, even though it was out of her way, worked at her job, picked me up and then came home and made dinner.  All without complaint.  She’s the one who gives dollar bills to the homeless guys and admonishes, “It’s for your food.” So why is it that she’s had to deal with cancer three times?  That’s precisely the bone that I’ve been picking with God over the last month. 

When I was in my teens I engaged in that phony bravado that seems to be standard in adolescent males.  “Ah, I won't live past twenty five. I'll live hard and die young”  We were so many ersatz James Deans living in the comfort of suburbia.  It was easy for us to scoff about death because, Vietnam War aside, we deep down knew that we would easily see twenty five and beyond.  That bravado goes away of course and as we hit the mid-century mark we start to take note of our mortality. 

I don’t recall that sense of mortality when Cora had her lumpectomies.  We were in our forties, they were manageable and mortality was still over the next few rises.  This time it was different.  When the doctors prescribed the actual removal of an entire organ the stakes suddenly became a damn site higher.  Until the CT scan came in negative I went through those stages; you know anger, followed by sadness and a nagging fear of the worst. What the hell God, is this how it works?  Why don’t you deal this out to someone a little more deserving?  You know maybe you could start with some child molester or human trafficker or crooked politician.  This was actually when I was fearing the unthinkable. I reflected on something my daughter told me recently about how she enjoys seeing the “grandparent experience” of Cora and I interacting with her children.  It was something that she'd never had.  Her maternal grandparents lived some distance away.  She was a toddler when my mom passed and very young when my dad passed.  During her early years my dad was in the midst of Alzheimer’s and so her grandparent experience was less than ideal.  Is this the deal God?  You take Cora away from the grandkids who she cherishes so dearly and you cheat those kids out of a grandma?  I thought back to when my mom passed suddenly; dad, already slipping into dementia, rattled around that house by himself and the slippage became a plunge.  I started to understand why he held onto small mementos, some seemingly insignificant but having special meaning that only he knew.  Would I be rattling around in my house?  I know people who’ve lost a spouse and have found another partner.  How do they do that (and no this is not a value judgment)?  How could I even think of ever packing away pictures of my Cora?  I don’t hold much stock in the Mormon religion but if I’m not mistaken they hold a belief that people remain married in the hereafter for eternity.  I like that notion. 

To us Boomers, I suppose there’s a feeling that time is becoming more precious.  I was talking to a co-worker just yesterday.  I told him that I went to the 49er playoff game last weekend and that the tickets were more than I would normally pay.  I would have just watched it at home but I ponied up because my son asked me to go and my daughter and her husband would be there as well.  He agreed, saying that he recently spent more on a basketball ticket than he normally would because his daughter asked him to go with her.  Said Don, “You never know when it can end.  It can be over in an instant.”

But let’s not get the idea that I’m cowering in death’s shadow.  All is good in the domestic circle now.  Cora’s back home.  I woke up before dawn this morning and felt the comfort of seeing her in the still dim light, feeling the touch of her hand and the smell of her scent.  Even the dog is happy.  While Cora was gone Rainey would stand at Cora’s side of the bed and stare at the unoccupied space.  Today she’s been a constant sentinel at the bedside and when Cora gets up Rainey follows like a hairy shadow.

My feeling is that we’re content and comfortable as we grow older together.  We contemplate places we want to go.  We make some vague retirement plans.  Our children and their families live close by and there are frequent family gatherings.  For my part I realize I have to shed my phobia about money.  Can we do things now, take trips, eat out and go to movies and still have enough to retire on (see my earlier post, There But for the Grace of God)?  Cora assures me we’ll be fine and why should I doubt her?  It’s not like she’s been wrong on these things before.  But above all there is a certain indescribable peace.  One day I was talking with the vicar of my church and she (yes, she) was talking about keeping the Sabbath.  She offered that it isn’t all about going to church.  Anybody can go to church, she said.  Her point was that the whole idea is to have a sense of spirituality on Sunday.  I told her of quiet Sundays at the house.  It might be a rainy afternoon, the dog is curled in front of the fire in the fireplace, I’m reading and Cora is puttering or sewing, the only sounds are of the house and the smell is of dinner cooking.  There is an overriding sense of peace, balance and companionship.  This, I told Vicar Susan, is the spirituality in my life. 

If there is a God in Heaven then the blessing that She's (yes, She) bestowed on me is Cora. 

Ameri-Football-Cana

Americana:  materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture; broadly: things typical of America.              Merriam-Webster

Baseball is what we were.  Football is what we have become.    Mary McGrory

I’m on my way to the NFC Divisional Playoff Game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints.  The game starts at 1:30 but we’re on the road and planning to be at the stadium parking lot by 8:30.  I’m riding in with my daughter Jess and son in law Kyle in their new pickup truck. We’ll be meeting up with my son Matt on the way and caravan in.

I attended my first football game sometime in the sixties (I suppose I was only 9 or 10) at Kezar Stadium, a little bowl by today’s standards tucked away in the eastern corner of Golden Gate Park.  My dad got the tickets and it was obviously for a father-son day because his interest in sports wasn’t even passing.  I hardly knew anything about football at that age but I could easily reel off the starting lineup and pitching rotation of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  By the time we parked the car somewhere seemingly miles from the stadium the game was about to start.  We arrived somewhere around halftime and watched the second half on Kezar's hard, cramped bench seats.  Years later the 49ers would move to larger Candlestick Park and Kezar would be all but forgotten until it got a bit part in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, where Eastwood’s Harry Callahan would confront the Scorpio murderer.  Years after attending that game with my dad I would return to Kezar to watch a Day on the Green concert starring the unlikely paring of Waylon Jennings and The Grateful Dead in a haze of cheap white wine and weed. Over the years I occasionally went to games at Candlestick until 1982, when I got season tickets.

By the time we get to the outskirts of the stadium, the main lots are closed off to all but those with prepaid parking passes.  We’re relegated to the hard packed dirt lots further out.  Once parked we unpack the truck for our tailgate barbeque.  The local air quality control board has declared today a spare the air day; no burning of wood.  The air in the square miles surrounding Candlestick is not only not being spared, it’s being abused.  It’s thick with the smoke of barbecues, cooking flesh of various species and weed.  A group of old boys to our right unpack and set up their temporary campsite.  “Let’s get drunk” says one.  It's always good to have a plan and they're well prepared to follow through with that plan.  Plenty of beer, a bottle of Skyy vodka and a personal favorite, Maker's Mark bourbon.  They have chicken, hot dogs, beans and looking out of place and forgotten, two green bananas.  What in the hell are the bananas  doing there?  There are four girls on our other side who are going basic; beer, chips and dip.

Football isn’t just a sport in America.  It’s an event; one that incorporates multiple American traditions.  Besides the game itself there is the prerequisite pregame tailgate which includes America’s love affair with the car -- the larger the better if not a truck or a recreational vehicle -- with barbeque and of course alcohol.

Jess and Kyle are ramrodding this tailgate.  They've marinated some meat for carne asada and my son has some spicy shrimp skewers.  We have shrimp and cocktail sauce, various chips and dip and beverages. This is the first tailgate they’ve organized and there have been some rookie mistakes.  There was a plan to make margaritas until it was discovered that they forgot the tequila.  Kyle and Jess go for a walk and come back 45 minutes or so later with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.  They ventured out into the sketchy local neighborhood and found a bottle shop that gouged them for bad tequila. The small blender works well and drinks are served.  Thanks to my doctor’s directive I’m alcohol free and drinking Pelegrino mineral water “spiked” with margarita mix.  It isn’t bad actually but it just isn’t the same.  Can't the football gods grant me a one day imbibing pass?

I didn’t start tailgating until I had my season tickets and they ranged from the simple to the outdoor feast.  There was the seasonal snack one Sunday during Christmas season when we roasted some chestnuts over the barbeque.  We took some ribbing for that one.  Speaking of which, ribs was on the menu more than a few times.  The tailgating menu is often rich with regional fare.  In Green Bay bratwurst is a favorite while Buffalo Bills fans opt for chicken wings.  What would a tailgate party in New Orleans be with without gumbo?  Here in San Francisco, local Dungeness crab often accompanied a grilled fillet with a side of baked potato and all washed down with Napa Valley wine.  My friend Rick had a side job as a deckhand on a salmon boat and he often supplied fresh salmon steaks.  Caesar salad, sausages, chili and roasted potatoes all have graced our tailgate table. 

Tailgating isn’t just eating and drinking.  Its board games, music, TV and for some a chance to make some money by selling something.  There are of course games of catch.  In the cramped community of tailgating there’s always the chance that an errant throw will land on a car or in the middle of someone’s plate of food.  During the heady dynastic days of the 49ers there was often a band and dancing in some corner of the parking lot.  We would bring a small television so that we could watch the broadcast of the morning game.  This was before you could get TV on your smart phone – because this was before smart phones.

Some entrepreneurs make their rounds through the parking lots selling team logoed t-shirts and souvenirs, all of it cheap, of bad quality and counterfeit.  There are plenty of takers though, including undercover cops who slap on the cuffs as the transaction is completed.  One enterprising couple is selling vodka laced Jell-O shooters to raise money for Team in Training.  Is it just me or is there something contradictory about selling shooters to benefit a cancer charity?  Matt and I play catch for awhile and he warns me away from a parked BMW; just in the event he makes an errant throw or I muff a catch. 

Meal’s done and it’s time to clean up and head into the stadium walking past ongoing parties and the corpses of former parties.  The ground is littered with bottles, cans, uneaten food and mounds of hot charcoal. 

It is amazing that someone would be either so drunk or so stupid that he would stash the hot coals from his barbeque under his car (usually the gas tank).  Is he afraid that someone with larcenous charcoal intent might come by, furtively look both ways, grab them and sneak them under his coat?  This is where the excitement would build, walking towards the stadium and hearing the cheers and boos coming from inside as those fans already in their seats react to players from both teams warming up.  Its during this walk that fans get in the last drink; knock it down before the security check or do the unthinkable and toss it.  In my early days of going to games security checks were non-existent.  In fact in the very early AFC days people actually brought small barbeques INTO the stadium.  Flasks and bottles the most common contraband made their way in even with the advent of the first security checks.  Any backpacks got a cursory pat down and sometimes a quick peak inside.  Were we more tolerant in those bygone days or was there simply less bad behavior?

We get to security and have to empty our pockets and hold our arms up so that the security guy can pass the metal detector over our bodies.  He notices my binocular case and peeks inside.  Into the concourse and through the crowded aisles we make it to our seats. The stadium is nearly full and the crowd in what I think we’ll be full throat (I’ll be proven wrong later on).  I don't know anybody here.  Don't know if my neighbors are season ticket holders or, like us, bought tickets for this one game. 

"The audience as participants is indispensable to most games.  The greatest contest in the world in which only the players are present would have no game character whatever."  Marshal McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village.

Getting to my season ticket seats was always a time to say hi to the usual fans.  The stadium was sold out to season ticket holders and so everybody knew everybody in the area unless an owner had given away seats to a single game.  The fellow behind me was a Grateful Dead fan with a booming voice that never wore out even in the game’s waning moments; we called him “leather lungs.”  When the game starts the crowd gets involved, cheering as loudly as possible to disrupt the communication and concentration of the other team’s offense, becoming what is called the 12^th man. 

Its kickoff and the crowd is alive.  Its 63000 individual red clad cells that have merged to form one huge crimson organism; a wild red beast.  And the organism is screaming and roaring and it’s louder than at any time I can recall.  The stadium is almost literally shaking.  This isn’t just the 12^th man, it’s the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th man (waking up the next morning my ears would still be ringing, reminding me of my days of standing in the front row at a rock concert). 

8:57 left in the first quarter: The Saints open the game with the ball and nearly score but their main running threat Pierre Thomas takes a vicious hit and loses the ball to the 49ers.  Thomas is concussed and will miss the remainder of the game.  The red beast in the stands is roaring.

Football is a violent game.  A reflection of a violent American tradition?

 “Let’s face it; most of the people in our society enjoy watching one guy knock down another one.”  John Niland, former tackle with the Dallas Cowboys

“You see a tremendous block from the blind side and you can hear 50,000 “ooohs” all at once.  So they must like it."  Elroy Hirsh, Hall of Fame flanker.
"Anybody who says this game is beastly, brutal and nasty, he's right.  You are out there to inflict punishment, but not to take it."  Wayne Walker, former linebacker with the Detroit Lions. 

Going into the game my idea is to sit and watch but the emotion of the beast sucks me in.  Saints quarterback Drew Brees takes the ball and rolls to his right and the crowd wants a hit. “Stick him,” I yell. “Kill him,” screams my son.  We don’t want a hit we want a de-cleating; a hit so hard he’ll fly out of his shoes. 

2:17 left in the first quarter:  Alex Smith throws a pass to the left to Vernon Davis for a 49 yard touchdown.  With :44 seconds left Smith finds Michael Crabtree for a 4 yard scoring pass. It’s the end of the first quarter and the 49ers are ahead 14-0.  All around us the organism is in a wild frenzy.  The fellow in front of us, stewed to the gills, has been high fiving everyone around him after nearly every play.  He wants to hug and I manage to keep him at high five distance.  He turns to us and screams, “We beat the Saints.  We beat the Saints.”  I turn to Matt and tell him that since we’ve won we might as well just go home now and beat the traffic.

Alcohol has fueled a few memories some foggy, some not so flattering.  One Monday we showed up in the parking lot to begin tailgating early (Noon) for a 6:00 kickoff.  The Jack Daniels flowed early and often and my conduct in the stands was less than distinguished.  After the game, well, days after the game I realized it and decided it was time to take it down a notch. My friend Rick figured out how to solve the closure of beer sales at the end of the third quarter.  During that third frame he would visit the concession and buy two beers, drinking one and storing the other under his seat.  After a few trips he would have beers lined up under his seat like foamy little soldiers.  After one such game, leaving the stadium he was reveling in victory skipping happily until he lost his balance, staggered forward and was stopped in his wobbly tracks by a parked Buick.  It was smashing; his face smashed into the car's grill.  The car was undamaged but I imagine Rick felt it the next day. 

4:16 left in the second quarter:  The Saints have scored their second touchdown and the score is 17-14 in favor of the 49ers.  The animal is quiet. The fellow in front of us is sitting quietly with his head in his hands.  Is he trying to hold in his lunch or is he fearing that the victory he proclaimed a few minutes earlier has slipped away?

In 1994 I brought my son to watch the 49ers roll to a 44-15 divisional playoff victory against the Chicago Bears.  We had decided to take the bus from downtown to the game after having a nice breakfast at Sears' Fine Foods in the City (no not that Sears).  The wait for a bus to return was interminable and Rick decided to hire a limo.  My 11 year old son had just watched the game of his life and was leaving it in a limo, standing on the seat with his head out of the sun roof.

11:42 left in the game and the 49ers are holding on to a 3 point lead:  The 49ers Kyle Williams drops a pass over the middle and the animal groans.  The air is being sucked out of the animal as it senses impending disaster.  A fan yells out in the silence, “It hit him in the fucking hands.”

Football is played in rain or shine.  One memorable Monday night I took a friend to watch the 49ers play the Dolphins in a driving rainstorm.  He was from Chicago and had spent many a cold Sunday at Chicago’s Soldier field watching games in the snow.  We left that game early as Derek, soaked to the skin, could no longer stand the cold.  He later told me that it was the coldest he had ever been at a game.

4:11 left in the game:  The Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 24-23 and you could hear a pin drop; or the sounds of a few cheering Saints fans. Less than two minutes later Alex Smith runs off the left side for 28 yards, a touchdown and the lead.  Pandemonium. Thirty seconds later the Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 32-29.  The animal in the stands is quiet, forlorn and desperate.  The couple on my left, longtime 49er fans and season ticket holders bolt for the exit with 1:48 remaining.  I keep remembering that five days ago was the 30th anniversary of “the catch.”

Thirty years ago the 49ers reached the NFC Championship game against the Cowboys and were expected to do nothing against their longtime rival.  In 1982 you didn’t get tickets on the internet; there was no internet.  If you wanted tickets, you went to the box office and fell in line, like my friend Scott did.  And you stayed overnight in line; like Scott did.  He got a pair of seats to the game and gave me one.  We sat through one of the best games in my memory.  Trailing 27-21 the 49ers got the ball on their 11 yard line with 4:54 left and began their final drive of the game. 

1:37 left in the game and the 49ers have the ball on their own 15 yard line trailing by 3 and begin their final drive of the game.  

"We're going to call a sprint option. It's going to break up and break into the corner, you got it? Dwight will clear. If you don't get what you want simply throw the ball away."  Bill Walsh to Joe Montana.  

There were 58 seconds left and the 49ers were facing third down at the Dallas six yard line.  Joe Montana took the ball and drifted to his right chased by Cowboy defenders.  He lofted a ball that looked as if it would sail out of the end zone until Dwight Clark snagged the ball between his fingertips.  Victory, a trip to the Super Bowl and pandemonium.  On the way home I was driving down the freeway with Scott hanging out of the passenger side window from the waste up screaming in a worn out gravelly voice, “We’re going to the bowl.  We’re going to the bowl. We’re going to the fucking bowl.” 

14 seconds left in the game and the 49ers are facing third down at the New Orleans 14 yard line.  Alex Smith drops straight back to pass and throws a laser down the middle to Vernon Davis who catches it in the end zone for a touchdown. Victory and pandemonium.

Until something else comes along to grab the nation's fancy, football will remain the quintessential American sport.  It's a billion dollar industry that grabs the national attention from training camp in July through the season and the Super Bowl in February and on into the draft in the spring.  People have called for a national holiday on the Monday after the Super Bowl ostensibly to come down from the high of the game, clean up the house and clear the cobwebs from an alcohol addled brain.

I have to admit that if I had a sports bucket list a football game would be on it.  Not the Super Bowl and not the college national championship.  It would be to a place where football is the life blood of the region.  It would be an autumn game in South Bend, Indiana to watch Notre Dame or in Ann Arbor to watch the Michigan Wolverines.   

In 1982 I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my best friend, the best man at my wedding and 30 years later still a dear friend.  Thirty years after that game I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my son, my daughter and my son in law.  At heart and in my sentiments I'm a baseball guy, but football has brought me two of my most cherished memories with friends and family. 

  

Claim Jumping

Almost thirty years ago to the day that the San Francisco 49ers became an honest to goodness powerhouse, when Dwight Clark came out of nowhere to catch a pass that looked for all the world like it would sail out of the end zone but instead carried them to the Super Bowl, the team apparently wants to resurrect a tactic that some original 49ers – those Gold Rush fellows – used over 160 years ago.  It was called claim jumping and it involved a lowdown blackguard taking over a mining site that had been claimed previously.

The 49ers announced that they will be instituting something called a stadium builder’s license (SBL) for season tickets at their new Santa Clara stadium.  No this isn’t the state license that those fellows pouring concrete and running electrical wire are required to hold in order to erect the stadium.  This is a shakedown that football teams have been employing for years that requires fans wanting to buy season tickets to pay a fee for the rights to buy tickets.  So before you even shell out a single penny for your tickets you have to buy the rights to get to buy the tickets and the rights are wrong, financially speaking.

In the case of the 49ers if you want some of the better seats in their house you’ll need to take out a second on your own house because the SBLs will run between 20,000 and 80,000 dollars – per seat.  So a couple wanting to buy a pair of tickets will have to pony up essentially the down payment on a home just so that they can buy 10 tickets per year to watch live football; and two of those games are exhibition games which as a former season ticket holder I hated having to buy. 

Some current season ticket holders were invited by the 49ers to put down a deposit on seats at the new stadium that would be comparable to the good seats that they now have at Candlestick Park.  They probably knew going in that they would be hit with a usury license fee but in their worst nightmares did they expect tens of thousands of dollars?  The local news showed some forlorn fans leaving the 49er office shrugging their shoulders and saying essentially, “It was nice while it lasted.”  And for some fans it lasted a long, long time, going back to the 60s when the 49ers were still at Kezar Stadium.  These are the fans who earned the nickname Forty Niner Faithful, the ones who stuck with the team through years of misery, then reveled in the glory years and continued to hold on during the last decade when the team plumbed the depths.  These are the fans that loyally went to a leaky, crumbling dump called Candlestick and supported their team only to have their good seats pulled out from under them because they won’t be able to afford the SBL.  Their claims were jumped and those seats will likely go to some corporation who will give them out as perks to empty suits who don’t know a gridiron from a waffle iron. 

And the team is proud of this.  A fellow named Al Guido, the Vice President of New Stadium Sales and Services, crowed, “You have the ability to transfer it down to your family, you have the ability to transfer it down to friends, colleagues; you have the ability to sell it on the open market. I think that's just a huge benefit."  I don’t know where you’ve been Al but that’s the way it’s always worked.  I got my first season tickets 30 years ago when a colleague transferred me the rights to a pair of seats he owned (I gave up my tickets years ago when my son’s college tuition took precedence over football tickets).  Guido did mention that the 80,000 dollar seats apparently come with perks like food and drink.  I should hope so.  If I paid that kind of money for a football ticket I’d be doing one hell of a lot of drinking.  At those prices it should be a full blown orgiastic bacchanal complete with wine, women (or the gender of your choice), banned, controlled substances and song.  In fact the only way I would pay a fee of any price just for the right to buy tickets would be in the midst of a purple haze (with apologies to Jimi) of heavy drinking and drug use.  There is a thing called principle after all.   

In all fairness, and this is the only fair aspect to this story, the team is only charging those amounts on the best seats in the stadium (but every seat will carry an SBL).  And they aren’t the first team to charge license fees.  When the Raiders returned to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1989 the team charged license fees and incurred the wrath of season ticket holders when the stadium didn’t sell out and fans could walk up to the ticket booth and buy an individual game seat and avoid the fee.  I despised Al Davis for doing that to loyal Raider fans.  The Cowboys, the Giants and the Jets all have brand new digs and they charge license fees.

But just because there’s precedent doesn’t make it right.  Even the worst end zone seat will likely carry an SBL of thousands of dollars.  This essentially prices out the family.  Assuming the lowest SBL is 3000 dollars it would cost a family of four, 12,000 dollars just to buy the seats; “Say Junior if you’re planning on going to college I suggest you get a paper route."  But look at the bright side.  This bit of extortion will probably keep out the riffraff making it a family friendly environment that you won't see any families at. 

Football was once the blue collar sport, playing second fiddle to baseball.  It was a rough and tumble sport that attracted hardy fans who would sit in the cold, the rain, the wind and the snow, who would keep dry with a rain suit and warm with a flask of whiskey to fortify some watery hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup.  Football has become, as I’ve said before on this blog, a glitzy, overdone, extravaganza catering to rich guys and corporations.  And now the 49ers, like the more disreputable of their namesake of 160 years ago, are jumping the claims of their most loyal supporters.   

2011

We’ve come to the end of another year and everyone who’s any one is doing a retrospective of some sort.  Even everyone who’s basically nobody is doing one.  And so that’s where I come in.  Sure I’ll do a retrospective.  Maybe I’ll do two; one on the stories that are important, you know all that news shit and one on my story, although the story of my own year is actually more important to me even if it isn’t to you.  Got that?

What appears in a retrospective is of course entirely dependent on what the writer thinks is significant.  There are a lot of stories that are going to get included on some heavy hitting columns and blogs that wouldn’t get on my list.  Some of those are:

                The royal wedding.  Aside from the fact that Britain could ill afford an eight figure party who gives a damn that a well-heeled pair are tying the knot.  Yeah I know lots of people but suffice to say I don’t get it.  The fact remains that the world, Great Britain included, is in a sick financial state.  To that end, the royals promised to make the wedding more austere than royal nuptials of the past so William and Kate had to scrimp by on 34 million dollars.  For a lot less they could have eloped to Reno and got one of those themed weddings.  Probably could have had an Elvis impersonator perform the ceremony and still not broken the bank.

                Top however many movies.  I went to see True Grit and that’s about it.  Did True Grit even come out in 2011?

                Top however many TV shows.  There weren’t any but I’ll make a list anyway.

                                Mash

                                All in the Family

                                The Honeymooners

                                Have Gun, Will Travel

                                Cheers

                                Johnny Carson

What’s that you say?  All of those shows were discontinued long ago?  Okay I go back to, there weren’t any.

Not on my list you're not

                Top songs of 2011.  I’m not qualified to judge this.  I’m not sure that I’ve heard any songs of 2011.  I’m not hating here mind you but my musical tastes start circa 1400 and end somewhere in the 70s.

                Anything to do with the Kardashians, Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan, Oprah, Kate plus 8 or Regis Philbin. Maybe Regis is a funny, entertaining guy but his moving on will carry no weight before we reach mid-January, but if it does then we really need to get a collective life.

              The significant stories are those that have global and national significance, that will affect our lives for months and years to come and that reflect or reveal what we are as a society.  There were indeed many in 2011 and so, in no particular order:

                The killing of Osama Bin Laden.  Nearly ten years to the month after he unleashed 9/11 the face of terror was found and killed.  It won’t necessarily mean the end of Al Qaeda but it put a dent in the terror group and it marked a milestone in the war on terror.  That he was found in an oversized million dollar compound in the veritable shadow of Pakistan’s military academy gave a sort of final credence to the notion that Pakistan really isn’t our friend.  That we still have a presence in Afghanistan becomes something of a mystery now.  I thought we went in there to get Bin Laden and then too quickly took our focus off the mission by going into Iraq (see below).  Well we got Bin Laden.  Are we really going to try to oust the Taliban for good and install a western style democracy into a nation that is, with borders that are in flux, a nation in name only?

               

Packing up and leaving

                  The end of the war in Iraq.  A misadventure that cost this nation dearly in lives and dollars will no longer devour our national treasures.  It was a trumped up war based on doctored information at best and outright whoppers at worst.  Remember WMD?  Seems almost quaint and nostalgic now doesn’t it.  An obsessed president full of his own hubris and steered by a cabal of neocons called the Project for the New American Century waged an illegal war and burned up the goodwill of a world that mourned with us after 9/11.  

                The earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  A disaster of biblical proportions significant not only because of its horrific magnitude and the loss of life and property but also because it revealed the fragile nature of nuclear power.  Was it nature’s way of reminding us that nuclear is an anagram for unclear?

                The Penn State child sex abuse case.  This is the creepy case of Jerry Sandusky, a “trusted” adult who took advantage of the most vulnerable and toppled a collegiate football program that for decades was recognized as a squeaky clean model for all collegiate athletic programs.  The university president, the athletic director and the head football coach all lost their jobs for lying to cover up the scandal in the case of the two administrators and essentially turning a blind eye in the case of the coach.   The significance of this story is that it once again shined a glaring light on the continuing problem of pedophilia.  And while some would say that the dismissal of a venerated football coach is secondary I would counter that maybe there is some hope that the firing of Joe Paterno will stand as a warning to any and all who would try to sweep the abuse of children under the rug.  It is also another indicator of the corruption that runs rampant through intercollegiate athletics. 

Power to the people

                The Occupy Movement.  No they don’t always seem to be on the same page; sometimes not even in the same book.  But the movement has managed to bring attention to and create a dialogue about a growing gap between the rich and the poor and the impending extinction of the middle class.  It also marked the end of what seemed an interminable malaise; a dearth of protests of any significance since the days of the Vietnam War.

                The shuttering of Borders.  Remember, my criteria for significance includes what a story reveals about our society.  It was a sad day when a major bookstore chain closed its doors.  Was it because bound books are being replaced by e-readers or because we just don’t read very much anymore?  I hope the reason is the former because if it is the latter we’re being exposed as a society drifting towards ignorance and away from literacy and culture.

                Legislative gridlock.  Symptomatic of a malignancy in government, legislatures are working feverishly at getting nothing done.  The prognosis is dire with indications of intransigence, demagoguery, chronic ideology and severe addiction to special interest money.  But perhaps the gravest symptom is an extreme allergy to compromise.  Our so called leadership is suffering from a stubbornness that makes a two year old look Solomonic by comparison and threatens the health of our nation.  And what make is all so maddening is that these folks have approval ratings that at 11% absolutely plumb the depths and they DON’T SEEM TO GIVE A DAMN.     

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year; The protester.  Related of course to the Occupy Movement, Time awarded kudos to the everyday person who decided that the status quo is not necessarily the way things should be.  Time not only recognized Occupy but also those protesters who toppled tin horn dictators in the Middle East and who continue to protest injustice.  Managing editor Richard Stengel remarked that the protester is, "the men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who toppled governments, who brought democracy and dignity to people who hadn't had it before."  The Protester includes those who protested corruption in Greece, Spain and Israel as well as those who took to the streets in Russia to protest against Putin.

Vinia Hall. You go girl

Vinia Hall.  Maybe the most satisfying story was that of Vinia Hall a 103 year old woman who was threatened with eviction from her home of 53 years.  When a loan servicing company sent the movers to Hall’s home the movers had a moment of pause over what they were being asked to do and said screw this and left.  When the servicing company called in the sheriff the officers had a similar moment of pause and they also said, screw this, and left.  Don’t you just hate it when you’re trying to evict an old woman and your flunkies come down with a case of morality?  As it turned out the bank renegotiated the loan and Vinia Hall was allowed to keep her home.  One would like to think that there was a hint of morality in the bank’s decision but someone in marketing likely came up with the brilliant notion that kicking a centenarian to the curb is bad for business.  Okay so maybe this isn’t a world shaking story but it sure is nice to see a little old lady bring a big old bank to its corporate knees.

There were some notable quotes in 2011 and continuing a six year tradition Yale Law School's associate librarian Fred Shapiro came up with a top ten list.  Among my favorites:

                “We are the 99 percent.”  As a supporter of the Occupy Movement what can I say besides, I love it.

                "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." — Warren Buffett

                "Oops." — Texas governor Rick Perry.  Real presidential Governor Perry. 

   "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for." — 2012 Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren

And finally if you want to impress at tonight’s New Year’s Eve party, regale them with the new words that were added to dictionaries this year.

                Fist bump.  The closed hand version of the high five.

                Bromance.  Related to the fist bump?

                M-Commerce.   You know, buying something with your smart phone.

                Walk off.  A game ending home run.
                Cougar.  This word made it to the dictionary in 2011.  But it isn't these cougars.

John Cougar

                                                                      And it isn't this Cougar

But it is a kitty, uh, in a manner of speaking.

 Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012.

A Christmas Potpourri

“Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.”

                                                                                              Johnny Carson

Every holiday season the stores offer up Christmas potpourri a fragrance that mixes spices, citrus, berries, evergreen, apples and probably a variety of chemicals.  My daughter loves the stuff.  Loves it to the point that she bought some potpourri spray.  I know this because a few weeks ago she brought over her son Jackson.  I was untangling Christmas lights in the garage and as he waddled in I took a sniff, “What in the hell smells like Christmas?”  Turns out Jackson had got hold of the spray and anointed himself with it.  He smelt like Christmas half a block away.

So what follows is my own Christmas potpourri.  You the reader might find it has a pleasant Christmassy air about it.  Others of you might just think it stinks.  This Christmas offering is a stocking stuffed with historical vignettes and some personal stories and observations.  Or maybe it’s not so much a stocking as a ratty gym sock.  I suppose the reader will be the judge.

(Sources for this post include the books, Christmas in America by Penne Restad and Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub)

A tannenbaum by any other name..:
       An evergreen in the home wasn’t always a symbol of a Christian celebration.  The Romans decorated their homes with evergreens as pagan symbols of fertility and regeneration.  In the early 19^th century the Pennsylvania Dutch introduced Christmas trees to America but there was resistance usually owing to the influence of Calvinism.  That no fun bunch couldn’t stem the popularity of the Christmas evergreen and by the 1830s the tradition of Christmas trees had spread beyond the German community.  

       By the 1840’s Christmas commercialism began in earnest.  In 1840 a woman from New Jersey schlepped some pine trees to New York City to sell along with some hogs and chickens.  By 1843 newspapers in New York were advertising Christmas trees and ornaments for sale.

The hideous aluminum tree

       Franklin Pierce introduced the first White House tree in 1856.
       In the 1950’s and 60’s aluminum Christmas trees were all the rage.  And they were hideous.  I still recall them in all their ugly glory.  The classic A Charlie Brown Christmas alludes to them when Charlie Brown and Linus go tree shopping.  Most of them were silver but pink and blue were not uncommon.

On the American Frontier Christmas was a Spartan holiday.  In 1805 William Clark described Christmas dinner at the mouth of the Columbia River with Meriwether Lewis as consisting of “pore elk so much spoiled that we eat it thro’ mear necessity, some spoiled pounded roots and a fiew fish.”  Fur trader Francis Chardon and his men celebrated Christmas 1836 with a “feast of eatables but no drinkables” and the firing of a few gunshots.

What would Christmas be without Christmas lights?
       One of my personal favorite things to do at Christmastime is to go for a run through the neighborhoods in the early evening; a sort of harrier’s Christmas light tour.
       When my children were younger we would drive through various neighborhoods to see light displays.  We drove through San Francisco, around Union Square, up Nob Hill, along the Marina and into the rich enclave of Seacliff.
       In local El Cerrito a gentleman who hailed from India, Sundar Shadi put up a Nativity display on the hillside grounds of his home.  He would begin working on the figures for his display in September which would be ready for viewing two weeks before Christmas.  It was one of the most popular displays in the Bay Area, a traditional holiday attraction dating back to the 1950s.  Mr. Shadi passed away in 2002 at the age of 101.  For some years the Soroptomist Club, the El Cerrito Fire Department and other dedicated volunteers have maintained the exhibit which is up again this Christmas season.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol presents empathy for the poor and working class.  Was this inspired by Dickens’ own life experiences of his father serving time in a London debtor’s prison and Charles himself having to leave school to work in a factory?

Christmas in the slave south while hardly benign was at least a time when slaves would be afforded a break from their labors.  Sara Crocker told of holidays in which the slaves would be able to rest and sleep into the day and eat a big dinner prepared by the whites, with roasted pigs and chickens and demijohns of whiskey.  Solomon Northrup who wrote of his experiences in the book Twelve Years a Slave, told of an open air feast of roasted chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, vegetables, biscuits and pies.  A slave in Texas, Charley Hurt recalled that on Christmas the master “puts out a tub of whiskey or brandy in the yard and colored folks helped themselves.”  It was also a time when slaves were given valued gifts of extra provisions or clothing.  Former slave Levi Pollard recalled that slaves received extra flour and rice, a whole ham, 5 pounds of cane sugar and winter clothes.

But for all of those who got a break from the cruelty of everyday life there were those for whom Christmas was just another back breaking day of labor.  One slave recalled that “Christmas was just like any other time with the slaves.  We never had anything extra.” 

It just wouldn't be Christmas without company parties.  You know, those events that spawn everlasting anecdotes about someone who got as lit as a Christmas display and created a ruckus of historic proportions. Over the years my Christmas party experiences have run the gamut from none at all to pretty extravagant (at least by my standards).
       A company that I worked for some years ago, owned by a tight old skinflint, went for years without a party.  He was a rich fellow who squeezed a penny so tight that poor old Abe suffocated.  One year the old bastard came up with the brilliant idea of having a Christmas luncheon….in the conference room.  The meal came complete with turkey…a warmed, pressed turkey breast.  It was a depressing affair in which everyone left their desks, stood in the buffet line, ate at the conference table and made desultory small talk.  After lunch we all shuffled back to our desks.
       There was consolation in the fact that my wife works for Clif Bar which throws lavish parties.  There were two years in which we had dinner and overnight accommodations in the Napa Valley.  One year dinner was served in the aging caves beneath a winery.
       I have a faint recollection of some parties in the 70s when I worked a retail job at a Downtown San Francisco hardware store.  These parties were for the most part pot luck.  Everyone brought a dish and the owners would throw for a turkey or a ham neither of which was the main course.  The main course was alcohol.  One of the more memorable ones was at the store manager’s swank Russian Hill flat.  He had a beautiful white couch right up until the moment that Dan Alonso, the lecherous old locksmith, added some color by vomiting potluck all over it.  It was a Christmas classic.
      Shortly after old Alonso’s historic hurl the store suspended Christmas parties so my housemate Scott and I decided to fill the breach.  I do recall making eggnog which was mostly brandy, or whiskey, or both; I don’t know, I can’t remember.  That was the year that I came up with the brilliant idea of inviting both my just still barely girlfriend Linda and Cora (now my wife) who I had just started taking an interest in.  Luckily neither showed up; it was not my finest hour.  If memory serves this was the party in which our other housemate got out of the trolley down the block and followed the blaring music to our home (this during the wee hours) and opened the door to find Scott and I passed out blissfully oblivious to Led Zeppelin at jackhammer decibel levels.

A yummy holiday treat

I’m one of the few people I know who likes fruitcake.  The trouble with fruitcake is its reputation precedes it.  I’d be willing to bet a big tin of fruitcake that most people who say they hate it and make those slanderous remarks have never sampled the moist, nutty goodness of fruitcake.  But then again I like black licorice too.

Santa Claus has traveled a long way and I don’t mean from the North Pole.  His beginnings go back to St. Nicholas, a monk born around 280 AD who lived in what is now present day Turkey.  Nicholas’ reputation was as a pious fellow who gave away much of his inherited wealth and gave comfort to the sick and the poor.  The name of Santa Claus is a derivation of the nickname Sinter Klass which was a shortened version of Sinter Nikolaas, Dutch for St Nicholas.

Thomas Nast's Santa

After going through several iterations, Thomas Nast a cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly drew the prototype for today’s “jolly old elf.”  Nast’s Santa, one of my favorite versions, might not be entirely PC these days.  Amongst the gifts under his arm the rotund one has a sabre and a belt with a U.S. buckle.  Worst of all Nast’s Santa carries a pipe.  He’s seriously overweight as well; probably too much fast food so he can’t be a suitable role model for children.

It seems that everyone has a list of best ever Christmas films so just for the hell of it here are my top five.

1.       A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version)

2.       Home Alone

3.       A Charlie Brown Christmas

4.       It’s a Wonderful Life

5.    Joyeux Noel (about the WWI Christmas truce).

I’m awarding honorable mention to Lethal Weapon which isn’t a Christmas movie per se but has a sort of Christmas subplot.

Finally, it would be hard to find a better of example of the power of the Christmas spirit than the events of 1914 along the Western Front of World War I.  To understand the events of Christmas 1914 it is necessary to understand the circumstances of the soldiers occupying the lines of trenches that stretched from the English Channel to the Alps.  It was a war that was fought with an insane and deadly combination of outdated tactics and modern weaponry.  Life in the trenches was horrific, described by a German as, “lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, underground caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel…the work of the devil.”  In the winter of 1914 the trenches were filled with water and mud, and the area between the trenches, no man’s land, was a barren muddy moonscape littered with the dead and the debris of war. 

        As December 25^th approached the soldiers discovered that they had a commonality; Christmas.  For a short time an unofficial truce took place; a truce unauthorized by high command.  Commanders ordered a cessation of the truce but the commands went, in most cases, unheeded.

       The truce often started on a quiet night when soldiers of one side heard soldiers of the other singing Christmas songs.  Those on the other side often responded with cheers or joined in the singing.  There were shouts of holiday felicitations between the two sides.  The Germans adorned the parapets with candlelit tannenbaums and signs that read, "you no shoot, we no shoot"  Finally a brave soul would stand up on the parapet and approach the other side to work out a Christmas truce.

       In some instances the soldiers traded souvenirs such as uniform buttons and patches.  They also traded food, tobacco and other items of comfort.  Soldiers shared drink such as in one section in which the German side rolled two barrels of beer to the British on the other side.  In another section the two sides met to celebrate mass led by priests from both sides.  Soccer games were held in no man’s land with the trenches on each side serving as sidelines. 

       Wrote British soldier Charles Smith, “We ate their sauerkraut and they our chocolate, cakes, etc.  We had killed a pig just behind our lines.  We cooked the pig in no man’s land sharing it with the Boche (Germans).

       Following a soccer match between the Germans and the British in no man’s land Bob Lowell of the 3^rd London Rifles wrote, “Even as I write, I can scarcely credit what I have seen and done.  It has indeed been a wonderful day.”

       William Dawkins, another British soldier recalled a soccer match in no man's land and an angry lieutenant colonel, "the Germans came out of their protective holes, fetched a football and invited our boys out for a little game. Our boys joined them and together they quickly had great fun till they had to return to their posts.  I cannot guarantee it but it was told to me that our lieutenant colonel threatened our soldiers with machine guns.  Had just one of those big mouths gathered together ten thousand footballs what a happy solution that would have been, without bloodshed."  The big mouths didn't learn then and they haven't learned now.

Merry Christmas and peace on Earth. 

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