Altar Dogs

Tonight I attended Mass at St. Cecelia's in the Back Bay, where several parishioners brought their pooches for a blessing in the name of St. Francis. During the Consecration, one mutt barked just as the Host was being elevated. (Why didn't someone just train him to ring the Communion bell with his mouth?) As the assembled dogs were being sprinkled with holy water at the end of Mass, a blonde lab and a shepherd-collie mix had a verbal disagreement, although it was probably just some canine business that had nothing to do with theology.

Later in the evening, I saw four raccoons manage to make their way across Broadway, Somerville without being hit by the # 89 bus. Francesco di Assisi even watches over pests!

No Surrender

Haiku for a Harvard Square Street Performer*

Older hippy guy,
With an Uncle Sam Puppet,
Baffling passersby.


*He has been working Brattle Street for years. He is no ventriloquist, and he just moves the marionette's jaw while he tells political jokes, mostly about Reagan. I'm not sure if he has lost track of time or if he considers the Gipper stuff to be his best material. I admire his perseverance and always give him a buck.

The Thing That Ate Cambridge

When I first lived alone, in a 1.5 room studio near Harvard Square, I ate mostly takeout and pasta. (The kitchenette probably still reeks of garlic from all the spaghetti aglio e olio I whipped up.) I gained a lot of weight, then went on a crash diet, a regimen so intense that I had to test my ketone levels, and I lost 60 lbs. in three months. After these 90 days of grilled chicken or fish, turkey on whole wheat, and steamed vegetables, all in tiny portions, I was supposed to move on to a "maintenance phase." Brothers and sisters, I never made it.

One night I had a craving for Maple Leaf hot dogs, the kind with natural casings, and I went to a place that served them, the Tastee on J.F.K. Street. It was late, I was the only customer, and when I ordered two hot dogs, the counterman, perhaps a closet commie who wanted to stick it to his boss, gave me a bonus.

"These are awful small," he said, double-loading two buns. "Take four." If I was a processed meat addict, this guy was my co-dependent.

After that I really fell off the wagon. I had Sicilian pizza at Pinocchio's and burgers at Mr. Bartley's. I went for late night walks to the Hong Kong, and because there was one particular appetizer I always got, the clerk at the cash register dubbed me, "Crab Rangoon." I had lamb vindaloo at the Gandhi in Central Square, and the hot curry furnished me with a rationale to insulate my gut with mango shakes and puffy bread. My dining companion K and I found a Burmese place called the Mandalay on First Street. I wolfed down the shepherd's pie lunch at the Plough & Stars. I visited Charlie's Kitchen more often than I visited my parents. I would hit bottom on Saturdays, when I would get a luncheon special at the House of Peking on the 1100 block of Mass. Ave. and chase it with some ice cream from Baskin Robbins on Bow Street. The combination of starches would cause drowsiness, and I would just barely make it home before my knees would buckle and I would crash on my futon in a glorious Glucose Nod.

Some of those eateries are defunct, but I'm more of a gourmand than ever. I live in beautiful South Medford, a block away from my mother's place on Winter Hill in Somerville. Ma is 80 and can fry cutlets in her sleep, so visiting her condo is a near occasion of sin (gluttony). Is there a league for Over 50 sumo wrestling? And if so, do the wrestlers get free tempura?

"Hogan's Heroes" it Wasn't

My late father was in the U.S. Army's 86th Infantry division during World War II. The division entered Germany in March of 1945 and fought in various engagements, advancing all the way to Mattsee, Austria, where they captured the crown jewels of Hungary. But when my father spoke of the war, he stressed not the glory of victory but the grotesque nature of armed conflict.

He crossed the Rhine not long after his 19th birthday and saw that the river was full of graying, bloated corpses. His platoon took machine gun fire from emplacements manned by 12-year-old boys and elderly men. There was a horrible "friendly fire" death in his company when a G.I. returning from a night patrol thought it would be fun to hide in some bushes and practice his high school German with the company sentry. A mean redneck in his platoon would throw packets of chewing tobacco to children who asked for chocolate. German prisoners would weep during processing and beg that their watches and wedding rings not be stolen.

News traveled slowly in the chaos of battle, and one day in April of 1945, a Catholic chaplain informed my father that his brother Jimmy, a sergeant in the 4th Armored Division, had been killed in February near Bastogne, Belgium. My father became both despondent and angry, and he destroyed the one souvenir he had planned to bring home, a little doll dressed like a Wehrmacht soldier.

"I wanted to hate the Germans after that," he once told me. "But after I saw what the war did to German kids, I just thought that it was all one sad deal. Little German kids, the only way they knew to play was to march around in formation. You didn't see little girls playing with dolls, or boys playing ball. It was all military."

The division left Europe in June of 1945 and went to the Philippines later in the year, arriving just as the Japanese surrendered. My father said that he and his comrades received combat pay because there were nationalist guerrillas in the hills around their base, but that, "They never fired a shot, so we just ate bananas and went bowling." He made it sound like an army version of "McHale's Navy," which is the sort of mercy I wish for every person who is caught in the absurdity of war.

A Good Name for a Punk Band?

When I was 14, I used to tweak my elders by bringing home an alternative weekly called the Real Paper. One Sunday, my maternal aunt Helen, a dear woman with a voice like Edith Bunker's, picked up the latest issue of the Real Paper and staring leafing through it.

"I DIG ENEMA THRILLS!" she suddenly screeched, quoting the heading for a personal ad. She was evidently shocked. Mission accomplished. . . .

Soigné

Jerry Lewis, Call Your Sommelier

I once went to a house party on Winter Hill, Somerville where there were some actual French people in attendance. I had met the French crew a couple of months before, and they had been enthused about visiting the U.S., but on this evening they were full of complaints, about the Boston "Metro" not running late enough, about a lack of decent bread in the area, et cetera.

They had bought a mixed case of wine for the party and were holding an impromptu tasting. At one point I poured some white wine into a glass that I had just drunk red wine from. I did it on purpose to hear the oenophiles shriek, which they did. A nice French woman showed me that I should use a fresh glass, and she was as patient with me as a loving mother conducting potty training.

Later, a young man named Michele was swirling some sauternes around in his mouth and managed to spit some on his shirt. "This sometimes happens," he said, a tad embarrassed.

"That's okay," I answered. "We do that with beer at baseball games." I'm not sure if he knew I was kidding.