This summer marks my thirtieth year as an attorney. But when I think back to the summer of 1978 it is not a courtroom that I see; rather I recall a brilliant sunny July day barbecuing at the base of the Seattle Space Needle on a Weber grill. About twenty of us from the country’s largest pork producing states were vying for first place in National Pork Cook-Out Contest. Truth be told though the southern states, principally North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee are known for barbecue the big boys of pork are Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska and Kansas. They were the guys to beat.
For me the event was the culmination of a 2-year grilling odyssey that began in 1976 when I entered the North Carolina State Pork Cooking Championship and came away with a respectable but disappointing third place for Orange Flavored Pork. Despite the loss (and despite my New York Jewish heritage), I knew I had it in me to bring home the bacon so to speak. Though I had always loved pork – mostly in the form of ribs slathered in ‘duck sauce’ from the local Chinese take out joint – I really never really embraced the true pig in me until I had come to Chapel Hill, North Carolina two years earlier to attend law school.
We’d finally made it all the way to Park Slope, it was less than warm, and I’m pretty sure I had mascara on my forehead from frantically trying to fix my make-up on the subway. You can imagine my dismay when the only boy I really wanted to see on my trip to New York wasn’t even home. But we couldn’t just call him! It would be much better if we ‘just happened to be in the neighborhood’. “They can’t be far. Their car is here!” But how were we gonna kill an hour in the middle of residential nowhere in 20 degree weather? That’s when we found it. BAR TANO. A little haven of happiness with pressed tin walls and a zinc bar.
Once upon a time, when my future husband and I had just started dating,
he called me one Saturday morning to see what I was up to. I was in the
car with my friend Phoebe and a trunk full of laundry.
Candy has been a bond between me and my pal Joy since we first became
best friends in sixth grade at Beverly Vista Elementary School in
Beverly Hills, California. Sure, there’s been humor, loyalty, shared
heart-throbs, and tears…but from the get-go, there were shared Nestle
Crunch candy bars filled with crinkly chocolate that we bought every
day as we walked home from school together. It became a ritual,
peeling off the blue and white wrapper, then the foil, and eating the
crunchy bar while hysterically laughing over some inside joke that was
funny only to ourselves. But it was better that way.
It's no secret that some of us urban dwellers face commitment issues. Embrace them, even. The greener grasses and more infinite infinity pools are a form of optimism. Some of us arrested developers avoid opportunities (read: obligations) by holding out for the perfect job, the perfect relationship. But perhaps getting stuck between a responsibility rock and a commitment place isn’t so bad.