MY FATHER: Jesus.
We all shout goodbye to one another a few more times as we depart.
On our way out, I see my grandmother return to the kitchen and my grandfather walk to an upholstered rocking chair, take an Italian newspaper from underneath the cushion, sit down, and begin to read.
The house is silent.
* * *
The Tropiano home not only reaped the benefits of their expertly nurtured garden but was so near the Hudson River that my grandparents were able to cull its edible riches as well.
As a boy, I loved going to the Hudson with them, tying pieces of raw chicken to the bottom of crab nets and lowering them off the end of an abandoned steamboat dock into its murky waters.
It’s important to note that I have just written that the crabs came from the Hudson River.I Some of you may know that, like most major waterways in our purple-mountained majesty, it is extremely polluted, or at least, it was at the time.II A General Electric plant upriver released 1.3 million pounds of PCBs （or “polychlorinated biphenyls,” which are used as a coolant in electrical apparatus and, as it turns out, highly toxic）， between 1947 and 1977, into what was once known as “the Lordly Hudson.” Compounding this ecological indignity, the Indian Point nuclear plant, situated one short mile from my grandparents’ home, literally sucked millions and millions of gallons of water from the Hudson to cool its reactors, killing marine life and leaking toxic effluvium into the groundwater that eventually found its way back into the river itself.
Yet unaware of or just choosing to ignore all this, my family ate what the river had to offer, and as far as I know, none of them ever got cancer or even as much as a stomachache from doing so. One can only chalk this up to the fact that the Italian immune system is staggeringly strong. The Calabrese are known in Italy as “teste dure.” Translated literally, it means “hardheads” and points to an innate stubbornness. However, given the longevity of my family members, it seems that their bodies may be even more stubborn than their minds.
At any rate, after we had spent a few languid hours catching these atomic crabs, they were boiled and dumped unceremoniously onto a table covered in newspaper beneath a pergola wrapped in grapevines in my grandparents’ backyard. They were served with corn on the cob,III boiled potatoes, tomato salad, and my grandmother’s homemade bread. Obviously there was wine, made by my grandfather, and cold beer, usually Schaefer or Black Label, those inexpensive but thirst-quenching ubiquitous brews of the 1960s and ’70s.
If you have ever boiled and eaten a crab yourself, you know that they are a fair amount of work for the small amount of meat they offer. You will also know the gustatory reward is well worth it. Yes, we loved this reward, but perhaps even more, we loved the conversation the laborious process engendered, as well as the excuse it gave us to stay a tavolo even longer than usual.
As for the sides, the potatoes were boiled, salted, and drizzled with olive oil. The tomato salad was prepared as follows:
Tomato Salad
— SERVES 4 —
8 small ripe tomatoes （quartered or halved, depending upon their size）
1 garlic clove, halved
A glug of EVOO
A small handful of basil leaves, torn
A splash of red wine vinegar （optional）
Coarse salt
Place the cut tomatoes in a bowl with the garlic, olive oil, basil, and vinegar, if using. Toss.
Salt a few minutes before serving. （Adding it too soon will draw the water out of the tomatoes and dilute the dish.）
The corn on the cob was boiled for about six minutes, placed on a large platter, and brought steaming hot to the table. Greedy hands then grabbed hot ears. But the buttering of the corn… well, it wasn’t just “put knife into butter, put butter on corn with knife.”
No.
No.
Good God.
No.
A piece of homemade bread was buttered and then used to slather the salted ear of corn, thus, in true Italian fashion, creating two dishes out of one, the ear of corn being the first dish and the homemade bread （now saturated with the melted butter, salt, and sweetness from the buttered kernels） being the second. This may have been the single most delicious part of an already delicious meal. An act so simple it’s almost stupid. But no one I know does it, except my family. And, as far as I know, they are not simple or stupid. （Well, maybe one or two.） I can only suggest that the next time you eat corn on the cob, try the above, and I think you’ll taste what I mean.
When the meal and the inevitable game of bocce that followed were over, it was time for us to leave. As we made our way back home and my sisters and I dozed off in the backseat, our car carried the faint aromas of butter and crab as additional and welcome passengers.