Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, it's me, john Ward.
This one is called Supper'sReady Dinner Time in the 1970s
and I hope some of you get thereference Supper's Ready.
Remember Genesis.
They were a rock band beforethey were a pop band.
(00:22):
I think it was a whole albumcalled Supper's Ready.
They did a whole record abouteating supper that I didn't
really understand much aboutwhat they were talking about,
but it was good music.
But people used to eat dinnertogether as a family.
In the 60s, 50s, 1970s, maybeinto the 80s, mother, father,
(00:48):
kids would gather around thedinner table every night and eat
dinner.
And I'm not saying that we needto do that anymore.
Saying that we need to do thatanymore, I'm not saying that it
(01:11):
was some kind of bonding familyevent because in many ways it
was torturous, it was tough, butwe don't do it anymore and I'm
not blaming it on social media.
It was dead and gone longbefore computers and I'm not
going to interview a Harvardsociologist or look up the
(01:31):
latest studies or anything likethat about generations that ate
dinner with their family versusthose that didn't.
I get some critiques that Idon't have a lot of substance to
my podcast and I don't a lot ofsubstance to my podcast and I
don't, it's just me talking.
We used to eat dinner togetheras a family and somebody should
(01:54):
chronicle it, somebody shouldjust mention it, somebody should
remember it.
So that's all.
This is Me remembering what itused to be like and remembering
what it used to be like and howimportant it used to be.
And it was important.
Let me tell you, dinner timewas sacred.
(02:15):
It was so sacred that westarted every meal with a prayer
Father Son, holy Spirit, blessour Lord, and these are gifts
from which we are about toreceive, from thy bounty,
through Christ, our Lord.
Amen, in the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit.
We had to say that at everymeal, as fast as we could, so we
(02:38):
could eat.
But you know, when you've gotto start something off with a
prayer, that it's prettyimportant.
It was so important that if thephone rang during dinner time,
whoever dared to call anybodyduring the hours that existed
that somebody might possibly beeating dinner with their family
(03:00):
would get cussed out for eventhinking about calling, and
everybody knew not to do it.
Nobody could come to your doorduring dinnertime.
The TV was off.
It was a time when familiescame together and ate, and I
(03:25):
don't want to overly make this anostalgic memory trip down
memory lane, because I'm notreally that sad that dinner time
is gone.
It wasn't really that wonderful.
Just the fact that we got toeat was pretty good.
That wonderful Just the factthat we got to eat was pretty
(03:51):
good.
But it was sacred.
It was every night and it was awhole ritual.
Now, where I grew up in myneighborhood, everybody pretty
much did the same thing.
Every family was a blue-collarworking-class family and our
(04:15):
dads all worked at the sameplace or similar places.
They made steel or they madecars or they worked construction
steel or they made cars or theyworked construction.
And when you were a kid you'dget home from school and you'd
get pretty much just kicked outof the house and told to go out
and play and then when the dadswould start coming home and they
(04:37):
all worked the same shifts sothey would all pull into the
neighborhood at the same timeand the front doors would open
and the moms would call andeverybody had to go eat because
Dad was home.
But you know, dad was home frommaking friggin' steel, right,
(04:58):
dad was home from working aconstruction site.
Dad was.
He could have maybe used acouple of cocktails and a beer
before he had to sit down withthe whole family and it didn't
make for the most relaxing, finedining that you might think it
(05:19):
was, where families commune andtalk about their day and stuff
like that.
It really wasn't like that.
That's why I don't really mournits passing.
But dinner time started waybefore dinner time.
(05:40):
Dinner time started with payday.
My dad would get paid.
Honestly, he got paid once amonth.
He worked steel.
He got paid once a month andhim and my mom would sit down
and they would.
He would cash his check andthey would bring the cash home
and they would put it inenvelopes and budget so much for
(06:03):
gas, so much for mortgage, somuch for electricity, so much
for food, so much forelectricity, so much for food,
and so by the end of every month, you know, we were kind of
running low on stuff.
So then payday led to groceryday and grocery day was the best
Because my mom would goshopping and she would walk in
(06:24):
with all these treasures, allthis food, and we were getting
with all these treasures, allthis food, and we were getting.
Look, I wasn't poor or anythinglike that.
You know, don't get me wrong.
I didn't suffer at all.
I had a great childhood.
But you know, when that foodcame in the house it was a big
deal and we would.
It would be like Christmasmorning, and I grew up with
(06:45):
three sisters and myself, sothere was a little bit of
competition for the food.
In fact, I would often get upthe day after grocery shopping
really early and go find what Iwant in the kitchen and hide it.
I know that my sisters did too.
(07:05):
I don't want to bring them intoit, but there was a competition
for food, man, because we had alot of kids and food went quick
and so we've got the money, wegot the groceries, we got the
(07:38):
family.
So let me take you into a circa1975 kitchen in middle America.
You didn't really have a diningroom Some people did, but we
ate in the America.
You didn't really have a diningroom Some people did, but we
ate in the kitchen.
We had a kitchen table andthere was no dishwasher.
(08:01):
Poor us right?
No dishwasher.
I got a dishwasher now itdoesn't even work.
I do everything by hand.
And my dad bought the food, mymother made the food and the
kids cleaned up after the meal.
It was a division of labor.
It was a system, a melody, aprocess, a ballet mother, father
(08:25):
, children.
So that part of it was kind ofsweet that everybody contributed
.
And we had a stove in thekitchen.
Now, I don't know if you guysremember what stoves used to be
like, but they were death traps.
They were treacherous.
Any kid that had to light astove adult, anybody, kids would
(08:52):
have to do this.
First of all, the burners ontop.
They didn't click or anything.
All you did is you'd turn theknob and immediately gas would
start shooting out natural gasand it stunk and you'd have to
have matches somewhere.
You'd have to hit the matchfirst, then turn the burner knob
and put the match next to theburner so that the burner would
(09:16):
light up.
Okay, no big deal.
It's not like we're living inmedieval times or anything like
that, but it was a little bitdangerous.
But the real problem was theoven.
So the oven you would open thedoor, you'd bring it down, open
from the top and pull it downtowards the floor and there
would be a little hole in thefront and then you'd turn the
(09:42):
oven on and the gas would startflowing directly through the
oven into the oven, filling theoven and you'd have to light the
match and start the oven andyou know, if you got distracted
or you dropped the match andthat oven filled up with gas and
then you hit that match, bamboom, your frigging eyebrows
(10:05):
would be missing.
You know, it was kind ofdangerous and thank God they got
rid of those things.
They were bad, all right.
So we got the stove, the food,the groceries, we got our family
(10:25):
.
What about the menu?
What did we used to eat?
Well, I'll tell you what weused to eat really bad food.
Half the shit we ate wasprocessed crap.
Now, I grew up in an Irishneighborhood.
(10:47):
Irish-man stuff we didn't cook.
You know, I'm sure otherethnicities were really making
good food and stuff, but it wasjust our way.
You know, food wasn't our genre, it wasn't our thing.
We were more into beer andthings like that.
(11:10):
I remember my mother, my sweetmother, who I love so much,
who's such a wonderful woman.
She would make.
She'd take a piece of WonderBread.
She would cut a fat slab ofVelveeta cheese, put it on the
Wonder Bread, hit the WonderBread with a bunch of Hunt's
(11:31):
ketchup over the cheese, cut twopepperonis, put them on top of
the ketchup, on top of theVelveeta and then sprinkle it
with oregano and then pop it inthe broiler, in the oven for
about four minutes, and we callthat pizza.
(11:51):
And it was good, man, I'mtelling you, I still eat it.
I'll probably have one tomorrow, not with the though, but try
it now.
I'm giving out menus or recipes.
I remember we ate that pizzafor years like that, thinking it
(12:13):
was pizza.
And then a Italian guy opened upa pizzeria at the corner of our
street and, as just a kid and Iwent down there and I said to
the guy.
I said look at you, know, can Iget a job?
You got something for me to do?
And he said well, I'll tell youwhat.
You sweep my parking lot andI'll give you a pizza.
So I go home.
(12:34):
I said Ma, don't bother cookingtonight.
I'm maybe 12, 13.
I said I got dinner tonight.
I'm going to bring home a pizza.
She's like a pizza, what areyou talking about?
I said don't worry about it,just wait, I'm going to take
care of dinner tonight.
I go sweep the parking lot.
Guy goes how many kids you got?
(12:54):
I go four kids, two adults,five dogs.
We had like five dogs.
I don't know why my motherloved dogs.
She still does.
And he says, okay, I'm going togive you a large and a small,
that should do it.
I'm like no shit man.
I look at this pizza.
I'm like not on a meat, look atthat thing, that's a pizza.
(13:15):
I get that pizza.
I walk on home to my house,everybody's waiting for me.
Johnny's bringing home dinnertonight.
Right, I take that pizza, I putit on the table, I open the box
and I say this is pizza, thisis real pizza.
And we ate that pizza.
Then we ate that pizza forever.
(13:37):
We found out what real pizzawas, but I'll still eat that
fake pizza, that fake WonderBread pizza.
Our spaghetti was Mueller'smacaroni and ragu.
(13:59):
Still love it, but it wasn'treal spaghetti.
You know real Italian spaghetti.
We were Catholic and we had toduring Lent.
Most Catholics eat fish onFridays during Lent, but we were
so friggin' Catholic everyFriday we had to eat fish.
Oh, I can't eat fish to thisday.
And my mom God bless her soul,I love her so much.
My mom wasn't really that goodat cooking fish.
(14:23):
So she would get these MrsPaul's fish sticks, and we would
.
It's.
All we would eat would be MrsPaul's fish sticks mashed
potatoes with every meal andmilk, and I grew so sick I
thought that was what fish wasright.
I couldn't eat it because I hadyears of every Friday night
eating fish.
We had a lot of stews.
(14:44):
We had a lot of sloppy joes.
We had a lot of stews.
We had a lot of sloppy joes.
We had a lot of grilled cheese.
We had shitty food in the 70s.
Let's be honest, man, we hadshitty food.
But the one thing you couldn'tdo, no matter what, you had to
eat everything on your plate.
Now, if my mom made somegoulash or some stew or
(15:06):
something like that, I had toeat it, no matter how bad it was
.
And she made some great stuff.
She really did.
But some of the stuff Icouldn't eat Spam.
Oh my God, what is that shit?
What's in there?
We used to eat that.
Oh, and the smell.
I remember the smell.
It makes me sick.
But I had to eat everything onthe plate and if I didn't, I had
(15:31):
to sit there and the wholefamily would go off into their
bedrooms or watch TV andwatching the Brady Bunch or
whatever, and I'd have to sitthere alone with that spam and
just try to figure out how tochoke it down.
I think I'd have hit all thosedogs.
I would feed it to the dogs.
(15:51):
I'd keep saying, hey, I got toget up and go to the bathroom,
fill my mouth full of spam andspit in the toilet, but you had
to eat everything on your plate.
Food was sacred.
Dinner time was sacred.
It was a time where we'resupposed to sit around, all of
us, and we're going to talkabout our day.
Right, my father's going totell me about what he did at the
(16:14):
factory.
My mother's going to keep thepeace.
Somebody's going to ask me whatI learned in school today.
I don't know.
I don't have an answer.
I don't know.
This is forced.
It's tough, it's hard.
We're pretending to be a family.
That's communicating and wewere a family.
We were a loving family, but wewere kids.
(16:36):
We didn't want to be with ourparents.
We wanted food, right, wewanted food.
So it would be awful,uncomfortable, just us sitting
around trying to come up withsomething to talk about.
Or if I had done some stupidshit my father found out about,
then he would bring that up andyou know, be like not that great
(17:00):
of a situation.
We just would make it throughdinner.
If it was good, we'd eat it.
And if it was dinner, if it wasgood, we'd eat it.
And if it was good, we didn'tjust eat it, we competed for it.
We ate it as fast as wefrigging could to get the last
piece.
Everybody was hungry, everybodywanted to eat.
You had to eat fast, man.
I married a girl.
She was an only child.
My wife, she's so funny aboutfood.
(17:23):
She won't let her food touch.
You can't touch her food.
She don't share food.
She's not man.
I grew up in a big family.
I will grab food off your plate.
I will mix everything together.
I eat so fast that I get myfood all over my shirt and my
mouth.
And you know, because I had toeat fast, or it'd be gone fast
(17:52):
or he'd be gone.
That's how it was.
We were hungry kids.
We had big families and we satand ate dinner together.
So we ate and when it was over,there was a big mess, a big
mess.
Somebody had to clear thedishes.
Somebody was a big mess, a bigmess.
Somebody had to clear thedishes, somebody had to wash
them, somebody had to dry themand put them away.
And we rotated through thechildren who did it.
(18:16):
And God help us.
I mean, the cleanliness of thatwhole operation was terrible.
We weren't really washing andboiling water or anything like
that.
You know, half the time wewould just rinse and stack and
(18:36):
store it away, and nothing liketoday's operation with the
dishwashers and stuff like likethat.
I remember one time we had adiscussion at the dinner table
where my father he had justdecided they had three sisters,
he had just decided that therewas gonna be a separation of
(19:00):
division labor.
That now Johnny's like you know12.
He's not going to do laundryand dishes, no more.
He's a man right Now.
I got him on lawn detail.
I got him on snow shoveling.
I got him on garage cleaning.
I got him in the basement.
I got him helping me fix pipes.
(19:20):
I'm going to teach him how tosaw wood and stuff like this.
So I got out of all this stuff.
I didn't have to do thatanymore.
Fold clothes, do dishes, sothey, they have a family vote.
My dad's like look at, we gotsome money here and we we think
we can get one of thesedishwashers and we're going to
(19:41):
vote on it.
And the vote was five to one.
I was the only I had to holdout.
I'm like what do we need adishwasher for?
I didn't have to do dishes.
We never got the dishwasher, wedidn't need it.
And then that whole system, thatwhole ritual, that whole
(20:05):
elaborate communal dining familyof the 70s somehow slipped away
into TV trays, living rooms,television.
Kids are coming and going, gotjobs, moms are working, there's
(20:28):
food in the refrigerator, cookit up, eat it up.
It it broke down, and I'm notso sure I miss it.
I'm not so sure it reallyaffected society or anything
like that.
It's a nice idea, though, toeat dinner together, but it just
(20:54):
didn't turn out like you wouldthink it was a good idea.
It wasn't like Wally and theBeeve sitting around with Ward
and June, it was more justpeople trying to get food down
their mouths and get out ofthere.
Wally and the Beeve sittingaround with Ward and June, it
was more just people trying toget food down their mouths and
get out of there.
I'll tell you one thing that Iremember Is that my dad would
(21:20):
always, if there was one pieceof pizza left or one sliver of
food that everybody was full,would always, if there was one
piece of pizza left or onesliver of food, that everybody
was full and it was me and himlooking at each other, me and
him.
He wanted it, I wanted it, andhe would always say you take
that last slice of pizza.
Always Little, tiny littlething it's yours.
(21:44):
I knew he was hungry as I was,but he always did that and it
seems like a small thing, but itreally was kind of a big thing
Because it taught me something.
If I could take anything out ofthe dinner table tales, it was
(22:05):
the generosity of my dad to makesure that his son was full.
And I took that with me and Ikind of extrapolated it into
being a generous man and aprovider.
(22:25):
Just that little lesson.
It may seem quaint, nostalgic,but I remember it.
I'm 65 years old and I stillremember it.
I remember me and my dad wouldgolf together Now I'm in my 50s
at this time and we would golfevery Thursday and we would have
(22:48):
lunch.
And I remember we went to thepizzeria that had opened at the
top of our street and my momwouldn't let him go there
because he had some cholesterolproblems.
And I remember sitting therenow I'm 55, 56, he's in his 80s
(23:15):
and we get a pizza and I'm stillhis son, though I'm still his
little boy.
He looks at me.
We get down to the last sliceand he looks at me and he says
it's yours, take it.
And I said, it's yours, take it.
And I said, no, dad, you takeit, it's yours.
(23:35):
And he said, no, you take it.
And I took it.
I was hungry, but it taught meI never stopped being this
little boy, you know.
So maybe dinner time was good,maybe it was, I don't know.
I'm not a philosopher or apsychologist.
(23:56):
I just tell stories about thebaby boomers and their lifestyle
that get missed by these othergenerations that for some reason
, can't stand us, and that's it.
I hope you got your steps in.
I hope I got you to work.
(24:17):
Nice drive to work, but peopleused to eat dinner together and
it was good and it was bad andsupper's ready.
Okay, boomers, have a good day.
Keep listening.
Hello, it's me, john Ward.
This one is called Supper'sReady Dinner Time in the 1970s
and I hope some of you get thereference Supper's Ready.
Remember Genesis.
They were a rock band beforethey were a pop band.
(00:22):
I think it was a whole albumcalled Supper's Ready.
They did a whole record abouteating supper that I didn't
really understand much aboutwhat they were talking about,
but it was good music.
But people used to eat dinnertogether as a family.
In the 60s, 50s, 1970s, maybeinto the 80s, mother, father,
(00:48):
kids would gather around thedinner table every night and eat
dinner.
And I'm not saying that we needto do that anymore.
Saying that we need to do thatanymore, I'm not saying that it
(01:11):
was some kind of bonding familyevent because in many ways it
was torturous, it was tough, butwe don't do it anymore and I'm
not blaming it on social media.
It was dead and gone longbefore computers and I'm not
going to interview a Harvardsociologist or look up the
(01:31):
latest studies or anything likethat about generations that ate
dinner with their family versusthose that didn't.
I get some critiques that Idon't have a lot of substance to
my podcast and I don't a lot ofsubstance to my podcast and I
don't, it's just me talking.
We used to eat dinner togetheras a family and somebody should
(01:54):
chronicle it, somebody shouldjust mention it, somebody should
remember it.
So that's all.
This is Me remembering what itused to be like and remembering
what it used to be like and howimportant it used to be.
And it was important.
Let me tell you, dinner timewas sacred.
(02:15):
It was so sacred that westarted every meal with a prayer
Father Son, holy Spirit, blessour Lord, and these are gifts
from which we are about toreceive, from thy bounty,
through Christ, our Lord.
Amen, in the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit.
We had to say that at everymeal, as fast as we could, so we
(02:38):
could eat.
But you know, when you've gotto start something off with a
prayer, that it's prettyimportant.
It was so important that if thephone rang during dinner time,
whoever dared to call anybodyduring the hours that existed
that somebody might possibly beeating dinner with their family
(03:00):
would get cussed out for eventhinking about calling, and
everybody knew not to do it.
Nobody could come to your doorduring dinnertime.
The TV was off.
It was a time when familiescame together and ate, and I
(03:25):
don't want to overly make this anostalgic memory trip down
memory lane, because I'm notreally that sad that dinner time
is gone.
It wasn't really that wonderful.
Just the fact that we got toeat was pretty good.
That wonderful Just the factthat we got to eat was pretty
(03:51):
good.
But it was sacred.
It was every night and it was awhole ritual.
Now, where I grew up in myneighborhood, everybody pretty
much did the same thing.
Every family was a blue-collarworking-class family and our
(04:15):
dads all worked at the sameplace or similar places.
They made steel or they madecars or they worked construction
steel or they made cars or theyworked construction.
And when you were a kid you'dget home from school and you'd
get pretty much just kicked outof the house and told to go out
and play and then when the dadswould start coming home and they
(04:37):
all worked the same shifts sothey would all pull into the
neighborhood at the same timeand the front doors would open
and the moms would call andeverybody had to go eat because
Dad was home.
But you know, dad was home frommaking friggin' steel, right,
(04:58):
dad was home from working aconstruction site.
Dad was.
He could have maybe used acouple of cocktails and a beer
before he had to sit down withthe whole family and it didn't
make for the most relaxing, finedining that you might think it
(05:19):
was, where families commune andtalk about their day and stuff
like that.
It really wasn't like that.
That's why I don't really mournits passing.
But dinner time started waybefore dinner time.
(05:40):
Dinner time started with payday.
My dad would get paid.
Honestly, he got paid once amonth.
He worked steel.
He got paid once a month andhim and my mom would sit down
and they would.
He would cash his check andthey would bring the cash home
and they would put it inenvelopes and budget so much for
(06:03):
gas, so much for mortgage, somuch for electricity, so much
for food, so much forelectricity, so much for food,
and so by the end of every month, you know, we were kind of
running low on stuff.
So then payday led to groceryday and grocery day was the best
Because my mom would goshopping and she would walk in
(06:24):
with all these treasures, allthis food, and we were getting
with all these treasures, allthis food, and we were getting.
Look, I wasn't poor or anythinglike that.
You know, don't get me wrong.
I didn't suffer at all.
I had a great childhood.
But you know, when that foodcame in the house it was a big
deal and we would.
It would be like Christmasmorning, and I grew up with
(06:45):
three sisters and myself, sothere was a little bit of
competition for the food.
In fact, I would often get upthe day after grocery shopping
really early and go find what Iwant in the kitchen and hide it.
I know that my sisters did too.
(07:05):
I don't want to bring them intoit, but there was a competition
for food, man, because we had alot of kids and food went quick
and so we've got the money, wegot the groceries, we got the
(07:38):
family.
So let me take you into a circa1975 kitchen in middle America.
You didn't really have a diningroom Some people did, but we
ate in the America.
You didn't really have a diningroom Some people did, but we
ate in the kitchen.
We had a kitchen table andthere was no dishwasher.
(08:01):
Poor us right?
No dishwasher.
I got a dishwasher now itdoesn't even work.
I do everything by hand.
And my dad bought the food, mymother made the food and the
kids cleaned up after the meal.
It was a division of labor.
It was a system, a melody, aprocess, a ballet mother, father
(08:25):
, children.
So that part of it was kind ofsweet that everybody contributed
.
And we had a stove in thekitchen.
Now, I don't know if you guysremember what stoves used to be
like, but they were death traps.
They were treacherous.
Any kid that had to light astove adult, anybody, kids would
(08:52):
have to do this.
First of all, the burners ontop.
They didn't click or anything.
All you did is you'd turn theknob and immediately gas would
start shooting out natural gasand it stunk and you'd have to
have matches somewhere.
You'd have to hit the matchfirst, then turn the burner knob
and put the match next to theburner so that the burner would
(09:16):
light up.
Okay, no big deal.
It's not like we're living inmedieval times or anything like
that, but it was a little bitdangerous.
But the real problem was theoven.
So the oven you would open thedoor, you'd bring it down, open
from the top and pull it downtowards the floor and there
would be a little hole in thefront and then you'd turn the
(09:42):
oven on and the gas would startflowing directly through the
oven into the oven, filling theoven and you'd have to light the
match and start the oven andyou know, if you got distracted
or you dropped the match andthat oven filled up with gas and
then you hit that match, bamboom, your frigging eyebrows
(10:05):
would be missing.
You know, it was kind ofdangerous and thank God they got
rid of those things.
They were bad, all right.
So we got the stove, the food,the groceries, we got our family
(10:25):
.
What about the menu?
What did we used to eat?
Well, I'll tell you what weused to eat really bad food.
Half the shit we ate wasprocessed crap.
Now, I grew up in an Irishneighborhood.
(10:47):
Irish-man stuff we didn't cook.
You know, I'm sure otherethnicities were really making
good food and stuff, but it wasjust our way.
You know, food wasn't our genre, it wasn't our thing.
We were more into beer andthings like that.
(11:10):
I remember my mother, my sweetmother, who I love so much,
who's such a wonderful woman.
She would make.
She'd take a piece of WonderBread.
She would cut a fat slab ofVelveeta cheese, put it on the
Wonder Bread, hit the WonderBread with a bunch of Hunt's
(11:31):
ketchup over the cheese, cut twopepperonis, put them on top of
the ketchup, on top of theVelveeta and then sprinkle it
with oregano and then pop it inthe broiler, in the oven for
about four minutes, and we callthat pizza.
(11:51):
And it was good, man, I'mtelling you, I still eat it.
I'll probably have one tomorrow, not with the though, but try
it now.
I'm giving out menus or recipes.
I remember we ate that pizzafor years like that, thinking it
(12:13):
was pizza.
And then a Italian guy opened upa pizzeria at the corner of our
street and, as just a kid and Iwent down there and I said to
the guy.
I said look at you, know, can Iget a job?
You got something for me to do?
And he said well, I'll tell youwhat.
You sweep my parking lot andI'll give you a pizza.
So I go home.
(12:34):
I said Ma, don't bother cookingtonight.
I'm maybe 12, 13.
I said I got dinner tonight.
I'm going to bring home a pizza.
She's like a pizza, what areyou talking about?
I said don't worry about it,just wait, I'm going to take
care of dinner tonight.
I go sweep the parking lot.
Guy goes how many kids you got?
(12:54):
I go four kids, two adults,five dogs.
We had like five dogs.
I don't know why my motherloved dogs.
She still does.
And he says, okay, I'm going togive you a large and a small,
that should do it.
I'm like no shit man.
I look at this pizza.
I'm like not on a meat, look atthat thing, that's a pizza.
(13:15):
I get that pizza.
I walk on home to my house,everybody's waiting for me.
Johnny's bringing home dinnertonight.
Right, I take that pizza, I putit on the table, I open the box
and I say this is pizza, thisis real pizza.
And we ate that pizza.
Then we ate that pizza forever.
(13:37):
We found out what real pizzawas, but I'll still eat that
fake pizza, that fake WonderBread pizza.
Our spaghetti was Mueller'smacaroni and ragu.
(13:59):
Still love it, but it wasn'treal spaghetti.
You know real Italian spaghetti.
We were Catholic and we had toduring Lent.
Most Catholics eat fish onFridays during Lent, but we were
so friggin' Catholic everyFriday we had to eat fish.
Oh, I can't eat fish to thisday.
And my mom God bless her soul,I love her so much.
My mom wasn't really that goodat cooking fish.
(14:23):
So she would get these MrsPaul's fish sticks, and we would
.
It's.
All we would eat would be MrsPaul's fish sticks mashed
potatoes with every meal andmilk, and I grew so sick I
thought that was what fish wasright.
I couldn't eat it because I hadyears of every Friday night
eating fish.
We had a lot of stews.
(14:44):
We had a lot of sloppy joes.
We had a lot of stews.
We had a lot of sloppy joes.
We had a lot of grilled cheese.
We had shitty food in the 70s.
Let's be honest, man, we hadshitty food.
But the one thing you couldn'tdo, no matter what, you had to
eat everything on your plate.
Now, if my mom made somegoulash or some stew or
(15:06):
something like that, I had toeat it, no matter how bad it was
.
And she made some great stuff.
She really did.
But some of the stuff Icouldn't eat Spam.
Oh my God, what is that shit?
What's in there?
We used to eat that.
Oh, and the smell.
I remember the smell.
It makes me sick.
But I had to eat everything onthe plate and if I didn't, I had
(15:31):
to sit there and the wholefamily would go off into their
bedrooms or watch TV andwatching the Brady Bunch or
whatever, and I'd have to sitthere alone with that spam and
just try to figure out how tochoke it down.
I think I'd have hit all thosedogs.
I would feed it to the dogs.
(15:51):
I'd keep saying, hey, I got toget up and go to the bathroom,
fill my mouth full of spam andspit in the toilet, but you had
to eat everything on your plate.
Food was sacred.
Dinner time was sacred.
It was a time where we'resupposed to sit around, all of
us, and we're going to talkabout our day.
Right, my father's going totell me about what he did at the
(16:14):
factory.
My mother's going to keep thepeace.
Somebody's going to ask me whatI learned in school today.
I don't know.
I don't have an answer.
I don't know.
This is forced.
It's tough, it's hard.
We're pretending to be a family.
That's communicating and wewere a family.
We were a loving family, but wewere kids.
(16:36):
We didn't want to be with ourparents.
We wanted food, right, wewanted food.
So it would be awful,uncomfortable, just us sitting
around trying to come up withsomething to talk about.
Or if I had done some stupidshit my father found out about,
then he would bring that up andyou know, be like not that great
(17:00):
of a situation.
We just would make it throughdinner.
If it was good, we'd eat it.
And if it was dinner, if it wasgood, we'd eat it.
And if it was good, we didn'tjust eat it, we competed for it.
We ate it as fast as wefrigging could to get the last
piece.
Everybody was hungry, everybodywanted to eat.
You had to eat fast, man.
I married a girl.
She was an only child.
My wife, she's so funny aboutfood.
(17:23):
She won't let her food touch.
You can't touch her food.
She don't share food.
She's not man.
I grew up in a big family.
I will grab food off your plate.
I will mix everything together.
I eat so fast that I get myfood all over my shirt and my
mouth.
And you know, because I had toeat fast, or it'd be gone fast
(17:52):
or he'd be gone.
That's how it was.
We were hungry kids.
We had big families and we satand ate dinner together.
So we ate and when it was over,there was a big mess, a big
mess.
Somebody had to clear thedishes.
Somebody was a big mess, a bigmess.
Somebody had to clear thedishes, somebody had to wash
them, somebody had to dry themand put them away.
And we rotated through thechildren who did it.
(18:16):
And God help us.
I mean, the cleanliness of thatwhole operation was terrible.
We weren't really washing andboiling water or anything like
that.
You know, half the time wewould just rinse and stack and
(18:36):
store it away, and nothing liketoday's operation with the
dishwashers and stuff like likethat.
I remember one time we had adiscussion at the dinner table
where my father he had justdecided they had three sisters,
he had just decided that therewas gonna be a separation of
(19:00):
division labor.
That now Johnny's like you know12.
He's not going to do laundryand dishes, no more.
He's a man right Now.
I got him on lawn detail.
I got him on snow shoveling.
I got him on garage cleaning.
I got him in the basement.
I got him helping me fix pipes.
(19:20):
I'm going to teach him how tosaw wood and stuff like this.
So I got out of all this stuff.
I didn't have to do thatanymore.
Fold clothes, do dishes, sothey, they have a family vote.
My dad's like look at, we gotsome money here and we we think
we can get one of thesedishwashers and we're going to
(19:41):
vote on it.
And the vote was five to one.
I was the only I had to holdout.
I'm like what do we need adishwasher for?
I didn't have to do dishes.
We never got the dishwasher, wedidn't need it.
And then that whole system, thatwhole ritual, that whole
(20:05):
elaborate communal dining familyof the 70s somehow slipped away
into TV trays, living rooms,television.
Kids are coming and going, gotjobs, moms are working, there's
(20:28):
food in the refrigerator, cookit up, eat it up.
It it broke down, and I'm notso sure I miss it.
I'm not so sure it reallyaffected society or anything
like that.
It's a nice idea, though, toeat dinner together, but it just
(20:54):
didn't turn out like you wouldthink it was a good idea.
It wasn't like Wally and theBeeve sitting around with Ward
and June, it was more justpeople trying to get food down
their mouths and get out ofthere.
Wally and the Beeve sittingaround with Ward and June, it
was more just people trying toget food down their mouths and
get out of there.
I'll tell you one thing that Iremember Is that my dad would
(21:20):
always, if there was one pieceof pizza left or one sliver of
food that everybody was full,would always, if there was one
piece of pizza left or onesliver of food, that everybody
was full and it was me and himlooking at each other, me and
him.
He wanted it, I wanted it, andhe would always say you take
that last slice of pizza.
Always Little, tiny littlething it's yours.
(21:44):
I knew he was hungry as I was,but he always did that and it
seems like a small thing, but itreally was kind of a big thing
Because it taught me something.
If I could take anything out ofthe dinner table tales, it was
(22:05):
the generosity of my dad to makesure that his son was full.
And I took that with me and Ikind of extrapolated it into
being a generous man and aprovider.
(22:25):
Just that little lesson.
It may seem quaint, nostalgic,but I remember it.
I'm 65 years old and I stillremember it.
I remember me and my dad wouldgolf together Now I'm in my 50s
at this time and we would golfevery Thursday and we would have
(22:48):
lunch.
And I remember we went to thepizzeria that had opened at the
top of our street and my momwouldn't let him go there
because he had some cholesterolproblems.
And I remember sitting therenow I'm 55, 56, he's in his 80s
(23:15):
and we get a pizza and I'm stillhis son, though I'm still his
little boy.
He looks at me.
We get down to the last sliceand he looks at me and he says
it's yours, take it.
And I said, it's yours, take it.
And I said, no, dad, you takeit, it's yours.
(23:35):
And he said, no, you take it.
And I took it.
I was hungry, but it taught meI never stopped being this
little boy, you know.
So maybe dinner time was good,maybe it was, I don't know.
I'm not a philosopher or apsychologist.
(23:56):
I just tell stories about thebaby boomers and their lifestyle
that get missed by these othergenerations that for some reason
, can't stand us, and that's it.
I hope you got your steps in.
I hope I got you to work.
(24:17):
Nice drive to work, but peopleused to eat dinner together and
it was good and it was bad andsupper's ready.
Okay, boomers, have a good day.
Keep listening.
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