GO FIG-URE

It’s funny how a simple thing in life can trigger an emotion or thought. A certain smell can carry one back to his childhood, a noise that reminds us of some obscure thing in our past that we thought we had forgotten.

My neighbor Rich Ignellzi came over last Saturday with some fresh figs from his backyard fig tree, and gave us a plate full. Seeing the fresh figs carried me back to Brooklyn, early 50’s and standing in my grandfather’s backyard, under his grape vines, looking out into his garden at his fig tree, and eating them right off the tree, ripe and sweet and fleshy. Eating figs is one of life’s true pleasures, the fig’s tiny seeds nesting in between my teeth.

Grandpa had homemade wine, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, mint, pears and apples. Grandpa Ralph was a country boy from the hills of Naples, and Naples never left the man.

My grandmother would jar all her tomatoes, and using the fresh basil, jar it with the tomatoes for use in the future. Her sauces were spicy and delicious, and the aroma in her kitchen emanating from the fresh basil and parsley all came back in one quick moment in time in my own kitchen, just by looking at the figs.

On Saturday nights, she would be down in her basement, standing over an old gas stove, flame high with a steak in a wire rack and she turned the steak to cook it on the open flame, and as she did, she made the whole neighborhood hungry. Then the big salad with fresh tomatoes and basil would be the accompaniment to the roasted steak.

Thanks, Richie, it was a bigger deal than you thought, a simple gift but a great pleasure.