IT WAS TAXING!

Grandma had one important rule, which was: you enter her kitchen for any reason; you eat! Say you were attacked by a herd of ferocious elephants that stomped on your head and broke all your bones, or a paper cut and you went into Grandma’s kitchen for relief, first you had to have something to eat!

Living in a tight Italian/American community, people took care of each other. Your neighbor had a son who was a doctor; you went to your neighbor’s son for a cure,

You needed potatoes, you went to the local greengrocer, and you bought potatoes. The important factor was they were all Italians. (NO, not the potatoes, the vendors! Managgia!) You wanted a good lawyer, you went to Belmont Avenue and found a good lawyer, Jewish preferred.

The same was true with preparing your taxes: there was always someone in the family or neighborhood with an Italian last name that did your taxes. H&R Block is alphabet street names running between the alphabetized blocks or streets.

So, one year Dad had to have his taxes made out for both Uncle or should I say ‘Zio’ Sam and the State of New York. Since we had moved from the old neighborhood, he would go back and have it done and asked me to come for the company.

Once we arrived at the tax lady’s house, Rosetta plied us with Italian cookies and black coffee in demitasse cups. Dad put his shoebox of receipts on her kitchen table and the process began and ended with the cookies.

Off we went and afterward stopped at Grandmas, who wasn’t expecting us.

We enter and happily, she greets us, making sure to pinch the Hell out of my cheeks (the ones on my face). She sits us down at her table and takes off while we drink a cup of coffee. Suddenly I get the delicious odor of steak on an open fire, Grandma is down in the cellar cooking steaks!

Reappearing a short while later, she reappears with two steaks, takes out this crusty Italian bread, wine a salad and cheese and pepperoni, (She has to be a direct descendant of a saint) and so we feasted, once more, Grandma’s rule enforced.

I wish I could go back to the old haunts, the older generation and tell them how much I appreciated all they did for me, my love of all of them from Zio Felice’s nasty smelling diNaboli cigars to grandma’s steaks, I hope their reward is great where they are now. God bless them all, in every family like they were, in every way.