In these days of economic uncertainty, I wish my grandmother were "with it." You see, if Nonna had better hearing, better vision and a better memory, I would love, love, love to hear her expound on the mortgage crisis, the bailout, "the Wall Street fatcats," the maroons in Congress and the ordinary Americans who spend more than they earn. All equally to blame in her eyes, I'm sure, for this big, bad economic mess.
Nonna is 99 years old. She'll be 100 in November. She was sharp as a tack until about three years ago, and since then has begun a slow decline. Because of her compromised hearing and sight, she is not really able to keep up with current events, and if you ever knew Nonna, she kept up with current events and was not afraid to share her opinion(s) around her kitchen table.
Nonna was a first-generation Italian American and one of six children. After high school, she was employed as an Italian translator and then as a bookkeeper. Nonna was 21 years old when the stock market crashed, and in part because of the Great Depression, she did not marry my grandfather until she was 27. Like my maternal grandparents, who were engaged in 1927 but did not marry until 1937, couples in the 30s tended to postpone marriage until they were able to save any amount of money. (They sure as hell did not go into debt for the wedding reception either.) She and my grandfather had two boys, my father and my uncle. My uncle was trained as a plumber and my father was a lawyer. He worked to pay his own way through law school, through Boston College (as a cater waiter) and even more shockingly, through Matignon High School (as a dishwasher). If my grandparents were able to help him financially, I'm sure they weren't able to offer much. When Nonna was middle-aged, she became a "salesgirl" at Sears and Roebuck until she was forced to retire in 1973 when she turned 65.
For 27 years, we visited Nonna every Sunday at her house just outside Davis Square Somerville
I have been thinking about those days a lot lately and wishing I could "go to Nonna's" these past few Sundays. Ironically, I'm not being sentimental about this. I would just love to hear her go off! In fact, I spent so many Sundays at Nonna's, I can tell you the lessons she'd likely want to impart about this economic mess if she could.
Know Who You Are
Nonna was extremely intelligent, and only graduated from high school after a concerned teacher begged my great-grandfather to let her stay in school. My great-grandfather hadn't believed until then that girls should go to school beyond the eighth grade, but for Nonna and because of her teacher, he made an exception. Nonna used her 'formal' education as a starting-off place for the rest of her lifelong learning. She did not assume that "everything she needed to know she learned in high school," and I don't think she'd blame public schools for the financial mess we're in. She continually educated herself. She read the newspaper every day. She went to the library and read voraciously. She was a whiz at crosswords. She double-checked her receipts and counted the change that the clerk handed back to her. She understood her bank statements. She wrote letters of complaint when she was displeased with products. And she never replaced anything that still worked just because it was out of style. She relied heavily on her common sense, and unfortunately even the best teacher in the world can't teach common sense.
Nonna knew that a person's life was worth more than the "stuff" we own, although Nonna did have a lot of stuff (another blog for another day). Having a roof over one's head, friends, family, a glass of wine (or scotch), making really great gnocchi, tending a garden of cacti and succulens which would have impressed Martha Stewart, and babysitting the grandkids were all she needed. Oh, and did I mention that she knew how to break the neck of a chicken for dinner? This was a skill she had learned around the age of 8 or 9 growing up on a farm. She didn't know much about acquiring wealth, but she knew a lot about not going into debt, about breaking even, taking advantage of offers, paying back, and most importantly about the concept of "choosing not to afford" things. Her values were in tact, and her spending habits reflected those values. She was all about personal accountability.
Trust your instincts
On a recent Oprah Winfrey Show, and while explaining the current economic mess we're in, Suze Orman and CNN correspondent Ali Valshi criticized banks for having assured home buyers that they "could" afford to buy more house with less money, thus setting the stage for thousands of foreclosures. I can see how people would have been seduced by an offer of a larger loan, I really can. I'm just not sure my grandmother would have been one of them. She would have gotten out a pencil and pad, recalculated the interest, measured it against both her and my grandfather's wages (note, I wrote wages, not salaries) and decided it was too risky. The end. Nonna would have suspected that the bankers had something to gain by offering her a loan with more interest. I believe she would have said, "Thanks but no thanks. We'll stay in our apartment until this is less risky."
Take the Butter and Run
When African-American comedians like Bernie Mac and Chris Rock talk about government cheese in their standup routines, you will hear chortles of laughter from the my siblings and me. Why? Because we, upper-middle class white kids, enjoyed our fair share of government rationed butter and cheese during our teen and college years.
You see, just after my grandfather died when I was 19, my grandmother transferred the deed to her house to my father and uncle so that she could eventually qualify for senior housing. Despite the fact that she still lived in a house, Nonna was technically considered poor. Not po', but poor. And in many ways, she was. The house was all they had. Davis Square was still a pit of despair, and my grandmother was living off of Social Security. (I believe my father paid a lot of her bills as well.) As result of this slightly unethical deed transfer and of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down theory of economics, Nonna qualified for free butter and cheese from the government. Yum!
Each 5 pound brick of butter or cheese was about the size of, well, a brick, and she got these bricks once a week. 5 lbs of butter plus 5 lbs of orange imitation cheddar cheese is way too much for one old lady, so she very generously offered much of it to her college-age granddaughters. (If you ever came to a cast party at 591 Beacon, you may have sampled said cheese on a cracker, paired, I'm sure, with wine from a $3.99 jug of Gallo chablis.)
Nonna was not afraid to stand in line for her free butter and cheese. She didn't look at it as a handout; she looked at it as something she had earned. She had worked hard all her life and raised two sons. She paid her taxes, voted, and left a very small carbon footprint by never learning how to drive.
I'm sure she also looked at the opportunity to live in senior housing as something she'd earned, too, but when the day came and she was offered an apartment, she turned it down, preferring to stay in her house until she was 95. During the final years that she lived alone in that house, she took advantage of subsidized services from various agencies: a part-time home health aide, a part-time health care worker and a pick up and drop off service from the Somerville library. She did not, however, get Meals on Wheels. For someone of Nonna's calibre as an Italian chef and cook, Meals on Wheels would have brought shame and disgrace, not to her family, but to her palate.
Family legend 1: In the 1950's, Nonna bought a canned ham from the Hormel Company. When she opened it, she was dismayed by how much fat was on the ham. She wrote a letter of complaint to Hormel, and by way of apologizing, they sent her a giant box filled with Hormel products. Lesson: if something you've paid for is not of good quality, let the company know.
Family legend 2: During World War II, all families got food rations. Somehow, my grandfather and his "associates" always managed to get more than their share of steak and roast beef, than their rations allowed. Sometimes the rations were, um, "rationed" from the trunk of a car. My father loved to say that his family ate better during World War II than at any other time of their lives. Had the meat been stolen from somewhere? Probably. Would other people have taken advantage of this opportunity? Probably. Lesson: If your country is in a world war, take the free meat.
Memory: Nonna was taking Alicia and me on the bus somewhere, maybe to the Museum of Science, I don't know. I was probably only 4 or 5. We got on the bus and paid our fare. I noticed that Nonna only paid a dime, but I knew that my mother paid a quarter. Concerned that she might get in trouble, I whispered, "Nonna, you only paid a dime!" And she looked at me, pleased as punch, "I'm a senior citizen!" Cool! Nonna's old and she only has to pay a dime. Way to score, Nonna! Lesson: Nonna enjoyed her discounts.
Ah, yes, the coupons. Clip coupons. And then actually bring them to the store and use them.
Traumatic memory: OK, here goes... the coupons and the receipts from Star Market. Nonna did all her grocery shopping at Star Market in Porter Square. She was an infamous character there, not quite Ebenezer Scrooge, but close. You see, Nonna had a reputation for cross-checking her receipt with the advertised specials. She also double-checked the math on the receipt, the change and the price per pound. Then she went back to the store for the difference.
"You charged me $.69 per pound and the flyer said $.59 per pound. You owe me thirty cents." By the time we were young adults, a Sunday visit to Nonna's often included a run to Star Market, and every visit was twofold: to buy groceries and rectify a mistake from a previous transaction. Nonna did not want us to simply give her the missing money. She wanted the store to be held accountable for each and every penny, literally, and she did not think we should be embarrassed about it. My cousin Joey's sad response to my uncle after returning from one of these trips was: "What did I ever do to you?!?"
In addition to checking her receipts, Nonna clipped coupons like a nutcake, and don't kid yourself, Alicia and I would rifle through those coupons and help ourselves to $.40 off here and $.75 off there, especially back in the good old days of "double coupons." Occasionally, the conversation around Nonna's kitchen table sounded like this:
Alicia: Nonna, this coupon is for $.20 off a bottle of New Coke.
Nonna: Can I use it for another tonic?
Alicia: No, just New Coke. Oh, wait, it expired in 1986.
Stephanie: 1986? Nonna, it's four years old!
Nonna: Oh. In that case, you can throw it away.
Rob: Damn! There goes $.20 down the drain!
Peter: Jesus, we'll have to go on welfare.
(Laughter, laughter, aaaand "scene.")
Great Christmas present for Nonna: new coupon file. "But I already got Nonna a new coupon file!" "No, I got it first!" "Oh, God, what am I going to get her then?"
A lot of the above is written with humor, but if you stop to think about it, there is a scary undercurrent to this: the Star Market Company apparently made a mistake EVERY SINGLE TIME my grandmother shopped there. How many people do not check their receipts and ask for their thirty cents back? Or are embarrassed about handing over a coupon for a dollar off? Are you sure you're not currently being ripped off by your grocery store? If you took advantage of sales and specials and cents off here and there, how much money would you have saved by now? There's a saying, "Take care of the minutes, and the hours take care of themselves." I like to paraphrase it as "Take care of the nickels, and the dollars take care of themselves." And that, my friends, is pure Nonna.
I created this dish in college out of necessity. You can update it with whole-wheat pasta and low-fat cheeses and it will taste fine, but not as good. You can also use name brand ingredients, and it will taste even better.
2 C pasta (whatever's on sale)
1/2 C ricotta cheese
1 thin slice federal government-issued butter
1/4 C grated orange federal government-issued cheddar cheese
Sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese.
Take cheeses and butter out of the refrigerator before putting the water on to boil. Boil pasta and drain. While pasta is still hot, add the butter and cheeses and mix well until it's a bowl of melted cheesy deliciousness. You can microwave the pasta again to make it even hotter.
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