'Enjoy just being here' — At almost 110, she's still baking pie, with a little help

Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin

     Edith Renfrow Smith is baking a sour cherry pie.
     "I just love sour cherry," she confides. "My father planted a sour cherry tree in the yard. He was a cook ... all the fruit; he had peaches, he had plums, he had gooseberries, currants and grapes. Everything that momma could can, because we were poor."
      That yard was in Grinnell, Iowa, where Smith was born on July 14, 1914, two weeks before the start of World War I. Regular readers might remember meeting her in 2021 for her 107th birthday and learning her down-to-earth world view, "Nobody's better than you." I figured, if 107 was noteworthy, how could 108 not be? Or 109, for that matter? The year she got COVID-19 and weathered the deadly disease so easily she didn't even mention that she'd had it.
     For her 110th, this Sunday, I wondered how to shake things up. Such "supercentenarians" are an extreme rarity. Researchers estimate one person in a thousand who reaches age 100 will live to see 110, which makes Smith one woman out of a million, maybe out of 5 million.
     I asked her daughter, Alice Smith, 78, if her mother still makes homemade jelly and wine.
     She does, Alice said, inviting me to come by and watch production of a cherry pie last Friday, an offer I suspect she had reason to regret.

     "It takes 45 minutes to pit a quart of cherries," says Alice, arriving at her mother's apartment with a bag from a farmer's market. "I won't be doing that ever again."
     Alice is late, and perhaps not in the best mood, having had to fight NASCAR traffic from the South Side. "I'm only bringing this stuff," she says. "I'm not making the cherry pie. That's not something I want to make."
     But as daughters know, what you want to do, and what you end up doing, are two different things when your mother enters the equation. Alice is pressed unwillingly into the role of de facto pastry sous chef.
     "Open the cookbook right there and check," Edith says, gesturing to a 1960s-era Better Homes & Gardens ring binder cookbook on the floor.
     "Mother, I don't need to open the cookbook," snaps Alice. "I understand how to bake."
Not easy as pie
     The cookbook surprises me — I had anticipated cherished family baking traditions dating back to the 19th century, which is why it's always good to check your imagined notions against the yardstick of p but reality. Edith sets me right.
     "Momma didn't make pies," she explains. "She didn't give us dessert. She said children should have apples and peaches. 'No garbage.' She called cookies and doughnuts and what have you 'garbage' because they were not good for you. She didn't give us cookies. She didn't bake pie. She made bread, three times a week, and she only used graham flour."

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The hatless man, in a hat

     Look at the above photograph. John F. Kennedy at his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1961. Study it carefully. There will be a quiz. Right now.
     Question: What do you see? The familiar handsome face of JFK, correct? His beautiful wife, Jacqueline, to his left. And anything else? Look closely. I'll give you a hint. It is cylindrical and black and sitting on his head.
     It's a hat. You see that, right? A silk top hat. Kennedy was the last American president who wore a silk top hat to his inauguration. Why is that so hard to grasp? Actually, I know why. I wrote a book on the death of the men's hat industry, "Hatless Jack," using Kennedy's inauguration day as a narrative arc. Some people who know me well remember that, and will sometimes share hat stories that come their way.
     "Read this this morning," wrote Michael Cooke, my friend and editor at both the Sun-Times and the New York Daily News. "Thought you'd have an interest."
     He shared excerpts from "Suffering with Style: A brief history of the Borsalino—from Al Capone to Indiana Jones, Bogart to Gatsby" posted on Graydon Carter's Air Mail blog June 29 by Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner.
     The article included this passage:

     Fashions changed—dramatically—in January of 1961, when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated president of the United States without wearing a hat. Soon, hippies were growing their hair, letting their freak flags fly.     

     That's the type of mistake that spurred me to write the book in the first place. I pointed out to Michael that, as displayed in the photo above, Kennedy certainly did wear a hat to his inauguration. And men's hats didn't die in January, 1961 — they had already been on the decline for half a century. Kennedy took off his hat to deliver his actual speech, which also contributed to the notion he didn't wear one. The public in 1960 were so removed from hat etiquette that they didn't realize that nobody wore a hat while giving a speech. It wasn't done. Removing your hat was a sign of sincerity.

     Glance at this photo of Abraham Lincoln giving his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. Use your powers of observation honed above. Notice anything missing? No hat. His famous stovepipe hat is nearby, ready to be worn. When he's done with his speech. 

     I wasn't about to bother trying to inform Kashner of his blunder — East Coast writer types don't acknowledge mistakes, never mind correct them, particularly when pointed out by heartland rustics. 

     Not that I'm in the habit of leaping to correct historical inaccuracies. The continuance of this error frustrates me, particularly, because it speaks to the complete non-influence of my book. It sank without a trace — no shame there, most books do. My use of Kennedy's inauguration day to tell the story of the death of men's hats confused people. The Boston Globe thought I had written the most trivial Kennedy book ever, not grasping that it was a book about hats using Kennedy as a lens. One Amazon reviewer complained there was too much about hats in my hat history, not enough Kennedy.
   I don't think Kennedy actually wearing a hat at his inauguration is a particularly complex, inaccessible historical puzzle, and it's sad to see how easily it flies past folk who otherwise are in the business of parsing reality. It's also comforting that some manage to grasp the situation.
     So kudos to Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker stalwart, who got it right in "The Knotty Death of the Necktie"
     At first I thought he, too, was going to blow it. Gopnik wrote:

     As surely as the famous, supposedly hatless Inauguration of John F. Kennedy was said to have been the end of the hat, and Clark Gable’s bare chest in “It Happened One Night” was said to have been the end of the undershirt, the pandemic has been the end of the necktie.

     Which staggered me a bit. I thought Adam was vaguely familiar with me. We've shared meals together — I once took him to Al's Italian Beef. He asked me to be his interlocutor when he was here 11 years ago at the Chicago Humanities Festival. I was just beginning to pout over someone I respect falling into the usual trap when Gopnik unleashed:

     In “Hatless Jack,” a fine and entertaining book published several years ago, the Chicago newspaperman Neil Steinberg demonstrated that the tale of Kennedy’s killing off the hat was wildly overstated. The hat had been on its way out for a while, and Jack’s hatless Inauguration wasn’t, in any case, actually hatless: he wore a top hat on his way to the ceremony but removed it before making his remarks.

    Well. Okay then. That's better. I don't know whether I like the historical accuracy more, or "fine and entertaining" or "Chicago newspaperman." If you haven't read it, you can pick up a used copy of "Hatless Jack" on Amazon for $7.26. It was my favorite book to write, in that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this generally-ignored realm, and sharing something that not only hadn't been presented as significant, but people were reluctant to see clearly. I must not have made my case, however, because they still don't get it.      

     This isn't just pickiness, or trivia. As with much history, there is an important truth nestled within the Kennedy and hats story. He was known for being a hatless man — he had a reputation. So when Americans saw him, the dashing, rich, hatless young president, nevertheless wearing a hat at his inauguration, rather than change their assessment to comply with the evidence, they simply edited the hat out of the equation, adjusting collective memory to match their preconceived notions. Perception trumps reality — I didn't chose that verb randomly.

Korean War reminds us freedom must be defended

Sam Casali (left), a 95-year-old Marine Corps veteran who worked with aviation ordinance in Korea in 1952, shakes hands with Consul Taesu Yeo (right) after being presented with the Korean Ambassador for Peace medal at the American Legion's George W. Benjamin Post 791 in Northbrook. Vice Consul Jongyun Ra (center) also attended Tuesday's event. 

     American Legion George W. Benjamin Post 791, a small storefront on Shermer Road in Northbrook, was packed with vets on Tuesday. Brianna Owen, 18, read her essay that won a $1,500 scholarship toward tuition next fall at Ithaca College, where she will play volleyball as an outside hitter.
     "This planet that we are on together is a beautiful one," she began. "We are all very lucky to be on it. However, this planet is also dangerous ..."
     After she finished, the assembled said the Pledge of Allegiance. Thomas Mahoney, post chaplain, led the opening prayer.
     "Please uncover," Mahoney said. He thanked God, "source of all our freedom," then added: "We humbly request a special blessing on those individuals in this room tonight who in serving both God and country preserved our freedom and the freedom of the people of the Republic of Korea."
     The Republic of Korea — what we think of as "South Korea," when we think of it at all — doesn't get name checked much in prayers at American Legion halls. But there were three guests from the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Chicago: Consul Taesu Yeo, resplendent in his police uniform, Vice Consul Jongyun Ra and cultural coordinator Eojin Shin.
     They brought along two Ambassador for Peace medals, given to service members who fought in the Korean War. The medals were presented to Salvatore Casali, 95, an Evanston resident, and, posthumously, to the family of Mario Faldani.
     "We honor the courage, sacrifice and selflessness of those who answered the call of duty and served," vice consul Ra said. "We remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice, laying down their lives during the Korean War. On behalf of the Korean people, I extend my deepest gratitude. Your service and sacrifice have secured the blessings of liberty for generations to come."
     That last line summarized the reason I was there. While I am not a regular attendee of honorary ceremonies, South Korea is a lesson worth reminding Americans of, as we struggle to shore up freedom around the world, in general, and support Ukraine as it fends off Russia, in particular.

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Hot Dog Report: Wolfy's

 

    Over the years I've driven past Wolfy's, with its distinctive frank-on-a-fork sign, I don't know how many times. Dozens and dozens. While blasting down West Peterson Avenue, the major route between 94 and the North Side — exit Touhy, slide down Lincoln Avenue, left at Peterson. 
    I always cast the sign a wistful glance. But I never stop to eat because it's not lunchtime and I'm not hungry. Only Friday it was lunchtime — about 12:40 — and I was hungry. I'd had an 11 a.m. appointment on Sheridan Road, just south of Belmont. To watch a 109-year-old bake a pie, if you must know. That should be in the paper Wednesday. And while I could have made it home without collapsing at the wheel from hunger, I sensed an opportunity to fulfill a tacit civic responsibility. Hot dogs are part of the culture of Chicago, and a person of my station has an obligation to keep track of the major vendors. Wolfy's has been here since 1965, and while I have a dim memory of having eaten there sometime in the hazy past, it's been decades. I pulled into the parking lot.

     Waiting my turn — there was one guy ahead of me — I scanned the menu for anything out of the ordinary. Not really. Burgers. Italian beef. A rib-eye sandwich. My eye paused on the ice cream, in chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. But no. We were having guests over for dessert — my future daughter-in-law and her parents — and would be eating Graeter's along with fresh-baked brownies.
     I ordered a hot dog, mustard and relish. "Anything to drink?" the counterman said. "No," I replied, and I thought I sensed a trace of disappointment at such a minimal order. Though that could have been just guilt on my part. The customer behind me ordered two Polish. I had contemplated french fries. Before dessert at home, we would be going out to dinner at Kamehachi. Restraint was in order. I also considered a Green River — exotic. But I don't particularly like Green River, and being rare doesn't make something good. So one hot dog: $3.79, plus tax. Ordering one hot dog is so spartan, it's almost a kind of decadence. 

     I stepped aside and waited. The man already waiting was wearing a black t-shirt celebrating the 70th anniversary of Godzilla. A father and his two children sat eating at a table. The place was clean and well-lighted. My order came quickly. "A hot dog," the counterman said, handing over a crisp white bag.
     The hot dog was boiled — that must be why I so seldom stop by Wolfy's, I'm more a char-dog kind of guy. But hot and good, with that glorious Vienna Beef snap to the casing.  The bun was S. Rosen's, poppyseed, fresh. If you're wondering why I didn't order ketchup, despite vigorously defending the right to eat hot dog with ketchup, well, I haven't had an abortion either, but I believe the ability to decide to have one should not be constrained by religious asshats. Hot dog stand workers tend to be over-liberal with condiments — to ward off complaints, I suppose. Look at how much relish is on the frankfurter below. Ordering both mustard and ketchup would risk a drenched dog. As it happened, there were a few unopened packets of Red Gold ketchup on a piece of wax paper from the previous diner, and I opened one and applied a thin line of red to half the dog, for the ketchup experience.  Eating the dog took a minute, maybe. Then I was on my way home.

    

"To an illegible stone"

     Last May I visited the New South Cemetery in Boxborough, Massachusetts, for no other reason than I was walking down Stow Road and there it was.

     My intent in steering myself onto its gravel path was to walk briskly through the graveyard and keep going. But I noticed a raccoon staring at me from a tree, and paused to stare back.  

     Next thing I knew, the gravestones themselves started catching my eye. Some for their unusual form.  Several were fashioned as benches, which seemed thoughtful — inviting visitors to linger. Here, visit my grave, have a seat.

    Some were noteworthy for the mysteries they held. Charles Brown, born in 1846, was buried here 60 years later, his grave marked by a stone prepared to include his wife, Eliza M., her dates given as "1851 - " and a blank. So ... was she buried there, but no one was left to update the stone to include her presence? Could fate have spun her away and she died elsewhere? She was 55 when her husband died. Could she be buried in another place, beside another husband? Were I Anne Rice, I might wonder, "Maybe she never died..." and be off to the races.

     The most evocative thing I noticed was a pair of headstones along a row — one had tipped forward, and the other back. The words on the one that had tipped back were illegible, worn away by the rain, covered in lichen. The other, being hunched forward, had shielded the writing, and maintained its purpose of recording who was buried there.  The front was almost pristine.

   

    "In Memory of Tabitha Taylor," it began. "Daughter of Capt. Silas & Mary Taylor. Who Departed this Life 3 Jan. 1789, "Aged 4 years, 4 months & 18 days."

    Above the inscription, an engraving of a drooping flower.

     Why had one pitched one way and one another? A tiny error in the setting of the stones? Random chance, a quirk of topography? Something to do with the micro-geology of the ground? We're all big believers in merit, but blind luck has a big role in what is preserved, what destroyed.

     Not that the affected parties care. The body buried under the effaced marker, and little Tabitha Taylor, are equally nonplussed in death, the same way that Samuel Clemens isn't happier in the afterlife than Finley Peter Dunne because his books are still in print.

     Ambition is all well and good, and I'm glad it goaded me forward for the past 50 years. But I'm also glad to be able to bank the fires now. We all end up in exactly the same place, eventually, and there's no harm in acquainting yourself with your inevitable destination a bit before you arrive.

     Of course I thought of T.S. Eliot's fine lines in "Little Gidding":    

     Every poem an epitaph. And any action
     Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat

     Or to an illegible stone...

 

   

  

 "Every poem, an epitaph. Any any action is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat, or to an illegible stone."

Hungry, hungry birds

Photo by Edie Steinberg

     "Maybe I'm a bastard..." I said, gazing out the kitchen window on Thursday, watching a dozen brown birds scrabble over each other to get to our backyard feeder. "But I'm only filling the bird feeder once a day."

     This dramatic pronouncement hung in the air for a moment. My wife, doing bills at the kitchen table, glared at me.

     "You jerk!" she hissed, or words to that effect.

     "Otherwise, I feel I'm being taken advantage of," I hastily elaborated, watching the avian feast.
     Habit might be at play here. Usually, I fill the feeder every few days. A task I leap to — can't keep hungry birds waiting.

     (Okay, okay, you're probably wondering what word my wife actually said. Well, she is an officer of the court, so she asked that I not quote her saying this particular word. An obscene agent noun. Let's leave it at that.)

     But this past week, well, a particularly ravenous crew of small brown birds has moved into my yard and taken up residence. No sooner do I fill the feeder than they swoop in, make themselves at home, and get busy.

      (An agent noun, as you may know, is a noun created by adding "-er" to a verb, just as a gerund is a noun created by adding "-ing" to a verb.)

     Part of me suspects my problem is with the quality of these ravenous birds. If the peckish birds were cardinals and woodpeckers and orioles and such — colorful birds — I'm sure I'd just bite the bullet and keep the seeds coming. But this lot ... I don't know. Somehow, filling the feeder twice a day seems like spoiling them. Like I'm their servant or something.

     (The word begins with "f" and rhymes with "pucker." Does that help?)

     Not that birdseed is incredibly expensive. About $20 for a 40 pound bag at Ace Hardware. And that's good for ... I don't know ... several weeks. Or was. This new accelerated rate of consumption ... well, I suppose it's me who'll do the adjusting. I don't know how long I can hold out watching birds fighting over a few stray seeds. Eventually, they'll wear me down, these birds.

     Not to forget the squirrels and rabbits — really, sometimes I look out my back window and feel like I'm gazing onto some kind of idyll menagerie. I'm waiting for the Teletubbies to come bounding into the frame. 

     (Which is another reason to be frank. My experience is, by attempting to conceal something, you end up drawing attention to it. Better to just let the word fly and be done with it. You'd have forgotten it by now. But I try to be respectful — one should be able to speak in an unguarded manner without worrying that you'll end up in a blog post).

     So what do you think? Feed the birds as much as they can cram into themselves? Or stick with the one refill a day rule? 

Don't be full of shit.

     It's not that I'm a fan of obscenity, per se.
     Rather, I like effective communication, and occasionally that means a well-delivered swear. There is "please be quiet" and "shhhh" and "shut up" and "shut the fuck up," each registering the same idea with varying degrees of emphasis. But that last one is the fire axe behind glass, when you really want someone to stop talking.
     That name of this blog, as I've remarked before, is meant to be exclusionary. Like one of those "You Must Be This High" sticks at the entrance to a roller coaster. If you can't measure up, this is not for you. If "every goddamn day," ruffles your feathers, then stay the fuck away. "Not everything is for children," as the great Robert Crumb once observed. "Not everything is for everybody."

     Which makes it ironic that I write for a newspaper, one of the few media realms where obscenity is tightly restricted. Oh, we make exceptions — when Donald Trump called Haiti a "shithole," we ran that unexpunged — a sort of precursor to this week's Supreme Court ruling. If the president says it, it's printable.
     I wish the situation were otherwise. Every time the paper gets a new editor, I ritualistically suggest writing a column that begins, "Fuck this," introducing the word into the Sun-Times lexicon for the first time in 76 years. They always say no, which gives me a hint that, yet again, we're being led by editors more concerned about offending a few readers than they are about attracting a lot more.
     Part of it might be generational. I was recently at the Apple store with a lady about my age who, in buying an iPhone, deployed the Germanic monosyllable for excrement — see, it's plainer just to say "shit." The sales clerk, a woman in her 20s, seemed genuinely taken aback, so much so that my companion apologized. Later, the clerk admitted she sometimes uses the word herself; the "I'm just not used to hearing it spoken by old people" went unvoiced.           

     Politics is another realm where dirty words cause notice. You don't expect obscenity in the state of the union, for instance. And I was surprised, in a good way, to see Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, say in her personal X feed: "Anyone who claims that I would say that we can't win in Michigan is full of shit."

     You go, girl. I felt like sending her tweet to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which, if you recall, got its underwear in a knot because I quoted one of its musicians saying "shit," twice. There is a backstory there. I found the usage so refreshing, uttered in the grandeur of Symphony Center, that after I wrote my column, I phoned my boss and asked if we couldn't, this one time, use the word undashed, so as not to soften its impact. He said no, unsurprisingly enough, and I went along — I follow style, I don't set it.

     But I share this background because some readers felt I used the quote maliciously, when I really, sincerely included it admiringly. Though the admiration curdled when the CSO informed me that my attention was no longer welcome. Writing has consequences, or should. Which is why so many do it badly — it isn't that they can't assemble words, though that is often a problem too. But they aren't willing to take the heat.

      "Shit" is a good word because it conveys the noxious quality of the substance being discussed. It's "dog poop" when deposited on a lawn and scooped up in a plastic bag, but dog shit when you step in it. That's a valuable distinction. I probably use it more as an interjection, "Shit honey, we need to do our taxes...." than as a noun.

    Originally the word was a verb related to separation — shit was the thing left behind. Thus the word "schism" is related; it's "scheiße" in German, a word I sometimes deployed in younger days, influenced by Thomas Pynchon, trying to give a vaguely menacing Teutonic air and, I imagine, failing miserably.

     "Shit" is a milder obscenity than "fuck." We can see that in Norman Mailer's 1948 war novel "The Naked and the Dead." He was forced, famously, to replace "fuck" with "fug," but "shit" was fine, unleashed 14 times, including the essential "shit-storm." 

    As late as the 1970s, my 1978 Oxford English Dictionary ignores one of the most common words in the English language, moving straight from Fucivorous,"Eating, or subsisting, on sea-weed" to Fuco'd, "beautified with fucus, painted." 

    But Shit, on the other hand, gets the full treatment, after the prim trigger warning, "Not now in decent use," posted before unspooling, "Excrement from the bowels, dung." and giving a first usage dated 1585, ""Dond flytter, shit shytter," though it appears in Alexander Montgomerie's poem, "The Flyting Betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart," that seems to have been actually published in 1621 and is described as a "lyrical joust" between two poets, quite similar to rap put-downs.

     The OED truncates the full line, which should be shared in its entirety: "Dond flytter, shit shytter, bacon bytter, all defyld!" The poem is quite fond of the term, using it 11 times, and I'm not sure the OED took the best example. I liked: "They fand the shit all beshitten in his own shearne," that last term being a synonym for shit.  (And yes, Wednesday morning I looked up from my dip into obscene Scottish insult poetry, at the summer rain falling hard, and thought, "I'm living my best life!")

      The second OED definition is "A contemptuous epithet applied to a person," and this usage is older still, also Scottish. "A schit, but wit.'   

     There are some noteworthy cognates. The aforementioned "shitten," "defiled with excrement" goes back to 1386. Shitfire "a contemptuous epithet applied to a hot-tempered person" deserved reviving, as does Shit-breech — though I would update it to "shit-pants" and apply it to the young. Shit sack "an opprobrious name applied to non-comformists" would also come in handy, though there really isn't a public morality to conform to anymore.

     In his notes to Capt. Francis Grose's "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," Eric Partridge gives a lengthy explanation of how "shit sack" was tied to nonconformity during the Restoration, involving a frightened preacher and the sack he was hiding in. He also explores its World War I usage: "In 1914-1918 the soldiers used either shit or shit-house of any unpopular person (very rarely of a woman); they used it also as an expletive, cf. Fr. merde! ... Pre-War was in the shit, in trouble; but a specifically military application was: in the mud and slush, in mud and danger, in great or constant danger; and shit meant also shelling, especially shelling with shrapnel."

    There's more. Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang" gives a dozen more definitions that are almost too familiar —- lousy merchandise, poor performances, "any talk or writing intended to deceive" not to overlook the essential "shit list."

     I won't go through all the phrases — "shit on a shingle," etc. — though did admire "shit in high cotton" defined as "To live more prosperously, pleasantly or luxuriously than one has formerly."

    Though my copy dates to 1975, Wentworth and Flexner note the growing acceptability of shit. "Wide Armed Forces use during W.W.II and the general loosening of moral restrictions and taboos has encouraged 'shit' uses among all strata of the population."

    Even the governor of Michigan. About time. Linguistic daring implies courage in other realms. Our nation needs that. Because otherwise we're up shit creek without a paddle.