Maudlin Christmas Memories
It's baking day here in the Bear Den, so whilst I wait for the panettoni dough to rise, I found myself getting a tiny bit maudlin for Christmas' past. Long past in this case. Very. Long. Past. Like when I was but a wee cublet. Think '50's kids.
Back in the days before the Blood of Numanor ran thin...wait a minute. Wrong story. Anyway...
Every year during the week before Christmas my family, my mother's parents, my parents and I, would hie off to the City for the Great Christmas Experience. Now to be sure, it was always referred to as "The City" in those days; almost never San Francisco and certainly NEVER Frisco, unless you wanted something cut wide, deep and frequent. We had manners in those days. And gloves and hats.
In those days men and boys wore suits and ties plus men over thirty wore fedoras, while women and girls wore dresses. Not skirts, dresses, and never slacks or jeans. Women and girls also wore gloves, and while little girls could get away with colorful barrettes, women must wear hats. Goddess, those were the days of some really fugly hats.
The "Great Christmas Experience" was a tradition in our family. Hell, it was almost a religion. It started with the dressing in appropriate garb of course, a quick brekkie and then all of us piling in to my father's brand new 1950 Pontiac and off we'd go, whizzing up the Bayshore Highway to The City. No sooner were we in the car however than the usual arguments started on where to start the GCE. Everybody had a favorite starting place. My Grandparents usually wanted to start at some obscure relatives house, you know, the kind of Aunt or Uncle you only see once a year or so. On the upside of that, said uncle usually had a wine vat in his basement along with an assortment of hanging cheeses and various salumi all lovingly hand made and just waiting for Quality Control. My father often went along with this because it allowed him to get a good buzz going before we had to go see the cute things my mother favored.
Me. I liked the salumi. Ah, Italian relatives. Ya gotta love 'em.
Only after everybody had a good snoot full (I got a little wine with a lot of water) would the GCE really start in earnest. First stop was Fisherman's Wharf to suck up on fresh Crab Cioppino served in those little paper bowls that leaked like the radiator in my grandfather's Model T. You learned to eat that stuff by holding the soggy bowl as far from your clothing as possible and then darting the spoon into your mouth. Five minutes of this and everybody smelled like Fisherman's Wharf. Or maybe just the wharf itself. Stains on your clothing were not optional, they were battle scars proving your worthiness as a San Franciscan.
After that came the "cute" stuff which only made my father wish had had taken that extra glass or three of wine at the start. On to Podesta Baldocchi on Grant. This is a florist shop that had been in The City since 1871 and every year has a window display of magnificent Christmas proportions. Trees decorated with all manner of lights and little ornaments along with electric trains running under them, and little mechanical animals and figures that did things. What they did I don't exactly remember, but every kid in town left their chubby little face and finger prints all over their windows. They still do these displays. I really must go back there some day.
Then came the tour of Union Square. First stop was Macy's to see the Christmas display. It was always good but it couldn't compare to the magnificence of the display at City of Paris. CoP had a huge glass rotunda and stained glass ceiling in which was hung a tree that might have been green, but had so many lights and ornaments and stuff hanging from it that you were never sure. The rotunda is still there, preserved in the new Magnin's store, but the original building has been long since torn down. Pity that, since that original building, while damaged, survived the earthquake and fire of 1906.
While at CoP, one had to go to their restaurant, Normandy Lane and have a snack of coffee and the petit fours about which I still dream. My father hated this bit, but he had the coffee and his little flask that he thought my mother never noticed, so after the first two cups of "coffee" he mellowed out remarkably well. After that was some shopping and window shopping around the Square with the final stop being North Beach.
Here we loaded up for Christmas with more and various salumi like bresaola, mortadella and prosciutto cotto, fresh sourdough bread and cannoli. No, we didn't leave the gun and take the cannoli. Well, we might have if we'd had a gun to leave behind.
The end of the GCE was dinner in Chinatown where we gorged on Cantonese food because nobody in those days knew any better, nor was Mandarin food even available back then. After that was the long drive home with my Mother nagging Dad about how much plum wine he had at dinner. The nagging usually went on well after I was in bed, asleep and dreaming of sugar plum fairies and all manner of wondrous Christmassy stuff.
Good times. So what are your favorite memories of the Season?
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