A Bridge Party of OJ

Not long ago I was behind an elderly woman at a fast food snack bar and overheard her order to the teenage boy working there. Listening to what went on between the woman and the boy was a funny and curious example of the generation gap and the slang that has grown up around food and food orders. The woman wanted a hot dog. Easy enough, until the boy asked what she wanted on the hot dog. “Give me the works,” she answered. For a few beats the boy stared blankly at the woman and then, as if she had not heard his question, repeated, “What do you want on your hot dog?” The woman looked at the boy as if he were an idiot and barked, “The works, I said! Give me the works!” Flustered and totally in the dark, the boy excused himself and walked over to the girl working in the kitchen. The woman looked back at me and asked, “What? What’s the problem? Am I speaking French?” The girl appeared in place of the boy and sweetly asked, “I’m sorry. What would you like on your hot dog?” Really put out at this point, the woman snapped, “What’s with you people? Do you understand English?” Figuring it was time to intercede, I leaned forward and explained that the woman would like to have everything on her hot dog, whatever relish, mustard or topping was available. 

Thinking later about this misunderstanding, I recalled a time when a group of us had a custom of eating Sunday breakfasts at a particular diner in Los Angeles. The diner (some called it a coffee shop) was a popular spot on La Cienega Boulevard called Ships that lasted from 1968 to 1996 before being torn down. It was one of those boomerang-shaped places with a futuristic neon sign that served American favorites at reasonable prices. Most times we had breakfast at Ships we were served by the same waitress, a jolly, bustling woman with the diner-typical name of Thelma. Boy, did she have a colorful vocabulary of slang to describe their menu. Four glasses of orange juice was “a bridge party of OJ” and once when I asked for some syrup for my pancakes she told a passing bus boy to bring some “motor oil” to the table and to put some rollups (silverware in a rolled napkin) on table 12. It took us a few Sundays with Thelma to figure out only a small amount of the shouted slang passing between the waitresses and cooks.

     

Food and the language we use to talk about it is often weird and interesting. American food vernacular was largely shaped by the working lingo of the waitresses and cooks in diners that spread across America in the 1940s and 50s and the earliest examples of their lingo go as far back as the nineteenth century. The men and women working in those diners used a vivid slang to communicate a customer’s order to the kitchen, expressions that were lighthearted, at times nasty, occasionally biblical and often just plain screwy, but in many cases served as mnemonic devices for cooks and staff. It may vary from place to place across the country, but you will rarely if ever hear this type of slang used outside the US.

American diners are a purely American invention that grew out of the early twentieth century lunch wagons that roamed the streets in many New England cities. Owners of these lunch wagons eventually got the idea of making their wagons into stationary lunch spots that came to be called diners. By the 1920s many of the diners began taking on an art deco look which by the thirties became modern and streamlined. The post WW2 years were a golden age for diners which saw interior decor with mirrored walls, stainless steel accessories, formica countertops in pink and beige, black and white checkerboard or tangerine and charcoal. By the late 1940s the American classic diner in all its curves, shiny chrome touches and glowing neon had arrived.

Soon, customers were hearing shouted orders of, “A radio, a 51, a stretch and squeeze it!” code words telling the cook to prepare a tuna sandwich on toast, hot chocolate, a Coke, and to make it fast. Such colorful language has all but disappeared in this age when servers named not Thelma but Sage or Brittany, carry electronic pads with pictures and names of the menu items that in one touch communicate a customer’s order straight to the kitchen. 

For me at least, these “dinerisms” are a sad lose to our tradition of eating out, a cultural heritage hugely more interesting than a disconnected face focused on a row of electric buttons that just might overlook a diner’s request to ”hold the onions” and leave no customers smiling over a dish bizarrely nicknamed, a “cowboy with spurs.”

Here are a few of the old slang terms now mostly lost from American restaurant culture:

Flop two / two fried eggs over easy

Eve with the lid on / apple pie

High and dry / a dry sandwich with no condiments

Put out the lights and cry / liver & onions

Wreck a pair / two scrambled eggs

Abbott and Costello / franks and beans

Fifty-five / root beer

Bowl of red / bowl of chili

Cremate a blue, bikini cut / dark toasted blueberry muffin cut into quarters

Nervous pudding / Jello

Beans to go / coffee to take out

Black bottom / chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup

Bloodhound in the hay / hot dog with sauerkraut

Brown down / wheat toast

Family reunion / chicken and egg sandwich

And my personal favorite diner breakfast…a western omelet with French fries, or in the lingo of Thelma, a cowboy with spurs.

Neighbor from Hell

Everyone is familiar with the ads that these days populate nine out of ten pages on the Internet, popping up and jiggling or blinking, sometimes expanding to overlay the entire page and drive you mad. Last week I came upon a book advertised in one of these pop-ups and while most times I want to scream, in this case something made me click on the ad. It turned out to be the most satisfying page link of the month, introducing me to a book by Swedish writer Fredrik Backman titled A Man Called Ove. Backman is a blogger and journalist who published this first book in 2012. An English translation followed in 2013 and the cover of the book now boasts translations into twenty-five languages. A stage version of the book opened in January 2015 in Stockholm and a film was released in December of the same year. Backman has published two additional novels since A Man Called Ove. 

The main character of A Man Called Ove is a 59 year-old extra salty curmudgeon, a crusty Jack Nicholson type of cantankerous and antisocial old bulldog with little patience for the ways of others, especially his neighbors. And then one day a boisterous new family moves in next door, an Iranian woman named Parvaneh with her Swedish husband and two girls. It is a hard road at first but the feisty and undeterred Parvaneh eventually succeeds in making Ove a friend and with her “interference” in his life opens him up to expose a heart we never suspected.

Ove (o-veh) is a man who views life in a black or white, right or wrong framework. He has unwavering principles, strict routines, and a hair trigger when it comes to other people. He dislikes most of the people in his neighborhood and is often ‘the neighbor from hell.’ He is annoyed by computers, iPads and cell phones and disparages anyone who can’t repair his own car or broken radiator. But there’s always a backstory and behind the crabby exterior is a very human story of fortitude, loneliness and loss. One day Parvaneh and her family move in next door—and accidentally crumple Ove’s mailbox with their trailer. This provides the doorway into a comic and touching story of unexpected friendship, one that shakes a cranky old man and the neighborhood residents right down to the roots.

Ove’s wife Sonia was the person who brought color to his world but Sonia died four years ago and all that color has drained away. She was the love of his life and her absence, along with his forced retirement has Ove making plans to join Sonia by way of a noose. The only problem is every time he’s on the verge of making it happen someone knocks on the door. Backman has created a marvelous cast of diverse characters to surround Ove, and while none of them is invited they one by one weave themselves into his life. The book is easy to read, filled with colorful characters and funny from start to finish. What surprises most is that under the rough exterior, Ove has unexpected understanding and acceptance of those with marginal or alternate lifestyles. We see this part of his character in his treatment of the heavyweight Jimmy, bad boy Adrian and gay Mirsad.   

If you’re looking to be charmed, A Man Called Ove is the perfect book, and one that offers a thoughtful reflection of love and loss and the profound impact one life can have on others. The bonus is that it comes with a big dose of laughter.

The Eye of the Camera

We all have memories of special places. For one it’s a particular spot in the old hometown, and for another it may be the jungles of Borneo or a high school trip to New York. The recollections of places we’ve spent a part of our lives, be it long or short, are not mere static images frozen in the imagination but something often enriched by the passage of years. This happens especially when memories of a place are pleasant and characterized by a happy time of life. Over time the memories become romanticized and take on an aura of specialness that becomes almost holy. At least that’s always how it’s been with me.

Businessmen stop for a bowl of noodles on the way home.

Anyone who has spent some time flipping through the pages of Scriblets will know that once upon a time I lived in the faraway land of Japan. Seeing as how I spent more than a year and a day there, my memories of it are about as tactile as thought can be. But a funny thing happened. It wasn’t long before those aspects of life in Japan that had once bothered me—the packed trains, the crowds and constant dodging of oncoming bicycles, the bureaucracy—all these gradually turned sweet in memory and now I’m thinking, “God, how I miss the loud and constant chatter of five housewives over coffee!” All of it has been embellished and set fondly and romantically aglow by the yearning for a place in memory.

Early morning bicycle

The photographs of Masashi Wakui bring to life the city in my mind. Though they catalog actual places, Wakui’s photographs give Tokyo a surreal, cinematic quality. Photographed at night, mostly among the backstreets and alleyways of Shibuya and Shinjuku, in their neon richness the photos are almost kaleidoscopic in their portrayal of the city. Wakui’s photographs have been called, “big-budget anime come to life.” It is the result of processing his photographs to give them the tinged look of oversaturated colors seen in Japanese anime—it is what some have begun calling the Masashi Wakui Look. Unlike other cities, light illuminates Tokyo at night to give it a dreamlike dystopian atmosphere and it is through this nocturnal city that Wakui’s camera eye wanders.

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Despite the many, many visitors to his Flicker and Tumblr pages and the popularity of his work, information about the photographer is hard to find. He is a self-taught photographer who wanders the streets at night with high-performance compact cameras (Sony RX100 and Ricoh GR) in search of nighttime cityscapes. Perhaps it’s that he prefers to let his cameras do the talking and so remains in the background. Certainly a humble touch that his Tumblr account includes the brief phrase, 本当に馬鹿でした。(“It’s just foolishness really.”) In fact, Wakui’s photographs are anything but and are marveled over by more than a few amateurs and professionals. You can find his work at http://masa-photo.tumblr.com and https://www.flickr.com/photos/megane_wakui/

Have a look. It’s a safe bet to say you will be fascinated by this man’s view of Tokyo.

Alleyway Bar

Shibuya Crossing, one of the most heavily trafficked crossings in the world

Rainy night in the neon jungle

The romance of dimly lit narrow streets colored by neon, streetlights and shadow.

Early morning under the wires

Soul Joint