February 3, 2019 – davidbruceblog #2

From Bruce Anecdotes

• As a small boy, Louis Nye was very thin, and his Jewish mother took him to an Irish physician who said that to fatten up her son she needed to serve him bacon. This was very shocking, because kosher bacon was unknown. However, his mother asked advice from his grandmother, who unhesitatingly recommended that for the boy’s health she should follow the doctor’s advice. His mother therefore purchased new kitchenware so that she wouldn’t cook and serve bacon on her kosher kitchenware. Whenever she fried bacon for her son, all three of them — grandmother, mother, and young son — used newspapers to waft the smell of frying bacon out of the kitchen window. (By the way, the bacon worked — Louis was a healthy-looking boy at his bar mitzvah.)

• A pastor friend of Wesleyan preacher William Woughter once forgot that he had two dinner invitations the same day. The early dinner went fine — the kind couple who had invited him to dinner took him to a special restaurant where they insisted that he eat a special dessert. After dinner, however, he went back home and immediately there arrived at his door a second couple to take him out to eat. This kind couple took him to the same special restaurant where they insisted that he eat the same special dessert. The server looked at him strangely, but fortunately she didn’t say anything to give him away. However, the pastor did pay for not writing his dinner invitations down — after the second dinner, he never before in his life felt so bloated.

• As a child, Abbe Lane often visited her paternal grandmother for the weekend. Her grandmother was thrifty, and she found a subtle way of making young Abbe clean her plate — anything that Abbe didn’t eat at breakfast appeared on her plate for lunch, anything that Abbe didn’t eat at lunch appeared on her plate for dinner, and anything that Abbe didn’t eat at dinner appeared on her plate for breakfast. Years after growing up, Ms. Lane says she orders small servings at restaurants out of a fear that if she doesn’t clean her plate she will have to eat the leftovers at her next meal.

• While on tour, Merce Cunningham and his dance troupe stopped at the Brownsville Eat-All-You-Want Restaurant, where they wolfed down food in huge quantities. (Dancer Steve Paxton ate five pieces of pie for dessert!) Mr. Cunningham asked the cashier how the restaurant managed to stay open, and she replied, “Most people don’t eat as much as you people.” On another tour, they stopped at a place that advertised homemade pies. Before the dance troupe left the restaurant, they heard the servers telling the regular pie-eating customers, “I’m sorry — we don’t have any more.”

• Alka-Seltzer once had a very funny TV commercial in which a man making a commercial for spaghetti and meatballs keeps blowing his line — “Mamma mia! That’s some spicy meatball!” — take after take, forcing him to consume more and more meatballs and causing indigestion that is of course cured by Alka-Seltzer. In real life, the man making the commercial, Jack Somach, suffered through 175 takes, requiring him to bite into 175 meatballs. He skipped lunch and dinner that day.

• For many years, Arturo Toscanini and Geraldine Farrar had an affair. After the affair ended, Ms. Farrar had a party at which Toscanini was invited. At the party, she served caviar, which pleased everyone except Toscanini, who complained, “I slept with that woman for seven years. Wouldn’t you think she’d remember that I hate fish?”

• At one time real food was considered to be unlucky on stage, and so actors ate some very unappetizing “food” items. For example, “bacon” consisted of strips of bread coated with gravy, “tomatoes” consisted of circles of bread colored red, and “fried eggs” consisted of circles of bread with a little mustard in the middle.

• Tommy Morgan was a Scottish comedian. While staying in a Belfast hotel and treating some friends in the hotel restaurant, Mr. Morgan was treated like the celebrity he was, and a waiter asked, “Will you be having a bit of partridge, Mr. Morgan?” Mr. Morgan replied, “A bit! What do you mean — a bit! Bring us a whole one each.”

• Russian baritone Feodor Chaliapin sometimes grew weary of hostesses who invited him to dinner, then pressured him to sing for the other guests. He told one such hostess, “If you ask me to dinner, you feed me. If you ask me to sing, you pay me.”

• William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunchreceived its title from novelist Jack Kerouac. According to Mr. Burroughs, “The title means exactly what the words say. NAKED lunch — a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.”

• Gertrude Stein wrote the autobiography of her friend, Alice B. Toklas; however, Ms. Toklas did write the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. This book describes meals with famous painters and authors — it also includes a recipe for Haschich Fudge.

• As a very young ballet student in the Soviet Union, Natalia Makarova flirted with a handsome boy by saying that she could eat six quarts of ice cream. However, when she tried to do it, she disgraced herself —she was able to eat only four quarts.

• The Roman emperor Claudius died after eating poisoned mushrooms. Afterward, he was deified. His successor, Nero, thereafter referred to mushrooms as “the food of the gods.”

• The great dancer Bill Robinson, aka Mr. Bojangles, had a serious weakness for vanilla ice cream, and reportedly ate four to eight quarts per day.

• “Reciting part of a sutra with the desire to benefit others is like reciting a recipe in the hope that it will prevent people from starving.” — Zen master Bassui.

• “The sight of someone eating will not appease your hunger. The spiritual experiences of others cannot satisfy your yearning.” — a traditional saying of Sufism.

• Ludwig van Beethoven had a terrible temper. He once dumped a dish of veal and gravy over a waiter’s head.

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David Bruce’s Smashwords Bookstore: Retellings of Classic Literature, Anecdote Collections, Discussion Guides for Teachers of Literature, Collections of Good Deed Accounts, etc. Some eBooks are free.

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Day: February 3, 2019

that’s a wrap

At 98: “I never stopped drawing, looking, living. It’s all the same thing, all solving your own life.”

“I never stopped drawing, looking, living. It’s all the same thing, all solving your own life.”

That Smile

71

davidbrucehaiku: UNRECOGNIZED GREAT BEAUTY

David Bruce: Food Anecdotes