New Jersey Beefsteak

I played football in 9th grade (I hadn't discovered running yet) and wrestled through 11th grade. In that time, I remember two end-of-season sports banquets catered by Hap Nightingale. Nattily dressed waiters with gleaming silver trays delivered endless portions of buttery steak on bread points. We would eat and eat and eat, the wrestlers particularly happy to be free of weigh-ins.

At the time, I had no idea I was participating in a unique Bergen - Passaic County tradition: The Beefsteak. This New York Times piece is a great reminder:

“Once you start going to beefsteaks, it’s an addiction,” said Al Baker, a Hasbrouck Heights policeman who had organized the evening’s festivities to benefit the Special Olympics. “You’ve got the tender beef, butter, salt, French fries, beer — all your major food groups. But it’s very unique to North Jersey. I go to other places and nobody’s heard of it.” [...]

Their business office is the house’s cramped basement, and the tenderloins are grilled over hardwood charcoal in the driveway before being taken to the beefsteak venues. From this unlikely command center, the Nightingales catered over 600 beefsteaks last year, going through 88,000 pounds of tenderloin in the process.

New Jersey has so many charming and unique traditions. I should probably spend a little Google time trying to figure out what was so magical about the Jersey tomato.

TV Antennas

Today is the last day for analog transmission of television signals. In other words, no more antennas. The FCC has mandated that from now on the only form of TV is going to be digital.

It reminds me that I had the opportunity recently to prattle on to a 20 year old on the subject of how it was when I was growing up (a theme on this blog if you haven't guessed). Here are some of the differences:

1. We had fewer channels on the TV to choose from and we had no remote controls. In our house we would alternate every thirty minutes among ourselves as to who would choose the next show, and get up to change the channel.

2. We had rotary phones with no answering machines or caller id. Not to mention we sometimes used pay phones because we had no cell phones.

3. Vinyl records.

4. We read newspapers and couldn't rely on The Internet for our news.

I stopped at this point because the guy's eyes were glazing over and he was probably sitting there wondering how boring a childhood I must have had. This no doubt was the same expression I had when my parents and grandparents explained how it was in their day.

The point here is that as we witness the rapid evolution of our means of communication, there are some things like reminiscing about our childhoods which will not change. I only hope to be able to use the current systems of communications, like this blog, to hammer home this point and to collect some memories of a simpler age before we grow too old to remember.

This idea was captured in a poem, in another time, by William Butler Yeats. This is a favorite poem of mine, and one which I have committed to memory:

William Butler Yeats. b. 1865

When You are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.