How Black Was It?

With all the palaver about Black Friday, I find comfort in knowing that the madness has nothing to do with me, for I do not, will not, shop on Black Friday.

I doubt much I'll ever see that movie over there either, never heard of it. However, a man-made monster on the loose does sort of sound like Black Friday, no?

Give me some plain old Monday or Tuesday afternoon, about 2:00 or so, and I can glide like a misplaced Santa Ana wind on a cold Mid-Atlantic day through whatever Christmas shopping needs to be done.

Indeed. There have been years when all of mine was done under one roof. And I don't mean an array of stores under a mall's roof, I mean in one store with several floors, one roof, one credit card bill. If there was a stack of receipts for returns, they were all from the same retailer. Real easy, it's fine way to do business.

There was a year before we were married when my wife was somewhat dazzled when I took her along to the aforementioned Globe Store, where I wheeled through departments and floors in under ninety minutes, doing every bit of my Christmas shopping save for hers. The very next day I did come back, alone, and did literally finish the shopping by grabbing what I'd eyeballed for her the day previous. If I'd had the good sense, and been a bit devious, I could have sent her in search of some bogus item on another floor, that way I could have knocked off Christmas with one trip.

Happily, those days are not all gone, we still have Boscov's right here where we call home. I suppose other parts of our country have their department store here or there. Really big cities do have them. Small to medium cities may not.

About the only concession I make to the day itself is in wondering just why so many assume the persona of someone, some thing else the day after Thanksgiving.

We know them. We're related to some of them. Others of them are good friends, maybe neighbors, maybe even people we don't much care for, and maybe we don't because their shopping gene ran off its tracks long, long ago. One such derailed sort couldn't give a respectable answer when I years back asked as to why he busted his hump all day Thanksgiving entertaining a houseful of family and friends, then got out of bed long before the sun rose to stand salivating while waiting for a door to open at some store or another. He had no answer. Fact is, he seemed shocked anyone would ask.

If you like it, do it.

I don't, so I won't.

The term Black Firday allegedly is east coast in origin, dating back to the mid-60s or so. Consider this newspaper clipping:

JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.

How true? Haven't a clue. A short twenty or fewer years ago, the epicenter of Black Friday madness was Sugerman's, where it is said certain cars were seen to drive in, never to drive out until somewhere in early Spring. It was also once observed that whatever happened to you on Black Friday, should you enter Sugerman's property, you had it coming, it was your own fault, that if you went anywhere near there on Black Friday, you deserved what you got.

So, what did I do this fine Black Friday?

Well, I'll tell you this, my first thought was to stay home. Giving it a second and third think, a tour seemed like a fair idea. No shopping, mind you, not even a consideration, mind you, just a look at what should be "prime" locations for Black Friday overload. An inspection tour, if you will.

A couple of disclaimers here; 1) There was little thought given where to start or where to end, 2) The tour commenced mid-afternoon, by which time most pre-sunrise Black Friday adherents were likely snug in their beds, or on their couches, or wish the hell they were.

Starting in downtown Wilkes-Barre, there were no crowds. The Square was empty, no traffic tied-up, backed up, no hustle, no bustle. All was calm, all was bright, since the city's tree and lights on Public Square looked pretty darned good.

Swinging on down South Main and then on up Blackman Street, I came at the arena hub and mall area from the south. No traffic jams, no long waits at lights. Strange and unexpected.

Highland Boulevard, Mundy Street, then actually into the mall's parking lot, no problems. Sure, there were plenty of people out and moving around, but not in the abundance I'd anticipated. Not a delay to be had. They just don't make Black Fridays like they used to. I took a second to grab a shot at the west end of the mall, where there was plenty of parking. Not exactly my finest moment in photography, unless storm drains and parking lot painting were a specialty. You do, though, get the point.

Does plenty of parking on Black Friday mean anything? I really don't know. Possibilities might include that shoppers are rolling the dice, figuring better deals lie ahead if they hold out, maybe next week, the week after. Could be that the dizziness of Christmas spending is perhaps beginning to slow a little after countless runaway years.

For me, it was an OK way to spend a couple hours. And I didn't come home with a headache.

It's An Annual Affair...

Ever year it happens, and it happens right about this time.

Thoughts of Christmases past don't wake me deep in darkness, they don't haunt my dreams, they don't rise from the mist of a bowl of late night gruel. I haven't heard any chains rattling.

These are warm and fuzzy thoughts, ones that clearly and routinely march right on through my consciousness every single season.

The Globe Store, seen at left in 1991, was the center of our universe way back when, at least at Christmastime. In acknowledgment of my Boy Scout Oath, let me level with you in saying that I poached the photo, having no idea whose it is.

As with so many other damned shames in my life, it's a damned shame I have no photos of my own of The Globe, even though I had to have passed the store on a regular basis for well in excess of twenty years with camera gear in my car or truck. Heck, I grew up no more than a twenty minute walk from the store. As a kid old enough to go "downtown" on my own, three different cranky old Scranton Transit Company buses passed near home hourly, each one could have dropped me at The Globe's front doors, and there were many front doors, revolving and standard, one of which was a direct connection to store's basement and the world that awaited there.

You'd have to suppose that most of us never bothered to take a picture or two because, well, because of one simply stupid notion - The Globe would always be there, right?

In 1994, all holders of the same notion were disabused of that foolishness when The Globe shut down, cutting loose 400 employees, its assets seized by a bank that for generations had literally been the store's neighbor.

Although it might be a bit hard to believe, here and now after fifteen years of being Globe-less, The Globe was initially an anchor tenant of the newly built Mall at Steamtown, connected to the mall itself by the walkway that still spans Lackawanna Avenue.

In an act that now looks like no more than appeasement, the mall's builders, or maybe backers, or maybe city leaders, insisted The Globe be included in the deal and become an easily accessible extension of the mall. Or, when you really take an honest look at things, it might have been little more than a gesture of fondness, of sentimentality for an institution that had played such a major role in the lives of Scrantonians for nearly one hundred years.

So, why no Globe? That's not all that tough a question to answer.

We could pick over the bones of The Globe's failure to stay current with merchandise, to stock that which people were demanding by the late '80s and early '90s. To make that statement would be no lie. So much in our society is bound tightly to relevance. Once those bindings come undone, relevance slips away. The Globe was yet one more victim of slipping relevance.

A movement that had begun over twenty years previous finally caught up with and consumed The Globe, and hundreds of others like it across the country. The shock is not so much that they failed, but rather that Scranton's Globe Store sustained as long as it did.

We've all heard about "...no stopping an idea whose time has come." That sentence needs a second phrase, which should be, "...and there's no saving an idea whose time is up, over, and done."

The great American downtown department store is largely gone, save for our very own Boscov's in Wilkes-Barre. Here's wishing all there a prosperous and very busy holiday shopping season.

I still want to walk up to The Globe's Toyland and see Santa sitting with a pile of kids all goggle-eyed waiting to sit on his lap. No doubt about it, I'd tell a grand jury this under oath; The Globe always had the best Santa Claus in town.

With no shame, I miss The Globe, and miss it very much.

Merry Globe Store memories to all...

I've Tried...I Can't...I Give Up

Anything homemade beats anything out of a jar, or a box, or a can, or a package of any kind.

That's an immutable, a given, a fact of life as we've been told over and over again by cooks, chefs, gourmets, gourmands, and moms and grandmas since our ancestors found fire.

Before fire, everything tasted like dirt and twigs.

After fire, maybe everything tasted like chicken.


"How's that gator, Dave?"


"It tastes like chicken, Ed."


"Why we eatin' gator, Dave?"

Is your gator lacking that certain something you've come to expect in a reptile? If so, what won't help is my not-at-all-famous and not-very-good homemade barbecue sauce. And, yes, gator tastes like chicken.

God Lord, I have tried and tried; then tried again and again. I can't do it. It's beyond my reach. I simply cannot make barbecue sauce that's any better than what comes in a bottle or jar.

Sometimes, it's not nearly as good as what comes in that jar or bottle. Sometimes, that cheap house-brand sludge that's mostly molasses tastes better than the stuff I slow cook right there with loving affection in my home.

You go with what you got, right? And what I got is that I am pretty darned good in the kitchen. No false display of modesty for me, it's true, it's an acquired skill. I worked at it, I learned basics over the years. I can cook better than most, although many cook better than me.

I heard it once said that, if you can read, you can cook. True? Nearly but not entirely. Reading, patience, caring, and attentiveness are also necessary to cook. You got all that, you got it made.

Since the '70s, I have studied, I have read. I have watched, I have listened. I have learned. Among the secrets is balance. Balancing flavors, complimenting flavors, knowing what works together, what does not. You must be smart and humble enough not to force together those that do not work. You build a dish. You build it layer by layer, layers of flavor. I know this, accept this, practice this.

To be clear, there is no formal training involved, and I surely could never run/manage a kitchen or a restaurant. But there is not a dish made in any restaurant, fine or otherwise, that I cannot make as well or better at home...then I hit that barbecue sauce wall.

Not all that long ago I gathered up the ingredients, while conjuring up the balance of flavors that would make for a genuinely good barbecue sauce. Layer by layer, I built the sauce element by element. Gently tinkering with apricot preserves which would play off the sharp edge of the crushed tomatoes, wedding the balance with sweet onion and next the tomato paste.

Then, just enough fresh garlic so that the palate would notice should it be missing. Fresh ground pepper, kosher salt, trace amounts of cumin and Worcestershire, a dash of turmeric to linger and nip at the tongue, and all then readied for a slow simmering. A few splats of a Louisiana hot sauce, a pinch, no make it two, of cayenne, the symphony was about to begin.

Wielding the baton to make beautiful the melody of barbecue sauce is that standard of standards when it comes to condiments. We're talking good old fashioned tomato ketchup, or catsup should you prefer. Good, finest quality, American ketchup. Heinz, what else? Many barbecue sauce makers don't want you to know the dirty little secret, but it's the ketchup that can put the magic in that gently bubbling dark red velvet.

Deep crimson, dark and smooth. Appealing to the eye, a very important ingredient itself, for the Chinese say you eat first with the eye.

Hours later...

"I wasn't crazy about the barbecue sauce." That's my wife. She's quick to praise my cooking, slow to criticize.

"Yeah, me neither." That's me. She was right. No need to feel at all deflated.

End of conversation on the barbecue sauce. End of me making barbecue sauce.

The next night it was Gruyere stuffed pork medallions with a balsamic port reduction sauce, sitting alongside a rutabaga carrot soufflé with a saute of shittake mushrooms? Tremendous, worthy of compliment, maybe could even win me a prize of some sort.

Barbecue sauce? Never made one worth a damn, but I have made my last, and that's a promise. Oh, my spaghetti sauce needs work, too.