Let me briefly interject into my ongoing, but hopefully soon to end, unMuellering

to say that Easter Sunday morning’s musing about my early years were spiced by W’s surprise provision of Asian 5-spice bacon (an unredacted recipe is below). We learned how to make this courtesy of our southernmost friend Rose C, who we suspect learned it during her time growing up in Hong Kong from her mother and grandmother. Warm coral isle memories of our first time eating this delight washed over us. Despite our best efforts to savor these crispy sweet spiced treats, they were gone much like our lives — almost in a blink.

We spent almost three hours Easter Sunday afternoon lunching in Chatham Square on deli roast beef sandwiches, kettle chips, blue-cheese-n-bacon potato salad, tiramisu and a California pinot noir vin gris.

W in Chatham Square

So, let’s continue my pre-mortem, kinda factual investigation to belatedly preserve the evidence of those times — and, yes, aging memories are selective and stale, and countervailing documentary materials are no longer available. To critics I am tempted to repeat what Bill the Cat used to say — “thbbft,” but honestly, I will do my best to trace the path of the slightly bent arrow my parents launched into an unsuspecting and innocent world long ago.

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Long before I became a teenager, I attended my first wake and funeral service in the home next door to our house. We had only known Mr. H for many years when he passed at well north of 80 years old. He was a kindly gentleman of considerable education and accomplishment — he was one of the architects of the horseshoe-shaped college football stadium three miles to our south. His only daughter, Mildred, lived with him and was an avid gardener like my father and for whom I worked. This petite, soft spoken, grey-haired woman was rabidly anti-federal-and-state-taxes, telling me to accept only “straight cash” for my gardening and law care work.

Mildred was a master cook in the kitchen. As the grandchild of good northern German immigrants, she believed in overcooking everything until it chewed like rubber so you would never get sick because all germs had been incinerated. Freezing germs also worked, hence her barely unfrozen green bean casseroles — they may have been crunchy or at times chewy, but they were totally germ free. We kids had quickly learned to use a napkin, when previously eating at her table. One would pretend to cough, spit her offerings into it and thus was born the Mildred diet.

As an aside, I believe that my mother took apprentice level cooking lessons from Mildred during the mid to late 1950s. This would explain how we maintained our less than 0% body fat measurements during the non-slave laborlawn care months of winter. Many years later, one of my siblings referred to our family kitchen as the “Burns Unit.” Mom must have known about her shortcomings around the stove and oven — I now recall fondly the black smoke/soot circle over the stove in one house and her warning to stand back when something was blazing or smoking in the oven. So, when money was not in short supply, she served dessert in the form of vanilla ice cream and Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

My parents and their children who had attained the age of reason and social decorum dressed up in their Sunday finest to pay our respects. What greeted us slack-jawed kids upon entry into the Mr. H’s front parlor was a tilted-up, open casket with the dear man propped up with a glass of bourbon in his right hand and a stogie in his suit jacket lapel pocket. (I was barely able to stifle myself from shouting like my Brooklyn born grandfather Jaysus Christ.) The parlor and all subsequent first floor rooms contained thick cigar and cigarette smoke, endless platters of food (thankfully in large part brought in by the neighbors), several open bar tables containing large cavalry detachments of the four horsemen of the whiskey apocalypse — Jack, Jim, Johnnie and George — and peels of laughter that rolled out onto backyard lawn.

Much to our surprise, none of the attendees were pained by the deceased’s passing. Tales of his life, both tall and ribald, so I learned later, were being recounted nonstop.

Also odd in retrospect was that none of the attendees wore black. Perhaps there was a dress code?

Given my youth, I was short on these stories’ mysterious background details. I do recall distinctly some of the story tellers in between sips of their adults-only beverages before launching onto another remembrance lovingly saying things like “If you thought that was bad . . .” or “Another escape from the law . . .”

This was the first time I ever heard the word teetotalerspoken. Its use had marked derisive undertones. Thus, with interest piqued, did I, upon consulting a dictionary, conclude that there were none present at this event.

Through my memory’s thick, swirling fog, I see no vases of condolence flowers at this wake, but there are images of numerous “sorry for your loss” sympathy cards displayed on a side table in the dining room. While looking at the cards, one mourner opined that cards from the local liquor distributors were likely in the mail. One notable quote I overheard at the card table took me many years to source its author:

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”
-Mark Twain

Apparently, the glass of whiskey in the deceased’s hand was to make him appear natural to his mourning friends. There wasn’t much mourning going on from what I could observe during the three days of the wake. In fact, the word “wake” took on a somewhat bent meaning for me due to this initial exposure — how on earth could these folks stay awake during a three day long ethylated blitz? That it occurred in the still dry village of Clintonville that gave birth to some of the most virulent abstinence movement supporters half a century before seemed to be one last, purposeful poke in the eyes of those temperance prudes by the deceased and his friends.

A few years later, I pieced together from the fragments I heard at the wake with the help from certain older neighbors that the deceased had operated his own basement whiskey still during Prohibition just twelve houses up from the very large Methodist church of temperance zealots and two doors up from the warden of the Ohio State Penitentiary. The warden and more than a few of that church’s faithful had been regular clients.

No buildings were ever named after Mr. H; and, no monuments were erected in his honor. But, man oh man, did he ever have some great friends whom he had the chance to know, love and serve through good times and bad during Prohibition, two World Wars and the Great Depression. None of them cried because he was gone; instead they were happy that he had been there with them. He left behind a very large extended family that he was very proud of. How much more blessed can a person be?

Asian 5-Spice Recipe

While some prefer basketed eggs, chocolate and hard candies on Easter morning, these sticks are bacon candy — great for breakfast, an appetizer, a chopped salad topper, sandwich layer, sprinkled over ice cream or eaten with dark chocolate.

If you like a dash of heat in your treats, consider spicing them up a bit by including a ¼ TSP of red pepper flakes mixed into the brown sugar before its application.

Ingredients:
1 lb. thick-cut bacon
1 Tbs. lower-sodium soy sauce
1/4 tsp. Chinese five-spice powder
1 cup packed brown sugar (light or dark)

Instructions:
Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 400°F.

Line a large rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and set a baking rack over the foil. Arrange the bacon in a single layer on the rack, leaving no space between the slices.

In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce and five-spice powder, and then brush the mixture over the bacon.

Evenly sprinkle the brown sugar over the bacon, covering each slice completely.

Bake, rotating the sheet halfway through, until the sugar is melted and the bacon is brown and shiny, 30 to 40 minutes. Bacon should not appear to be fatty when done. Let cool on the rack for about 5 minutes, then loosen the slices from the rack with a metal spatula. Continue to cool for another 5 minutes before plating/serving; the bacon will crisp as it cools.

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