Summertime the way it used to be

As time accelerates and instant gratification has been elevated to a right, I swim against the current and try to hold on to time the way it used to be. Summertime was the best time. Days were hot and humid, just like today. They were also long and free-form, an unprogrammed succession of pleasures, boredom, joy, and pain.

I lived on Greenwood Hill in Pottsville when I was a child. Children played outside from morning till night. Early in the day, before temperatures and humidity rose to numbing highs, we walked downtown, a gang of us, paying particular attention when we crossed “the Boulevard.” We had a nickel or a dime for candy or a soda. We were not yet ten, but we window-shopped and entered stores like Woolworth’s or Kresge’s on Pottsville’s Centre Street. We even made purchases, cheap plastic toys you could buy for a dime or less.

After supper, we ran outside to play, literally, in the street. Our favorite games were “kick the wicky” and “tin-can-alley” (I’m sure some readers played those games too). We played them on Edwards Avenue, at the crest of its downwards slope towards Jackson Street. That way, when we kicked the can and ran to hide, the person who was “it” had a long uphill climb before they could go looking for us.

Between morning and evening, during those long, hot afternoons in the days before air-conditioning, we played board games like checkers or parcheesi, Candyland or Clue. When we weren’t playing games, we read. That was one reason why we went downtown. We almost always visited The Pottsville Free Public Library and we all participated in the summer reading contest, nearly every member of “our gang” winning a prize for the number of books we’d read at summer’s end.

Today, I can’t remember many of those books. I’ll admit, our reading habits were similar to work on an assembly line. On a shady porch, we gathered together with our books. We sat down and began reading as fast as we could, and once we finished a book we passed it on to the person sitting next to us. By the end of an afternoon, we’d have skimmed a dozen books or more!

Back in those long-ago 1950’s and early 1960’s days, some homes still had what were called “party lines.” You could pick up your phone and listen in on somebody else’s conversation. In our house, we had a private line, but every once in a while, the phone would revert to its former state and when I picked it up to make a call, I tuned in to a conversation between people I didn’t know.

Our black dial-phone sat on its own special table, where there was also a space reserved for the telephone book. Obviously, the phone was an object of importance, but it didn’t ring very often and we didn’t use it very much. Except when it rang or we made a call, we ignored it, never touching it or glancing its way. If I’d had to make a choice between our black-and-white TV or the telephone, hands-down, I’d have voted for the TV, which brought me “The Little Rascals,” “Laurel and Hardy,” replays of Shirley Temple classics, and in April 1961, the Eichmann trial for Nazi war crimes. I remember lying on the living room floor, alone, as the Holocaust entered our living room.

We also went to “summer playground,” organized at playgrounds throughout the city. Ours was at the Greenwood Hill Fire Company, what we called the “hosie,” a word unknown, I’ve discovered, in other parts of the USA. We made gimp and pipe-cleaner sculptures; we wove potholders with nylon loops. We also played team sports like whiffle ball and volleyball and put on dress-up pageants.

One year, two very ambitious playground supervisors even organized a bike ride to Heisler’s and back—a pack of kids on bikes, most who’d never ridden so far in their lives. Our supervisors were 18 or 19 years old. We were between 8 and 16. Imagine doing that today! The organization might be comparable to the Tour de France, with parents riding in front and rear in SUV’s, one equipped as an emergency first-aid vehicle, the other, filled with water bottles and high-energy bars. And imagine, NO ONE HAD A CELL PHONE! We set off from Greenwood Hill on our bikes. We returned, aching, tired, thirsty, at the end of an unforgettable day. 

Am I simply taking a stroll down memory lane, writing about the “good old days”?  No, because though they are “old,” they weren’t always good. Family strife, poverty, de facto segregation, a reality in Pottsville in those days, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear conflict, all that and more weighed on our lives. Prejudices of all kinds were rife, neighbors didn’t get along, and we kids regularly fought on our way home from Jackson Street or Patterson schools.

Time had a different feel to it though. On a muggy summer afternoon, curled up with a good book (because sometimes I did read for pure pleasure and not for the prize), I could read for hours without a single interruption – no beeps, no rings, no notifications, no urgent texting from friends. Time to be, that’s what I had. And that’s what I miss.

I also miss the sense of community that reigned on Greenwood Hill. After supper, because the house was too hot, everyone came outside and sat on their porch. Walking from my home to the home of the Newtons, where my best-friend Donna lived, I had to say hello to at least 10 people every evening! I thought I’d never make it down the block.

Today, on some streets and in suburban settings, where big houses sit amidst a perfectly manicured lawn, a casual passerby might think the neighborhood was deserted. Where has everyone gone? Do these people know something I don’t know? they might ask.

In most cases, to the first question, the answer is “nowhere.” To the second, a resounding “no.” The houses are not deserted. Inhabitants have simply closed themselves up inside, benefiting from air-conditioning, home cinemas, and the internet, which opens their homes to the world…

But closes them off from their neighbors.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day a week, we turned off our air conditioning, our computers and our phones and simply sat outside? We’d meet neighbors, talk to strangers, get to know people different from us. This might be the “old-fashioned” way, but it might also be a small step towards more concord in the world.

  

 

The trendiest bread in Paris: “Pain à la mode”

I do not think of myself as a trendsetter, but recently I collided head-on with one of the hottest trends in Paris. “Pane Vivo,” bread as a statement of all that’s best in life. That seems a lot to ask of a loaf of bread, but these days young bakers in Paris are combining the baking of bread with philosophy, law, and environmental science.

I did not seek out this trend, nor was I even looking for a loaf of bread. I was simply strolling in my neighborhood when I was offered a sample by a very aggressive saleswoman who, while I chewed, explained to me the virtues of “pane vivo,” living bread, a new product rooted in the past, focused on the future.

I was standing outside “The Bread Lab” (in English), 49, rue de Chine, in the 20^th district of Paris, a fifteen-minute walk from where I live. The bread, “Pane Vivo,” is the creation of Adriano Farano, a 41-year-old Italian and a very unconventional baker who travelled a long and winding road before, in 2020, setting out to produce what he believes to be “the best bread in the world.”

Adriano began life as a child on the Amalfitano coast south of Naples. At a young age, he became interested in journalism and politics. As a student of political science in Strasbourg, France, in 2001, he created an on-line participative magazine in six languages, the first of its kind in Europe.

From there, he moved on to Stanford University, where he had a 10-month research grant that turned into a 9-year stay in the United States. While in the Bay Area, he was dismayed because he couldn’t find a good loaf of bread for his French wife and their three children, so he decided to make his own. He even built a brick oven in his garden. His recipe? Flour, bread, salt and water, a good pair of hands and the muscle power to knead the dough.

When his wife’s mother fell ill, the family returned to France and Adriano put his entrepreneurial skills to work once again. In California, he’d fallen in love with bread-making. In France, he decided to turn his passion into a business and that’s how “Pane Vivo” was born in September 2020.

“Living bread,” according to Adriano Farano, should nourish both body and spirit. He claims that the food we eat, be it bread or anything else, should be chosen in light of its impact on our health and the environment. Farano bakes his bread with this philosophy in mind.   

First, he chooses his flour carefully, working with an agronomist and a biochemist. They have studied samples of flour from all over Europe. For “pane vivo,” Farano uses stone-ground Russello organic durum wheat flour, grown in Sicily, the same durum wheat used in the making of pasta. It is an ancient variety requiring lots of sun and three times less water than soft wheat varieties.

Farano also uses live yeast starter, never baker’s yeast. It’s the difference between lactic and alcoholic fermentation. Live yeast enables the body to assimilate all the bread’s nutrients. Baker’s yeast, the kind used in most breads, makes digestion more difficult. Russello wheat flour contains an easily digestible gluten, even for those with gluten intolerance.

But how does the bread taste? That’s the most important question, the only selling point for me.

Initially, I was not convinced. First of all, I was put off by the price: €7.25 euros or $8.50 for a pound of bread (500 grams). And then there were the names, pretentious in my book: Sapiens, Scheherazade, Esmerelda. This is bread we’re talking about! 

Yet, chewing that first bite, I had to admit, the bread was dense and delicious, nutty, slightly sweet, with the texture of moist, chewy cake. I paid the price and was handed my first loaf. At home, I discovered that toasted, the bread does not burn or crisp around the edges; it simply takes on deeper flavor. Wrapped in a cloth, stored in a breadbox, it lasts for a week, retaining its fresh taste right down to the last crumb. Since that first chance encounter, I’ve become a regular though I’ll admit, the price still makes me wince.

Adriano Farano opened his bakery just as France went into quarantine, but that has not prevented success. He and his bakery have been on prime-time TV and articles about them have appeared everywhere, in the major dailies and on-line. Pane Vivo has become a trend, one I discovered by chance.

Recently I stumbled across another bakery and another excellent organic bread. The bakery, Le Petit Grain, The Little Kernel, was created by Edward Delling-Williams in 2018, once again, not far from where I live. Like Adriano Farano, Delling-Williams is not a traditional baker and the road from his home in Bristol, England to a backstreet in the Belleville section of Paris, has taken a few surprising turns.

Today Delling-Williams, who has been interested in cooking since childhood, would define himself as a chef. However, as a young man, he studied law. In France, he became interested in immigration law, and his policy in his bakery is to hire asylum seekers and immigrants in general. When among them he finds a talented baker, as he did in one man from Sri Lanka, he puts him in charge.

In 2016, Delling-Williams opened a “neo-bistro”, Le Grand Bain, in rue Denoyez in Belleville. In 2018, a couple of steps away, he opened his bakery, where besides organic loaves, he sells simple pastries. The delicious cinnamon roll would find many fans in Schuylkill County.

Today Edward Delling-Williams is chef at a restaurant called “Buffet” in the 11^th district of Paris. Much like Farano in his baking, Delling-Williams puts his philosophy into practice in his cooking. He uses “farm-to-table” products and respects his co-workers and the environment. The last time I went to his bakery for a loaf of whole-grain bread, I was served by a woman from Russia’s Ural Mountains.

Adriano Farano and Edward Delling-Williams, neither French by birth, represent a new breed of baker in a country where bread truly is the staff of life. Neither sells the traditional baguette, but these two trendsetters have created an excellent loaf of bread. It has earned their bakeries a place among the best in France.