More Scranton Memories

I was mollified by dinner at Brenda's. "Brenda" is Brenda Bistocchi, a wonderful woman with whom I went to high school, and whose family has always owned and operated the best Italian restaurant in a city of old-country Italians who really know how to cook. The restaurant is called "Bistocchi's", but I never call it anything but "Brenda's" My entire huge Irish family frequents Brenda's, so I can always get a large dollop of news along with my entree. This is much better than actually contacting my family members, who are not my best friends and mostly have treated me like a poor relation. More about this at another time.

Brenda has also clued me in to the best Italian pizza on the planet. This would be at Revello's, in the town of Old Forge, just south of Scranton. I can get there in fifteen minutes, and it is well worth the trip.

Real Italian pizza comes in two styles, red and white. The red has pizza sauce on it, and a limited number of toppings are available, like shrimp or mushrooms. The white variety is folded up and has no sauce, but is filled with a melty cheese mixture that just may have a little pesto or something in it. Anyway, I always get a box of each at Revello's, and take home what I can't demolish there.

Back to Bistocchi's. I was much tempted to tuck into "Chicken Brenda", a glorious dish smothered in four different and harmonious cheeses, but after downing a Manhattan (to which I am definitely not accustomed), I settled for a shrimp cocktail and grilled fish of the day with, of course, a side of spaghetti. I don't know what it is bout Manhattans; I only have one about every ten years and usually in Scranton, but they are a very pretty color and have a cherry in the glass that my Grandma Lavina Lydon used to call a "Marciano Cherry", like the fighter Rocky. Grandma loved the Friday night fights, sponsored by Gillette. More about this later, as well.

Manhattans are also very filling, so the fish was just fine, and left room for Spumoni.I always have to pick around the candied fruit in Spumoni, like mining for gems except you throw out the gems. The candied fruit tastes nasty, not at all like fruit, and has the consistency of stale gummy-bears. The picking took me a long time, and Siss and I didn't say our goodbyes to Brenda until it was late. It doesn't take long to get from the restaurant to the hotel-that-used-to-be-a-Sheraton; just over the infamous Harrison Avenue Bridge that so many people were said to have jumped off in order to end it all. They could have, too. The creek that flows underneath, Nay Aug Creek, has a very rocky bottom; big, glacial things that look like they would do the trick if you had a mind to cash out. The creek flows out of Nay Aug Park, a Scranton landmark where I used to skateboard on my old, clay-wheeled ride and swim in Lake Lincoln, a man-made lake that was always filthy by summer's end, and where they would let the poor little elephant from the Nay Aug Park zoo come down for her annual swim. The zoo was ultimately condemned and the animals removed, but I was aware of their suffering even as a child.

The creek was a refuge in my early teen years. I could get out of the park when I had no money for food or rides, which was much of the time, and ride my skateboard down the long slope to the water. There I would jump from stone to stone until stopped by a small waterfall. This was a good place to sit and contemplate whatever it is that fifteen-year-olds contemplate, if teen contemplation is not an oxymoron.

Once back at the hotel, we prepared for bed and discussed the next day's itinerary. This would be breakfast at Chick's Diner, followed by the pilgrimage around Lake Scranton, the city's reservoir-cum-running-track. I believe that the wide path around the lake is about three miles long, but if I call this a novel rather than a non-fiction diatribe, I don't have to check my facts. So ha ha, it's suddenly a novel, maybe a novella if I run out of steam, or even a play.

Siss takes as long to get ready for bed as she does to go out for an evening. On this particular evening she opted for a shower, as did I, and we took turns steaming up the bathroom. I emerged in the buff, toweling off my short, red hair and Siss remarked that gee, I didn't look as skinny as I did in clothes, and actually was very muscled. Then she followed suit, walking around naked and loudly proclaiming that she had never done this in front of anyone before....but after all I WAS her sister. I was so grossed out! Nothing like being subjected to a self-conscious, overweight, cottage-cheese-thighed, naked woman who wants to bond. All this trying out of the waters on her part was getting extremely tiring, so I watched the news and went to sleep thinking of Chick's Diner, poached eggs, biscuits, ham, and fresh o.j. This is the stuff of sweet dreams.