Wise Up (11-09-09)

Food

"¢ Comedians Eddie Cantor and Bert Williams and some other Ziegfeld Follies stars were invited to eat at the home of fist-fighter Jack "œTwin" Sullivan, who unfortunately played a cruel practical joke on Mr. Cantor, who was Jewish. Mr. Sullivan served pork chops, which everyone but Mr. Cantor ate. Seeing that Mr. Cantor wasn't eating his pork chops, which of course as an observant Jew who kept kosher, Mr. Cantor would not do, Mr. Sullivan offered to bring him a sandwich. However, the sandwich was made out of ham, which of course Mr. Cantor did not eat. Mr. Sullivan then offered Mr. Cantor eggs, but when he brought the eggs out to Mr. Cantor, they were covered with bacon and bacon grease.

At this point, Mr. Williams felt that the joke had gone far enough, so he revealed that he had brought a present for Mr. Cantor. The present turned out to be a sirloin steak that Mr. Williams cooked for him in the kitchen. Of course, the joke was insensitive, but to Mr. Sullivan's credit, he did invite Mr. Williams, an African-American comedian, to eat in his house at a time when many public restaurants would not have allowed Mr. Williams or any other black person to eat there. One day, Mr. Williams walked into a bar and ordered a drink. The bartender told him that the price would be $50 "“ an even more exorbitant price in the early 20th century than it is now. Mr. Williams, a highly paid entertainer, put a $500 bill on the counter and said, "I'll take 10 of them."

"¢ Survivors of the Holocaust often had little or no food to eat. Yvonne Sokolow was a hidden child of the Holocaust, living with various families, many of whom were suffering from food shortages. Yvonne lived for a while with her mother in a home whose head could provide food for only his family, and so Yvonne and her mother ate hard bread and soup made from potato peelings. Sometimes, Yvonne and her mother smelled the bacon and eggs that the head of the family could provide only for his family.

Yvonne was 17 when World War II ended. She came to the United States, went to Columbia University, got married, and raised a family. She says now, "I will never say about a restaurant, 'I can't eat here,' because it is never as terrible as what I ate during the war." Of course, in her life after the Holocaust her teenage sons would sometimes open the refrigerator at home, look inside and say that there was nothing to eat. She would always tell them, "You don't know what nothing to eat is like."

"¢ Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent sometimes gained more weight than she should. To combat this tendency, she once put a huge chain around her refrigerator "“ only her children knew the combination to the chain's lock. Unfortunately, one morning she wanted milk with her coffee, and she was up too early to go to a coffee shop. Therefore, she used a metal saw to saw through the chain "“ it took her 30 minutes, after which she found herself in the mood to eat a huge breakfast.

Once, Ms. Kent planned a party, but before it started she discovered that the caviar she had purchased was mysteriously disappearing. She solved the mystery when she discovered that her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Trista and Trista's 3-year-old cousin Jennifer had learned that they liked caviar. When no one was looking, they would go to the refrigerator, get a spoonful of caviar, then run to the bathroom and eat it.

"¢ In 1918, during World War I, Karl Heinzmann was a German prisoner of war in a French prison camp. The food the German prisoners were fed was very poor, and sometimes an ingredient was "floor flour" "“ that is, flour swept from the floor along with sand, dirt, and hairs. The prisoners complained, but nothing was done. One day, an elderly French guard came to work at the prison camp. When he saw the bread the prisoners were forced to eat, he took a sample to the head of the prison camp. An argument arose, the elderly guard was punished, but afterward the bread was better. Mr. Heinzmann says, "Such guards were very rare."

"¢ Before the Holocaust, Leopold Mendlovic's parents fed hungry people at their own family's table in Czechoslovakia, although they had nine children of their own to feed. The young Leopold noticed that the impoverished people sometimes stank. Leopold says, however, "My parents... were very accepting and never said a word." Leopold managed to escape death at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust, but his parents died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

"¢ In the early day of World War II, Tomie dePaola, who was in the second grade, heard a lot about hoarders: people who bought lots of things they thought would be rationed soon. For example, young Tomie heard about a wife who made her husband buy 50 pounds of sugar to hoard in the basement. However, because of the humidity, the sugar became hard, like a rock. Each night, the husband would go into the basement and chip off a piece of sugar to put into his tea.

"¢ Early in her career "“ basically before she had a career and while she was still a housewife, Phyllis Diller did a show at the Alameda Naval Air Station, where she was a hit and for which her pay was a 30-pound live turkey. She left it tied outside her apartment that night, and the next morning a couple who lived near her made her an offer: "We're farm people, so we'll kill it and share it with you." Ms. Diller accepted the offer, and each family got 15 pounds of turkey.

"¢ Operatic tenor Jan Kiepura strongly preferred European sweet butter to American salted butter. At a restaurant, Mr. Kiepura pointed to some American salted butter and asked a server, "What is that?" Of course, the server replied, "That is butter, sir." Mr. Kiepura then said venomously, "In Poland, we give such butter to pigs!"

"¢ "Food is an important part of a balanced diet." "“ Fran Lebowitz