Getting Back to the Root of...

I'm psyched about Abby's fever to store away food in danky-darky cellar. Because...well...she's got this strange viral influence on me when it comes to sustenance.

The thing is, I never had one of those old-timey cellars. As a kid, I had a basement, a wide open thing with a slippery green-and-gray check-tile floor. Its express purposes so far as I can remember was for roller skating, socializing, my brother's pot-smoking, and for any number of family members in need of comfortable-enough digs to sack out for weeks (sometimes months) on end. And it's where I snuck sips from the make-shift party bar (a slab of marble over the one-ton concrete sink-and-tub where Mom washed Dad's hair every Saturday afternoon). It's also the place I ran to with handfuls of cookies and other no-nos before my brother (a different one, the one I stole "the baby of the family" title from) could beat them out of my fists.

But root cellars. I witnessed precious few people live and work and die by them. City living didn't inspire such things, I guess.

But, man, was it a cherished treat to receive specially made hand-scribble-and-lopsided-tagged jars of jam (my fave) or tomato sauce--especially Gram's.

Ma (mine) wasn't a grower or a canner (some things stayed on the mid-Michigan farm of her childhood that she fled for the sun-drenched hills of California as soon as she had the chance).

Oh, she came back, later. Without her mother's mad canning penchant or skills. It was enough (and maybe because) we could always just drive to the farm and get Gram to hand over her booty, jars clink-clinking in the back of our big 'ol station wagon all the way home.

But the cellar--Gram had stopped using her own (bad knees, no good on stairs) by the time I came around. She'd set Gramp to moving everything into the bathroom off the kitchen. And damn if it wasn't cold as a snowman's balls in there all winter long. Perfect to stop almost all of nature's processes.

Now there's something to think about for the extra Cavaszynski bathroom....

But before I go telling Vince my plans for his "library," I probably oughtta get him thinking about helping me whip our garden into shape next season. I'm sure that'll go something like this.