The Column: 'Pinkelwurst'? The mystery of childhood memories
I found a note in my pocket.
"Pinkelwurst," it said.
Nothing else. "Pinkelwurst."
Though I wrote the message to myself — when? why? — I was halted by the reference to a certain daunting German sausage composed of pork, oats, bacon and onions.
A scrap of paper saying "fishmonger" "igloo" or "fricassee" would have made as much sense, or "rugelach!" scrawled on a napkin
One friend tells the story of waking from anesthesia after a dental procedure convinced that the word "shoulders" revealed eternal secrets. Perhaps. But "pinkelwurst"?
Childhood recollections may provide a hint.
"What’s for dinner?" my father would call out each evening, exhausted after delivering Bond Bread to delis and luncheonettes in South Brooklyn.
Occasionally, my mother would reply proudly: "Tonight, pinkel."
"Ah," Dad would say, nose in the afternoon Journal-American. "Pinkel."
Such moments routinely caused me to wonder what life on the road might be like for a chubby adolescent — hopping a freight to the coast or stowing away on a tramp steamer, anything to escape the meal Mom now was so earnestly preparing.
Mom’s pinkel recipe called for poaching the sausage in a stew of kale and oatmeal. The combination always struck me not so much as odd — though surely it was remarkable — as, perhaps, borderline illegal.
Wasn’t there at least a common law stricture or religious prohibition against mixing breakfast cereal with a disagreeable vegetable that would have to wait a half-century for redemption as an ingredient in everything from face wash to vegan smoothies? Shouldn’t a social worker have intervened?
As the smell of pinkel filled our little apartment, Dad would shift in his easy chair.
"Soon?"
"Soon," the kitchen answered.
Mom and Dad were gentle and decent working-class folks not given to gratuitous acts of provocation or punishment and, so, when, as always, I took a bite of the pinkel and tentative sip of the stew and winced or showed signs of losing consciousness, a reprieve immediately was granted. The condemned saved by the governor’s last-minute call.
"It’s all right, dear," Mom would say, taking pity. "How about a little Lipton chicken noodle?"
And she would put on the kettle and take out a pouch of chicken soup mix, and I would be at ease with the world, except, of course, for the sight of the pinkel floating, pale as grief, in the somber oatmeal goulash.
"You don’t like pinkel?" my father would say, incredulous, forgetting previous scenes with the same outcome.
"He likes Lipton," my mother would declare.
"Yeah," I would say. "I like Lipton. Not so much, pinkel."
Why bother with all this?
Because we are filled these days — tell the truth — with random memories, things from the past, inscrutable little notes that may, at first, remind you only that even Post-its can’t perform miracles.
It is no shame to be a bit off balance.
The pandemic year has passed out-of-focus, a smudge on the window of time, one day sneaking into the next, the seasons marked more by readouts on our L.L. Bean indoor-outdoor temperature device than anything confirmed by the calendar.
"Forty-two degrees this morning. Hmm, October?"
"My word, it’s 53 and not even 9 a.m. Baseball soon, I guess."
President Biden holds out the hope of backyard barbecues for friends and family on July 4 and, no question, I’d be eager to see how an Impossible Burger holds up on the charcoal grill and share my wife’s pesto salad with a well-vaxxed crowd.
Ah, to see a Frisbee sail innocently into the neighbor’s yard or hear a summer tune, The Drifters singing "Under the Boardwalk," and sit back and listen to your middle-aged children discuss the issues of the day under their own steam.
"Right, Dad?" one might ask finally, lining up support.
"Sorry, retaining my editorial objectivity."
Then comes the strawberry shortcake or brownies with ice cream, and a smooth, sweet glide into a summer night, cicadas and all.
Keep the faith, is the idea.
"Some year," says my son in Kew Gardens.
"Some year."
"Going to get better."
"No question."
Fourth of July, let’s hope, like the president says, or, anyway, pretty soon.
Meanwhile, what about the mysterious note — "pinkelwurst"?
Still, not sure.
Perhaps I was just reminding my often-uncertain self that, no matter how tight the situation, there’s always chance of a reprieve.