If rice is dicey, life's not worth living

Isn't it a sure bet that end times approach if, in one week, a gift box of fancy peanut butter is recalled by the West Coast shipper for fear of salmonella and you learn that rice -- rice! -- might be tainted with arsenic?

To me, the rapture might as well sweep us to the sweet hereafter here and now if either of these food pyramid favorites gets placed on the hazmat list.

Since grammar school in Brooklyn, I have been overdosing on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and briefly considered joining ranks with the father of a friend who unfailingly subbed Skippy's for mayonnaise. Yes, in tuna salad, too.

On the summer days Mom and I rode the Sea Beach Express to Coney Island, lunch bag contents never varied: plum, Fig Newtons and hefty combo of PB&J on slices of white brought home by Dad, a trucker who delivered Bond Bread. Eating on a sandy blanket ensured grit in every bite, but I stuffed myself just the same while swallowing milk from the dented cup of a Thermos.

Peanut butter a threat? Yeah, sure, and some day Ebbets Field will be an apartment house. No chance.

So much for the age of innocence. And now: rice.

Turns out, the grain absorbs naturally occurring arsenic from the earth, and while experts suggest ways to minimize risks -- cook forever in lots of water -- the idea of approaching a bowl of rice pudding as though it were a stick of dynamite is depressing.

The issue is especially sensitive for my wife, Eileen, and me, because rice was an essential ingredient in one of our most memorable nights.

Though from Brooklyn, I went to school at the University of Missouri and there grew fond of a terrific teacher and big-name magazine writer by the name of Donald Romero. Dapper and sophisticated, but with a reassuring nature and hoarse, easy laugh, Romero was hot stuff. Around the room he would dart, bent at the waist, Groucho-style, recalling one publishing adventure or another, and assuring his bedazzled journalism students that, yessir, this was the life awaiting them, too.

It only added to Romero's glamour that, each summer, he left little Columbia, Mo., for New York, and, not only New York, but Greenwich Village. And to do what? To write! To pound out another gorgeous story and then another that some glossy magazine was certain to gratefully gobble up.

Before the 1963 fall semester, Eileen -- a Jersey girl who most everyone calls "Wink" -- and I were heading to Brooklyn for a few weeks and Romero somehow heard we'd be in town. When he suggested dinner at a Spanish place in the Village called Jai Alai, I was dizzy with disbelief. Romero? Us? On the appointed evening, Wink and I took the subway from Bay Ridge, dressed as well as we knew how. Romero met us at the front door of Jai Alai, nodded that we should go ahead, and greeted the staff in Spanish.

The restaurant was narrow and dark -- or at least that is how it is fixed in my memory -- and Bohemian looking, although, really, I had little idea then exactly what Bohemian meant. All I knew is that I'd never been in such a place, and, most likely, never would be again.

Romero, splendid in tweed jacket and tie, looked relaxed, delighted, it appeared, to be in familiar surroundings and back in the big city. He'd reserved a corner table.

Before long, an elegant waiter appeared as though a genie from a lamp. Romero greeted the fellow warmly and then, in robust español, ordered dinner. The waiter vanished and Romero turned back to Wink and me. He told us about his travels and his work and why he loved teaching, about books he read and thought we should read, and, of course, how good it was to be in New York. Columbia was swell, but this, this, was the center of the universe.

From a decorated pitcher, Romero poured glasses of something new to us, sangria. Wink and I had married only weeks before and he toasted our future. He summoned story after story, and laughed often, sometimes at his own expense. Hypnotized, I'm not sure I uttered a word.

Suddenly, the spell was broken. Waiters appeared to move plates and glasses and make room for a tremendous metal casserole fitted with a lid.

And here is the part about rice.

With a gesture graceful as any in the bull ring, the waiter lifted the pan's top and released a stupendous and aromatic cloud. Steaming before us was a cauldron of clams, and mussels, scallops, lobster, red pepper, capers, all on a bed of beautiful rice, turned golden by saffron (I now know). "Paella," Romero announced, and told us to begin. Even if he had warned of arsenic, I would have obeyed.

After dinner, the paella's varied and delicious tastes still fresh in our mouths, we stood briefly outside Jai Alai. Soon Romero, shaking hands, bowing a bit, said good night and headed to wherever a man of his esteem headed when in New York, the evening still young.

Wink and I were motionless for a moment and, then, arm in arm, headed for the subway. Isn't the world something, we said. Isn't it just something?