Where do I begin? Do I have to tell you who this is, Dear Readers?
She is one of my great girl crushes of ALL time-
Ali MacGraw.
Back in the 70’s she was the Fashion Girl of the Moment. Her “boho chic” style made a huge impact on the world.
Here is her Time Magazine cover from 1971.
She made it fabulous to be a brunette. And her fashion sense just knocked me out.
I had several of those little knit hats. And scarves and bell bottoms. And anything else LaBelle Ali wore. I loved her style.
Maybe the less said about her acting the better.
But oh, how she looked in Love Story. I love her preppy cool. (She went to Rosemary Hall, you know. She came by this honestly.)
And The Getaway.
Her Halston ultra suede coat dress should have won the Oscar for “Best Dress.”
I was so fascinated with her that when her autobiography came out, I rushed to buy it.
It was frank and moving.
And sad.
Cold and diffident parents, alcoholism- which led to bad choices in men and career decisions- a devastating fire, all made for some very tough reading about a woman I had admired for so long.
But at age (almost) 80, she seems to have her act together.
And once again, she looks like the millions of bucks she left on the table when she divorced Steve McQueen.
My Ali is back! Gray, gorgeous and rockin’ the fashion world once more.
We’re in it for the long haul, my dear role model. Thanks for reminding me.
And thanks for giving me the courage to keep on.
Loving you, Ali, means never having to say you’re sorry.
My mother started smoking, she told me, when she was fourteen. That would have been in 1938.
Back in those days, everybody- except my father- did.
She smoked as a teenager, she smoked as a young married, she smoked when she was pregnant, she smoked when I was a kid.
I remember her doing it.
She probably saw ads like these on our Sentinel television set all the time.
And then on January 11, 1964 Dr. Luther Terry, the Surgeon General of the United States, released a report on the health consequences of smoking.
Here’s just an excerpt.
“…For the United States, this epidemic of smoking-caused disease in the twentieth century ranks among the greatest public health catastrophes of the century…”
And of course, now, some fifty-four years later, I know we’re all on the same page. Not only is smoking lethal- it’s a social taboo.
A real no no. You want to feel like a pariah, an untouchable, a leper?
Try lighting a cigarette in Aspen.
But just because cigarette ads have all but been banished from our advertising landscape, it’s kind of fun to sit back and try to remember all the names of all the cigarette brands we once saw our parents, aunts, uncles, and older brothers and sisters light up.
See if any of these ring a bell.
(And don’t worry. No second-hand smoke will be involved.)
Winston
Chesterfield
Camel
Salem
Newport
Kent
Malboro
Virginia Slims
Phillip Morris
L&M
Lucky Strikes
Old Gold
Benson and Hedges
Capri
Cool
Doral
Dunhill
Galoise and Gitanes (I was a big Jean-Paul Belmondo fan)
Lark
Pall Mall
Parliament
Tareyton
Viceroy
And what about recalling their slogans?
Does L.S.M.F.T sound familiar?
How about “Outstanding- And they mild?”
Doesn’t everybody know “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should?”
Or “Call For Phillip Morris.”
And what about “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby.”
Gosh, just writing this has given me a smoker’s cough. Excuse me, Dear Readers, while I just quit.
I’m going cold turkey.
Now here’s the most famous “smoking” scene in all of romantic moviedom.
Don’t forget your handkerchief- and your nicotine patch.
Dearly Beloved Readers, the bride in this photograph is my sister-in-law Mary Lu Roffe, née Rubnitz.
The groom is my brother Kenneth Simon Roffe.
And today is their forty-third wedding anniversary.
Just in case you don’t recognize the rest of us, here’s the key to the wedding party above.
From Left to Right The Bridesmaids:
Karen Rice Winner (partially obscured)
Martha Frankel
Yours Truly
Lynn Cohen
Suzie Berkowitz
Laura Londoff
Laurie Larson
Toni Rosen
Holly Hiller
From Left to Right The Groomsmen:
Tommy Rubnitz
Bob Rubnitz
Grant Bagan
David Matasar
Barry Feldman
Steve Rosen
Scott Levenfeld
Eddie Cohen
Peter Rubnitz
Yes, the bride was beautiful. And wore the most breath-taking wedding gown I had ever seen. It should be in a museum with a glass case around it.
And yes, the groom had a real 70’s haircut.
(And yes, Camp Ojibwa represented.)
If a picture is worth a thousand words, let me add only these few more.
This wedding was a real blessed event for so many of us. Mary Lu and Kenny are a true “Power Couple.” They have used that power generously for friends and family alike. And together they have brought joy and happiness to everyone who has ever had the pleasure to have known them.
Congratulations, best wishes, and many, MANY more.
Before I get to the subject of today’s post, Dear Readers, let me first wish my daughter Natasha a very happy birthday.
(That’s Sam, Natasha, yours truly and Carly taken this past June.)
Wishing you my darling daughter – and everyone dear to me in this photo- many happy returns of the day.
Love, Mom/Gran
… And now on to the main event.
The doorway on the photo that heads the blog today is at 900 West Lake Street in Chicago.
It is the former home of the Zimmerman Brush Company.
It was owned by my Uncle Mike- my dad’s sister’s husband- and for over twenty years my dad was the national sales manager.
Which meant he traveled Monday through Friday all over the United States.
(When I was a little girl, I thought he lived at O’Hare. I always set the table for three people during the week – and if my mother was cooking brought the catsup bottle out FIRST.)
900 West Lake was a broom and brush factory. The plant was on the bottom of the building. The office- where my dad did his paperwork- was on the fifth floor.
The elevator- with a sliding cage door- was rickety, scary and kind of cool.
The pop machine on the factory floor was awesome.
The factory also had cats- to keep away the rats and mice, I suppose.
I loved these mangy guys. I called them “crouchers.”
My dad’s office had a swivel desk chair. I would pretend to “file” but mainly zoom around on the chair.
There was also a closet with stationery supplies. How I loved all those unused new boxes of envelopes, pencils and order pads.
But best of all, I loved being with my father. He would take my brother and me down there on Saturdays during the summer.
Back in the days, before Edens Highway was finished, It was quite a trek from Lake Avenue in Wilmette to Lake Street in Chicago. It took forever and I though we were going to the moon.
But I was always excited to (finally) get there. There was an unearthly- and unsuburban- roar that always heralded our arrival.
The El!
And lunch was always a treat. Anything from Barney’s (“Yes, Sir, Senator!”) to Batt’s to Bishop’s.
Sweet, sweet memories.
But these days, whenever I walk by 900 West Lake on the way to Leslie Hindman’s Auction House at Lake and Ada, I can’t help notice a few changes.
First, the old rusty, sawdusty factory of Zimmerman Brush is now a pricey Yuppie condo. The cutest twenty-something gal was coming out of the front door right before I snapped that photo.
The El? A noisy nuisance that shook the building and aggravated everyone?
Nope. Not any more. Now it’s cool and so Risky Business.
The whole neighborhood is so hip now. Everything from the new McDonald’s Headquarters to the trendiest of restaurants are in that Fulton Market area these days.
Who would have dreamt it?
As I walk, I look around in wonder.
And every time, as I pass the entrance to 900 West Lake, I marvel that it looks exactly the same.
And I look for something else, too.
Every time I look at the building, I expect to see a little girl and her little brother following their father into work.
If I squint my eyes and gaze through the mists of time, I can just about make them out.
And what would I tell that little girl about the woman now walking by on her way to work? What would I tell her about the life she was going to lead?
I think about it and then decide.
Nope. That little girl- who only loved books, dogs and horses…
I’m back, Dear Readers. I had swell time in Seattle at the birthday bash of my one year old grandson.
(See if you can guess his name.)
And just in case you can’t guess the name of the young man in the photo that heads up this post, it’s Jay North.
He played “Dennis The Menace” on tv and he is the perfect poster boy for this blog post because I wanted to write about another “menace” I haven’t thought about in years.
(Not Hendrix. He’s a doll.)
The other young man’s name was Marty Marks and he went to Avoca School with us a long time ago.
He lived on the border of Northfield and Winnetka in a very nice house off of Hibbard and Hill Roads- and it had a swimming pool. ( Very rare for its time.)
His father was some hosiery tycoon, I recall. He owned a company called Perfect Plus Nylons (or something like that) and the family was clearly well off.
I believe Marty was an only child. (Or perhaps he had other siblings but they were much too frightened of him to show their faces whenever company was around.)
Marty was blond, smiling- an All-American lad with the heart- at the age of twelve- of Al Capone.
He wasn’t mischievous. He was Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for the Pool where I almost lost my twelve year old bathing suit top diving in one summer afternoon at a swim party at his house. The shame of that moment still resonates with me.
He just didn’t seem to know- or care to distiguish- right from wrong.
Example: My mother came home one day aghast. “I just saw Marty Marks DRIVING (he was maybe thirteen at the time) and I shook my finger at him! How awful.”
Later when I spoke to Marty about the encounter he said, “Oh yeah, I saw your mom. She waved to me.”
See? A real sociopath. Nice enough but clearly no real firm value system or conscience.
There were probably many more examples in his budding juvenile deliquent career but after forty-five years, I have forgotten most of them.
You see, after we all graduated from Avoca- where we had been a class of 83 kids, we went into New Trier High School. Now my class numbered 1200 and there were 4700 kids in the school.
No more MM sightings ever again.
Until one day when I was about sixteen…I got a letter.
It was from Marty.
(Now remember, I hadn’t seen him since I was thirteen.)
He blithely informed me that he was currently at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma having joined the Army.
(I’m betting some judge gave him the choice between that or jail.)
Would I write to him? Please? And send a photo of me in a bathing suit. Preferably a two piece.
His number was RA16872723 and he gave me his address.
And oh yeah, one more thing.
He had made ME beneficiary of his life insurance and next of kin.
My father almost had a stroke when I showed him this communiqué.
“What the heck! You write him NOW and tell him to change that and get you off that policy immediately. That kid was always crazy!”
I did what my dad wanted and wrote to RA16872723 and told him that although I was flattered, I thought his parents should be the logical next of kin and I couldn’t possibly accept any Army benefits.
And you know what?
Shortly after that, I began receiving checks.
Government-issued checks about once a month made out to me.
I never cashed any. I’m sure I tried to return them. They finally stopped coming.
I never heard from Marty again. I heard a rumor a long time ago that he was dead.
But who knows? He was just the kind of person who would fake his own death just as a Halloween prank.
If you know what happened to him, please let me know.
Author’s Note: There will be no Letter From Elba this Sunday, Dear Readers. I will be attending my grandson Hendrix’s first birthday gala celebration in Seattle.
Yes, time flies. Hendrix is going to be one.
(I would have put his photo up here but as you know, his father, my son, Nick, has strictly forbidden it. So just imagine a really adorable tyke and you get the picture.)
See you back on September 13. Thank you.
And now for today’s blog post.
I must admit at the outset that I’m getting sick of it.
The “Look” I mean.
You know. The one that I get from other women that’s patronizing as all get out and full of pity.
Their brows furrow, their eyes get moist, their lips turn down in a struggle not to frown.
And what brings on this show of pseudo-sympathy?
It’s always the straightforward announcement that my children- and grandchildren- live out of town.
Here’s how that conversation usually goes whenever I’m introduced to a new person of the female persuasion.
New Lady: (finally taking a breath after bragging non-stop for ten minutes on the many virtues and talents of her unbelievable gifted grandchildren, Trip, Katie, Cady, Olivia, Matthew, Lacey and Casey (they’re twins) Sophie, Ryan and Declan) And do you have children?
Me: Yes. Two. My daughter is married and has a boy aged four and a little girl two and a half. And my son and his wife have a baby boy ten months old.
NewLady: (sadly disappointed somehow) Oh.
Me: (hearing my cue) That’s quite a gang you have! It must be fun when they all come and visit.
New Lady: (perplexed. And vexed.) Visit? What visit? They all live close to me. I babysit some of them almost every day. Do your kids live in Chicago?
Me: (apologetically. I know the drill by now.) No. My son lives in Seattle and my daughter lives in Boston. That’s probably why I still live in Chicago. It’s a good half-way point for them to meet up.
And that’s when I get “The Look.” It’s so condescending that I immediately know that this new woman considers my situation- and me- pathetic.
NewLady: (trying hard not to sound triumphant) I’m so sorry. I get to see my grandkids EVERY day if I want. I just love being a big part of their lives.
Me: (expected to look anguished and envious) You’re sooo lucky.
NewLady: (gloating. She can’t hide it now.) The other day. Trip- you know, the oldest- he’s eleven, did the cutest thing…
I’ll be more merciful to you, Dear Readers, than the New Lady ever is to me. I’ll spare you the banal details of her little story that’s supposed to regale, amuse and show off what a good- no make that great– athlete, scholar, musician, genius, nuclear physicist Trip or little Sophie (the youngest) is.
And trust me.
Once they find out that I’m challenged in the in-state grandkids department, they really go to town.
I’m always polite. I never point out that perhaps these doting grandmothers are leaving out some of the less-than-savory details about their families. Things they can’t brag about.
For instance:
Their grandchildren’s parents neglected to get married.
Their son-in-law is a mooch who can not keep a job and thus “works” for his father-in-law.
Their grandchild is out-of-control brat.
I could go on and on. But I never say any of this stuff. I gracefully accept the New Lady’s condolences for the tragedy of my life and I let them feel real sorry for me.
It makes them so happy, you see.
If you think I’m making this up for the sake of the blog, let me re-enact an incident that did happen to me. Recently I met a women who had three married children all living within a two mile radius of her. I congratulated on her good fortune.
“You’re so lucky that your kids live near you,” I sighed.
She looked at me as though I was nuts.
“Of course!” she snorted. “Of course they would never dream of moving away.”
And she stared at me knowing that I had been some kind of unfit mother whose kids had to move out of state to get away from toxic me.
Where they no doubt lived in poverty and filth with the wolf at the door and the shadow of lousy daycare looming because the grandkids’ no-good harlot of a grandmother got what she so richly deserved.
This is Catfish Lake at beautiful Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Mark it well, Dear Readers, for it is the site of one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of ideas.
I was sitting by its shores- as I am wont to do each morning that I am at Post Camp. And I was drinking my customary hot chocolate out of its customary white, styrofoam cup.
Now I have been drinking hot chocolate for years. Both at Post Camp and at Café Suzanne on Snowmass Mountain.
Here is the hot chocolate machine featured at both places.
I bet you know how this works.
Here is the bowl of mini marshmallows that sits next to the machine.
My drill was easy.
Get cup
2. Fill cup with hot chocolate
3. Add mini marshmallows carefully as to not overfill the cup
But one morning, sitting by the lake, I had a FLASH of inspiration.
PUT THE MARSHMALLOWS IN FIRST!
OMG! It was an Eureka moment.
The next morning, my hand was shaking as I tested my brilliant new theory.
Here are my field notes:
This morning, I took a regulation white styrofoam cup and put in about one half inch of mini marshmallows.
Then I placed the cup under the spigot of hot chocolate of the hot chocolate machine and pressed the “on” button.
The cup filled up and before the liquid and marshmallows reached the top, I let go of the button.
This test was a complete 100% success.
I, Ellen Ross, inventor of the “marshmallows in first” theory or “M into HC = WOW” hereby pass on my invention/brainstorm to all of humanity free of charge.
I don’t want one penny for the my betterment of cocoa-drinking mankind all over the world.
And don’t bother to thank me the next time you try it.
I’ll be too busy practicing my speech for the committee in Stockholm.
This is Eliza. She is ten. She is my niece. (Well, technically, she is my great-niece. I try to forget that part because if she is my great-niece, that turns me into her great-aunt and that turns me into my Great Aunt Celia- my grandmother’s sister- which turns me into…)
…Anyway back to Eliza. Recently she and I shared a car back seat all the way up to Eagle River, Wisconsin. And since it was a seven hour drive, she came prepared with a backpack filled with things to do.
For the first hour so or so, Eliza kept busy herself playing games on the iPad. She seemed pretty engrossed.
But curiosity got the better of her seatmate and I couldn’t help peeking.
And what she was doing was pretty cool.
She was playing this.
The Logos Game.
Have you ever played this? The game we played features famous logos that are covered by four squares. You can uncover one square and guess and then you get points depending on how many squares you need to uncover in order to make a correct guess.
There is an anagram of letters at the bottom of each logo that spells out its name, too. But there are extra letters added just to confuse you.
Believe it or not, this is not as easy as it sounds. I got the Starbucks logo and the United Airlines logo and the Google logo right away.
But this one had me stumped.
Hard to believe, right? But cover up the bottom and just show a red upper left corner and I was confused for a long time.
After two hours of guessing, I was getting a name brand headache. I had to beg off.
But then Eliza asked me a question.
“Aunt Ellen, do you want to play a card game?”
“Sure,” I said, happy to stop staring at the iPad.
“It’s called ‘Sleeping Queens.’ Have you ever played it before?” asked Eliza innocently as she brought out a cardboard box and fanned out the deck of cards with all the skills of a Las Vegas blackjack dealer.
“Nope,” I said. “You’ll have to teach it to me.”
Eliza’s eyes lit up.
“Don’t worry. I can show you how to play. I’ll teach you all the rules.”
Hmmm.
Have you ever played this game? You see there’s a Rose Queen and a Cat Queen and a Dog Queen (but you can’t have the Cat and Dog Queens together because cats and dogs don’t get along) and there are number cards and picture cards with Jesters and Knights and Dragons and wands and sleeping potions and some of the cards can steal your queen and some can stop the other player from stealing your queen and some cards can get a queen back for you and the knight card can slay your dragon card- or is it the other way around or…???
And the player with the most points at the end wins.
“Got all that?” asked Eliza. “Let’s play. I’ll deal.”
What followed was pretty ugly.
Every time I drew a queen (good) Eliza already had something- a wizard, a wand, an unicorn, a knight, a rose, a bicycle, something, in her hand that could snag it.
Sometimes this included some ” Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe” counting if she happened to draw the jester.
Sometimes it was some new rule about the Rose Queen that she had neglected to tell me. Or my sleeping potion card had run out of strength. Or my Dragon Card had just been put under a spell by her Wand Card.
Every time I wanted to poach one of her queens, Eliza always had a “Get Out Of The Dungeon Free” card in her hot little hand.
The rules were constantly shifting but Eliza kept protesting her innocence anytime I complained. No matter how I cried foul, she would patiently say that she had explained that rule about Rose Queen twenty minutes ago.
“But I didn’t know she had special properties!” I said.
But Eliza would bat her big brown eyes at me and swear on a stack of Barbies that she had told me all about that rule at the beginning of her tutorial.
At the end of the game, Eliza counted up the ponts.
Hi, Dear Readers! It’s great to be back from the Roffe/Ross Annual Family Post Camp at wonderful Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin.
(You might notice that this photo is heavily populated by a majority of Roffes. But I’m hoping to balance this inequity by rallying Natasha and her gang and Nick and his clan next summer.)
Today, however, I have made a special video in honor of a very special day.
Author’s Note: This is my last post until Sunday, August 26. I’m sorry, Dear Readers. I’m heading out of town and then when I get back, I’ve got some personal obligations that will keep me away from the computer for awhile. I beg your indulgence and hope that you will miss Letter From Elba while I’m away.
…So a couple of weeks ago, TBF was visiting me in Chicago.
On a Saturday.
A rare occurence.
Rare because, most of the time, I am at his house on the weekends. Early in our relationship, we had vowed to split the commuting duties, but you see, he has this dog, Bailey, and she’s a good dog and she’s old and …well, you know.
Dog lovers will need no explanation. TBF hates to throw her in the kennel every other weekend and I have to agree.
Anyhow, as Fate would have it, he was here in Chicago and I wanted to make the most of it before we both drove back to his house in the western suburbs.
A brainstorm hit me.
“You know where we have to go today?” I asked.
“Mr. Beef!”
TBF, being from Pittsburgh and all, is a little challenged in his knowledge of Italian Beef. He likes Portillo’s version well enough but here he was at the nexus of great “Mom and Pop” Italian beef stands.
This was his golden opportunity.
He agreed but as we walked to his car, he was having second thoughts.
“It’s getting kind of late for lunch, isn’t it? (It was around three o’clock.) “If we eat now, won’t that mess up dinner?”
My taste buds were all primed and ready for Mr. Beef and by now, I was starving. I was really disappointed but I saw his point.
“You’re right,” I reluctantly agreed. “And it’s probably better if we get this show on the road. Traffic will be awful by now.”
And sadly, I was right, Traffic sucked.
Jackson was closed down due to some summer fest/event thing and so we had to inch our was at a snail’s pace to the Dan Ryan.
But as we started to get on the entrance ramp, TBF could see that the cars were at a complete standstill.
So he made an executive decision and pulled a hard right- and bye bye highway.
And after a few turns, hello Taylor Street!
Two minutes later, I saw it.
“Stop!” I cried. “Look there’s Al’s Number One! We’ve just got to eat there now. It’s fate.”
So he parked and we dashed in. Three o’clock on a Saturday is not prime time so I waltzed right up to the counter and placed my order.
“One beef, dipped, hot and sweet, one order of fries and a large Diet Pepsi, please. And can you cut the sandwich in half please?”
They complied.
It wasn’t Mr. Beef but it was great. The giardiniera was a little different- it had a slight hint of “red sauce” in it. And the fries rocked.
CAUTION: The author only endorses the original Al’s on Taylor Street. She has been mightily let down at other Al’s outposts so if you want to try this yummy sandwich, get yourself to Taylor Street. They have a parking lot so it’s pretty easy and the great Italian ice stand, Mario’s, across the street makes for a perfect finish.
By now, we were both ravenous. But even though the beef was generous and the fries were a hefty portion, TBF and I gobbled down our half sandwiches with ease.
“Want to get another one?” I asked hopefully.
“Nope. I’ve heard Johnnie’s in Elmwood Park makes a pretty good sandwich. Let’s go there and order another one. Okay?” TBF suggested.
“Okay!”
So we headed down North Avenue and faster than you could say, “Mama Mia!” there we were at Johnnie’s.
I stepped up to the counter and placed the same order- without the fries, though. (I had taken special notice of them as we eyed the diners eating at the picnic tables outside. They didn’t look like anything special.)
Round Two Review: Johnnie’s is very close to Portillo’s in feel and look. Better quality of beef but the exact same jarred giardiniera- and way too much of it. My mouth was burning. They also charged $.39 for both the hot and sweet peppers. It was pretty good but I won’t be going out of my way again any time soon.
So now we had had done our comparisons and we headed to his house.
But a funny thing happened on the way.
As we were driving down York Road in Elmhurst, I spotted a joint I’ve always wanted to try.
“OMG! There’s Hamburger Heaven!” I cried happily.
“Do you want to try it? ” TBF dared me.
“You betcha. You know I can never say no to a hamburger.”
We moseyed on up to the order window. But before I could open my mouth, TBF rang in.
“Order me a cheeseburger. I want my own.”
“A cheeseburger with just mayo, onion and pickle and your special hamburger with everything on it.”
“We only have double patties,” the girl told me helpfully. “But they’re not real big.”
Sold.
“And a root beer.”
Omg! My burger was just like a Richard’s Drive In California Twin Burger- a glorified Big Mac. It was YUMMY.
And believe it or not, there was one more course to our moveable feast that day.
