What is Lost in the Great Blender’s Whirl

09-09-19

Everybody worked late today.  So dinner will be late.  Ours will be a simple dinner.  Two more or less homemade pizzas with the various add ones divided up so that nobody’s favorites get touched by someone else’s “must not be on pizza” items. For me I cannot stand green peppers.  Used to love ‘em.  But after the gall bladder departed for warm parts, by that I mean a medical incinerator, I just can’t eat them any more. Others find mushrooms anathema.  We do not ever put pineapple on pizza.

The making of the pizzas made me think about what we in America had in common and what we didn’t when I was growing up. Spreading the sauce out made me think about how we used to define ourselves and how we define ourselves now.

Making the pizza took me back to the treat it was to be getting a pizza from Penns Grove when I was a kid.  What was the place called, Tony’s?  I think so, but I am not sure.  All I remember was you had to dial AX9 and four other digits and you placed your order.  Sometime after the call one of my family members would drive to the pizzeria and back and viola, there on the table was a pizza pie.  Thin crust, tomato sauce and cheese, it was a family feast.  

I grew up with many Italian kids.  I learned words in Italian that I should never have learned.  I ate things with lots of tomato sauce and fresh farm produce. Italian Ice was a treat at the shore,  yeah...the Jersey Shore.

When you grow up somewhere you just assume the things you experience are the same things that everybody experiences.  I don’t know if pizza was a staple across America in the early 1960s, before Domino’s and Little Ceasar’s had spread their tasteless cardboard tentacles across this great land. But I know we had pizza where I lived and Italian subs.

As I would come to find out from a couple of doctors from the land of Birch Bayh, Indiana had pork tenderloin sandwiches.  Cleveland, as I discovered on weekend trip to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and one great art museum, had a special beef sandwich.  The Upper Pennisula had pasties.  Detroit had Vernors, Strohs and Coney dogs. Chicago had its own great style of hot dog.

We all kids had different television.  Detroit had the Ghoul.  Philly had Gene London, Wee Willie Webber and Sally Starr.  We had local radio that played different music.  In Philly we had Wibbage and WFIL.  In Detroit there was CKLW.  I could run through some of the clear channel stations but if you are my age you already know them.

But all that has changed.  The government’s big cave in to big media have taken regional variations in music away to a far greater extent than people want to admit. The same is true in the news business. There are few if any regional view points really. The handling of food has migrated regional foods onto the menu of chain restaurants around the country, if only on a rotating basis. At the worst you can find you local delicacy at some little store tucked away but advertised like crazy on the web.

We used to bring different voices and different experiences to the table.  But with homogenized media and the instant access to everything that the internet has provided us, we have been transformed into us and them, right and left, privileged and poor.  There is no middle group any more.  Regional voices weren’t always good, think segregation, but they brought different perspectives.  

We are much more alike than we have ever been.  But, we are much more deprived of the oxygen of local experience. I really don’t think that is a good thing.  I don’t know I am probably wrong.