14-Mar-99

. .
.
Rosenfeld’s Bagels was pretty empty this morning. Ten years ago there was always a line out the door when I went down for bagels on a Sunday morning, but not so these days. Maybe I’m just showing up later now that we don’t have kids to get to Sunday School, or maybe the new bagel chains are really cutting into their business.

When I was a kid I used to call the bagels my dad bought for Sunday breakfast “elephant hide bagels”. The things you get nowadays are more like bulkie rolls with holes in the middle than like bagels. Get a clue, Dunkin Donuts! If I want a bulkie roll I’ll get one without a hole in it.

What I liked better than bagels when I was a kid was something called salt sticks. They had the structure of croissants, but were straight, made of bread dough, and had coarse salt on the outside. You would dab some cream cheese or butter on the end, take a bite, add more spread to the bitten end, and keep going.

I put two new tires on my hybrid bike. With a little luck I’ll be riding to work in a week or two. Meanwhile, it’s snowing tonight. This is New England, after all, and if you were to complain about snow people would just look at you and say, “it’s not even officially spring until March 21. What do you expect?” We had very little snow all winter until the very end of February, and when that happens around here everyone sort of walks around looking over their shoulder wondering when it’s going to hit us. Once we do get a six or eight inch snowfall people breathe a little easier.

That reminds me of a story of a farmer who lived in Maine right on the New Hampshire border, or so he thought. When he was 76 they resurveyed the state line and though the cow pasture was sure enough in Maine, the house, barn, and half the hayfield were in New Hampshire. “Well, praise be,” the farmer said. “At my age I don’t think I could of took another one of those Maine wintahs.”