Sunday Drive

[avgwarhawk]

Can anyone relate? For me it was Sunday drives in our 73 Buick Estate Wagon when I was knee high to a grasshopper. She could find her own way home. My four siblings sitting in the back.  TV was 3 channels.  There was no such thing as a cellphone or internet. 

 

 

 

[alsancle]

Sunday drive for us was to my grandmother's house which was about 30 miles away.   Got there for noon,  started eating around 1,   finished eating around 3, desert at 4, home at 5.

[Den41Buick]

I remember Sunday's well.  Pretty much the same MO. Dinner at 1. My family would go home after dinner. I would stay with my grandparents and often it would entail a ride in my grandparents Galaxy then LTD somewhere with something in it for me. Then they would take me home after cornflakes and bananas at around 6:00PM. 

[Machine Gun]

Sundays were days of unchanging ritual. Mom would get the spaghetti sauce going while we dressed for church. (Note: I grew up in a divided home. My mother's family from Paterson, NJ referred to the stuff you put on spaghetti as "sauce," whereas my father's family from Hoboken referred to it as "gravy." Italians from NY Metro will understand). Once the sauce was slowly simmering and we were dressed we would get into the '55 Olds (and later the '62 Olds), swing by my mother's aunts' house a few blocks away to pick them up and then go to Mass. On the way back home we would stop at the bakery for fresh bread. After dinner around 1:00 it was time for the Sunday drive.

 

Sometimes the drive was out to the country, which in those days could mean parts of Wayne, Wyckoff, or up by Wanaque. Sometimes we'd venture up the Hudson along 9W. Sussex County, where I currently live, would have been considered the frontier and we never traveled that far into northwest NJ. One of my favorite ways to ride when I was small enough was to lay on the rear package tray and look up through the rear windshield. Many of those drives ended with a visit to one of my other aunts and uncles, of which there were legion. A favorite occasional stop was my Uncle Louie's and Aunt Lucy's place. He owned a monument company and was the only one in the family who could afford a color TV set. Those Sunday evenings were special because we would watch Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, in color! Dad was in charge of properly adjusting the color and hue controls because he was a TV repairman.

 

Saturdays had their own rituals. In the morning I'd accompany my dad on his TV repair calls. At the time he was assistant service manager at the DuMont factory service center and he'd do moonlight TV repair on non-DuMont sets. Right after lunch we'd hop in his car and make the half-hour drive to Jersey City to visit his sister and my cousins. We'd always get home in time for dinner. Happy times, when entire families lived within a short drive from each other and didn't have to hop a plane to make visits.

[dei]

13 hours ago, avgwarhawk said:

Can anyone relate? For me it was Sunday drives in our 73 Buick Estate Wagon when I was knee high to a grasshopper. She could find her own way home. My four siblings sitting in the back.  TV was 3 channels.  There was no such thing as a cellphone or internet. 

 

 

 

 

Just Beautiful!

Thanks for sharing.

 

For me this captures my thoughts anytime I'm behind the wheel of the Overland dad bought back in 1966...

He got to drive it till loosing his license and then I was able to take him to shows which were on weekends.

 

 

 

[alsancle]

52 minutes ago, Machine Gun said:

Sundays were days of unchanging ritual. Mom would get the spaghetti sauce going while we dressed for church. (Note: I grew up in a divided home. My mother's family from Paterson, NJ referred to the stuff you put on spaghetti as "sauce," whereas my father's family from Hoboken referred to it as "gravy." Italians from NY Metro will understand). Once the sauce was slowly simmering and we were dressed we would get into the '55 Olds (and later the '62 Olds), swing by my mother's aunts' house a few blocks away to pick them up and then go to Mass. On the way back home we would stop at the bakery for fresh bread. After dinner around 1:00 it was time for the Sunday drive.

 

Sometimes the drive was out to the country, which in those days could mean parts of Wayne, Wyckoff, or up by Wanaque. Sometimes we'd venture up the Hudson along 9W. Sussex County, where I currently live, would have been considered the frontier and we never traveled that far into northwest NJ. One of my favorite ways to ride when I was small enough was to lay on the rear package tray and look up through the rear windshield. Many of those drives ended with a visit to one of my other aunts and uncles, of which there were legion. A favorite occasional stop was my Uncle Louie's and Aunt Lucy's place. He owned a monument company and was the only one in the family who could afford a color TV set. Those Sunday evenings were special because we would watch Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, in color! Dad was in charge of properly adjusting the color and hue controls because he was a TV repairman.

 

Saturdays had their own rituals. In the morning I'd accompany my dad on his TV repair calls. At the time he was assistant service manager at the DuMont factory service center and he'd do moonlight TV repair on non-DuMont sets. Right after lunch we'd hop in his car and make the half-hour drive to Jersey City to visit his sister and my cousins. We'd always get home in time for dinner. Happy times, when entire families lived within a short drive from each other and didn't have to hop a plane to make visits.

 

Sounds like a mixed marriage.  Northern Italians and Southern Italians.   Both of my grandparents were born in Northern Italy.   Interestingly enough,  we never had pasta at Sunday dinner.    The menu was always the same:

 

1.  cappelletti soup in a home made chicken broth

2.  Breaded chicken wings

3.  Chicken and Polenta,   and this is where my Grandmother's Gravy came in but it wasn't tomato based.

4.  Potatoes roasted in an open flame kerosene oven out back.

5.  A bunch of stuff I can't remember

 

As a side note,  growing up we had spaghetti one or two times a week and my mom made a very nice "sauce" (we didn't say gravy).    Sometime in my mid teens my mom went on a low fat kick and her sauce become horrible.   To this day she will not admit she changed it but I know she did.     It is a sour subject and if I bring up I'll get yelled at.

 

Entire family circa 1968.   Look Italian enough?   I'm the little dude all the way to the left.

Edited May 30, 2021 by alsancle (see edit history)

[dship]

Sundays we would either have 1pm dinner at our house or at my aunt's about 15 miles away.  We'd drive our family '56 Ford Fairlane (later a '62) if it was to my aunt's house.  She was my mom's identical twin.  My maternal Italian grandmother Lucia Coletti would start preparing tomato "sauce" around 9am...she lived with us.  She and my grandfather Loretto Coletti were born in San Donato, Italy, about 50 klicks northeast of Rome...migrated to USA shortly after the turn of the 20th century.  My dad was career Navy, so it was a real Sunday dinner treat when he was home on leave.  He was usually out to sea 9 months of the year.  Very fond memories....   

[Machine Gun]

On 5/30/2021 at 8:23 AM, alsancle said:

 

Sounds like a mixed marriage.  Northern Italians and Southern Italians.   Both of my grandparents were born in Northern Italy.   Interestingly enough,  we never had pasta at Sunday dinner.    The menu was always the same:

 

1.  cappelletti soup in a home made chicken broth

2.  Breaded chicken wings

3.  Chicken and Polenta,   and this is where my Grandmother's Gravy came in but it wasn't tomato based.

4.  Potatoes roasted in an open flame kerosene oven out back.

5.  A bunch of stuff I can't remember

 

As a side note,  growing up we had spaghetti one or two times a week and my mom made a very nice "sauce" (we didn't say gravy).    Sometime in my mid teens my mom went on a low fat kick and her sauce become horrible.   To this day she will not admit she changed it but I know she did.     It is a sour subject and if I bring up I'll get yelled at.

 

Entire family circa 1968.   Look Italian enough?   I'm the little dude all the way to the left.

Great family photo. I especially like the stink-eye the young lady on the end is giving the photographer. My mother's side of the family is from Reggio di Calabria and my father's side is from Carpino in Foggia. We made a southern variety of cubed polenta with sausage and tomato sauce baked in the oven. Everything else was pretty typical.

[alsancle]

1 hour ago, Machine Gun said:

Great family photo. I especially like the stink-eye the young lady on the end is giving the photographer. My mother's side of the family is from Reggio di Calabria and my father's side is from Carpino in Foggia. We made a southern variety of cubed polenta with sausage and tomato sauce baked in the oven. Everything else was pretty typical.

 

My two cousins on the right are lovely people and both did really well for themselves.   She was a teenager at that point so the stink eye doesn't surprise me.   I'm probably the least accomplished person in that entire photo.

 

Polenta is all about whatever you serve it with.  My grandmother's version was closer to a heavy mashed potato consistency than something you could cut up.