Great hotdogs, birthdays and dinner out

Oh how Mom and Dad would have been proud of their baby girl daughter. Mom would have been one hundred and six today, it is her birthday and Dad would be one hundred and twenty in November. Dad use to write columns himself and he wrote letters to the editor of the Morning Sunpapers at least once a week. He would comment on current events and they would publish each and every letter that he handwrote to them each week. They tried to get him to buy a typewriter. He could not afford one in those days of nineteen hundred and forty-eight to nineteen hundred and sixty when he passed on. He would sit there in the late evening at the kitchen table and handwrite the letter to the editor with his trusty Schaeffer ink pen (no ballpoint pens in those early years had been invented then) and he would fill the pen bottom up with ink from a black ink bottle. Then he would neatly stamp his business size envelope and walk it to the mailbox which was about two blocks away. Then about two days later, he would look for it under Letters to the Editor and there it always was on the letter page. He would call Mom and say “Lea, they published it.” He was so proud and he would cut it out of the paper in order for him to tuck it away in a scrapbook for further insertion. When he passed on, the Sun called us and asked for some information on his life, so they could publish a nice obituary about him. My brother Herbert gave them the information on how he had come to this country with his folks and siblings when he was seven from Russia, legally.. One day, he received a letter from the then editor H.L. Mencken. He typed it and it said " Mr. Sohmer, we no longer will accept hand written letters. This causes erros. " Note the erros was meant to be errors. So he mistyped a letter talking about errors. Interesting. I still have the original letter. He kept on hand writing his weekly letters and they accepted them. They said he had three grandchildren at that time and he was just seventy-two and how they always published his letters and that he was quite prolific. He would have been so proud to see what they wrote. He always said “as long as they spell our name right, everything is OK.” Yes, Dad they spelled our name right. He wrote by hand too, his other column called Comments and Opinions by JOSEPH B. Sohmer. It is said that “one small thought in the morning can change your whole day.” Of course, it is better if the one small thought is a happy thought and not a sad or depressing thought. It is also “a day to refill your soul and to be grateful for your blessings.” Do you do that when you awaken? Do you think “I wonder if something great will happen to me today?” If you do, then you probably are in the minority. Most people have to get ready for their work day and they may think that they hope it will be a nice day or perhaps something wonderful will occur. If they are at work, then perhaps a pleasant remark from their boss or a nice compliment from a client and then they look forward to their homecoming with their family. Perhaps, the wife will cook a delicious dinner; the children will run to their daddy, glad to see he is home. If you are a female, you may look forward to maybe the husband who came home earlier will have started dinner and the kids are happy Mom is home now too. If you are single, then perhaps you look forward to having dinner with your lady friends or perhaps you have a date. So five o’clock looks delightful if your closing day is then, some are earlier because they start the day earlier and others may be on a later closing time because they came in later. There is not much time from coming home until it is bath time and sleep time. You seem to have little time for yourself during the five day work week and then the weekends become your delightful two days off. If you have a job where you work the weekends, then maybe you have two days off in the middle of the week and they become your delightful two days off. Whatever days they are, they are yours and they are treasured hours and often they seem too short and they certainly go fast. When we were first married in 1960, my husband only had every other Sunday off and he worked every Saturday. I would take the children out for a nice Saturday and on Sunday; we would eat out as a family, usually in a delly restaurant. That was where we could hardly wait to eat a nice and huge Kosher hotdog, all beef, greasy and delicious smothered with French Fries, salted and huge. Sometimes we ordered chicken noodle soup first and a huge stack of onion rings. When we look back, they say now cut back on the salt on the fires, hot dogs have preservatives and nitrates in them and they aren’t the best selection for good health. However, if you have that dinner not frequently, what the heck? You have to have some fun sometimes. Some days, we did not get the homemade soup and we dared to eat two hotdogs. We would slather it with mustard and some put Ketchup on the fries. It sure was a good dinner and almost everyone in the restaurant ate similar food. You have to splurge once in a while and what better way than to eat a hotdog full of nitrates, preservatives and meat. Dad would often write in his other column in another writing, a local magazine and in it he wrote homelike articles. He would talk about how good his wife was in her cooking and how he enjoyed anything she made, even if it was a simple hotdog at home and a bowl of homemade soup. He seemed to like to eat home more than out and we did not dine out more than once a month, if that, in those times of my teenage years. The important thing is to go out sometimes to a restaurant and this gives you some happy times to be away from your home. No matter how lovely it is, it is beneficial to your mind and soul to get out now and then. It is better to do it now and when you come home; your gorgeous home certainly looks more beautiful than when you left. It keeps your life in perspective and dining with others is important for your well-being. It does not matter how much you spend for dinner, just the going and getting there, the reading of the menu and just plain eating out. Now we can go online to the restaurant site and we can view the menu in advance to see if we like what they serve. Whatever gives you pleasure, even if it is for a short time, the change of scenery is useful and rewarding. The other night we went to an all you can eat buffet Asian and American style restaurant for the first time. At first I was anxious if I would like it, if it too crowded, too noisy, and I not liking the selection. Well it was marvelous and would you believe me if I told you I felt ‘content’ being there. I do not know if it was because I had only recently started to go and eat out now and then since my aching right knee keeps me home. This became a huge adventure for me and we were quite satisfied and delighted with the atmosphere, the prettiness of the walls and spaces and most of all, the extra fine and favorable array of all kinds of food. We will go back this weekend too. I felt peaceful there and this is a great feeling. So thinking a good thought, small is fine, anticipating is better and getting out for a few hours and then you come home and appreciate your place even more. The short outing is a pleasant way to spend a few hours with other people, different food than you cook and most of all; it is a change of scenery. So to Mom on her one hundred and sixth birthday, I know you loved coming to my house for dinner every week and you loved going with your lady friends out to eat a buffet American style or to a Chinese restaurant. I am thinking of you today, missing you and loving you and I know you would love reading my writings and this one is for you and also to Dad who would adore my columns. You raised your baby girl well and you taught me to love my blessings and what we had. You taught me not to be envious of others; just to go out and try to attain everything I wanted. I did that and I still do that and every morning I think and hope that it will be an unbelievable day, as my email friend, Steven Behr teaches his students in Washington State that in his Wellness Classes. They are all told to have an unbelievable day, no matter what day of the week it is. So here is to these special days, restaurants and greasy hotdogs and to fries with a bit of salt on them and most of all to us, good folks doing good things and having good days. elita sohmer clayman