MemoryShed

I came across a brief mention of Lily Popcorn, a company started in 1946 that produced the original movie-house popcorn, and I got all excited because Lily Popcorn is local! Oh, well, no, not local now, in my current foodshed, but local when I was growing up in Mineola, NY. So, um, local in my, uh, memoryshed! Yes, my memoryshed!

And so, today, I coin this new word, to mean all the things that are or were local in all the places that you've ever lived or traveled. And I invite you to sit back and close your eyes a moment and go there, to one or more of these places from your past. And smell, feel, taste what it was like, that local delicacy. The way the nice lady at the corner bakery put those butter cookies in that box and then the "string machine" wrapped candy-striped red-and-white string around it, sealing it securely so there was no chance you could sneak a few sitting in the back seat of the car on the way to some family party over the bridge with your parents. Or the dozens of flavors of Italian ice from the Lemon Ice King of Corona, including your favorite, watermelon, even though it had pits, that you got to eat from that little white paper dental cup as you watched the old men play bocce ball.

Or the Lily Popcorn Factory that we passed on the way home from school, rubber bands holding up my required grey knee socks, my books covered in recycled brown paper grocery bags from the A & P. We'd knock on the factory's back door, where the nice ladies worked, and they would give us little bags of still-warm popcorn. We'd walk and sing, crossing the tracks, passing O'Daughterty's Bar on the corner where unfortunately we always knew someone coming or going. We'd pass the deli and the barber shop with that tell-tale relic of a striped barber shop pole outside that you never see anymore, while eating our buttery yellow popcorn the whole way, eventually peeling off, little by little as we each turned down our respective blocks to our blue-gravel-driveway houses. There were no parents around, no carpools, no afterschool activities that start in ten minutes, hurry up or you'll be late, and very little homework. Just a long, lazy afternoon and a bag of still-warm popcorn.

What's in your memoryshed?

MemoryShed