Smokin in Boston revisited

Lightning strikes twice!

Spencer and I were in the neighborhood of Symphony Hall and Berklee School of Music today, and once again, I smelled a fine cigar. Glanced around, and there was the red-headed woman I saw in May puffing a slim cheroot. This time, her hair was very curly, possibly a concession to the drizzly day when the natural look is the best grooming option.

Our mission was to find architectural model supplies for Spencer to use in crafting airplanes. He builds model planes 1/48th and 1/72nd scale, primarily up to 1950. We went to Dick Blick's in the Fenway and Utrecht across from Symphony Hall in search of tiny aluminum rods and thin sheets of plastic.

The area between Fenway and Mass. Ave. is one of my favorites in Boston. It's a little seedy in places, a bit upscale in others, and just teeming with creative types of all stripes. We lived near Fenway Park for a few years; used to abandon our dinner and rush to turn on the TV when we heard a cheer rise from the ballpark on summer evenings.

The place got too expensive, and when we finally bought a condo, Allston was as in-town as we could get on a shoestring. We love being a 3-minute walk from places selling everything from molly bolts to mandolin strings.

The only time we hate it is Saturday nights at 1 a.m. when we wish the college kids would either find someone to screw or go to bed alone.

Chess Pie

Spencer's sister Barbara asked me if I had her mom's recipe for Chess Pie, a rich, gooey, family favorite that was as important to the Morrow Thanksgiving as the turkey. It's nothing but butter, eggs, sugar and flavoring (including vinegar) baked in a pie shell.

Well, I've baked Candy Morrow's chess pie a dozen times and always with the same result: a sloppy mess that does not at all resemble the divine confection I had at her house. It doesn't matter how long I bake it; it never firms up.

So when I got Barbara's request, I didn't know whether to send her mom's version or my own, The Joy of Cooking's pecan pie without the nuts that includes a heretical ingredient, corn syrup. I also add the all-important vinegar. Spencer thought it would be silly to give her a recipe that doesn't work, and that I should just send mine without comment. As far as he is concerned, it's Chess Pie.

But given my love of family history, I felt obligated to preserve the authentic recipe from Barbara's mother's kitchen, so I sent it to her with the explanation that I can't make it work, and also sent my Pecan Pie Without Pecans.

And guess what?

Barbara has Candy Morrow's recipe, but it has never come out right for her either! She thought maybe she wrote it down wrong because she always ends up with a sloppy mess too, and that's why she requested the recipe in the first place.

So this year, she's making the kind with corn syrup, and I know from experience that it will be marvelous.

November in Harmony, Maine

At our little cabin, the rusty leaves are all down covering the yard and the floor of the woods.

The pointed evergreens, deep green cones reaching for the sky, dominate the landscape against the gray net of naked branches around them.

Mornings everything is frosty: cars, leaves, milkweeds. The milkweeds and cattails have exploded, sending their genetic messengers out into the world.