Weiner Stew and Caviar

submitted by Tina Recchi

In the early married days when our entertainment center consisted of 6 cinder blocks and 4 pieces of plywood to hold our record player and records (those round vinyl frisbees), we had many conversations where we said, "Should we pay FPL or should we buy groceries.....eenie, meenie, miney, moe."  When we were at home, we ate lots of mac and cheese, weiner stew and of course meatballs on Sunday.....EVERY Sunday you had to have sauce.  That was sacrosanct.

We did not go to the movies much...too expensive by the time we got our popcorn and Ray always had to have his box of snowcaps which cost almost as much as the movie. I would smuggle in candy to save money but Ray always had to buy the damn box of snowcaps.  He said it wasn't the same when you took the candy from your purse as when you bought it from the guy behind the counter.  He tried to explain that even if you had a Creamsicle in the freezer, the Creamsicle from the ice cream man always tasted better.

But we had a double life back then.  Those were the days when he was covering entertainment.  We went to every opening at the Diplomat and Playboy Club.  There, we would eat filet mignon, lobster, caviar and drink fine wine (at home it was Cella Lambrusco).  Afterwards, we would party with the stars...Liza Minelli, Burt Reynolds, Ben Vereen, Kenny Rogers, the Fifth Dimension, Norm Crosby, and even Wonder Woman.  Ray had a way and a wit about him and always seemed to be holding court and making people laugh.  He was not really that impressed with any of those people....they were just people like him he said...they just had different kinds of jobs.  I do not think he even would have minded letting them see our cinder block/plywood entertainment center.  We went out in limousines and were always given the best seats wherever we went.  We were the prince and princess all evening.....somewhere along I-95 on the way home we would revert back to Cinderella and the pumpkin...for another week until it was time to get dressed up and go back to the Diplomat.