Play Verbal TEGWAR.
Three dark figures phantomed down the back stairs and stumbled into the metallic-blue Datsun. The engine kicked over and trilled with Japanese precision, gears fell into place and the fourwheeler launched into the night. Destination: Buffalo. Objective: food.
I was at the helm, with Jay minding the deathseat and Mitch tempting sleep in the back. We were about two hundred miles from from our first stop: Wade's Diner, Oswego, New York. At Wade's they serve only one meal--breakfast--and they make it better than anyone else in the universe. The pot of coffee they leave on your table is fresh and hot, the homemade cinnamon-raisin toast is exquisite, the home fries are coated with stardust, and their omelettes sing. Driving through the 3am blackness, my mouth watering, I had visions of Zeus in a ham and cheese chariot chasing Nike (the goddess, not the running shoe) through the white-freckled firmament.
I wanted to see if they were awake:
"Did I tell you about my new invention for a seven-minute pregnancy?"
"What?" said Jay.
"Gzz...?" Said Mitch.
"The microwave ovum."
"Scum," said Jay.
"Death," said Mitch.
They were awake.
We amused ourselves along the way by playing a game called Word Association Football or Verbal TEGWAR.
"Omelettes," I began.
"Home fries," replied Mitch.
"Bacon," added Jay.
"Shakespeare."
"Quiver."
"'Twist and Shout.'"
"Cries and Whispers."
"Cryogenics."
"Walt Disney."
"The Sorceror's Apprentice."
"Flying saucers."
"Frying pizzas."
"Calzones."
"Ozone."
"The red zone."
"The Twilight Zone."
"Lightning rod."
"Spare the rod."
"Spoil the milk."
"'I'm way ahead of you, sister.'"
"Edith Head."
"Eraserhead."
"'It's one of those new man-made chickens.'"
"Chicken lips."
"Chicken wings."
Our true destination was Frank and Teresa's Anchor Bar on Main Street, Buffalo, where chicken wings were invented in 1963. Of the three of us making the trip, I was the only one who had yet to taste wings. Jay, a veteran wing eater, had worked his way from mild to extra hot in the four years he attended the State University of New York at Buffalo; Mitch had sampled them on a visit to the city.
I was supposed to have tried Buffalo wings myself about a week before our journey. A mutual friend told us he was planning an excursion to Buffalo for noncomestible reasons and offered to bring us wings from the Anchor Bar upon his return the next evening. Jay and I were getting off work at the phone company at 1:45am that night, and Mitch discovered that The Importance of Being Earnest was going to be on television at 2. Well, three ugly Jews tramped into Jay's house at 1:50am. No wings. A short, frantic search turned up a neatly handwritten note from our alleged wingbearer, who shall remain a nameless cretin, which said that at the last minute he had had to cancel his trip. Our only consolation was that we could settle down to a classic film on the tube.
At two o'clock, we switched on the set. The image fuzzed into being, the WPIX Channel 11 logo, followed by the lead-n to the late movie. Suddenly, a huge flag washed across the screen, Old Glory herself, accompanied by some decidedly American military music. The title of the film appeared over the flag: The Wild Blue Yonder (the True Story of the B-17 Bomber), starring Forrest Tucker. Mitch leaped to the set and started changing channels. Jay manned the TV Guide. I got the phone number from directory assistance and called WPIX. I was greeted by a recording thanking me for my interest in WPIX and regretting the fact that the studios were closed for the night. The TV Guide maintained that The Importance of Being Earnest was on channel 11 at 2. Mitch switched back to channel 11 in time to hear a high-ranking officer tell a lower-ranking officer, "There's only one lady on this base, Captain, and she's the B-17!"
Wingless, and invincibly depressed, we set out in search of food. The only place open besides the local, toxic Gager's Diner was the Howard Johnson's ten miles away in Liberty.
We sat over our Fudganas and discussed clever ways of dismembering faithless messengers when we were subjected to divine intervention: a visitation from the Lord God himself. His passage into the restaurant was about as subtle as a train derailment. A huge, bovine thing He was, with pitch-black, oily hair done up in an Elvis pompadour over a massive, sloping forehead that looked like a relief map of the Sahara. A thick cigar grew from purple lips at an obscure angle just below the mirrored shades. His yellow cashmere cardigan was unbuttoned down to his crotch, exposing groomed chest hair and a thick gold chain. His trousers were day-glo yellow with a houndstooth design.
He belch-growled His way past us an melted into a corner booth with His dining companion. Whether or not He noticed three ugly Jews convulsed and giggling nearby I don't know, but when after several minutes no waitress had volunteered her services, He bellowed, "Hey, can we get some men-youse?!" the noise reverberating through the restaurant for some time.
The three ugly Jews held a short discussion, and decided that the only way this being could possibly justify His existence on the planet was that either
(a) He owned the state of Missouri (unlikely)
or
(b) He was God.
We imagined Him decked out in the same outfit, but with the addition of gossamer wings and a harp, shouting to Saint Peter, "Hey, can we get some hay-loes?!"
And, as we sat there in His divine presence, we knew that we would have to go to Buffalo.
Jay had taken over the driving, and I took a short nap. I opened my eyes to a yawning sun on a distant horizon. Mist softened the landscape of mountain greens and dirt browns. I closed my eyelids again and opened them to the Syracuse skyline.
"Dawn," I mumbled.
Pause. To build dramatic tension. I looked to Jay for a reaction. His head was cocked at an important angle, eyes aglow, a smile growing. Suddenly his right index finger rose from the steering wheel and he spoke, with the subtlety of a Delsarte heroine:
"Morning broke...over Syracuse...like an egg."
"My god!" cried Mitch from the back.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Vivian Vance is dead!" he shrilled.
"Wait," gasped Jay, "So is Rimbaud!"
"It must have been a suicide pact," I decided.
"I knew it," said Mitch.
And we were 45 miles from Wade's.
Something was seriously wrong. When we turned the corner of Bridge and Ninth Streets, there was no line of anxious diners, no lack of parking space. It was too dark inside; I couldn't see anyone in there at all. Granted, it was only 5:49am, they didn't open for another11 minutes, but shouldn't there at least be someone inside prepping the home fries? Keep still, I thought, don't panic.
Mitch an Jay were standing over by the curb, amused by a fire hydrant that had a pictograph on a post behind it to explain what it was. The pictograph was a little drawing of a fire hydrant. I walked up to the front door of Wade's Diner and peered inside. Dark. Empty. The grill seemed cold and lonely behind the counter, the shiny coffeemaker squatted eternally like a forgotten idol, and the cash register sat bewildered next to the cigarette machine in the pale morning glow. Then I saw the sign, hand-scrawled and tacked to the wall:
WE WILL BE CLOSED
FOR VACATION MONDAY
AND TUESDAY
THE MGT
I lumbered over to Bridge Street and lay myself down in the middle of the road.
We left Oswego in silence, with Mitch at the wheel, Jay in back and me in the navigator's position. The road stretched long before us, bright sunshine mocking our disappointment. Silence continued, punctuated by occasional fits of yawning. We were about twenty miles shy of Rochester when thick, grey smoke began to escape from under the hood. Mitch steered the car to the side of the road and shut off the engine. He pulled on the release and the hood popped up, sending a dismal grey smoke signal into the blue morning sky.
Mitch and I got out to investigate while Jay snored contentedly in the backseat.
"It's on fire," I diagnosed, pointing at the air conditioner.
"Is it? I can't see anything through all this smoke and flame."
"We'd better put it out."
"The three ugly jews are nothing if not resourceful."
"Have you got a water bottle?"
"In the trunk."
"Let's stop at this gas station,": said Mitch. "Maybe they can look at the air conditioner."
Jay sat up and yawned. "What's wrong with the air conditioner?"
"It thought it was a Buddhist monk," I replied.
While Jay pumped the gas, Mitch and I watched the mechanic cut the belt leading to the air conditioner. Mitch stared mournfully at the blackened, useless mass. The gas pump clicked off at $19.80. I looked at Jay and said, "Excuse me, Jay, but this is nineteen-eighty-one."
"Oh, of course," he said, and ran another pennysworth of gas into the Datsun. A cornfed attendant wandered out to collect for the filling. He looked at the reading on the pump, then chuckled and said, "Huh. Nineteen-eighty-one. That's funny, hah, this is nineteen-eighty-one." He was really quite amused.
"If he thinks that's funny, " said Jay, "wait 'til he finds out we're driving 700 miles to eat chicken wings."
"Are you kidding?" the attendant queried through acned features. "Who are you guys, anyway?"
"We're traveling around the country spreading good cheer," said Jay.
"Really?"
Verbal TEGWAR saw us safely through Rochester and up to a cluster of villages that share in their names the word "Chili" and the pronunciation "chaye-lye." One Chili would be bad enough, but there's a plague of them between Rochester and the New York State Thruway interchange at LeRoy. There's Chihi, Chili Center, North Chili, East Chili, New Southwest Chili and Uncle Chili. We considered stopping at a diner and ordering a bowl of chaye-lye, but we were anxious to complete our journey.
The midday sun shone shimmering off the windshields and hoods of passing cars as the Datsun made its way down Main Street, the three of us inside sweltering from the heat and anticipation. Only one lane of traffic wass open, due to subway construction, and the car hobbled laboriously over the wooden planks and steel plates that made up most of Main Street. Through the haze, I saw in the distance a turquoise coat-of-arms with an anchor inside. Little sunbeam sapphires glinted off the sign and for a moment I thought I could see the ghost-image of a grail. I turned to Jay, once again the driver, to see if he'd noticed as well. His hands were shaking on the steering wheel, his face pale, his eyes wide open. Mitch was likewise affected from his post in the back, though his face was flushed beet red, as if he and Jay were connected by an umbilical cord and Jay's blood had suddenly fled to safety in Mitch's face.
"The Anchor Bar," said the three ugly Jews.
A man rode past us on a bicycle, and as he glided by my window, I said to him matter-of-factly, "We're going to eat chicken wings." I turned to watch him cycle away, and saw his right hand, a mobile Tiberius, the thumb up in approval.
We parked under a huge painting of a link chain, and slowly, with the solemnity of a Michelangelo cartoon, we removed ourselves from the car and entered the Anchor Bar.
Jay an Mitch, who were busy redefining Nirvana, looked to me for my first impression, but all I gave them was a bland, skeptical smirk. Why not? Any exuberance on my part at the time would have been false, like applause at the beginning of a play, before the players have proven themselves.
We were seated at a table near the kitchen, and the standard Italian restaurant aroma of olive oil and oregano now seemed to be propped up by a supporting scent of Tabasco. The waitress offered us menus, which Jay and Mitch politely refused. I thought I was courageous in selecting the medium wings over the mild, until they both ordered extra-hot.
While the wings were being prepared, we tossed around ideas for Anchor Bar tee-shirts that we would market through our 3UJ advertising agency. We settled on a design that featured a huge, ornate anchor with the simple legend underneath, "The Wings of Man." We would sell these along with our other fabulous products: Stop-Sine, sinus spray in a red, octagonal container; Oxy-Moron acne cream ("96% benzoyl-peroxide, so strong you'd have to be a moron to use it"); and our own brand of designer jeans with one pocket across the seat, called Elton John Henry James Joyce Leslie Gore Vidal Sassoon Jeans. Every few minutes, Mitch or Jay would start to swoon as a steaming tray of wings was delivered to a nearby table.
Then came our turn.
A large oval plate was laid down before me. There were a few stalks of celery, a dish of blue cheese dressing, and twenty steaming red-orange chicken wings. I looked up. Mitch held a wing between thumb and forefinger as a conductor might hold his baton at the beginning of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand. Jay examined the surface of his wing as if it were the topography of some distant world. Suddenly, as if on cue, they both sank their incisors into the meat. I stared on in horror as they worked their wings down to polished bone. I lifted a wing from my plate, feeling the weight in my fingertips, the heat in my nostrils, and I took a bite.
Chickens on Polaris, the music of Satie, a trip to Buffalo for gossamer wings! I chewed the gobbet of chicken slowly to feel the rush of flavor and the insistent twang of cayenne, steam still hissing off the wing as from a punctured aura. I was baring my teeth to take another bite when my ego tapped me on the shoulder and told me that my mouth was on fire. He advised immediate action: "The celery, idiot, the celery!" I dipped a stalk into the blue cheese dressing and soothed my tongue with it. Then I ate another wing. And another. As I descended upon wing after wing, I was drawn into the torrid maelstrom where Mitch and Jay whirled with delight. Under their tutelage, I learned to pause between each wing, to savor anew that succulent sensation on my palate. During one such pause, Jay scolded me for leaving so much meat on the bones. Jay's looked as if they had been sandblasted. Mitch offered me an extra-hot wing, which incinerated my mouth with the sweetest napalm ever devised.
We spent the afternoon sprawled out on the Three Sisters Islands at Niagara Falls, digesting our food and trying to recapture lost sleep. Niagara fell with grace, and the threee ugly Jews returned to the Anchor Bar for dinner. When we left, we bought 14 double-orders to take home. Then a quick stop in Depew, just outside of Buffalo, at Antoinette's, which is to the ice cream sundae what Wade's is to the ham and cheese omelette, and we were on our way.
Play Verbal TEGWAR.
Go back to my home page.
To get what is alleged to be the original Anchor Bar chicken wing recipe, click here.
Eat every day.
© 1984 David Cohen "The Three Ugly Jews go to Buffalo" first appeared in The Uncommon Reader Spring, 1987.
