I Am A Time Traveler - Stepping Into A Time Warp

This morning Jay and I decided to run a few errands.  In return for his faithful service, I promised Jay we would go to Pronto’s, the Mexican restaurant down the street from our home, for Huevos Rancheros.  (He will do anything if I promise him food!)  

After a yummy breakfast, we were walking back to the car when I spotted a sign I could not believe…it said Meat Shop and Deli.   

Could it be?  Dare I hope?  I opened the door and low and behold…it was!  It was a real butcher shop.  It had fresh meat arranged without plastic wrap in long trays in a meat case.  It had machines behind the meat case…machines like a meat grinder, a butcher’s saw, knives and cleavers, a scale. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. 

While we have certainly reduced our consumption of meat products, we are not vegetarians.  So it is frustrating to go to a market and look for a specific cut of meat to told, that cut doesn’t do well in this store and we do not carry it.  I remember my mother going to the butcher’s shop to request three types of meat cut into cubes (veal, pork, beef) to be used to make one of her favorite recipes, “City Chicken.”  The meat was threaded onto thick butcher skewers (which the butcher happily provided), then breaded, browned and baked in the oven.  I remember as a young wife, seeing an unusual cut of meat and the butcher, as he wrapped the exact amount I asked for, proceeded to tell me exactly how to prepare it when I got home…and the next week he remembered to ask me how it turned out.

So to find a real butcher shop in my new neighborhood was a delight.   

South Shores Meat Shop is owned and operated by Darko Skracic, a friendly dynamic, gray-haired Croatian immigrant.  Darko said he has been in this shop since he was twelve years old.  Not only does he have fresh meat and seafood, he makes and sells his own sauerkraut and traditional sausage as well as cevapcici (a Croation style sausage).   

We left with sauerkraut, cevapcici, some freshly sliced liver, freshly baked rolls and a smoked ham hock for split pea soup.

From there we went to stop in at the Assistance League Rummage Sale.  Many women in our Park belong to this philanthropic organization and we had given them some donations for the sale.  When we turned on to 8^th street in San Pedro we experienced another time warp…here was a little piece of Americana, one block long with unique shops where people stop and talk to you. 

I found a Clock Repair store that says they could repair our wall clock from Sorrento, Italy. “Please bring it in and we will see what we can do.  If we can’t fix it, no charge to you!”  

We discovered an Italian Deli, Pirozzi's, that had imported products and the Italian pastry, Sfogliatelle, that they get shipped in frozen from New York and then they bake it fresh on site.   

 

We left with a six pack of blood orange flavored San Pelligrino sparkling water, a tube of Italian Tomato paste and....ONE sfogliatelle.

There is a tiny post office…the only volunteer post office in the United States that is staffed by Assistance League volunteers.  

Finally we reached our destination, the Assistance League’s Sale.  As I browsed around talking to some of our new neighbors who were working there, Jay was off pursuing his own objectives.  I found him out front talking to man about a horse…no...about an old set of golf clubs.  Now that we have a 9 hole golf course just outside our door we are thinking of trying the game.  Not knowing if we will take to it, we do not want to invest heavily in equipment.  

So the guy says…”Make me an offer.”  

Jay says, “I’ll give you a dollar and a half.”   

The guy says, “Make that 5 and it is yours.”   

Jay says, “I’ll take it!”

On the way home, we remarked “What a great day!”  We could have been in Kent, Ohio or Macomb, Illinois.  We could have been 10 or 17 years old.  For those few hours we experienced a time warp!  No wonder we feel younger in our new home!