My
dad lived part-time in Sag Harbor and made the drive from the city
every weekend in every type of weather. I would visit him and my
stepmother every summer, and we’d stay put for the weekend, usually
poolside. My dad and I would swim back and forth and read books and
nap. He would do his Sunday puzzle and I would nudge him for clues; I
would read books he gave me and he would nudge me about which part I
was up to. Because to me, my dad was part Phillip Roth and part John
Updike, I read Phillip Roth and John Updike. Because we both loved to
punctuate the headier reading with murder mysteries, he would toss me
his copies of Lee Child or Lawrence Block, and I would gobble them up
like candy. I still have the water swollen copy of Annie Proulx’s Shipping
News that he accidentally tossed into the water in order to save
me from a hovering bee, and I remember how he had said he envied my
getting to read it for the first time.
But what would any return home to the family be without the requisite favorite foods? Besides the inevitable Saturday night Maine lobster dinner, the most memorable part of the summer food wise, in addition to the musk melons and the corn and potatoes and other fresh fare at the roadside markets, were the little blue and white checkered bags of chocolate chip cookies that one could find only at Kathleen’s Bakeshop.
My
dad lived part-time in Sag Harbor and made the drive from the city
every weekend in every type of weather. I would visit him and my
stepmother every summer, and we’d stay put for the weekend, usually
poolside. My dad and I would swim back and forth and read books and
nap. He would do his Sunday puzzle and I would nudge him for clues; I
would read books he gave me and he would nudge me about which part I
was up to. Because to me, my dad was part Phillip Roth and part John
Updike, I read Phillip Roth and John Updike. Because we both loved to
punctuate the headier reading with murder mysteries, he would toss me
his copies of Lee Child or Lawrence Block, and I would gobble them up
like candy. I still have the water swollen copy of Annie Proulx’s Shipping
News that he accidentally tossed into the water in order to save
me from a hovering bee, and I remember how he had said he envied my
getting to read it for the first time.
But
what would any return home to the family be without the requisite
favorite foods? Besides the inevitable Saturday night Maine lobster
dinner, the most memorable part of the summer food wise, in addition to
the musk melons and the corn and potatoes and other fresh fare at the
roadside markets, were the little blue and white checkered bags of
chocolate chip cookies that one could find only at Kathleen’s Bakeshop.
Admittedly, this was not the first time a local food put its delicious
stamp on my summer. There were Friendly’s Fribbles, the first
triple-thick chocolate milkshakes I ever had, and Freihofer’s small,
chewy chocolate chip cookies in the white box with the red label, both
the delicacies of summers spent at camps in Massachusetts and the
Adirondacks.
Kathleen’s, these flat, crisp, salty, chocolatey cookies, in the tradition of summer snacks past, soon became an essential part of my summer-visit routine. Unfortunately, these cookies were Hamptons, and sometimes NYC, exclusive, though I think I found them once in a boutique snack shop near the Hampton Jitney stop on the East Side, and maybe I found them once at Zabars. Therefore, each year, I would stash bags of Kathleen’s 15 or so cookies, stacked in two separate cellophane and plastic trays, into my suitcase so I could enjoy a part of Sag Harbor once back home in L.A. I am not one to eat a pint of ice cream or a bag of cookies all by my lonesome, but Kathleen’s rare, perfect, salty-sweet chocolate chip cookies were impossible to stop eating once you got started. That is was impossible to rewrap them made the logic of eating all of them at once (well at least one tray’s worth) easy to swallow, so to speak.
Just when I got used to this little splurge of mine, one summer Kathleen’s cookies just disappeared. Apparently, Kathleen King had lost the rights
to use her own name on her bakeshop and poof went the cookies. Then two
years ago my dad passed away as did my summers in Sag Harbor.
It’s funny how just when you think memories are solidly encased in an immutable past, something happens to remind you that memory is a living, self-defining power, and what better than a familiar food to trigger this capacity. Recently, I was shopping at my local Gelson’s, and right in front of me in the cookie aisle, there they were, 7-ounce, light green bags of Tate’s all natural chocolate chip cookies. I had heard over the years that Kathleen had renamed her brand. One20bite and there I was again in Sag Harbor, the sun on my face, my dad tapping his tooth with his pen, working the puzzle. Just delicious.
Pamela Felcher is the English Department Chair at Hamilton High School's Music and Arts Magnet.