The Pawtuxet General™

The Pawtuxet General | Episode 1

October 29, 2021 Jess Watts Season 1 Episode 1
The Pawtuxet General™
The Pawtuxet General | Episode 1
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to our first episode!  We hope you enjoy it!  We will talk about poetry, food, drinks, and ghosts.

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Electromagnetic Pinball Museum
Pinball restoration and preservation museum arcade, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

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The Pawtuxet General, episode one. A "Something for Posterity Production." Greetings from Pawtuxet Village, Rhode Island. Welcome in! You are right on time to catch local hints, tips, recipes, and general wackiness all things Pawtuxet-ish. I am your guide, Jess. I've lived and worked here, most of my life. So, sit back and let's chat for a bit. Pawtuxet General style. If you'd like to reach out with questions or have an amusing Pawtuxet village story, please tell us. Send us an email to Jess@pawtuxetgeneral.com . We may read them on the air, especially ghost stories. We LOVE local ghost stories. From time to time, will be having guests who share their own tales or to give juicy insider info that you're looking for. In our first episode... I'd like to start with a very small poem. So, here we are. Wet the rain is outside falling pipe plays near me. This week has been very blustery in our little burg. The Pawtuxet River roars, down into the cove. The power of it can catch your breath on the bridge. I'd like to share a recipe with you, one of my most popular vegan soups. I know, right? A meat eater, like me, starting out with a vegan soup. Check out how this came about. This is a soup I call roots and shoots. Years ago, while working as a chef at Little Falls Bakery and Café, owned by the St Germain / Donnelly family, I was pressed to come up with two daily soups, one meat and one vegetable. one weekend, I was brainstorming over new ideas while watching PBS Cook shows on a Sunday morning. I was watching the new Scandinavian cooking. I was intrigued by their use of dill and fennel in a soup. I got to thinking the best flavor to add to a delicate soup is celery. So how about celery? Right now, I've got some things. So how about add an onion, garlic and a sweet carrot veggie broth? That is some wild pairing, so I went into work the next week. Armed with a celeriac pack of fennel, some dill, and a plan. First, I cut up the carrot and let them simmer with a covering of water. Then, I gently saute the onion, garlic, and fennel in a deep pan, like, peeled and cubed the Celeriac. Now at home, I would use a cup of white wine, vodka or aquavit to de glaze it, a bit, and then pour the carrot stock in over the celery, and simmer until the celeriac is tender and then add an entire bunch of dill, chopped. Finally, turn off your pot and serve with fennel fronds on top to decorate. This is so flavorful, so bright, that it can be serve as a vehicle for poaching fish, quahogs or as a bright little starter. I have always gotten rave reviews. This week's special drink is a Rhode Island martini. It's a vodka martini made with Rhodium Vodka. I keep a mixer, with ice, in the freezer, so that chilling the vodka is quick. Then, break open one whole pepperoncini and let the juice and seeds fall into the vodka-filled mixer. Put an opened pepperoncini onto a chilled glass, swish, gently. Careful not to "bruise the booze" and pour into the glass. And this, of course, is to be served with pizza strips, fried calamari or clogs on the half shell. Hey, I'd like to talk to you today about my friends, over at Electromagnetic Pinball Museum and Restoration. Now, these guys have been around Pawtuxet village for a long time, and now they've moved to Pawtucket and have expanded and it's, just, the most incredible thing you would ever see. So ,what they are, are a pinball museum, so, they've got machines from 1958 right up until the current 2021 machines. I mean, I went there and they actually had a Skee-Ball. I mean, like five Skee-Ball machines, it's incredible. Every pinball machine that you can think of. They've got it, including Star Trek machines, the Addams Family machine. And we will be going there at some point soon. And so we can talk all about it. But, I wanted you to know exactly what they have going on.

Open from 10:

00 a.m.

to 9:

00 p.m., seven days a week and $10 and you play all day, all machines! They've got over 70 machines! OK? Not to mention, a huge collectible shop. Table-games, actually. Get your holiday gift ideas. Everything that everything that you want for your game-playing family member. They are expanding into restoration. So, if you have pinball games and you'd like you'd love to have them restored. You should give them a call, and they can really help you out. You can find directions online. They're on Main Street in Pawtucket. Try it. You won't be sorry. So, to start the Ghost-Stories section off with a bang, I thought I would start with one of my own. As most of you know, I grew up in this neighborhood and in a house that was quite haunted at the time, the eighties were an exciting time in Pawtuxet Village and my street was no different. Large Victorians all looming on the side of the road, like teeth, ready to clamp on you, as you drove. It was a fast road; its width gave the illusion of safety but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Many, many times I would hear the screech and smash of tires and glass, outside our house. It got so I would just wince and wait for it. I suppose the crossroads encouraged danger or lost souls, perhaps. My family moved into this house when I started kindergarten. We were all excited to move into a big house from an apartment. My sister and I would share a bedroom on the second floor of the kitchen. We were thrilled! So much space and our parents got it cheap! We brought running and singing and loud music back into the place. At that time, our parents rented out the first-floor and had a few close family friends, living on the third floor, because of the new setup. Dad had moved the door on the second-floor kitchen, to block the stairs, instead. Deadbolts were placed on the first floor doors and the second-floor stairwell, so that no one could walk past the second floor, without a key. My mother liked having heavy Christmas bells on our side of the second-floor door, so that she could hear people come in, if she was on the other side of the house. My bedroom, with my sister, was on a diagonal, across the kitchen from the back door. But being on the stair, I could not see it from my vantage. My first memory of something might be strange happened while my friends, J and B were living upstairs and we had all been running in and out of the house, intermittently, playing "red-light / green-light," with our father's VW bug, outside. Every time we ran up, we would hear the bells slam against the door, very hard, when we came in or out. We went in and out, many times, throughout the day, so, when I hear three very loud knocks, while I was coming into the kitchen, but no bells... I yell, out of free, teen bravado, "J, how did you get the bells to be quiet? We'll get in trouble if you break the door!" as I flung open the door to see... Nothing... Hear nothing... No little kid's feet, running down the stairs... No J, making a face at me, pulling a trick... Most of all, I just wanted my reality back, so, I pushed it out of my mind until later that night. J and B were off with their parents, my parents were reading, after dinner, in their room, with the door open to the living room, where my sister and I were laying, on our stomachs, watching TV, sharing popcorn. But, all of the sudden we hear three loud knocks on the second-floor, back-door, my sister and I looked at each other, in disbelief. This is not possible! The downstairs people were away. Our upstairs friends hadn't come home, yet. The house was locked up. Dad had checked it, as always, before settling down to read. We got up and went into the kitchen and said, "Come in!" No sound. And then, three loud knocks that SHOOK the kitchen. At this point, my sister and I didn't know what to do. It took what seemed an eternity for us to loosen our feet from that spot, and then the spell broke and we started to scream and run and we ran back to our parents and we told them, there's something at the door, there's something at the door. You have to help us. There's something at the door. My parents went out there. They opened the door... Nothing was there. This happened many, many times while I lived at that house. My father told me, Never say, "Come in." Always ask, "Who is it?" That always made me laugh when I was little but as an adult, it chills me. This is only the first installment of "The House on the Corner." Many, many things happened there. Thank you so much for joining me. Please, join us next time, at the Pawtuxet General and we'll talk again soon. Prerecorded in Pawtuxet .