Young Stomachs

By Leo Racicot

Some days, when the walk from the bus stop to home feels too long, I stop in at Tasty Dumplings for an order of their pan-friend wonders, as I did today. I like waiting at the table that looks out onto their outdoor cafe. Beyond — the infallible hydrangeas, there since I was a kid, creating a moat around Cardinal O’Connell Parkway. Further on, the wounded, old trees of Lowell, oak and sumac, leaning against the gabled, fabled Smith-Baker Center where, in the 1980s, Allen Ginsberg and his band of Beats gathered every October in celebration of Lowell native, Jack Kerouac. The leaves of the trees, waving, lazy, sunbathing in September’s sun. And further out still, he gold-plated domes of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, the cathedral-high spire of Saint Patrick’s (my childhood parish) comprising Ecumenical Plaza. I like watching this scene until my takeout order is ready. Today, I watched a couple: she, showing him how to use proper chopsticks, he, so content with his meal and the day, chewing with his mouth open, his tongue making clacking sounds of satisfaction with every bite. The two waitresses, giddy with hilarity or fatigue, clack, too, with laughter, both startled by the boldness of what they’re saying.

I like it here a lot. I like the lightsome tenderness of their Southeast Asian manners, the way they bow when they bring me my check. I bow back! I like the sunny quiet of this little corner of the city.

The place is the nearest reminder of the times Joe and I used to eat at a restaurant a couple of doors down from this one, Southeast Asian or “Southeast” as we came to call it (long gone). Lowell was just then becoming a mecca for Vietnamese fleeing their country following the 1973 U.S. military withdrawal of troops from their land. Today, Lowell boasts the second largest Southeast Asian population in the United States (Long Beach has the largest). But back in the mid-1970s, when the city’s predominant mix of Polish, French, Greek, Irish first saw Southeast Asian faces in their neighborhoods, longtime residents were wary. Joe and I at first weren’t sure of these newcomers but we were sure of their food. We’d never seen, much less eaten, plump pillows of gioza, fresh, tangy scallion pancakes, the colorful cavalcade of hot sauces (Sriracha being the most lethal) and a dish we quickly christened our favorite, Phat Prik, a dish designed to burn the mouth of the Devil himself. To make it and our mouths hotter, we’d pour hot sauce all over it. The owner, Joe, was a former US soldier stationed there during the war was so taken with that cuisine, he brought recipes home with him to the U.S. and vowed that one day, he’d open his own restaurant here. Ably assisting him was his Asian wife, “Mrs. Joe” who, sadly, seemed to be doing all the work. Joe was a typical “lord of the manor”, or so Joe and I observed. We loaded up on Tsing Ha, a beer new to our taste buds, and ate and drank and ate and drank for happy never-ending hours. Drunk as skunks, we’d then get it into our heads that we needed more food. We’d stumble our drunken way across the Aiken Street Bridge, to Tony’s over a mile away in Centralville where — and we still occasionally resurrect our amazement that we were able to do this, and do it without being hit by a car or killed by Lowell’s wild nightlife or needing to have our stomachs pumped — we’d belly up to the counter, order large cheesesteaks, fries, onion rings. And, of course, more beers to make us more drunk, and wolf down the whole greasy lot. In our inebriated state, we imagined that our jokes, our laughter, our abject silliness, put us in the spotlight. But we probably made a spectacle of ourselves. On one such escapade, we saw my French teacher, Madame Bourgeois Herlihy-Bourgeois (she’d married, divorced and gone back to her maiden name; we found that so exotic, so “not Lowell”) was swilling glass after glass of cheap, red wine while correcting the day’s homework. We felt less alone in our folly. And when our gluttony was over, we parted. Joe, groping his way towards home, me, groping my way towards mine, living testaments to the elasticity of young stomachs. Fifty-seven years on, we are still friends. We were young together and now we’re old together. Lowell is no longer the city of our childhood, its Greek coffeeshops, Celtic bars and pizzerias replaced by Southeast Asian gardens, Southeast Asian eateries, Southeast Asian water festivals. Many of the city’s canalways have been transformed into Far East canopies of hibiscus and catalpa. I sometimes imagine I’m in Saigon.

This summer was so very miserable — every day, extreme heat, a sister battling the aftermath of cancer, myself struggling to rebound from heat stroke and a pulled leg muscle. I decided to turn it into The Summer of Pad Thai and order that dish at least once a week, on such a regular basis that one of the giddy Tasty Dumplings gals told me they ran out of fresh lime.

My friend Sam schooling me on the finer points of I Ching at Southeast Asian Restaurant, 1986

Phat Prik King – keep lots of water handy

Southeast Asian Restaurant interior

Southeast Asian Restaurant exterior

Joe Antonaccio with Mrs Joe and staff

Staff at Tony’s on the Boulevard