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Health & Fitness

Mushrooms and Swimming

The Markeleville mushroom caper

Mushrooms and swimming really have nothing in common for most people, but for my oldest brother and me, they did and over the years it was referred to as the “mushroom caper.”

When we were kids, we went on many camping trips.  This one was a camping trip to Markleeville. At that time there were only three of us kids, the youngest being three. 

Dad picked out such a nice spot right near the Carson River and we set up a real good campsite.  There was even a sheltered area that we used for a “swimming hole.” Dad named it after himself when obviously, someone who had been there before, carefully laid out rocks in a nice big circle around the shallow water.

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Years later as an adult, living in South Lake Tahoe, somewhat near Markleeville, I tried to find that spot again and never could.  Things look different when you are a kid and everything looks bigger. But I returned to Markleeville over and over and never did find it again and maybe that was meant to be. It left a lasting impression in my mind from my childhood and maybe that is where it always needs to be.

One night, before Dad prepared our steak dinner, he put the mushrooms in a colander and assigned the cleaning of the mushrooms to me and the holding of the colander to my younger eight year old brother and positioned us in the water.  Minor detail, neither of us could swim. 

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Growing up in SF, none of the people in the neighborhood had swimming pools. Weather in SF did not require swimming pools like it does in our area.  So, swimming was not something you learned to do apparently until you were in high school.

On our honeymoon to Hawaii, Bill put me over his shoulder and threw me in the water.  He always tells people that I said, “This water is salty” which to him was strange that a girl from SF would not know that the water in the ocean was salty. Our family spent time at Playland at the Beach in SF and in the ocean, but we would just wait for the tide to come near our toes and then run back and forth to tempt the water. The water never got anywhere near our mouths because our parents were afraid we would drown. We never swam in the ocean before. They put the fear of God into us and we never did more than get our feet in the ocean.

I was ten years old on that trip to Markleeville but I had cleaned mushrooms many times to help with dinner at our home in SF.  Cleaning them at home in the sink, the colander did not move, and the job was pretty simple.

That day, I am not sure what happened, but the colander tipped and the mushrooms started drifting down the somewhat fast moving water.  We hollered for Dad and he told us to catch them.  But all he could think about was that the mushrooms were getting away and totally forgot that my brother and I could not swim.  We did save some of his precious mushrooms, but we lost the majority. We didn’t think about it when we were kids, but thinking back on it as adults, Dad seemed to value those damned old mushrooms more than he valued our lives.  We laugh about it now, but it was not something Dad was too happy about, losing the mushrooms, that is.

As a kid in SF, Dad’s former music teacher at Balboa High, Mr. Billecci, stopped by regularly to deliver a flat of nice hothouse mushrooms to our home. It was his hobby to grow mushrooms and they were nice and fresh and not like what was in the grocery stores. We looked forward to his visits.

Dad liked to go on some mushroom forays to pick mushrooms under manzanita bushes in the high country. Thankfully, he knew what to look for and knew how to identify the poisonous ones. The mushrooms he came home with were really uggg-ly! They certainly did not look like the pretty hothouse mushrooms but they sure tasted good in his homemade pasta sauce (the Italians call “gravy”). He made some neat drying screens which seemed to cover the kitchen counters when he cleaned the mushrooms and they awaited their fate in a big glass jar with a nice big bay leaf waiting to be stored for use in a special dish to be prepared by Chef Reno.

On one of our trips to Italy, we stopped at the EuroMercado in Milan and Dad’s eyes lit up when he saw the fresh porcini mushrooms there.  He wanted to buy some and have his cousin cook them up for us. But we were leaving Milan and would not return for almost a week so we discouraged him from buying them at that point. I surely did not want mushrooms in the trunk of the rental car where our suitcases were. I could only imagine what our things would have smelled like in the hot trunk when the mushrooms would be really ripe.  Besides, we had precious oil paintings Dad’s cousin gave us that were painted by her brother, Dad’s other cousin, who died a year prior.  He had a little studio in Portofino and sold paintings to Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and other Hollywood stars. I didn’t want the canvases to stink of mushroom before we could get them home and framed. We promised Dad that we would return to the EuroMercado when we got back to Milan on our way to the Airport before heading home.  We did go back, but unfortunately, there were no mushrooms at the market.  Dad was so disappointed, I thought he was going to cry. 

Besides, you can’t take things like that through the airport.  His cousin felt bad for him and bought him about a pound of dried porchini mushrooms which he smuggled in his carry-on case where he had his insulin.  We have all heard of people smuggling drugs but mushrooms (and not magic mushrooms) never. 

Mushrooms, as we found out that summer, do float.  The colander sank, but the mushrooms floated down the river rather quickly. I was afraid Dad would blow a fuse.

So the mushroom caper was etched in our minds and we did eventually learn how to swim when we moved away from SF to Newark, a warmer climate.  Dad put in an above the ground pool which we enjoyed for years.  We loved it. I wore my leopard print faux fur bikini from Fredrick’s of Hollywood but I didn’t like my dad disgustedly telling me I looked like a Putana. I almost wore the beach towel in the pool to cover my body when he was out in the backyard.  Italian men are tough on their daughters. Good thing I went shopping for my bikini with my mom. Dad would have had me in a wetsuit if he had his druthers. 

Speaking about swimming…I have repeated told this story that my Dad told me. Dad was a good swimmer.  He never did tell me where he learned to swim though.  In fact, in SF, where he grew up, you had to be able to swim to get your diploma.  Dad’s two best friends could not swim.  So, the three Italian boys decided on how they would handle this so they could all graduate.  A plan was put in place and executed without a hitch.

Dad got in the pool, swam, went up to the desk and told the person recording the info his name, “Reno Vicini.”  They marked him as passing.  Dad got back into line and swam again.  This time, he was “Joe Busino.”  The next time he was “Matteo Genna.” They all passed and they all graduated.  So, it goes to show you that when Italian boys are wet, no one can tell them apart. 

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