You might want to sit back and get comfortable. This is a tale that must be told but it cannot be rushed. It’s un-tweetable. Great stories are like that and this is no different.
Almost 32 years ago I married Lin. On our honeymoon I casually mentioned that I was beginning to believe that I was ‘unemployable’. As you might expect, her reaction was less than positive. Not exactly what a new bride wants to hear from the love of her life—especially since I was not born to money.
It’s not like I was unemployed. I was driving tractor-trailers and substitute teaching but I had these feelings to get out on my own and be my own boss.
So we (I?) decided to buy a bar. Since neither of us had any business experience, we sought guidance from a trusted friend who owned a bar also. Unfortunately his place went bankrupt about a month after he helped us buy ours. So we were on our own in the truest sense.
The movie Urban Cowboy was immensely popular at that time and even the New York City clubs went country— a dramatic shift from disco music (ugh J). We named our place A Touch of Country and sought to present the best bands and serve the best food.
The problem was that I was left in charge of everything- bartending, cleaning, ordering, bookkeeping, advertising, booking bands, minor repairs, and COOKING. Lin had recently finished her RN training and was working in a local Intensive Care Unit. I had less than no experience unless you consider the Cooking Merit Badge from the Boy Scouts. To see me run from the bar back to the kitchen, prepare some food and then run it back out to the bar was comical-- until you tried to eat the food. Overcooked burgers and undercooked chicken were my specialties.
And every night I would beg Lin to quit her job and come work with me. It took months but I was so pathetic she took pity and joined me. Lin has an impeccable gift in knowing how to make just about anything look and taste great. That was the good news. The bad news was that her only experience was cooking meals for us and maybe a few friends. Timing was not exactly considered. If you came for dinner at 6pm, all of the food might be out by Midnight. But everyone had a good time LOL.
Lin cooking was a tremendous encouragement to the regular patrons of A Touch of Country. And she set about putting a menu together. Special Burgers, Salads, Enchiladas, Burritos, Quesadillas, Nachos, Chile--- all prepared ‘from scratch’ with fresh ingredients from the Paterson Farmer’s Market.
The kitchen became her laboratory. She would bring out many different versions of each menu item until all would agree on the ‘best’. Every one of her creations stood on it’s own as her many fans can attest.
While getting together some ad copy to promote our entertainment calendar I figured that since the food had gotten so good, I should mention it. So it was that it became A Touch of Country- Country Cookin’ and Cookin’ Country Music. Why I felt the need to come up with an extra special persona for our new Chef I’m not sure. But my ‘hotter than a $2 pistol’ wife was given the professional name of Ma Jones. It was Ma Jones’ Kitchen.
As our reputation grew, it was always a hoot when someone new would ask to meet and compliment the chef. Expecting an older, more mature, grand- motherly type with white hair, carrying a few extra pounds and wearing knee high stockings, they were ALWAYS shocked when 20 something year old Ma Jones came bouncing out of the kitchen with her apron on. If the band heated up and she could escape for a moment, you would see her on the dance floor kicking up her heels to a high speed version of Rocky Top!
BUT there was a spot on the menu for something extra special even by Ma Jones’ standards. So this is how it went down.
We would be open from 4pm till 3am everyday except New Years when we didn’t close. In the early days we would only get a handful of people for Happy Hour. There was a woman who came in sporadically. She was always dressed up in business attire and we found out she was a traveling sales person. I can’t recall her name but she was around for some of Lin’s pre-menu cook-a-thons.
After 2 drinks she would always tend to get a bit loud in expressing her opinions. She would also brag about a recipe for chicken she had that would make us world famous. We would all smile and nod in agreement like ‘yeah right’. After a few months of hearing this inebriated braggadocio, she caught me in a bad mood. I went back to the kitchen and got Lin, handed her some money and told her to take Ms X to the market and buy whatever she wants.
Lin was about fed up with her tall tales as well so she agreed to go. They were gone for about 30 minutes and returned with 2 big shopping bags. Back to the kitchen they went (with a refill for our friend) and they re-appeared about 30 minutes later with a hot plate stacked high with Buffalo Wings.
Now hold it right there! You all know about Buffalo Wings, right? It’s 2012 and everyone has them on the menu. Bars, Restaurants, Deli’s, Wing joints--- they’re everywhere! But wait a minute Boys and Girls this was 1980 and NOBODY had Buffalo Wings. 99.99999% of the world had never heard of them. If you mentioned them in a bar, it meant getting in a lengthy discussion about how ‘Buffalos Don’t Have Wings’.
AND on top of that no one on the planet can make wings like Ma Jones!
But before I get ahead of myself let me finish the story of Ms X. Apparently her work as a traveling sales person took her to many different places and she would find a ‘watering hole’ in each place to unwind at the end of the day. AND in Buffalo, New York she had stumbled on the place that only a few years earlier had actually invented Buffalo Wings.
What makes the story a bit seedier is that she admitted to us that the way she procured the original recipe was by using her feminine charms to actually seduce a family member who new the secret (a type of undercover work I guess :D). I can’t believe I even got my wife involved with a character such as her (LOL!).
So we passed them down the bar along with the special dip and the carrots and celery… and EVERYONE CHEERED! Dang they were good! To this day I can be explaining Ma Jones’ Wings to someone and I actually can feel myself salivating… just thinking about them. They became a major hit on the Touch of Country menu and to this day I have never tasted a buffalo wing that even comes close to what we had back then.
The sad part is that we sold the place in 1984 along with all of Ma’s original recipes. One of the new owners got caught up in too much alcohol and his partner got way too coked up and the business failed shortly after. A Laundromat now stands where A Touch of Country had shown so brightly.
Over these many years Lin has rarely prepared any of the dishes from that fabulous menu… being busy raising a family and not wanting to be ‘chained to the stove’ again.
Until now!
For Christmas this past year my nephew asked what I wanted as a gift. Since I had changed to a more Primal diet and since some oils are very healthy, I asked for a Deep Fryer. After trying it out on some shrimp, I innocently asked my wife about making some of her buffalo wings. She agreed to coach me through it.
Well Lin slightly modified the recipe and I made them last weekend. You’ve heard the expression ‘finger lickin’ good’ right? Well these wings were way beyond that--- even though you will lick your fingers, some more boldly than others. And I have witnesses who hadn’t been even born during the heyday of Ma Jones.
And get this. With the utter chaos in the nursing business (it’s really a Profession but the people running it have seemed to forget that the priority should be CARE and not Profit), Lin has shown some signs that there is a possibility of a resurgence of the legendary Ma Jones. That’s correct. We are actually discussing her options as an unequaled Cook Of, By and For the People!
Stay tuned… we’ll need some ‘evaluators’ for the different varieties of Ma Jones’ Wings… and that’s a Very Good Thing! :D
