I actually have a small problem with gefilte fish. It’s not that I see anything wrong with the idea of pickled fish balls made with white fish, onions and potatos. It’s simply that my first exposure to this delicacy was a bit unusual.
It happened when my grandmother had her knee broken in an automobile accident. My father and I took the opportunity to clean out her apartment while she spent about two months between surgeries and convalecence in a nursing facility.
While we were there we got proof positive that her loud assertions that the cockroaches were in her apartment building only because they’d allowed those people* in to be so much bunk. It’s one thing to suspect that someone is a hoarder of the first water. It’s another to see the ant and cockroach infestations in the sugar, flour, and other sundries.
The two things that most shocked me, however, were the Schlitz six-pack, and the gefilte fish. I have no idea how old either had been, by that time - but the six pack was only half-full. Which seemed a bit odd, when it came time to pick them up and throw them out. The reason they were only half full was that the caps had rusted so much that they longer held a seal, and so approximately half the contents of each bottle had evaporated.
Then I found the gefilte fish. I had never heard of this stuff, before - like I said, this was my first experience with the substance. It was a jar of Maneschewitz gefilte fish, and, since it was in the back of the closet, it wasn’t surprising that it was a bit dusty. I figured it to be another Jewish delicacy that I’d never heard of, and so asked my father what it was. He gave me a tolerable account of what it was, along with a muttered, “Why in God’s name did she even have that in the apartment? She hates gefilte fish.” (This was the umpteenth repetition of this mantra - we’d found many other similarly inexplicable foods in her place. Esp. for a woman who still complained that my German Catholic mother wouldn’t keep Kosher for my non-practicing Jewish father. For me, the item that broke my irony meter was the pack of some 12 or more boxes of mac & cheese - and that had been hours ago, back while we had been working in the kitchen.)
So, like I said, I pretty much ignored my father’s complaint and focused instead on what, to me, was the real puzzler: “You said this is made from white fish, right?”
“Yessss…” My father had learned, by now, that if I were to continue questioning something, there was usually a reason for it.
“Is it supposed to be bright green?”
A pause.
“No.”
I have since seen what real Maneshewitz gefilte fish looks like, and it’s nothing like what I saw then. But I’m still afraid of it. 
The plan when we had gone down there, was to spend the night, after we’d cleaned up the apartment, in the apartment. By the time we were done, neither my father, nor I, were willing to actually consider that course. We were back on the road at about 8 PM, and very glad to be leaving Jersey City behind us.
Are you a chain? 
)
