Collage by Heather Richmond

I

Perhaps it’s the lingering effect of the pandemic and the experience of being homebound for nearly two years, an experience from which neither I nor the world may have yet fully emerged. But allow me to reminisce about my Aunt Lera’s Ruffles and dip.

Both would be consumed ritually each year at her home in Skokie, Illinois during the pregame show of the Super Bowl, a game I didn’t watch and couldn’t care less about, frankly, since our team, the Chicago Bears, hadn’t graced its field since the second Reagan Administration.

Yes, they’d make an appearance in ’06. And Devin Hester, who was the human equivalent of a bowl of ranch dressing, returned the opening kickoff in that contest for a 92-yard score that, in true ranch dressing fashion, ignited my insides, along with Dolphin Stadium—the better half, that is.

While it would be superfluous to say that the Bears of that era, ’86 to ’03, were entirely dispensable—Neil Anderson was a formidable back, and James “Big Cat” Williams could grapple with the best of ’em—it is fair to say that no event, but for perhaps the Moon Landing, which preceded my birth by nine years, or the perhaps the lurid spectacle of O.J. Simpson barreling northbound along the 405 inside his tinted white Chevy Bronco, of which I remember every waking second, including my Aunt Lera herself cupping her hands to her lips, captured us with quite the same magnitude.

One memory from that era stands out.

Nineteen-ninety-three was, by all account, a rather nondescript year. In January, Bill Clinton was sworn in as president, ushering in, if not a sense of promise, then at least a vague hope that Bush and his promise-defying raising of taxes would finally end. (That Clinton would outdo his Republican predecessor in slashing the “welfare state” and entrenching inequality would only become apparent to us later, and gradually at that). That same month, ABC and CBS would air their own competing versions of Amy Fisher’s life, one starring Drew Barrymore, the other Alyssa Milano (my Aunt Lera was reportedly partial to Milano’s). And in the world of youth gaming, which is effectively the world, Super Street Fighter II would hit the stands in September, featuring rebooted graphics, mesmerizing audio, and four completely new figures, which my younger cousin immediately grasped.

Other things of note included the series finale of Cheers, during which my own mother cried and subsequently explained to me the ending (“His home is the bar, Josh; his home is the bar”); and an armed standoff inside of a peculiar-looking compound in Texas, which, if nothing else, confirmed everything we then thought about the state.

Brittney Spears and Justin Timberlake joined the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club. In September, Raymond Burr died.

The other thing you need to know about Skokie, Illinois is that, like most northern suburbs, it was founded as something of an escape, initially, from the perceived crime and noise of Chicago’s downtown (or, as our more socially aware counterparts might put it, the city’s more subjugated half) and then, subsequently, as a haven for Holocaust survivors and Jews. It would become the scene, famously, of an attempted Nazi march in 1977, resulting in a Supreme Court case that vindicated the Nazis’ free speech rights, which my Aunt Lera, curiously, embraced.

Her home, like the thousands of two-story, side-gabled ranch homes that surrounded it, all set back squarely on Bermuda grass lawns, featured a tiny, brown, wood-paneled den, where an antique fireplace smoldered; a shaggy suede sofa, on which my cousins and I piled; a behemoth of a television, which might well have manned a trip to the moon; a couple plastic serving tables, on which the Ruffles perched zestfully in their wood-veneer bowls, accompanied by a glazed, lumpy heap of white dip; and a felt cloth recliner vaguely the color of Honeycomb Cereal on which my Uncle Lev languorously lounged, one eye appraising the fumbled toss of Frank Reich, the other one inspecting said dip.

We habitually arrived several hours before the Super Bowl started, during which time my mother and her sister would talk, mainly about the quirkier members of our family, including the wing that had gone full-on “Black Hat” in South Bend. My dad and his brother-in-law would discuss sports, which consisted chiefly at this time of Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan, followed by itinerant thoughts on Michael Jordan. My little sister would terrorize the dog, a shaggy, wet, golden retriever whose tangled fur she’d struggle to braid. My older cousin would sneak out to smoke, stealthily ducking behind the myrtles along the alley towards Kostner, well out of my discerning aunt’s view, while my younger cousin and I would dart upstairs to my older cousin’s bedroom, where we would dexterously slide back his cabinet shelf, pry open a shoebox, remove his old grades and SAT’s, and reveal a sweating cover of Leg Show or Oui, not to mention High Society, my younger cousin’s perennial favorite, in which, it was reported, you could nearly peer into a model’s splayed kidneys, though I never saw this myself. I can attest that posters of Madonna, sporting nothing but a halter top and puny silk wrap, and of Mr. T flexing his bangled, greasy arms, adorned the sallow walls, as did the peculiar LP of two men shaking hands outside a recording studio, one of them igniting in flames.

To this day, every time I hear a Pink Floyd song, especially the lines from “Wish You Were Here” in which the singer evokes the image of two people, together and yet apart, trapped in a fish bowl—perhaps across decades—

—I think of my older cousin, and the peculiar smell of that shelf: the vague odor of pot, ancient carpet cleaners, mold, the oiled leather glove, the worn cleats, all the products of a childhood—a child I never knew—and all those scents with which we associate youth.

Are we alone on this planet? How does time progress?

And where are they, my relatives, all the ones who’ve since passed?

I believe the felt recliner’s still there. And probably the scent of lighted Camels behind the bush.

II

Nineteen-ninety-three, as it were, represents a kind of culmination of my childhood—I was 14, newly Bar Mitzvahed, still a virgin, pale, pimpled, and thin—and I recall little about it beside the smell of those chips, those candescent Ruffles, and the ranch-onion dressing in bowls.

It’s hard to explain. Perhaps it’s because I’ve become a vegan and no longer eat junk food and have run on and off for thirty years that I can so viscerally recall the popping taste of those chips, their warm, hard, delectable crunch, and the creamy smoothness they engendered. Come to think of it, there was probably no dairy inside of that dip, as pareve required.

I would also hypothesize that the wood veneer bowls—rich in BPA’s, or whatever they then used—imparted their own flavor, as did the must of that room, the smoking fireplace, etc.

We all have our favorite foods of childhood, our own small, immortalized scents. But mine is ever associated, in my mind, with the bright spectacle that flashed on the screen that balmy night.

“You’re gonna want to see this,” someone hollered to my aunt, who was off washing dishes, as gender norms held, and to my older cousin, who returned soon enough in a hooded sweatshirt and coat, looking as if he’d just emerged from a mosh pit for Whitesnake. Soon, my sister rode in on the dog, and everyone glanced at the screen, which evidently showed Pasadena, at the half.

An ominous crashing noise followed. Then firecrackers sparked off a jumbotron board.

Sixty feet up from the stands, a lone figure rose up, he of the elastic black pants and white socks, arms both extended, sunglasses on.

Uncle Lev paused, reaching into the dip.

Then, across the stadium, the same figure appeared, his arms now outstretched to the sky.

Eerie synthesizers bellowed. A hundred thousand fans cheered.

Deep inside my palate, a tiny Ruffle chip cracked. But I couldn’t swallow. Not then.

At the center of the stage, midfield in the Rose Bowl, with a setting sun burning the sky, a frozen, bleached figure in black military jacket and gold crisscrossed bands stood erectly, arms dangling, fists balled. All of Skokie, and the United States, watched entranced.

A hundred kids rushed to the stage, which in retrospect strikes one as somewhat disturbing but at the time sent a chill through our spines.

He was singing of how his mother always told him be careful what he did, not to go round breaking young girls’ hearts.

He moved with a gracefulness, a fluidity, a splendor, that I had never seen on a stage.

He sang that we should be careful who we loved, hand sliding, feet stomping. And he warned us that lies and truth can become impossible to tell apart. 

It’s hard to articulate what this half-time performance might have meant in ‘93. Even then, we knew the whole show was ridiculous, not unlike Clinton himself. Certainly, Clinton’s affair with Gennifer Flowers, and the litany of sins that emerged—all of which, it seems, now pale in comparison with those of 45—were well known to us at the time. It might also have been the knowledge that the entire world was then watching, with the Berlin Wall having crumbled, and the Soviets felled.

Even in the U.S., the Super Bowl wasn’t until that point much of a global affair. (The prior one had featured the Pride of Minnesota marching band, Gloria Estefan crooning “Live for Loving You,” and Brian Boitano on skates).

It’s estimated that 133 million tuned in for the King of Pop’s show, even more than OJ had drawn at the height of his chase, and this one was no less “dangerous,” as his latest hit album proclaimed.

Truthfully, words will never do this halftime show justice, though it’s hard to say, “One had to be there,” as we weren’t.

And yet we were, in some way.

We were alive in an era in which people gathered—with all the fighting and love that entailed—and all the glazed, lumpy dips. This was in an era before Netflix and internet, when people still called, newspapers were folded (or at least slept through uneventfully), humans still gathered in bars, clubs, and homes—and the mood, the human mood there, was vital and pungent, not unlike a bowl of ranch dip.

I haven’t visited my Aunt Lera’s home in several years, though it remains on Lowell Avenue, with Aunt Lera inside and Uncle Lev still ensconced in his chair. I can see them clearly, although Covid and its aftermath created a new separation, a kind of glass border, a bowl.

We’re not really there anymore.

And yet, in a strange way, we are. 

 

 

 

J.A Bernstein’s works include Rachel’s Tomb (New
Issues, A.W.P. Award Series Novel Prize Winner, 2019);
Desert Castles (Southern Indiana Review Press,
Wilhelmus Prize Winner, 2019); Northern Cowboy
(Green Rabbit Press, Wilt Prize Winner, 2021); Glass
Essays (Variant, 2023); and a forthcoming nonfiction
novel, Afterlight (Galileo, 2025). His stories, poems, and
creative nonfiction have appeared in The Kenyon
Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Washington Square,
The Threepenny Review, Boston Review, CutBank,
Northwest Review, and Notre Dame Review, among
others. A native of Chicago and associate professor in
the Center for Writers at the University of Southern
Mississippi (USM), he lives with his wife and three
children in Hattiesburg, Mississippi