WEBVTT - Josh Brolin 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.680 You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in Partnership with Montclair. 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:08.039 Arriving home yesterday after a busy night, a book was 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:10.800 waiting on the table. The book was a memoir from 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.680 Under the Truck, and the author was my friend, Josh Brolin. 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.520 I say friend, but for full disclosure, Josh and I 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.520 have only met once, when Glenn Close called me to 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.000 say she was bringing him to the River Cafe and 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:26.120 would I be able to stop cooking for a bit 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.800 and join them. I did, and right away there was 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.600 a connection between us. Josh is a story teller, and 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.440 I sat there listening as he described what it was 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:38.800 like to be a fourteen year old chef in an 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.280 Italian restaurant and the way food and love for his 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:46.280 family sustains him to day. He also told me about 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.640 filming with Glenn in London and Knives Out, working with 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:52.440 the Cone Brothers on No Country for Old Men, and 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.880 making Gus Vansan's movie Milk with Sean Penn. Josh was 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.680 leaving for la the next day, but before he did, 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.280 a text arrived on my phone, Ruthie, let's do a podcast. 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.080 I think we'll have fun, or at least it will 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:11.640 be beautifully revealing, very nice. I thought it was very 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.520 moving on the last pages of your book, last chapter 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.800 really that you end with a recipe of your mother's 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.559 with Oreo cookies, which I brought. But you also wrote 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.080 a very moving paragraph which I thought perhaps you could read. 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:33.320 I loved her, let's see, but the one thing she 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.280 could do without any hassle was cook She'd leave food 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.760 on people's fence posts at the start of their driveways, 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.120 and they'd waive at us the next day as she 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.919 was taking me to school. She'd help start small local 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.360 restaurants in the area, then talk about starting her own. 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.840 How she even filled the fridge with six dessert dishes 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.080 the night she died. Three days later, when we had 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.960 the gathering at the ranch to honor her, that's where 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:04.320 everyone ate her sweet creations, the only sweet she could muster. 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.120 She moved inside my mother even when she was dead. 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:15.960 And from these strewn scraps of recipe ingredients comes a history. Wow. 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.760 I haven't read that for a while. It's funny because 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.720 I thought of this on the way over here, which 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:26.880 I never do. I never prep for interviews or podcasts 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.160 or any of it. And on the way over here, 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:31.960 I started to write on my phone different foods and 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:35.239 different things that I kind of have a history with 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:40.799 or that resonate within me. And then that moment of banafi. 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.040 That's what she made the night before banafi and key 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:49.280 lime pie and these rectangular glass trays and there were 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:51.440 six of them, and that those were the desserts for 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:52.079 the gathering. 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.360 Food and music bring back memories. You hear a song 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.520 and you know where you were when you heard it. 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:00.160 You know. It's one of those things with books that 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:02.519 I'll say that it's like the one thing that I've 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:07.000 heard compliment about the writing is that it's very vivid. 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.000 And my mother lived very vivid, And you go, so, 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:14.400 what is it about that? With music? What you just 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.040 said with food? There's been these things in my life 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:19.360 that have been extremely vivid. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:23.240 So tell me about the early days when you remember 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.120 her in terms of the way she fed you, the 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.560 way you ate, or the way where you grew up. 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:30.600 You grew up on a ranch. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.400 I grew up on a ranch. My mother's from Corpus Christi, Texas. 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.160 She ran away from home when she was nineteen. She 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:40.440 came to Hollywood and the first people she met were 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:46.080 Clinton Maggie Eastwood, and that's who took her under their wing. 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:48.880 Did she run away from home because. 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.160 Well, I don't know. No, I don't think so, because 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.320 she always talked of her parents fondly, you know. And 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:57.200 then I just found out. I just did a book 0:03:57.200 --> 0:03:59.000 reading and somebody came up to me and kind of 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.720 handed me six pages that were stapled together, and they said, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.920 I went to school with your grandfather, my mother's dad. 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:09.760 And I said wow, and I started looking through. This 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.800 is very my mother. I started looking through the pages 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:14.920 before I went on stage, and it turns out that 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.880 my mother was married before she left Texas. I never 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:21.520 knew that. I just found that out something I guess 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:22.839 for a week. 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:25.480 Wow. But she hasn't run away to do it. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.320 I just think, you know, it was one of those 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:30.440 innate things that she just felt like she needed more. 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:30.920 I get it. 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.240 I think she ran away from her husband. 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:40.000 I don't know. I just think she needed more vivid, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.839 she needed more music, she needed more food, she needed 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:46.479 more something. So when she came to La I think 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:48.960 that it was what she was looking for. But I 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.800 also think it was overwhelming. So she started, I think 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.080 sleeping with a bunch of married guys, and she was 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.400 you know, religious, and she'd been you know, to go 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:02.640 to church all the time. And so then she came 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.719 to La. She starts getting into this Hollywood thing and 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.719 then she ended up taking some pills and driving into 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.200 park cars and she got kind of hauled off to 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.040 Camerio State Hospital, which was the local funny farm. 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:16.440 She wanted to be an actor. 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.839 No, animals were always her thing, so she started a 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:26.520 wildlife waystation. She met my dad. She was assistant casting 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.440 the series of her Batman, and my dad did an 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:34.159 episode of Batman, so that's when they met. But they 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:39.040 got married twelve days after they met. My dad was 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.840 more of a subservient type and my mother was not. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.520 My mother just made things happen. She was always making 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.000 things happen, whether it was food, whether it was whatever 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:56.039 she was involved with was had a high octane gasoline involved. 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:02.119 So you describe josh Livigana Ranch early age, your mother 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:06.839 taking you out of an urban existence and into the wild, 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.840 and that includes animals and her passion for animals or 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:13.720 protection of animals. Can you tell me a bit about 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:14.280 what that was like. 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:18.839 Itved out of La to a place called past Robos California, 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.320 which is about two hundred miles north of Los Angeles. 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.680 I think I was five at the time. And she 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:29.560 always had animals. Before that, she had cages, and so 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:31.960 she had she ran a wildlife way station. She would 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.440 take animals who had illegally been taken out of the 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.120 wild and she would have those people jailed and she 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.560 would nurse those animals back to health. If they'd been 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.840 defanged or declawed. She would find the most habitable zoo. 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.160 You know, she would find those lyon country safari type places. 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.680 But you know, there were a lot of There were wolves. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.599 My brother got sixty stitches in his leg from a wolf. 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.880 We cleaned the cages. There were mountain lions. I have 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.320 a picture right here. I mean, you want me to 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.280 show you the picture. I have a picture of an 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:06.280 adolescent mountain lion in my crib. 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.880 In my crib, Oh, my gosh, is that you? Is 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:13.360 that you? 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.080 That's a mountain lion? God, I mean, that's me. If 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.920 you if you look at every single picture of me 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:27.440 as a kid, if you swipe has my face looks 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:30.640 like it's the attempt to eat it off has been had. 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.040 It makes me kind of crazy to think of that. No, Yeah, 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.280 I'm sorry, this makes me crazy. 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.840 Oh it's insane. Yeah, it's insane. That's nothing. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.040 And there was no protection for you. There was never 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:42.960 anybody around. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.480 He said, this case, I would and I don't victimize 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:47.440 in my book. When you read my book, I don't 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.120 victimize myself and I don't feel victimized. But there is 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:53.360 an indictment. I was talking to Howard Stern about man. 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.560 They said, you don't indict your parents, sy said, I do. 0:07:56.000 --> 0:08:02.600 The reality. Yes, they're incredible, irresponsible because that was the 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.360 least of it. We had to clean those cages. You 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:07.120 go in there at eight years old and you have 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.679 a rake and you're looking at a wolf in the eye. 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.040 But if you look down too much, it's going to 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.280 see you as prey and weak. But if you if 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.440 you confront too much, it's going to see it as 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:20.000 a confrontation and attack. 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.920 Do you remember domestic life? Do Would you sit down 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:25.600 to meals with every food. 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.680 Always on the table? Oh? Yeah, always? That was the 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.640 one thing. It's the one through line that I remember 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.000 in my childhood, because you know, I'd wake up sometimes 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:39.040 my brother and I would wake up three o'clock in 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.200 the morning with my mother shaking us and saying, I 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.880 want a waterburger, and then would drive, you know, fifteen 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.200 hundred miles with us in the car, even though we 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:51.080 had school and fifteen hundred oh yeah, fifteen hundred miles. 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.280 My mother didn't fly. She had she had been a stewardest. 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:58.560 What is a water waterburger? Texan burger that started in 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:02.680 Corpus CHRISTI is. It's like r in an out burger 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:03.480 in America. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:05.200 Also, it was the name of a brand, and she 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:06.320 had a craving for it. 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.360 That you'd get in the car and you'd be in 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:09.720 the car for four or five days. 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:10.680 What would that feel like? 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.160 It was? It was good. There was something that was 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.280 great about the adventure of it, which I think is 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.319 still in me my brother. It's interesting because my brother 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:24.120 didn't have it was my dad describes the fight in 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.760 him that that I had. So my brother was much 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:33.200 more quiet, you know, and so his life is very simple. 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.400 It's quite the opposite me. I was just writing about 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.200 it on the on the way over here, not in 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:41.200 thought of coming over here, but I was like, I love, 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.800 I'm ready to go home right now. I've been traveling. 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.880 I've been doing this book thing but I was like, 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.760 I started describing the light and this and that, and 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:54.439 the constant adventure is great because it's like being born 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:57.840 again and again and again and again. You're like a child, 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.360 you know, where everything became new discovery. You're like, what's that? Wow, 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.439 look at the way that's hitting that. The English light 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:06.679 is different than the Italian light, which is different than 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.040 the Middle Eastern light or whatever it is. 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.200 So she would with waking up at three in the morning, 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.920 or having the animals that you describe so vividly in 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.680 your book, or the ranch, there was a kind of 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:21.360 structure of that. We would always sit down to a 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:22.160 meal or. 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:26.240 Always Yeah, that's why I say, that's the only kind 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:31.840 of domestic reality within our family. My dad was constantly 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:35.560 traveling because he was working. My mom was always looking 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.680 for something to do and something to kind of mix up, 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:41.439 and then there would be her cooking. 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.080 So describe her kitchen in the house. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.480 The house was just put up for sale. So I 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.760 was able to see an actual picture because the ranch 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.400 is three miles from the ranch that we're on now. Okay, 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:55.320 so where I grew up is three miles away from 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.599 where our ranch is. Now. Where is that Pastor Roobos, California. 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.079 Where is that central California? 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:02.760 How far from. 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.080 Four hours north of La three and a half hours 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:09.800 south of San Francisco. Yeah, Selina's valley close to Steinbeck 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:13.040 Country and all that. But so I could see what 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.040 my memory was. But it's a very Spanish type, you know, 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:22.880 Spanish tiles all handpicked by her. Yeah, and the stove 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.880 was always I always remember the flames, high flames in 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.240 the stove, and then I would get up. I don't 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.360 know why I started doing this. I'm thinking about it now. 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.240 I would get up on Saturdays usually and I would 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:35.880 cook breakfast for my whole family. 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:40.160 And you still make a flame by the flame and 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.760 the eggs over medium, over easy. 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.160 I had the toast, I had the bacon, I had 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.840 biscuits sometimes. But I don't know why. I don't know 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:54.520 what it was about. There was some meditating, obviously, I 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:56.920 wanted to please them. I loved the Maybe that was 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.800 just me trying to extend that thing, like you stay in, 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.120 I'm going to take it together. Yeah, I'm going to 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:06.880 take care of you. It's funny. I haven't thought of that. 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:08.760 And so do you think you used recipes or did 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:09.760 you just instinctively. 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.400 No, it was instinctive. It was always instinctive. And in 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:14.960 my kids, my older kids who are thirty six and 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:18.160 thirty one now will tell you that I made either 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:22.000 the greatest food or the worst food that I would eat, 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.320 because if we were out at the ranch and it 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:26.480 was like, look, this is what we have, Like I 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.439 didn't go to the grocery store today. This is what 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.679 we have. So you have to experiment with what you have. 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.760 And sometimes that kind of experimenting would turn out brilliant, 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:39.880 and sometimes it would turn out like regurgitation. I remember 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.880 my daughter crying and saying, it tastes so bad. I'd go, 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.360 you have to eat it. Yeah, And I think that 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:48.440 was the kind of connective tissue I had of my 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.800 mother because the one time that my family was a 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.080 family family, the kind of family that you see and 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.360 leave it to beaver, even though it was as far 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.240 from leave it to beaver as you can imagine. Gin 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.240 was dinner and my mother always cooked. My My mother 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.800 cooked every day. Cooking was her thing, Cooking was her art, 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.000 Cooking was her canvas reading. 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.640 Your book last night. And the amount of times that 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:19.199 telephones were slammed down or noise was made, or people 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.200 running away, or the anger of the fury, or the 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:27.240 that looking back on that, you know, and then sitting 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.680 down to dinner with dinners calm though, which you kind 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.120 of want the food eating properly or would they also 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.120 be a nice for dramatic interest. 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.160 No, it wasn't. No. Even the thing that you're that 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:44.679 you're referencing is the phone being slammed down and her 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.199 throwing cups through a window at my dad and all that, 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:53.160 which was immediately followed by a breakfast. Immediately, I say, 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:53.720 I didn't. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:55.440 Even pick up why it didn't happen. 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:59.280 It was just we just went literally right back to 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:04.439 this default to the semblance of normal, some normalcy. There 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:09.120 was nothing normal about it. Yeah, but when you look 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.560 around and everybody's kind of got this kind of gorgeous 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:17.520 morning smile, like like we were outside and vitamin D 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:20.560 getting ready for the day, and it's like, do you 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.120 remember what we were doing, just like for the last 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.920 four hours, which was total insanity. And I think that's 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.000 why when I went out into the when I went 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.000 out into the world, it was that was the shock. 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:36.760 The shock wasn't what I was experiencing because I didn't 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.400 know any different. And then I got older and went 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:41.960 out into the world and started dealing with people on 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:45.800 the level that I had gotten used to. And then 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.880 you see people reacting. I think that's why I like 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:51.960 being in Italy, because I think people are just less 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:58.800 they're more animated. Yeah, it seems to vibe with how 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.560 I was raised, without the chaos, without the. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.840 Yeah, my husband came for a very Italian family and 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.600 he they were you could, you could stay out till 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:09.840 five in the morning, He could do everything that he 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.080 wanted to. He didn't have to dress in a certain way. 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.040 He had to be home for meal times. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:15.880 That was us, you know, that was. 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:18.960 The structure, you know. And Jake Jilanov said he opened 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.400 up his podcast saying that food was the only functional 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:24.800 thing in a dysfunctional family, you know. 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:26.560 And I know him and his parents and his. 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.440 Sharents and you know, but he said it, as can 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.720 I say that. And he talked about going to the 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.480 market and I don't know Westwood of Pacific Palisades with 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.640 his father and seeing seeing the food and what about 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:39.000 your mother's dinners. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.400 Her dinners were there was a lot of Mexican food, 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.520 there was a lot of Italian food, there was a 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:46.160 lot of southern food. 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:49.040 Did she read? What do you think? 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.160 So? My mother she learned at our ranch. Now we 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:57.720 have an entire, very large bookshelf of just her cookbooks. 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.320 I would love to see those sometimes. Oh my god. 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:06.040 I mean they're all original cookbooks from decades, you know, 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:10.320 different decades out hers that she cut out. She would 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.680 do these collages. There's handwritten I mean that's only one. 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.040 That's just one that I think. I actually called my 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.960 daughter and said, send me a couple of handwritten recipes. 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:25.000 There's literally hundreds, if not thousands of recipes that she copied. 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.720 You know, I have in the book too. Let me 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.120 see if I can find it. There's a thing that 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:32.720 in the beginning. 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.480 She said that she introduced herself as in restaurants. She 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:37.160 would go into. 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.480 Restaurants, she would always end up in the kitchen. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:41.120 That she would end up in the kitchen. 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:45.320 Always, yeah, always. I think that. Let's say dusty fires. 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:49.720 She made it. And the cook in the back, a 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.520 lanky twenty eight year old who didn't know that he 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:54.760 was her prey for the evening. She showed him how 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.000 to better stir the sauce. She made him hold his 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.520 hand over hers as they flipped a dish in a pan. 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.000 She asked him who his favorite country Western singers were 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.040 and if he had ever been to a proper rodeo. 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.280 He was toast. As far as I was concerned, I 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:09.879 knew it was going to be a long night, and 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:11.520 that I might as well go back out into that 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:13.480 parking lot and see what I could find in the 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.560 desert beyond it. Parents of the bones we cut our 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.280 teeth on, but they never talk about the parents' own teeth. 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.240 They never talk about the bite you learned to see coming. 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.760 I dreamed about her last night, and I awoke happy 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:31.359 but sweating, because every moment with her was exciting. You 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:36.159 couldn't just go have a meal in a restaurant. She 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.439 had to take over the entire restaurant. 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.440 Did you find it exciting or sometimes embarrassing? Both? 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:45.280 Yeah, yeah, I think both, because why wouldn't it be 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:50.360 embarrassing as a child, you know, like, don't bring attention 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:52.560 to us. But then at the same time I could 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:56.000 tell I mean, it was like living with Salvado'dlly. It 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.920 was like I remember hearing my dad saying I saw 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.200 Salvador Dolly running down the street. It was like running 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.280 down Lexington Avenue with a pork chopped capon. It's like, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.560 there's just those people. Why him, Why did he do that? 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:13.160 Why did she do that? Why did he dress that way? 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:15.600 Why were they? You know, somebody wears jeans and a 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:18.000 black T shirt every day, and somebody dresses in the 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.880 nicest dresses. They can get versauce in this and that. 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:26.359 My mom just acted the way she was, unapologetically herself, 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.960 and there's light growing up on the ranch. When you 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:32.720 have to feed forty eight horses or fifty eight horses 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.760 every morning, when you're doing it, it sucks. It's horrible. 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.280 It's just labor. But when you look back on it, 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.399 you go, thank God for that upbringing. Thank God I 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.399 had to get up and get out into the elements 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.640 every single morning before I went to school. It made 0:18:49.720 --> 0:19:05.680 me who I am. Pastor Robles is considered wine country now, 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.040 you know, so it's a very famous wine country. And 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:11.200 when I was growing up there there were two wineries, 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:13.920 so it wasn't known for its wine. Napo was known 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:17.399 for its wineries, but you know, people would it was. 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.520 It was a farming community and a horse community, so 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:22.840 people would take their kids out of school for two 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.040 or three weeks when the farming happened, when the harvesting happened, 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:27.960 and all that school was not a priority. 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:29.480 What year was. 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.400 Seventy six, Yeah, seventy seven, seventy eight. 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.280 So what was it like? Well, first of all, before 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:40.600 you left home, you worked age fourteen as a chef 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:41.480 is cooking? 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:41.720 Right? 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.120 It wasn't a chef, no, but you were in the kitchen, right, 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.200 I was in the kitchen. Told the story of that 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:48.760 very similarly, is Wolfgang cook? 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:49.800 Really? Yeah? 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.600 Because he was like but that was economic. They just said, okay, 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.360 you're living in Austria, we don't like you very much. 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.000 You're going to go peel potatoes in a suicide. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.280 It's in order to earn Yeah, he worked there. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.679 He found it. He must try to jump off a bridge. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.000 But for you, how did it actually be a fourteen 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.520 year old at home one minute and then working in 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.880 a restaurant or twelve? You were twelve? 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:17.040 It was twelve, wow, And there was we knew the 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:20.240 owner of the restaurant. It was called Rocky Galenti's. It 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:24.520 was an Italian restaurant. And I started literally I did 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.600 I start doing dishes in the back or just like 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:31.399 picking just crap off the walls or whatever I was doing. 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:33.480 And then I started getting into it. And then I 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.560 started doing salads, and I started doing chopp salads, and 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:42.119 then like drum rolls, oh yeah, at twelve, no, and 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.560 that was like thirteen. By the time I had hit thirteen, 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:46.760 but I was already smoking cigarettes in the back and 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.199 taking breaks and you know, little SIPs off glasses of 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.720 wine that were left on tables and big restaurants. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:53.440 Small restaurant. 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:55.679 No, it was a fairly small restaurant. It felt like 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:59.320 when I think of Italian restaurants now, like authentic Italian restaurants, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.720 they're small. They're all small, small tables. And there was 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.959 a guy who would go from table to table and 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.919 sing arias. There was a guy who was hired and 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.639 he would sing these arias right. And then there was 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.040 somebody else who would do caricatures on the wall, kind 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:18.800 of drunken, awful caricatures on the wall that you'd pay him, 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.760