A Shroom of One's Own

That summer day must have felt like a reprieve for my parents. They had returned home to Michigan, having never lived here together, after four moves in as many years. Each of those places has its own stories, but I mostly heard about how they could have bought that place in Park Slope for a song — and more recently, how Ida referred to the loft they found in SoHo as a garret, not suitable for her son.

I was born in the midst of a ferocious January snowstorm, during which my dad heroically ventured to Stroh’s for ice cream and my mom did everything else. In June, they bought the house on Thurber Road, with neighborhood beach on Wing Lake — but had yet to undertake what I recall as unending consecutive home improvement projects over the next twelve years.

On that fine August day, they were visiting with my mom's parents in Huntington Woods. Just weeks before I was born, my grandma and Erwin Simon (Simie) got married and decided to start this new chapter of their lives in the Simon House on Nadine Avenue, approximately two blocks from where my mom and her sisters grew up. There was plenty of packing and unpacking to be done — to say nothing of legal work and art work for both families — but not so urgent to keep everyone from enjoying the afternoon sunshine.

I had just begun to crawl and, plunked down in the plush grass, I began to crawl. Near the base of the big oak tree, I happen upon a cluster of wild mushrooms and eat one.

Mom panics. They take their eyes off their healthy baby boy for one second and now he is in the clutches of some feral fungus. Surely, her mom — who along with Dr. Hecht, the esteemed pediatrician, had raised three girls — would advise her on how to deal with this toxic threat. Her advice:

“Wait and see what happens.”

Mom called poison control and followed their guidance (since discontinued) to induce vomiting with ipecac syrup.

A lot can change in 40 years. Also maybe nothing ever changes. 

We bought the Simon House last year. Many of Grandma’s watercolors still adorn the walls. The heartier of her perennials still return. All of the carpeting is gone, as is most of the wallpaper and the kitchen-adjacent hot tub. The asbestos is gone, with the possible exception of the tiles on the screen porch. Cardinals and finches still come to the backyard feeders, though I don’t have the same relationship with them as I did with the nice mallard family that would frequent the standing water in our old backyard.

The oak trees tower. The one in the front yard must have seemed suitable back in 1956 when Simie and Ellie affixed the street number to it. Over the ensuing decades the tree paid that plaque little heed. Now all that’s visible is the S and an 8, the rest of the name and address encased beneath its bark.

The Simons gifted us a matching sign on the day we bought their childhood home. In time, we added it just below S-8 to the trunk of the oak tree. Then — and only then and I’m not ascribing this to some higher power or "the universe" and I currently feel fine — something unusual happened. Upon returning from visiting Grandma and Dad at Beth El Memorial Cemetery, an orb was peeking out from behind the old Simon sign. 

Days later, I went out front to inspect. With an incisive combination of my accumulated wisdom and phone, I determined that it was a mushroom. Now, if you think I reflexively reverted to my toddling ways and bit into that mushroom, I did not. Because it was Yom Kippur. 

But by the time Sukkot rolled around, I had determined with confidence that it was none other than Laetiporus Sulphureus, also known as Chicken of the Woods. 

And, no — having determined that it was an edible fungus, considered a delicacy in some parts of Germany, and no longer fasting or atoning — I didn’t grab it and shove it in my mouth. I am not a baby just out of reach of his otherwise responsible parents. I am an adult man, home alone on a weekday afternoon.

I carefully removed the grapefruit-sized Laetiporus specimen from the trunk of the tree. Upon closer inspection, it matched the online description and bore none of the markings of Inonotus Dryadeus or Weeping Polypore, which can be a fatal for oak trees. 

As the name suggests, Chicken of the Woods allegedly tastes like chicken. I thought it tasted more like woods. I cut a half-inch slice and sauteed it in a cast iron skillet with butter and sea salt. Alone, it was not particularly palatable, but diced in spaghetti with chicken (of the egg) meatballs, it blended nicely.

Now I’m sitting at a Falik family heirloom desk from Hudson’s, a different fate for a different oak tree, staring out the window and I feel fine. Which is to say, I am not hallucinating — its hard to feel fine with the world in such a state. In another 40 years, I may not be able to get butter from Ireland or salt from the Himalayas. Perhaps I’ll be right here where I started with, if nothing else, an appreciation of those who came before me and the peace of mind that I can forage for food. Then, as now, let no man say that I was not a fungi.