What we call ourselves lets others know where and who we came from. It can tell the tales of our parents and our heritage — or simply let us know what's for dinner.
I was named after a little girl my mom saw on the Art Linkletter Show.
Erin Colleen.
You would think that, since she was a Malone, my mother would have picked the name based on her heritage or stories about long forgotten relatives or a simple longing for a home “she’d never known before.” But no. I got my name in the most American of ways: named after someone on a reality show.
If I had been a boy, my name would have been Minor McClellan Malone Stephenson. The. Coolest. Name. Ever. That was the name of my mother’s grandfather; they called him Mac. Since I turned out to be a girl, I think my parents considered naming their next child that as well, but my dad’s mother — who did not think Minor McClellan was The. Coolest. Name. Ever. — convinced them to go another way.
My mother had an affinity for Irish names; and she embraced her Irish heritage. She listened to Irish music — anyone up for a rousing rendition of “I’ll take you home, Kathleen”? — and enjoyed celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with green clothes and loving pinches and some kind of Irish food (but not corned beef which was not a welcomed dish on my dad’s dinner table). Once she hosted a party and made centerpieces out of potatoes and Irish pipes (the kind you smoke, not the kind you use to play something resembling music).
Ruby Malone had nine children and not an Irish name among them.
My grandmother, apparently, didn’t share her daughter’s affection for the Emerald Isle. Ruby Malone had nine children and not an Irish name among them. One time — being enamored of the Irish names that had gained popularity in the U.S., like Eamon and Seamus and Siobhan — I asked my mother why her mother didn’t take advantage of her husband’s last name to give her kids Gaelic names. Because she didn’t like foreign sounding names, my mom told me. People were more interested in assimilation back then, she said.
My grandfather was Irish, but my grandmother’s family was German. In the days between World War I and World War II, the years when my grandmother was having babies, many Americans were hesitant to admit their German heritage. My grandmother was one of them. She claimed to be “Pennsylvania Dutch.” That’s a term for people who fled religious persecution in Germany and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands during the mid-1600s, after the Thirty Years War, and who settled in and around Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. Although I’m sure she had relatives or ancestor who were from Pennsylvania, my grandmother was born and raised and spent almost all her life in eastern Nebraska. Many of the Pennsylvania Dutch were Mennonites and Amish and Quakers, but my grandmother — and as far as I know, all of her ancestors — were Methodist, originally an offshoot of the Church of England.
My grandmother wasn’t interested in giving her children German names either. Only one had a German-ish nickname. The seventh Malone kid was given an English name, Winifred, after her father, Frederick (also an English name, although I always thought it was German). He chose to call the little girl Fritzie after a comic strip character, a name uniquely suited to her.
Four of my mother’s siblings had English names, one a Hebrew name, one Greek. James and Paul were given names of apostles. My mother‘s name, Gwendolyn, is Welsh.
Mostly what’s noticeable about the names that Fred and Ruby Malone gave their brood is that they were common names for American children born after World War I and in the early years of the Great Depression. For example, according to everything-birthday.com, the name Helen reached its peak popularity in the U.S. in 1918, two years before my aunt Helen was born. The name Marion peaked in 1895, remaining popular for 30 years and then beginning a precipitous drop in 1928. My aunt Mary was born in 1926. (Interesting aside: Although the name Maxwell has been used in the U.S. since the 1880s, according to everything-birthday.com, and my Uncle Max was born in 1918, that name hit its popularity peak in 1999.)
My dad’s mother, Clara Haubold Stephenson, was just one generation removed from the old country. Her father, an upholsterer, came to Chicago from Germany in the late 1800s. My grandmother had three children, only one of them — my father — was given a German name. He was named after his father, Louis Eli, whose heritage was primarily Scottish. And although everything I looked at said Louis is a German name, until quite recently I believed it was French.
I’ve been thinking about those simple and simply beautiful names, and what those choices meant, and what my grandmother was thinking when she didn’t want her children to have foreign-sounding names. As it is today, the country was fraught back then, balancing between two world wars, swinging from a decade of prosperity to a yearslong depression; industry was growing, agriculture was contracting; social change was in the air: speakeasies and radios and shorter skirts and women in the voting lines. It was also a time, like now, of increased nationalism, immigration quotas and a rise in illegal immigration, a decrease in church attendance, high unemployment and racial strife.
Today, I’m not sure my grandmother would have been allowed to think that way — or, at least, to say it out loud. But I reject the idea that common thoughts from past eras are inherently faulty because we don’t adhere to them now. These days, we talk about communities and define ourselves by all the groups we belong to because of our familial heritage, our race, our sexual and gender identities, our professions, our hobbies; and we celebrate individual journeys. That’s a good thing because, at least politically, it points out our failures and charts a path to future improvements. (And yes, I do believe there are lots of things we can do better, as evidenced by the past four years.) But we also lose something when we let the micro communities overshadow the common bond and the greater community.
That, I think, is what my grandmother knew when she gave her children simple, common names, Bill and Jim and Mary and Helen. Not that she didn’t want her kids to be among the others, but that she wanted them to be part of the “we” — challenged and striving, even if battered, then and now, as a country, a community and a family.
The pie
This pie is the perfect dish for a holiday meal or for a cold weekend when you’re snowed into your driveway and you can’t go anywhere. I found this recipe online (thespruce.com) when I was looking for something else, and it looked tasty — like stew in a crust. With both a storm on the way and St. Patrick’s Day on the calendar, I decided to try it out. It did not disappoint. The original recipe called for a plain white crust, but I thought a whole wheat crust flavored with rosemary would add a nice touch. It did. Also I added potatoes because the lack of spuds seemed like an oversight. I did manage to find Guinness by the bottle at a nearby liquor store (and by the six- and 12-pack in dramatic displays at the grocery store in advance of the holiday), but if you can’t and decide you don’t want to invest in a lot of beer which you might not drink (because stout ales are an acquired taste and, you know, blech!), any stout will work.
The recipe
Steak & Guinness pie
with a rosemary whole wheat crust
The Filling
3 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
2 pounds chuck steak
1 ounce butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 large onions, sliced thin
2 carrots, chopped into cubes
1 large potato, cubed
1 teaspoon tomato puree
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 1/8 cups Guinness (or other stout beer)
1 ¼ cup beef stock, heated
2 teaspoons white sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
In a large bowl, add the flour, salt and pepper.
Add the meat and toss well in the flour until evenly coated.
In a large, heavy casserole dish or skillet, heat the butter and oil until the butter has melted. Add the meat to the fat in small batches and brown quickly all over for just a minute, then remove and set aside.
Add the onions and carrots to the pan and cook gently for about 2 minutes.
Return the meat to the pan, and add Worcestershire sauce, tomato puree, Guinness, hot beef stock and sugar. Grind in plenty of black pepper and salt, stir well and bring to a boil.
Cover, reduce to a gentle simmer, and cook slowly for about 2-2 ½ hours until the meat is tender and the sauce has thickened and is glossy. (At this point, I added about 2 tablespoons cornstarch to thicken the gravy. Use as much or as little to make the gravy suit your individual tastes.)
Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely.
Once cooled, place in crust-lined pie plate, either a 9-inch pie plate or 4 individual 5-inch pie plates. Cover with top crust, seal edges and cook in 350 degree pre-heated oven for about 30-35 minutes, until it is golden brown and the filling is warmed through.
I froze my little pies and then baked in a hot oven (425 degrees) for about 30 minutes, then turned the oven back to 350 and baked for another 30 minutes or so.
Rosemary Whole Wheat Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups whole wheat flour (I use the non-bleached kind because it’s prettier, but if you want a white crust, bleached whole-wheat flour will work too)
3 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons rosemary
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
6 tablespoons cold vegetable shortening
6 tablespoons cold vodka
¼ cup (12 tablespoons) cold water, plus more if you need it
In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt and pepper until thoroughly combined. Add butter and shortening and cut together using a pastry cutter. It should form small pea-size crumbs coated in flour.
Add the vodka a tablespoon at a time. Using a rubber spatula, press the dough together. Add the water a tablespoon at a time; using the rubber spatula press the dough together to form a large ball. The dough should be fairly sticky. If it does not come together in a ball, add a little extra, a tablespoon at a time, until you can easily form a ball and all (or most) of the flour comes together. Try not to handle the dough too much to keep it from being tough.
Allow to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or longer.
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