Jim Bear Full and Thompson Reichert on Bear's history of food and cooking, and how it formed and enhanced his relationships.

00:04 It's February 11, 2024. I'm Tom Reichert. I'm here with Jim Ful, my friend. He's 67 years old. We're in Staten Island, New York. He's going to talk about how he got into cooking and some of his early experiences and some things about his mother and how that all tied in. Go ahead, Jim.

00:27 Hi. Yeah, I only discovered recently, and I'm not sure how, just recalling my past, I don't know how aware people. I'm dealing with stage four cancer, so I have a lot of time being in hospice to reflect on my life. And one of the things that I just came out of the blue that I never, never thought about before is where I started cooking and where my passion came from. Like I told Tom before, my upbringing was very transient, and I never lived anywhere for more than two years at a time. And I never went to the same school for a whole year, ever. Like, we would move and then I would be transferred to a new school. So I was always kind of the new kid in school. And at this particular school, Benina Junior High, I was bullied a lot, being the new kid. And lunchtime was the worst because you were out there in the quad exposed to all the bullies and all the mean kids.

02:04 And as a new kid, of course, you stood out.

02:06 And I was big and lanky, and, you know, I was a good target. Anyway, one day I'm walking by the cafeteria, and this girl comes out the door because she knew it was obvious that I was being bullied. And she waved me inside the door, and she goes, you want to volunteer? You can cook with the lunch lady. And so I went inside, and they said, do you want to work here? And I said, sure. What. What. What's there doing? So, you know, you would pan up the food into the trays. You would actually serve the people. But I also.

02:47 So let me back up a second. So now, this was a lady who worked in the cafeteria? No, it was a girl.

02:53 This was a student.

02:54 And she. She somehow had a connection with the. The cooking people.

02:59 Right. There were lots of. There were lots of alienated kids that all worked in the cafeteria.

03:04 Interesting.

03:05 Yeah. So.

03:06 And she saw you and was like, took. Took an interest in helping you out.

03:12 Right. Wow.

03:12 Amazing.

03:15 So, yeah, so she brought me in, and then we formed a little romance in the kitchen, and on top of all that. Right, right.

03:26 As a bonus.

03:28 Yeah. And so I never, just never thought, wow. I was cooking way before my mom was teaching me to cook. I was, like, not making recipes or anything. But I was in food service, and I really liked it.

03:48 So in this cafeteria, they basically would tell you to do something, and you were just helping out, kind of like, I guess like a sous chef would be.

03:55 Right, right, right.

03:56 You know, just doing various things, filling.

03:59 Up hotel pans and putting them in the water trays and then being the server. It was weird that the kids didn't. They didn't really bother you because you were getting their food for them, so you kind of took a tiny step up the social ladder.

04:23 Wow.

04:24 Wow.

04:26 Interesting.

04:28 Yeah.

04:29 So no more. So you weren't bullied anymore?

04:31 No, not. No, because I had a place to hide out for one thing. For one thing.

04:35 Right, right.

04:36 And then I gained a little status by giving extra tacos or whatever. Right.

04:43 Of course you could.

04:44 You could. You. I had the spoon in my hand.

04:50 So you could. You could do little favors to the ones that. Oh, my God.

04:56 Wow.

04:56 That's amazing. What a story. So, all right, so. So now you're learning how to cook, and you liked it.

05:04 I liked it. And then later on, you know, my mom. My mom was very thin. Very, very thin. And she. She had some maladies, which I'm not sure of, but it caused her to almost never be hungry. And so she would have me come into our kitchen and she'd say, taste this. Taste this. What does it need? And it didn't matter if I was saying, oh, it needs some sugar. She would, like, try it in the recipe. And we'd say, that kind of doesn't work. But she kind of guided me through the early, early stages of cooking and.

05:52 Testing recipes and what works, what doesn't. How do you change things? In what ways, right?

06:01 And she wouldn't eat the same thing twice ever, as far as I can remember. I mean, there were certain dishes, baked beans, certain things she would make on holidays that were routine, but basically, she had a bone appetite magazine subscription, and we would try out those recipes.

06:25 Well, now, those were complicated recipes, weren't they?

06:28 They were very complicated. And we get in the car together. It's one of our activities. And she would go down the shopping list and buy everything. That bone app. Keith said, you need to make this recipe. And then we go home and make it and try it out. Wow.

06:45 And this was starting at what age do you guess?

06:50 Probably what's after junior high school?

06:56 High school, yeah, 13 and 14.

07:01 But it went on for years, you know, all through high school, even. Even past high school, we would cook together.

07:10 Wow.

07:11 And she'd get all excited about this recipe. I'm like, I don't even know what that is.

07:17 Wow.

07:17 We're gonna make some gnocchi. This was back in the seventies or eighties that people never even heard of. Gnocchi.

07:27 Yeah, that was seventies. Yeah.

07:28 Yeah.

07:30 You and I are the same age, so. Wow. So that was how you got into cooking, right? So how you got out of being bullied, right? How you started to learn how to cook and then got into cooking with your mother, right?