Each generation has its own defining experience, which leaves its mark as indelibly as if it’d been scored with a branding iron.

For mine, of course, it’s The Sixties.

Ah yes, The Sixties. To the historically farmisht it was a brief time, easily understood and explained. To anyone who’s tried to make sense of it systematically, it was one long, extended societal nervous breakdown, interspersed with moments of creativity, joy and hope. Certainly, there’s no book, lecture or documentary that can cover it in any meaningful detail.

The defining experience of my parents’ generation was The Great Depression and World War II (listed here as one, because the people went through both, in that order, with no break between).They were referred to soley as “the depression” and “the war,” and no one confused which ones they were talking about.

It seemed almost all depression survivors were left with some kind of fixation with food, which was only natural for a generation who almost never had enough to eat. In my youth I knew a lot of “old guys” who said the first time they didn’t go hungry was in boot camp.

This led to permanent food-oriented behaviors. One friend’s father always had meat for dinner, in huge portions. Another friend’s aunt bought doubles or triples of any food on sale. My mother’s was two food rules. One was you ate whatever was put in front of you. The other was you never left anything over. I can’t remember her actually telling me that, which means she probably drilled the point home before I took my first step.

When I say these were rules, I’m not kidding. The only difference between hers and the Ten Commandments was the commandments were carved in stone. But that’s only because she didn’t have access to a tablet and cold chisel.

I had one major issue with her Commandments — she wasn’t a good cook.

Right now, if my brother’s reading this, I know he’ll accuse me of slander, not to mention out and out treachery. But his defense is based more on familial loyalty than culinary discrimination. The sad truth is my bro, bless his little taste buds, still thinks the finest gourmet cheese is Velveeta.

To be entirely fair, there were some things my mother cooked wonderfully — soups being her gustatory flagship. But when it came to meat, forget it. I don’t know if she’d taken an oath to eliminate food-borne pathogens, but the result was she cooked the bejammers out of meat. By the time it was served, not only was it was as dry as an old Sorel, but there also wasn’t one molecule of H2O within a 100 yards of the house.

No matter. She cooked meat to desiccation, and I ate it. Ultimately, it was just the way things were and I didn’t have any basis of comparison. In fact, it wasn’t till I’d left home and had my first rare steak that I understood why people liked the stuff. Besides, let’s get real — it wasn’t like I was, or am, a foodie. I like what I like, I don’t like what I don’t like, and I don’t complicate the equation by trying to figure out what’s in it or how it was prepared.

And while I’m not fussy about food and pretty much like everything, there is one food I truly loathe, and always have. It’s also the only meal I refused to eat. Truth be told, the stuff is so disgusting, I hesitate to label it “food.” It is liver.

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Tales of the glory days

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Now some necessary background.

My parents were old enough to be my grandparents. Both were Gothamites, born and bred, and had stories of their younger days that fascinated me. Having lived when and where they did meant they came from a world that to me was as long gone and far away as the Albigensian Heresy. Consider this: My father was 22 before New York City had its first commercial radio station and he was raised in a Lower East Side tenement, like something out of a Jacob Riis expose. My mother saw the George Washington Bridge being built, swam in the East River, and saw the Hindenburg fly over the city on its way to and from Lakewood, New Jersey. She also saw Houdini on stage.

She loved to talk about the celebrities of her day. Her favorite New York City stars were two of its mayors — Jimmy Walker and Fiorello La Guardia. Walker was the quintessential Tammany party hack. He was as crooked as they get, but he also was a dapper dresser and a charmer n’est plus ultra, thus his nickname, Beau James. So while he was robbing the city blind and everyone knew it, they also considered him less a crook than a darling rascal.

La Guardia was Walker’s opposite. He was honest and a fearless reformer. He was seemingly everywhere at once in the city and no details escaped his eagle eye. He was also brilliant, but kept that pretty much to himself. My favorite La Guardia story is Tammany ran a Jewish candidate against La Guardia, claiming La Guardia was an anti-Semite. In fact, La Guardia’s mother was Jewish, but he refused to announce it, claiming it was self-serving. Instead, he offered to debate the other guy … but only if they spoke in Yiddish, which he spoke fluently, and which the other guy spoke not at all. There was no debate, and La Guardia won reelection easily.

Another of my mother’s favorites was FDR. She talked of his determination, his Fireside Chats and his beautiful command of English. And being the animal lover she was, she told stories of FDR’s favorite dog, a Scotty named Fala. And though Fala had trotted across The Rainbow Bridge a decade before my tale of rebellion and resistance, he holds a starring role in it, rest his soul.

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When no means No!

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It was fall, 1962. After a full day of spacing out in school and then wandering around town, purposeless and clueless, I came home in need of replenishment and renewal. But what I found instead was my mother frying the flukes out of a chunk of — you guessed it — liver. She’d blackened a bunch of onions to complement the repast, but when she put the plate in front of me and I got a good look and a worse sniff of that swill, I was suddenly transformed.

No longer was I that passive kid who for years had choked down liver without uttering a word of complaint. Uh-uh. Suddenly I became a rebel in the finest American tradition — a pint-size Patrick Henry, taking his stand, come hell or high water. And while there’s no proof Patrick Henry ever uttered “Give me liberty or give me death,” it didn’t matter. For me, a simple “No” sufficed.

“What?” said my mother.

“I said, ‘No,'” I said.

“What do you mean No?” said my mother.

Keep in mind, my mother, like TGOS, didn’t take no mess. Nor did she negotiate with terrorists. And she sure wasn’t about to let any offspring of hers refuse to eat a meal.

“Oh, excuse me,” I said. “I thought you understood English. How’s about this? Nein. Nyet. Non.”

She was taken aback and momentarily speechless. Once she recovered her cool, she decided to take a didactic approach.

“Liver is good for you,” she said. “It’s healthy. It’s a great source of iron.”

“Sure is,” I said. “And it’s also a great source of every toxin known to the Poison Control Center.”

Her eyes narrowed to mean little slits, and I’m sure mine did as well, as we stared at each other, soundless, for at least a full minute. Finally, I broke the silence.

“You can feed me peanut butter and jelly, cold cereal without milk, or sour milk without cereal. Or nothing at all. I don’t care. Cuz I’m not gonna eat that crap, today or ever. Period!”

My mother may have been stubborn, but she was not stupid. She realized I actually meant what I said, and she couldn’t bully or steamroll me into so much as sniffing that clot on my plate. So she decided to go for a patriotic appeal.

“You know,” she said, in an instructive tone, “liver and onions was FDR’s favorite dish.”

“Big-o deal-o,” I said. “Or if you prefer, big-o, new deal-o.”

“That’s it?” she said, the time for instruction over. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll say one more thing.”

“What’?” she said.

“Feed it to Fala,” I said.

And with that, I stood and tossed my napkin on the table, signaling that argument — and that phase of my life — was over. Then I wheeled around and marched out the kitchen, headed to my upstairs lair, where my Sugar Daddy stash would sustain me till breakfast. I left her to deal with FDR’s rave fave as she saw fit.

That was the only time I fought The Power and won.

Amazingly, she and I reached an unspoken agreement: I never mentioned it — even in passing — and she never again served me liver.