Jesus.
Good to have that weekend behind me. Emotional shit, that.
An aside about Dad’s favorite meal: Mom HATED sauerkraut. Hated it so much that she fed it to him damned near every day for a year. Sauerkraut, mashed potatos (dad liked ’em a bit lumpy) milk gravy. He’d make a big pile of taters on his plate, smoosh a big crater in them with his spoon, slap in a big dab of kraut in the crater, douse the whole deal with milk gravy. Stir it up. (When I was a kid, I loved it too, I called it ‘stir it up’. Hell, I thought that’s what Bob Marley was singing about) Anyway, Dad was in heaven. He thought he’d married his blue fairy godmother. Mom grew more and more disgusted at the whole ordeal until she finally said “Marion, don’t you ever get tired of eating that crap?” The answer, apparently, was no. Mom went back to cooking other things, but dad still ate until the containers were empty whenever Mom made his favorite dish.
When I was a kid, summers on grampa’s farm, we woke up around four thirty. grampa would be in the kitchen, smearing a two pound chunk of unsliced bacon on the old Majestic cookstove.The bacon grease would sizzle and he’d make a fisful of sauerkraut into a ball, roll it around in a little cornstarch, and flatten it on the hot griddle. A couple of slices of thick bread would go down on either side and keep it company. The whole thing got made into a sandwich, which you stuffed into the top pocket of your bibs, so you could just bend your head down when you were milking and take a bite.
A fried sauerkraut sandwich doesn’t sound like much of a breakfast, but it kept you going while you fed the animals. When everything had been fed, when the cows were milked, we’d go back inside and by then (around seven) gramma would have “second breakfast” made, which was a stack of pancakes, some fried eggs, bacon. Enough for each one of us for the whole day, because we never saw anything again until dark.
We’d finish breakfast and sit side by side in the outhouse, four grandkids and the old man, receiving orders for the day. THe older kids usually got duties involving power equipment while the younger ones got hoeing. I hated hoeing. I almost always got hoeing.
Dad grew up exactly like this- and while I only got small doses of it in summers, dad lived like that until he was twenty. I remember what work it was. I remember thinking how dad must have hated not having the ability to escape it like I could in the school season. I remember those sauerkraut sandwiches most of all.
Nostalgia can make any sandwich taste good. Fried ‘kraut, indeed.
Almost makes me miss those sardine ‘n’ cream cheese jobbies I used to eat.
Ah…Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. Used to spend a few weeks there every summer. I never really had to do much outdoor work – mostly helped Grandma picking veggies and strawberries, and cookin and snappin beans and such – but I do remember going out with Grandpa early, early in the morning now and then. He’d roll up a cigarette and light it up. Then, in a normal speaking voice, he’d start saying: “Here, calf-calf-calf-calf. Heeeeere, calf-calf-calf-calf-calf.” Soon you’d hear the rumbling hooves and cows, LOTS of cows, seemed to appear out of nowhere, practically running toward the gate where Grandpa stood.
My older brother witnessed this when he was about 3 or 4, and had nightmares for years where the “cows were going to get him”.
Again, thanks for the memory trigger. I miss Grandpa. He’s there in my heart, though, telling me to quit smoking so I don’t die of emphysema like he did.
One of my favorite (of manymanymany) sayings of my paternal step-grandfather was on mixing food on the plate. People would express surprise or disgust and he’d say — logically enough — “It all gets mixed together in your stomach.”
M