Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

I have said before that my mother worked in a small rubber factory from 3p.m., until 11 p.m., five nights a week. I don’t remember when she got home but it was way after my brother, sister and I had gone to bed. I do remember that when I got up to go to school the next morning, Mom was already up. She would be standing at the stove cooking Oatmeal for me.
These oats were not the instant kind. They did not have freeze-dried peaches, strawberries or brown sugar mixed in with the oats. The round Quaker Oats box held only one kind of oats and that was the "old fashion" kind. Ugh, I didn’t like oatmeal. It was slimy and looked like glue sticking to the small enamel pan in which Mom cooked the oats.

Sometimes, I ate it with brown sugar, cinnamon and a drop or two of milk. Other times I ate it plain with a drop or two of canned Wilson evaporated milk. Double ugh! But Mom cooked it and I ate it.

The best part of Mom having to work the second shift was that she would be home at noon when I came from school for lunch. In 1940, grade schools didn’t have free lunches for students. Most of the students who attended Allen School on Alaska Street in (Old) North Dayton went home for lunch.

The day I liked best was when Mom would be washing clothes down in the basement. She had an old cook stove down there and she would cook a pot of Soup Beans while she washed our clothes. They were usually pinto beans or white beans with a piece of ham or even a ham hock for favoring. By the time I got home at lunch time the beans were ready to eat.

For lunch Mom fixed me a small bowl of beans with a piece of bread and maybe, a glass of milk. And for supper Buddy or my sister heated up the bean soup and we had the beans and the Corn Bread that Mom had made before she went to work. She made the corn bread in an old iron skillet and was it good. She didn’t use sugar or put an egg in the mixture and she always made it with white corn meal. I never did learn how to make it but my sister did. To this day she still makes it in the same iron skillet that Mom did.

That was a day when I loved to eat even if the beans did make me let "bumps." Oh, how my mother would laugh when I called letting gas making bumps.

Three Wasn't Company, It Was A Family

I grew up in a single parent household since my father died when I was three. It was 1940, a time when my Mom had no car and walked for miles to get to work but glad
to have the work. Going to work at 3 p.m. was bad enough when she had to brave
the rain or the snow. But it was the coming home at 11:00 p.m. that must have been
the worst.

Of course, now, that I can’t asked her, I wonder what she thought about when she walked up those empty, dark streets, through a park toward home. I wonder if she was afraid or if she talked to herself, maybe, even sung out loud, since there wasn’t anyone around. But no, I don’t believe so. She probably hurried as fast as her tired legs could and was thankful when she reached the unlocked front door of our house.

This was a time when my 16 year-old brother, who was the oldest, cooked supper for my sister and I. There was always something to eat. But I liked it best when Mom could afford to buy pork chops. There was always three. They were pink, with fat running around the sides and with a bone. They were never thick. Yet, they were never skinny. They always seemed to be just right. The bone was always good when you chewed on it after the meat was gone.

Buddy would coat them in flour, shake some salt and pepper over them and carefully, brown them on both sides. Never did he burn them. There were three of us for supper, my brother, sister and I. But the first pork chop out of the pan was always placed on a plate and put inside the oven for Mom to eat when she got home. The other two chops were shared between the three of us.

Buddy always made gravy. He would scrape the brown flour drippings from the bottom of the iron pan, mixing them with the grease until he thought it was just right. If we did not have milk or canned Wilson evaporated milk, there was always water. The gravy was good poured over "white" bread and maybe, if he felt like it, and if Mom had them, he would peel two white potatoes and mash them. I hated it when he opened a can of spinach and heated it up. But it wasn’t too bad if Mom had some vinegar to put in it.

Like I have said before, I can’t ever remember going to bed hungry.

A Hot July Afternoon...

It felt good on this hot July day, sitting eating strange food, listening to strange music and hearing strange words fill the air. It felt good. The food, the polka music and a feeling of security surrounded me. This feeling, although I did not know it at the time, stayed with me, weaving its way into the growing fabric of my childhood and my life.

The friends I went to school with were as American as I was, yet, we were all a family of immigrants. My Mom was third or maybe fourth generation Irish with a mixture of Scotch thrown in while my friends families were mainly Eastern European. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents came from places like Poland, Hungry, Lithuania and Germany. We all spoke English, some with a southern twang and some with an European accent but we still were Americans.

It was not strange to be invited to eat with school friends and their family. Their food might have a different name then what my mother called it but it was really all the same.
Like when I would be playing at someone’s house in the Kossuth Colony at supper time. Instead of sending me home, my friend’s mother, always set a place for me.

The best time was when her mom fried Blinkies and served them with applesauce. The crunchy taste of the crispy, lacy potatoes cakes with the Sweet Applesauce was enough to make anyone say, "Thank you for letting me stay."

My mom made Potato Cakes or Patty Cakes and where my friend’s mom would grate raw potatoes, my mom used leftover mashed potatoes that had a sprinkle of onions mixed in with them.

There wasn’t any applesauce but once in a while she fried up the last two or three apples in butter and brown sugar and we had them. Oh, boy, they were good. Maybe, even better. But really, it was the same recipe one from Poland and another from the mountains of Appalachia.

The Faces of Yesterday

The cookhouse was set apart from the shelter house at picnic grounds.  The fourth Saturday in July was hot before noon and would be hotter after noon.  For a six-year-old girl the threshold to the cookhouse was the best place to be when there was going to be an all day and half the night, picnic.

The women who had worked all week alongside my Mom in the small rubber shop over in North Dayton (now called Old North Dayton!) allowed me to sit on the threshold where I could smell the aromas of their cooking. 

Mom wasn't in the kitchen because she didn't know how to make Cabbage Rolls, Hungarian Goulash or Pierogis.  The women, most of who were second generation Europeans, felt sorry for me because I was so very little and my Mom was the "poor widow woman" from Appalachia.  It was not long before one of the women pushed a plate filled with a cabbage leaf, hamburger, rice and tomatoes with a hunk of black bread at me and said, "Here, eat this while you watch them set up the polka band. Eat!"