Many , if not most, of my memories about Mom include Dad. They were partners for over 60 years and it is impossible to talk about Mom without Dad.
EARLY MEMORIES
Earliest memory was of sitting on a linoleum floor with a very bright light from above. I believe that the apartment that we first stayed in had a skylight.All of Mom’s kids’ first names ended in ‘ie’ - Davie, Dannie, Jackie, Merkie, Jimmie and Brucie. OK, maybe some of the kids’ names ended in ‘y’. But the second syllable of each name all sounded the same…’ee’.Our first house was on Lee street. Back then, everything looked big. Dan and I wanted to go sledding when we were probably only about 2 or 3 years old. Mom let us use her baking pans to slide down the hill in the front yard. If you drive down Lee street and look at the front of the old house, you will notice that the hill is only about 2 feet high.When I was about 6 years old, we were all going to play outside in the snow. We had a closet under the stairs where we kids threw all our winter stuff. Dan and Jack had plunged into the closet and with Mom’s help, already were dressed in winter gear and ran outside. I got my stuff on but couldn’t find gloves. Mom found 2 right handed gloves on the floor in the back of the closet but could not find a left handed glove for me. I took one of the right handed gloves, turned it inside out, and put it on my left hand (I don’t know how I figured that out but it worked). From that moment on, Mom thought that I was a genius destined for greatness. I have heard about this story every couple of months for 50 years. Unfortunately, the height of my intellectual flight hit its apex at the age of 5. Since that time, I have only been able to use the ‘Clark Inside Out Glove Technique’ 4 other times. The patent for this technique expired years ago.Just to prove that I peaked at 5, I was the third grade spelling champ at Garrett (my teacher taught me the word ‘aisle’ and then used it to knock out all the other spellers; I did not understand what she had done at the time). Mom practiced spelling words with me for weeks so I would be ready for the County championship. I felt like I was being punished for being the champion because now I had to practice. I went out on the first word of the tournament…whith…the correct spelling of the word…with. To this day, I have been trying to get Webster to correct the dictionary. Mom was there for me all the way.
FOOD
One of our favorite meals was fried chicken on Sunday. We all fought over the drumsticks because they were…drumsticks. I don’t even know that we thought that they were good. I kind of think that Mom and Dad tricked us into eating the drumsticks so that they could have the breasts.
This leads me into the first weapon that mom would use in order to get us to eat something. It was called gravy. I would eat anything with gravy on it: meat, potatoes, bread, muffins, hockey pucks. Still do; though now, at my age, it’s hard to chew up a hockey puck.
Mom’s second offensive culinary weapon was cheese. She put cheese on everything. Obviously, she put cheese on everything that she would put gravy on. She added vegetables to the mix and we ‘bit’. Sure enough, we even ate a green vegetable as long as it had cheese on it. To this day, my favorite meal is cheese potatoes with hot dogs. I am convinced that Kentucky Fried Chicken should pay mom a royalty for their gravy, cheese and mashed potato dish. That was mom’s idea 50 years ago!
One year, Mom and Dad had a great idea and bought a side of beef. Some company had a promotion that if you bought their freezer, they would throw in the side of beef for free. We all sat down for our first steak dinner but the meat was so tough that even gravy would not help. It was actually tougher than a hockey puck. Mom and Dad did not fret. They decided to grind up the whole side of beef into ground beef. We had every conceivable ground beef meal that you can think of: hamburgers, hunky stew, stroganoff, ground beef with noodles, rice, tomatoes, beans, you name it, chili, and, of course, you have already probably guessed it, hamburger ‘gravy’.Hamburger gravy was a staple unto itself. It was great. You could eat it on anything or use it as the entre by itself. You could freeze it. Then, if you had some dish that you didn’t know how to save, you simply thawed the hamburger gravy and poured it all over the entre. Again, gravy comes to the rescue.
Mom was really a great cook, but everyone knows that her specialty was her world famous applesauce. She would peel apples for hours. One of the secrets to her applesauce was the apples that she selected: northern spy. People would lie, cheat and steal for her applesauce. The applesauce was better than pie filling; a sweet, cinnamon flavored fruity textured sauce that could be eaten with anything. This made the applesauce Mom’s third weapon in the fight to get her children to eat. Just like gravy and cheese, the applesauce could be used to make almost anything taste good. Or it would be used as leverage: if you don’t eat the broccoli, you don’t get the applesauce.
MUSIC
Mom instilled the love of music in all of us. She and Dad would often sing songs while we rode in the car. She would harmonize with Dad as he attempted to sing the tune. I guess that Mom’s sweet melodious alto voice more than made up for, let’s just say for diplomacy’s sake, Dad’s raw talent.
I came to realize that our family does not remember the words to one single song. We hum along a lot and some of us make up words or sing different stanzas at the same time. We also change keys about 6 times during one song. Thus, we end every song on at least 3 different notes.
Mom encouraged all of us to sing. Because of her, I sang solos and in duets, quartets, choirs, and musicals. She and Dad attended all my performances in high school and college, and, later, they attended some of my church performances.I really enjoyed listening to the choir and the harmony in their hymns. Mom and I were in the Methodist choir together for 2 years. Mom had a really pretty voice and seemed to pick up her alto parts with ease.
Mom played the piano and encouraged all of us to play. I played for about a year and a half. The only thing that kept me from being a piano virtuoso was practice. I really practiced a lot; but it was jump shots. I liked to hear Mom play the piano. Her favorite song was ‘Claire de Lune’. It was a song that she was beginning to learn when she quit playing the piano. Consequently, she only learned about the first 16 bars of the song. She would often play these bars but have to stop. She always meant to learn the entire song but just never did. To this day, those first 16 bars of ‘Claire de Lune’ are my favorite. I have no idea what the rest of the song sounds like.
SUCCESS
Mom and Dad did not measure success by wins and losses. They wanted you to always do your very best. If you did your best, then you were successful. That is always what they ever asked of us. If you think about it, that really is a very high standard, but it is an attainable standard.
PATIENCE
When I was about 15 years old, we owned a white Chevrolet station wagon with a 3 speed stick shift on the steering column. It was not a car to die for. One day all of our family was in the car when my dad turned around and said, “Dave, do you want to drive?” I was dumbfounded but said, “Sure.” I got behind the steering wheel and Dad proceeded to explain the art of using the clutch and shifting in a one minute lesson. I had no idea what he said. I did not understand the necessity for a clutch nor the need for gears.
Fortunately, I understood the concept of steering and braking or we all would have crashed and burned that day. I started the car. For the next 15 minutes, we chugged and lurched and shimmied and stopped and lunged. About every 2 to 3 minutes, I would finally get the car in third gear and we would drive smoothly until we hit a stop sign or curve on the road. Then, the violent shaking would start all over as I tried vainly to get the car into a gear that would work. Remember that we had Dad, Mom, Dan, Jack and Merk in the car. Instead of screams of agony and shrieks of dread for their lives, everyone, except me, was laughing hysterically. Every shake brought a roar, a shimmy brought glee, they could not control their amusement over my agony.
The next time Dad asked if I would like to drive, I politely said, “No.” Later that week, Mom drove me out to a back road in the country. She had me get behind the wheel and then she carefully (and without an audience) taught me all about first gear. We drove around in first gear, stopping and starting, for about 10 minutes. Then we practiced on first and second gears. Finally, we put them all together. I never had problems with a stick shift again. Mom taught me patience.
DISCIPLINE
Mom used to employ a fly swatter to spank us. It really didn’t hurt, but we all cried anyway. It was better to get spanked with a fly swatter than by the ‘hand of Dad’. When Dad spanked, he would follow through. That little extra lift off you got from his spank really convinced you that you really did not want to be a repeat offender of your current crime.Looking back, it really amazes me that Mom and Dad did not punish us very much passed the age of about 10 to 12 years old. Somehow they had convinced us that we wanted to please them. So we really just kind of stayed out of trouble on our own. Also, they seemed to let up on the rules at the right time. I always felt that I had all the freedom that I wanted.
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