Traveling Salesman

Traveling salesmen. They peddled everything from handy-dandy gadgets to make life simpler, to soap and magazines. Knock Knock. No, it's not Avon calling.

In a day when the majority of women stayed home and raised kids, the traveling salesman was sure to find the lady of the house when he knocked.

"Good morning, ma'am. Isn't it a beautiful day? Let me show you my wares."

Mom reluctantly allowed the man in the kitchen door where he opened his case on the lid of the washing machine. She looked at his samples and was making noises about not needing any of that product. The salesman, fearing she might not buy anything, began to compliment her.

"Are these your little brother and sister?" He pointed to my brother and me. My Mom, at 5' 1" and ninety pounds, didn't appear to have ever been pregnant or given birth.

"No, I'm their mother."

"Why, you look much too young to have big kids like these. You can't possibly be over twenty!" He confidently stepped closer to her as he troweled on the flattery.

Unfazed, my mother told him, "I got married when I was ten."

The man shied away like a horse who hears a rattler and stared horror-struck between mom and the two six- or seven-year-olds playing a game on the floor. She grinned at him, no deceit showing in her bright gray eyes and honest expression.

"Is that even legal?" he exclaimed. He snapped his fold-out sample case shut and ran out the house like the dogs were after him. 

I guess he didn't want to make a sale after all.

Rule 10.  Mom has been pranking people for years. Never underestimate her.

Open Container

My mother is a teetotaler. If that word has fallen out of use, it means she doesn't drink liquor; she abstains from alcohol altogether. The simplest reason is that she doesn't like the taste or smell of the stuff. Second, it makes people act funny; it causes them to lose control of their good sense. The most important reason she has for never drinking is the fact alcohol has a way of ruining lives, families, and finances.

She doesn't get on her high horse and preach about the curse of drink. People can make their own mistakes. She doesn't judge.

That's not to say she didn't have some colorful relatives who were known to imbibe too much. At an occasion at her parent's house when my brother and I were small, some of the men were passing around a bottle of cheap booze. They had already loosened up a bit, and someone asked my grandmother if she wanted a drink. Read my 6-11-18 post about the goat in the house to find out what a good sport she was.

She good-naturedly abandoned the cooking and sat at the table with the guys where they poured her a drink. None of these people had ever heard of a highball glass or a shot glass. They poured a generous amount of undiluted rot gut into a water glass, and she proceeded to drink it like it was water. My dad recalls she was quickly on her way to dancing on the table when my brother, who was about four years old at the time, wandered into the kitchen.

"Gwammaw," he said in an innocent voice, "that's whicky."

She put the glass down and left the table to the sound of several male voices calling to the females to keep the kids out of the kitchen.

My mom spent twenty-two years working at a restaurant where the owner was in the habit of hitting the bottle during the evening shift. It was his own bottle and some people wouldn't allow their high school aged kids to work there because they didn't want the youths exposed to drinking. This was before 'liquor by the drink' laws passed in Kansas. Everyone in the restaurant knew how much he had been drinking by how loudly he sang. He only knew one song:  Happy Birthday.

When I was in high school, a craze for a holiday dish swept through the area. Everyone wanted the recipe. It was called Bourbon Sweet Potatoes. What exactly is bourbon? Quite simply, it's whiskey distilled from at least 51% corn and other grains, and aged in new charred oak barrels. 'Corn squeezins' was the slang during Prohibition.

Corn squeezins in the sweet taters? No worries, all you teetotalers. The alcohol cooks off in the heat from the oven. Or does it?

In their website What's Cooking America, the authors state that anywhere from 4 to 78 percent of alcohol remains in food after it is cooked. The results depended on the temperature and area of the cooking vessel not to mention the density of the food, such as cake batter. However, at the end of the article they cite the following author:

James Peterson, a cookbook writer who studied chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, stated in his encyclopedic cookbook called Sauces:

You need to cook a sauce for at least 20 to 30 seconds after adding wine to it to allow the alcohol to evaporate. Since alcohol evaporates at 172°F (78°C), any sauce or stew that is simmering or boiling is certainly hot enough to evaporate the alcohol.

I'm confused. Does the alcohol completely evaporate or not? Nearly everyone who sampled the sweet potato dish thought it was divine, couldn't taste any liquor, and decided no spirits lurked in the food to cast their wicked spell. My mom wanted to make it for Thanksgiving.

Ah, now she had a problem. How could this lady of high moral standards walk into an establishment that sold spirits and purchase even a small bottle? Someone might see her. In a flash of inspiration, she asked her boss if he would sell her some bourbon out of his bottle. He was a jolly old guy who never turned down a reasonable request. He pointed out that without a liquor license he could get in a lot of trouble if he sold it to her, so it was a gift.

Armed with the recipe, a measuring cup (as though there wouldn't be such a thing in a restaurant kitchen) and a pint mason jar, she stood by as he doled out the prescribed amount. She put the container in her handbag and took it home with her at the end of her shift. Back at home, she left the jar on the kitchen counter.

"What's this?" my dad asked.

"It's whiskey for a recipe I'm making for Thanksgiving dinner. You stay out of it."

"Where'd you get it? The only booze that comes in a jar is moonshine, and it's illegal."

"Harlan gave it to me."

Dad twisted the lid off, gave a sniff to the high quality contents and raised his eyebrows. "You drove home with this jar on the car seat?"

"It was in my purse."

"I'll rephrase the question. You drove home with this open bottle within arms' reach of you?"

"What difference does it make? It's not open, or wasn't until you sniffed it. The lid was on it."

"It's an open container. It's not sealed. You could have been arrested if you'd been stopped."

"Why would anyone arrest me for bringing an ingredient for a recipe home with me?  I wasn't drinking it."

"It doesn't matter." Dad's voice rose an octave as it always did when he argued with my mom. "It's an open container. It was accessible when it was next to you on the car seat. It's part of the drinking and driving law."

He never convinced her she had broken the law. The distinction between carrying a mason jar of booze in her purse or in the trunk sounded ridiculous to her. He didn't even try to get into the ramifications of the jar not being labelled.

The sweet potatoes were delicious, and I'm sharing the famous recipe with you.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving whether you make this dish or not.

Bourbon Sweet Potatoes

4 pounds fresh sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed

(you can save a lot of time by opening a couple of two-pound cans)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup Bourbon (your choice of brand)

1/3 cup orange juice

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice or allspice

Add in order and mix well.  

Line a large, greased casserole dish with pineapple rings (1 can, drained). Spread the above mixture over the pineapple. Sprinkle with walnut or pecan pieces.

Bake 45 minutes at 350F.  

At the end of the 45 minutes turn on the broiler. Remove the casserole from the oven and sprinkle it with mini marshmallows. Place it under the broiler until the marshmallows are lightly browned. Watch closely.

This dish reheats well with the Thanksgiving leftovers.
Bon appetit.

Who let the frogs out?

In the movie Fools Rush In, Isabella's male cousins take Alex out to show him a good time. They bring him home with a second-degree sunburn and a butt full of cactus needles.  When my mom and dad got engaged, her male cousins took him bull frogging. They needed someone to hold the gunnysack, so Mom was invited to go along. She was 16 or 17.

At sundown everyone showed up at my grandparent's house in their grubbiest clothes and shoes. They drove to the creek with Mom sitting on the hard bench seat of Dad's old Chevy pickup. Three cousins, armed with flashlights and dip nets, rode in back perched on the fender wells or sitting with legs dangling off the tailgate. At the bridge, Dad parked off the road, and they all jumped out.

Mom didn't trust any of them when it came down to who was going to hold two strands of the barbed wire fence apart so she could crawl through to the pasture. Either she was going to snag her clothes or one of those boys was going to pinch her butt, even if they were her cousins. Instead, she climbed over the fence at a post. The boys showed off by scissor high jumping over it.

Mom was instructed to be quiet, stay out of their way, and open the neck of the burlap gunnysack when they brought the frogs.  

The wildlife at the creek had stilled when they drove up. After a few minutes, crickets resumed their chirping, cliff swallows under the bridge settled back into their nests, and the bullfrogs began to bellow. They visited quietly while waiting for it to get dark.

The fellows stealthily approached the creek and slid down the steep bank. It had been a dry summer, and the water was less than a foot deep. At a whispered signal they clicked on their flashlights.  Sweeping the surface of the water with the beams, they soon detected glowing eyes.

Dip nets captured one mesmerized frog after another. The guys toed their way back up the crumbling bank of the creek and hurried to where Mom waited with the gunnysack.

"Let's see what we caught."

They directed the lights to the contents of the nets. Mom held the sack open, and three frogs were deposited inside.

"Where's Bobby?" she asked.

They hurried back to the creek. "What are you doing down there? I thought you caught a frog."

"I did, but I can't get back up this bank," he whispered. "Somebody give me a hand."

"Why didn't you say you needed help?"

"You guys told me to be quiet."

"Hey, Laverne, why'd you bring this kid along?"

"Mom made me."

His catch was added to the sack. "Now we're making bag. Look at the size of these grand-daddies. Don't let 'em get away, Eleanor."

"Let's try further down the stream. Sit tight. We'll be right back." 

Back to the water they went.

She could hear them whispering and splashing in the water. She sat cross-legged on the springy pasture grass and held the burlap bag as the moon rose. Frogs crawled around inside seeking escape.

Their whispers carried on the water. "Dang it. Hold the light steady. That one got away. I think we've scared them off."

Lights bobbled up and down as Jack and her cousins returned. "Open the sack, Cuz. We caught three more."

She pulled the mouth of the sack open and four frogs erupted in their faces.

"Damn! You're letting them get away. Watch these nets."

The foursome dove for the athletics amphibians. Two were apprehended. They stomped back to her, stuffed the slippery frogs through a tiny opening and did the same for the ones in the nets.

Thoroughly disgruntled, they returned to the farm. Since Mom hadn't gotten wet and muddy, she drove while all the guys rode in back. They stayed in the driveway where they shucked out of wet clothes and pulled on the dry ones they had brought with them while Mom went in the house.

My grandparents asked Mom if she had fun.

"I guess not," she said morosely. "They're all mad at me. I let some of the frogs they caught jump out of the bag."

The boys came in and straddled straight chairs in the kitchen. Grandma fed them a snack. They collected the catch and butchered the frog legs, keeping up a steady stream of complaints about the two that got away. The third time my future father mentioned that holding the gunnysack was Eleanor's only job, my granddad said they ought to go home if they couldn't do anything but bellyache.

The next morning Grandma found a pair of men's underwear lying in the driveway. She took them in the house and washed them with the family laundry because she knew who they belonged to.

The next time my father came to the house for a date, Grandma said she had something for him. She was holding the surprise behind her back. He held his hand out. She tried to give him the briefs.

He jerked his hand back like a snake had struck at it. "Those aren't mine," he claimed.

"Oh yes, they are," Grandma told him with a grin. "Your mother's laundry mark is right here on the waistband."

During my childhood, the story of how the engagement nearly ended before it began because of the bullfrog debacle was repeated over and over by my dad. The tale of him losing his underwear was told nearly as often by my Grandma. I was a little older before I figured out why everyone made such a big deal over it.

"Ja-ack, get out of the cookies."

My grandmother's best friend was Pauline Degarmo. My dad and his siblings knew her as Auntie Pauline. She didn't have children of her own and doted on them when she came to visit. A published poet, she wrote under the name Pauline Degarmo Wilkerson.

In The Window of Prayer, the publisher prefaces the book with these words:  'Pauline Wilkerson's poetry is filled with gentle surprises. Her eye and ear are extremely sensitive to places, to atmosphere, words and tones of speaking, but this exactitude does not narrow her vision; she evokes the intimacy of a shared past; she writes not only of religious experience but of the small events of her days, described with reverence. Her feeling for children is revealed in the many poignant poems she writes about them.'

Another of her works is titled There Is No Rhyme for Silver.

She was a prolific poetess with a gift for taking an ordinary word and weaving a poem around it. A popular guest at ladies' afternoon teas, she sent everyone in attendance home with an original, hand-written poem themed on the word they had suggested. She must have dreamed in AABB couplets.

This evocative poem, simply called Shopping, was inspired by her friendship with my grandmother and her intimate knowledge of my dad when he was a youngster.

While shopping at the dimestore

Just the other day--

I'd gathered up my parcels

And started on my way,

When I saw a boy looking at cookie jars:

And this is what he did--

He carefully inspected them

Lifting up each lid.

When asked if he found one

He wanted to buy

This I heard him say,

"I want a nice gift-

For my mom--you know--

It's for Mother's Day."

The clerk said, "A cookie jar's real nice,

"I'm sure she'll be surprised."

Then he looked at her so skeptically

With doubt in his big green eyes.

"I don't think any of these will do;

For they all have lids that rattle.

When I sneak a cooky now and then--

I don't want the jar to tattle!"