You can always look it up

You could always look it up, even before the Internet. In Germany, one of my mother's few most cherished possessions was her Fannie Farmer Boston School of Cooking cookbook. You may have one of these. Before Julia Child or the Joy of Cooking, this was the undisputed Bible for American cooks.

I still have her copy, published in 1947. It is kept in a freezer bag for safety, the binding is cracked, the cover is gone and the book is falling apart. The pages are brown and discolored at the edges and carry the marks of flour dust, egg and vanilla spills and notes in the margins. the ads in the book describe a few things that don't now exist; but many products have stood the test of time, and Ball canning jars, marshmallow fluff, Certo (for jam making), Gravy master and Baker's chocolate are there, along with an appeal to buy more war bonds.

My sister tells a story of Mom looking everywhere in Germany for english muffins. There were none to be found, they just didn't have english muffins in Germany in those days.

So Mom went to her trusty cookbook, and decided to make them herself. When you want a thing, you just want a thing. And naturally, the recipe was there. Here it is:

1/2 cup scalded milk
1 cup water
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 yeast cake dissolved in 1 tblsp. water
3 tblsp shortening
4 cups flour

Cool milk to warm, add water, sugar, yeast, and 2 cups flour. Beat well, let rise to double bulk. Add shortening and remaining flour. Beat and knead thoroughly. Let rise to double the bulk. Place on slightly floured board, flatten with rolling pin to 3/4 inch thickness. Let stand until light. Cut with cutter, bake 15 minutes on hot buttered griddle, turning several times. Makes 24 to 30 muffins.

Don't go to bed mad

Like most couples, Mary and Lou were not always 100% pleased with eachother. They had the battles and fights that all couples do; especially those that never have enough money, six kids, and very different families.

I believe that like most of the family wisdom that we get from our parents, the guidance about going to bed mad was a true aspiration for Mom and Dad. But I will never forget one night, when Dad had crossed a line.

It was long ago, and I have no clear memory of what the trigger was, but she was just plain at the end of her patience. She went straight to her stronghold - the kitchen table; and stayed there by herself all evening, refusing to talk to Dad. Would not say a word. He trailed in and out of the kitchen from the livingroom (his stronghold) all night, waiting for some word, some return to normalcy, some bit of conversation about the day to day that would tell him things would come out all right. He was met with stubborn silence. Finally, looking so totally pathetic that my 10-year old heart broke for him, with little tufts of hair standing up on his head, he came in one last time to say Goodnight before heading upstairs.

I will never forget his feet on the stairs. We both heard every creak, every thump as he got into bed. And not a peep from Mom.

It's the only time I saw a demonstration of her anger that went past bedtime. After 20 years in my own marriage, I know for sure that there were other nights when she must have lain awake herself, stewing about something that wouldn't leave her mind. But I never saw it before or since.

I got my temper from her. But she would always remind me that when I grew up and started a family of my own, it was a good idea never to let a disagreement last beyond bedtime. "It ruins your day the next day," she said. "And then it lasts."

You can't always get what you want

It was 1964, and I went to school for the first time. I was the last "baby of the family" left at home.

President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, and the Beatles topped the charts for the first time and had their very first television appearance on American sets on the Ed Sullivan Show. Ed Sullivan was a favorite of Dad's, so we were watching when the screams erupted from the girls in the crowd, drowning out the song. "That's crazy, you can't even hear them", was Lou's judgement call. Vietnam protests erupted all across America. The Rolling Stones came out with their first album ever.

And Mary got a short-lived job.

"One winter" Mary said, telling the story, "I decided to go to work. Just part time, for Christmas money. all I could really do was clean house, so I did that. I got a job cleaning house, three mornings a week, for a woman a block away, on Orchard Street. Right after you and your father left in the morning, I would walk to this house, and clean all morning, and then at lunchtime I'd go and get you from school. Nobody knew I did this. I did it until Christmas, and then I took the money, and I bought you kids extra presents. but I was most excited because I could buy Daddy a present from my own money. So Christmas came, and I gave Daddy his present, and told him how I worked to buy it. I was really proud. He opened it and said thank you, and then he said I had to quit my job. I shouldn't have been working with you so young, and I should have told him. Even though you were in school; he said what would have happened if you'd gotten sick? So I had to quit."

Years later, I asked her why she quit the job.

"Because," she said patiently, "I wanted to share it. After that I wasn't excited anymore. It wasn't the same."

How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?

Louis R. Pelissier was born in 1913, in Hadley, Massachusetts.
Mary J. Twarog was born in 1918 in East Whately, Massachusetts.

They were married on the 13th of May, 1943 - three years after Lou joined the U.S. Army.

Once they were married, they moved almost constantly, as many army families did back then (and still do). I'm looking at an army record that lists all the "Precise Periods and Places of Residence", and I see:

1943, moved to Mobile, AL (right after getting married)
1945, moved to Deridder, LA
1947, moved to Yokehasu, Japan
1948, moved to New York, NY (Governor's Island)
1951, moved to Munich, Germany
1954, moved to Colorado Springs, CO
1956, back to Germany.

In the course of all the household moves, Mary and Lou found time to have six children. The last three (their "second family") were my two brothers and myself, all born on army posts in Germany. I have no memories of any locations except our town of Northampton, Massachusetts, where we returned the year after I was born (1958, Germany). But my older sisters have told me numerous stories of the big post houses in Japan and Germany, japanese maids and german high schools, and what life was like growing up in the military.

I know as I reconstruct this, partly from memories and stories I heard growing up, and partly from what few paper records there are remaining; that with little hope of finding work in Western Massachusetts in 1939, the army was the most promising choice a young man could make for a living. Lou borrowed money from his older sister, Helen (a teacher at the time) to see a dentist before signing up. He needed to be sure he could get in without problems. Sometime between 1941 and 1943, he was posted to Panama. Mom told stories of waiting in Massachusetts for word of him, and when he returned for a short time in 1943, they tied the knot.

Soon after, they started their family with my oldest sister, Mary Jane. She was the only child born in our hometown, close to friends and family members. For the rest, Mom dealt with births in army hospitals far from home.

I hope you dance

It was 1968, and Eddie Forman of Hadley, Massachusetts had just formed the Eddie Forman Orchestra. This was the year the Polka Hall of Fame opened its doors, and Mary and her sisters were dancing with eachother at the Three County Fair in Northampton. I was 10, and she taught me the "hop, two, three" method of polka dancing. We were all at the fair that day, my two brothers, myself, Mom and Dad - and two of my aunts.

Mary wanted to dance with Lou to the polka band, but he sat that one out. I never saw him dance the polka with her once. I'm not sure if he thought it was dignified. Polka was not among his musical tastes; they ran much more to the occasional dance to Guy Lombardo on New Year's Eve.

I'd dance with him in the living room, hanging on to his smoking jacket. But I have to say the polka with Mom was a little more fun, and definitely better exercise. We grew up thinking of the polka as "blue collar music". But I later watched a couple in tuxedo and long gown dance the polka at a wedding; and they fairly flew around the floor, nimble as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and it matched any other dance I'd ever seen for elegance. So that's back at you. It was a class act, and that's all I have to say about that.

Waste not, want not

Mary and Lou both grew up in the Depression, and as they raised their family of six, their approach to food reflected that. As with most kids in my generation, we had oatmeal for breakfast (it was cheap), all our baked goods were homemade, and our weekday meals featured goodies like franks and beans and creamed hamburg on toast.

Weekday meals were penny-stretching choices, and depending on how tight that week's paycheck was, they could get very creative toward the end of the week especially. But the hands down prize winner had to be the week Dad brought home tripe for our evening meal. I later realized that he just couldn't afford anything else at that point. And I know now that we made him feel pretty bad about when we flatly refused to eat the disgusting stuff, and volunteered to go to bed early without dinner rather than touch it. He sat that night, completely alone at the dinner table, eating the tripe by himself.

It was a source of pride to Dad to be a good provider. And on weekends and holidays, especially when we had family and friends at our table, we would eat "dinner" instead of "supper" (supper was for weekdays). Dinner, even on a Saturday, was a more formal middle of the day meal, and would entail really putting the feedbag on. Dad's favorite Saturday dinner was steak or roast beef. Served with a liberal side of potatoes and gravy and always, always, bread and butter. Even if our supper choices had slimmed down to french toast by the end of the week, once payday hit, Saturday dinners were celebratory.

Holidays were the same, only no holds barred. Being a great host was also important to Dad; and Thanksgivings, Christmas Eve smorgasborgs, and Easter feasts offerered so much food it wouldn't even fit on our large dining table; but spilled over onto the buffet and card tables set up just to hold extra dishes.

These were a central part of our family culture growing up, these dinners. And while Dad taught us the feeling of satisfaction and joy there is in hosting such a meal, I realize now that these could only take place because of Mom. Working behind the curtain, pinching pennies, finding ways to stretch a dollar all week in order to make the big family dinners and holidays possible. At a time when families were discovering the charm of ready-made and frozen foods for convenience, she baked, she cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, she made everything "home-made" that she could in order to save on the grocery bill. I still have her recipes to prove it. I'll tell you about them someday.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

With six kids to raise and a modest single income, money was always tight when I was a kid. Not all of our clothes came from a store; Mom made so many things on her sewing machine that I can't count them all.

We had the best Halloween costumes in the neighborhood; I remember winning a contest in a poofy Little Bo Peep outfit she made, complete with my Uncle's dog-headed cane for a shepherd's crook. My sister still talks about the Indian Princess costume Mom made.

Christmas presents were also a candidate. One year, Mary put in weeks of secret work during the day to make a plaid wool smoking jacket for Lou, my Dad. He wore it every night for years, and when it finally wore out, she made him another. It remains to this day one of my memories of him; the smoking jacket that smelled like Dad.

She also taught me to sew. We had home economics and 4-H as kids to learn the basics, but it was really Mom that taught us to make elaborate projects. She made my sister's wedding gown, along with gowns for all of her bridesmaids.. and I followed suit years later, after she was gone, by making my own wedding gown. Raised as a bargain hunting, do-it-yourselfer, I couldn't imagine why anyone would spend the money to buy a gown.

The same was true of my prom dress, and I've kept it as a reminder of what I could do, if I had the time.

Sewing brought me a source of income as a kid as well. once I learned to make things on the machine, i began a business with Mom's help; making potholders and aprons (people still wore aprons...) to sell to school friends as Christmas gifts for their mothers. That was good for three years' worth of Christmas money. Now my daughter makes hand crafted earrings to sell to friends in order to earn half of her iPod Touch-I guess the tradition lives on.