Family Therapy
Dear Lou,
One of the things I do to avoid the cuckoo’s nest is to pound the PC keyboard. So consider reading this as your part in keeping me balanced.
Saturday, we went to Waterloo to attend Carrol’s Cahokia High School class reunion. Although she graduated from Sparta, she went to school at Cahokia for her freshman through junior years so most of her longtime friends are from Cahokia, not Sparta. We ate dinner with six widowed or divorced women at the table, each of them auditioning for a part in The Golden Girls
Sunday morning, we drove to Eckerts to pick up some Southern Illinois peaches. We got West Virginia peaches instead because the Eckert family decided to keep both the peaches from their trees. You may remember that we had enough warm weather early last spring to bring fruit trees into bloom early. After the peach buds had formed, we had several days of heavy frost that eliminated the peach crop. As one orchard owner said, “Apples pay the bills, but peaches are the profit.” Guess that is why there are no more orchards of just one kind of fruit like the Stahlman pear orchard was.
While we were at Eckerts, I enjoyed looking around at all the old style meat and produce they sell. How many places do you know that sell fresh, home-grown kohlrabi? Or still offer honest-to-goodness liver sausage? If you lived closer I would have bought some and brought it to you on the condition that I didn’t have to eat any of it. Carrol bought a muskmelon for Scott that came from Posey County, Indiana.
Back in Springfield Sunday afternoon, (God forgive me for shopping on the Sabbath.) I visited a couple of farmers who drive into town and our neighborhood to sell fresh vegetables from the back of an old Ford pick-up. I may not be able to convince you that their corn is as good as you can find anywhere, but I guarantee that you can’t find any fresher produce unless you have your own garden.
As one of the two farmers was sacking up my corn, I asked him how many tomato plants he had this year. “Oh I only put out 46 this year. These are my neighbor’s tomatoes.” (Forty six doesn’t provide enough to sell I guess.) So I asked if he knew how many plants his neighbor had. He said, “A couple a hundred.” And as if that demanded an explanation, he added, “He’s 95 and goes to bed at 7:00 o’clock every day. My partner and I sell his tomatoes for him.”
While I was out and about Carrol suggested we could have bacon and tomato sandwiches for dinner, IF I would pick up a loaf of bread. She knows how to motivate me! While at the store I found dark cherries for the less than three dollars a pound, so picked up a small bag of cherries. When I got home, and looked at the register tape, I realized I had paid almost ten dollars for a bag of cherries grown in Montana. The bag was larger than I thought.
Had a great dinner. I vaguely recall reading that the combination of fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet cherries override the drawbacks of thick sliced bacon. I am sure I read that somewhere!
Monday, Carrol spent most of the day in the kitchen making peach coffee cakes. I joined her for a mid-afternoon break and forced myself to eat some warm peach coffee cake with her. By the time the last of nine coffee cakes were out of the oven, only seven could be accounted for. For a brief moment on that summer afternoon, I was sitting in Grandma Stahlman’s house. It was a Saturday morning and I was waiting for that old kerosene stove to spit out coffee cakes. As I remember, the first grandchild to show up got to choose which peach coffee cake he could take home. Last one to show up got the one that was a “little well-done.” I also recall that Grandma, however, didn’t allow Butch to come early because he liked to eat the unbaked dough before she could get it in the oven.
The weekend turned out to be a pretty good one – even though attending a spouse’s high school class reunion.
Too bad I couldn’t share any of my nutritional pleasures with you. But I did think of you.
Love you.
Your brother
One of the things I do to avoid the cuckoo’s nest is to pound the PC keyboard. So consider reading this as your part in keeping me balanced.
Saturday, we went to Waterloo to attend Carrol’s Cahokia High School class reunion. Although she graduated from Sparta, she went to school at Cahokia for her freshman through junior years so most of her longtime friends are from Cahokia, not Sparta. We ate dinner with six widowed or divorced women at the table, each of them auditioning for a part in The Golden Girls
Sunday morning, we drove to Eckerts to pick up some Southern Illinois peaches. We got West Virginia peaches instead because the Eckert family decided to keep both the peaches from their trees. You may remember that we had enough warm weather early last spring to bring fruit trees into bloom early. After the peach buds had formed, we had several days of heavy frost that eliminated the peach crop. As one orchard owner said, “Apples pay the bills, but peaches are the profit.” Guess that is why there are no more orchards of just one kind of fruit like the Stahlman pear orchard was.
While we were at Eckerts, I enjoyed looking around at all the old style meat and produce they sell. How many places do you know that sell fresh, home-grown kohlrabi? Or still offer honest-to-goodness liver sausage? If you lived closer I would have bought some and brought it to you on the condition that I didn’t have to eat any of it. Carrol bought a muskmelon for Scott that came from Posey County, Indiana.
Back in Springfield Sunday afternoon, (God forgive me for shopping on the Sabbath.) I visited a couple of farmers who drive into town and our neighborhood to sell fresh vegetables from the back of an old Ford pick-up. I may not be able to convince you that their corn is as good as you can find anywhere, but I guarantee that you can’t find any fresher produce unless you have your own garden.
As one of the two farmers was sacking up my corn, I asked him how many tomato plants he had this year. “Oh I only put out 46 this year. These are my neighbor’s tomatoes.” (Forty six doesn’t provide enough to sell I guess.) So I asked if he knew how many plants his neighbor had. He said, “A couple a hundred.” And as if that demanded an explanation, he added, “He’s 95 and goes to bed at 7:00 o’clock every day. My partner and I sell his tomatoes for him.”
While I was out and about Carrol suggested we could have bacon and tomato sandwiches for dinner, IF I would pick up a loaf of bread. She knows how to motivate me! While at the store I found dark cherries for the less than three dollars a pound, so picked up a small bag of cherries. When I got home, and looked at the register tape, I realized I had paid almost ten dollars for a bag of cherries grown in Montana. The bag was larger than I thought.
Had a great dinner. I vaguely recall reading that the combination of fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet cherries override the drawbacks of thick sliced bacon. I am sure I read that somewhere!
Monday, Carrol spent most of the day in the kitchen making peach coffee cakes. I joined her for a mid-afternoon break and forced myself to eat some warm peach coffee cake with her. By the time the last of nine coffee cakes were out of the oven, only seven could be accounted for. For a brief moment on that summer afternoon, I was sitting in Grandma Stahlman’s house. It was a Saturday morning and I was waiting for that old kerosene stove to spit out coffee cakes. As I remember, the first grandchild to show up got to choose which peach coffee cake he could take home. Last one to show up got the one that was a “little well-done.” I also recall that Grandma, however, didn’t allow Butch to come early because he liked to eat the unbaked dough before she could get it in the oven.
The weekend turned out to be a pretty good one – even though attending a spouse’s high school class reunion.
Too bad I couldn’t share any of my nutritional pleasures with you. But I did think of you.
Love you.
Your brother
posted by John | 10:32 AM
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