The Ode to a New Day
It would be some time before the sun could sublime Jack Frost's fractal ferns painted on the kitchen window. The front door had already been cracked open to retrieve the two frozen bottles of milk from the front step, left there in the early morning hours by the milkman. The shivering milkman's horse, jostling the leather strap of horse-bells while patiently plodding up the street behind him, was pulling the Palm Dairies Milk wagon, loaded with glass bottles of frozen milk stuck to wire-frame baskets. Forty below zero is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.
The retrieved milk bottles were sitting on the kitchen counter. The cream was sticking up a good inch from the neck of the glass bottle. A little cardboard cap perched precariously on top. And once again, the raspy indention on that frozen cream, made by the licking tongue of the neighbor's cat, would infuriate mother.
But the noises in the kitchen.
The newsreader on CFCN 1060 droning on about Korea. Something more about Eisenhower. And the frantic counting by my mother. The counting in reverse. This time for heating the formula bottle in the pan of hot water on the stove. An interruption in the count-down would end up scalding the milk. My little sister, perched in her high chair, was squawking to be fed and would have to wait longer. And then the counting again, this time necessary for making unburned toast. The old General Electric toaster was all manual. And to ignore it was to offer burnt sacrifices to the morning gods. Counting down from twelve would prevent incense of burnt brown bread from rising to the ceiling.
The pot of Sonny Boy cereal was bubbling on the old gas stove. Years later I would see those same thermal dynamics of explosive steam vents at Yellowstone Park. The old gas stove however, had seen a lot of spouted cereal eruptions. But before that could happen, it would take another Eddy strike-any-where match to ignite that stinky Canadian Natural Gas into a pop and then flicker of flame. And how the oven could singe your eyebrows if you weren't quick enough to get the lit match into the little hole in the center front of the cavity after turning the oven gas on.
Sonny Boy was a real-boy's porridge. A little different from its main competitor Red River Cereal. But far different from the Ogilvie Rolled Oats, with its play-money buried in the contents of the cardboard canister. Play money that we dutifully collected and took to school to accumulate enough to redeem for baseball bats and stuff. But then there was the sweetness and blandness and sissiness of Cream of Wheat. That was the delicate cereal for a weekend treat. But Sonny Boy was a multitude of cracked whole grains, generously infused with flax seed so the effect for some was more like Runny Boy cereal. And this porridge demanded its full 20 minutes of cooking. A time that seemed to correlate in some way as a function to the length of time it would stick to one's ribs.
And then the cat. Our cat. Not the one that licked the cream. Meowing and promoting the annoying staggering and stumbling in her persistence to get my mother's attention to be fed. Which then meant my digging out a glob of Perky cat food from the cat-food encrusted can, opened with the cat-food encrusted crank can-opener, scooped with the cat-food encrusted cat food knife and flipping the glob into the cat-food encrusted cat dish. And the more dead that that Perky cat food smelled, the more the cat seemed to relish it. And the more my nose would turn into a turnip as I did my "chore."
The little kitchen was laid out with a U-shaped counter. The far side had the kitchen sink with the frosted-over kitchen window. That section was also the location of the "junk" drawer with a small arsenal of household tools to include an awl that was used to punch little holes in the top of the canned-milk can. Behind the door, that opened onto the back porch and was adjacent to the counter was sequestered the "wooden stick." That was the means of implementing discipline. And one soon learned to never "hide" the wooden stick.
The dish cupboard was hanging above the bottom side of the "U." In it were the stacks of plates and bowls and cups. And a mystery of unfathomable intrigue as to how my Dad could wipe the top of the top plate, and the bottom of the bottom plate, in his process of drying a stack of plates, and then shuffle the bottom plate to the top and keep everything wet wet, and dry dry, and swipe the newly exposed surfaces again. Within my reach of that overhead cupboard, was a set of embossed red and green and blue aluminum glasses. Just perfect for seeing the top of the cold milk by the position of the condensed moisture on the outer surface. An early object lesson in abstract reasoning.
The near side of the counter-top-U was open and served to divide the kitchen from the little dining alcove. The end of that section of the counter was round and consisted of a bottom shelf and middle shelf extension. That middle shelf was just the right height for me to stir a bowl of new fangled store-bought cake mix, my earliest endeavors in the construction of the cuisine of comestibles .
The chrome kitchen table with four matching padded chairs was nestled within that little alcove between the open counter and the back of the front room wall. It was a haven of refuge. And was just big enough to let all of us, Grandpa Martin and Uncle Scotty too when they came for Christmas, to sit there and eat cold turkey sandwiches with mustard and drink hot cocoa. Interrupted by secret trips to the back porch where Uncle Scotty would let me sip Coca-Cola and I would wonder how he could use bottoms of broken Coca-Cola bottles for his glasses.
The wall opposite the counter sequestered the gas stove and ice box. The kind of ice box that used real ice, blocks of ice, from the ice plant out on the Bow River. The kind where the iceman came down the back alley with his truck, and carried the block of ice, slung on a huge grappling hook, into the kitchen, dripping a path of water on his way. The kind of ice, on a hot day in the summer, when we would follow the ice man and he would give us little broken-off pieces for us to suck. The kind of ice box where even in the winter if we were to be treated by ice cream, I would be dispatched to run down to Alaska Grocery on the corner right after supper, to get a pint brick of Neapolitan for dessert.
By now, the Sonny Boy was ready.
The amount sufficient to stick to my ribs until lunch was meted out into my bowl. The frozen and exposed cream had melted enough to be poured onto the irregular mounds of mush so as to make rivers and lakes separating the hills and valleys of the contour of swollen cracked multi-grains. A little brown sugar added character, color, and contentment. Careful stirring could elicit experiments in the hydraulics of bursting dams and flooded porridge planes.
The little glass of Sun-Rype B.C. apple juice with the big words "Fortified with Vitamin C" blaring on the can's blue wrapper was simply the conjunction of marketing, nutrition and government policy. Canada grew no oranges. Apples are notoriously low in vitamin C. So fortifying Canadian apple juice with ascorbic acid fought off scurvy in kids and balance of trade problems for Canada.
A piece of brown bread toast smeared with that awful white oleo-margarine*, a spoonful of raspberry jam from the Empress Jam tin, a little skim milk in a little glass, a Jap orange . . . all the accompaniments to round out the complexity of Sonny Boy cereal.
The radio guy was still droning. The overheated formula bottle had cooled enough to quiet the baby sister. Dad was off and on his way. My egg-salad sandwich lunch was packed. I was bundled up for the frigid trek to school.
The little kitchen could be cleaned up a little later.
Now, it was my mother's moment of refuge to sit for a few minutes at the piano in the front room. She would flip through the hymnal and find some ode to the new day.
The Refectory Manager
*The dairy farmers of Alberta had enough political clout to prohibit the sale of yellow-colored margarine in the Province of Alberta. There was however, a little packet of beta-carotene that was included in the package and one could "color" the margarine on their own if they insisted.
The retrieved milk bottles were sitting on the kitchen counter. The cream was sticking up a good inch from the neck of the glass bottle. A little cardboard cap perched precariously on top. And once again, the raspy indention on that frozen cream, made by the licking tongue of the neighbor's cat, would infuriate mother.
But the noises in the kitchen.
The newsreader on CFCN 1060 droning on about Korea. Something more about Eisenhower. And the frantic counting by my mother. The counting in reverse. This time for heating the formula bottle in the pan of hot water on the stove. An interruption in the count-down would end up scalding the milk. My little sister, perched in her high chair, was squawking to be fed and would have to wait longer. And then the counting again, this time necessary for making unburned toast. The old General Electric toaster was all manual. And to ignore it was to offer burnt sacrifices to the morning gods. Counting down from twelve would prevent incense of burnt brown bread from rising to the ceiling.
The pot of Sonny Boy cereal was bubbling on the old gas stove. Years later I would see those same thermal dynamics of explosive steam vents at Yellowstone Park. The old gas stove however, had seen a lot of spouted cereal eruptions. But before that could happen, it would take another Eddy strike-any-where match to ignite that stinky Canadian Natural Gas into a pop and then flicker of flame. And how the oven could singe your eyebrows if you weren't quick enough to get the lit match into the little hole in the center front of the cavity after turning the oven gas on.
Sonny Boy was a real-boy's porridge. A little different from its main competitor Red River Cereal. But far different from the Ogilvie Rolled Oats, with its play-money buried in the contents of the cardboard canister. Play money that we dutifully collected and took to school to accumulate enough to redeem for baseball bats and stuff. But then there was the sweetness and blandness and sissiness of Cream of Wheat. That was the delicate cereal for a weekend treat. But Sonny Boy was a multitude of cracked whole grains, generously infused with flax seed so the effect for some was more like Runny Boy cereal. And this porridge demanded its full 20 minutes of cooking. A time that seemed to correlate in some way as a function to the length of time it would stick to one's ribs.
And then the cat. Our cat. Not the one that licked the cream. Meowing and promoting the annoying staggering and stumbling in her persistence to get my mother's attention to be fed. Which then meant my digging out a glob of Perky cat food from the cat-food encrusted can, opened with the cat-food encrusted crank can-opener, scooped with the cat-food encrusted cat food knife and flipping the glob into the cat-food encrusted cat dish. And the more dead that that Perky cat food smelled, the more the cat seemed to relish it. And the more my nose would turn into a turnip as I did my "chore."
The little kitchen was laid out with a U-shaped counter. The far side had the kitchen sink with the frosted-over kitchen window. That section was also the location of the "junk" drawer with a small arsenal of household tools to include an awl that was used to punch little holes in the top of the canned-milk can. Behind the door, that opened onto the back porch and was adjacent to the counter was sequestered the "wooden stick." That was the means of implementing discipline. And one soon learned to never "hide" the wooden stick.
The dish cupboard was hanging above the bottom side of the "U." In it were the stacks of plates and bowls and cups. And a mystery of unfathomable intrigue as to how my Dad could wipe the top of the top plate, and the bottom of the bottom plate, in his process of drying a stack of plates, and then shuffle the bottom plate to the top and keep everything wet wet, and dry dry, and swipe the newly exposed surfaces again. Within my reach of that overhead cupboard, was a set of embossed red and green and blue aluminum glasses. Just perfect for seeing the top of the cold milk by the position of the condensed moisture on the outer surface. An early object lesson in abstract reasoning.
The near side of the counter-top-U was open and served to divide the kitchen from the little dining alcove. The end of that section of the counter was round and consisted of a bottom shelf and middle shelf extension. That middle shelf was just the right height for me to stir a bowl of new fangled store-bought cake mix, my earliest endeavors in the construction of the cuisine of comestibles .
The chrome kitchen table with four matching padded chairs was nestled within that little alcove between the open counter and the back of the front room wall. It was a haven of refuge. And was just big enough to let all of us, Grandpa Martin and Uncle Scotty too when they came for Christmas, to sit there and eat cold turkey sandwiches with mustard and drink hot cocoa. Interrupted by secret trips to the back porch where Uncle Scotty would let me sip Coca-Cola and I would wonder how he could use bottoms of broken Coca-Cola bottles for his glasses.
The wall opposite the counter sequestered the gas stove and ice box. The kind of ice box that used real ice, blocks of ice, from the ice plant out on the Bow River. The kind where the iceman came down the back alley with his truck, and carried the block of ice, slung on a huge grappling hook, into the kitchen, dripping a path of water on his way. The kind of ice, on a hot day in the summer, when we would follow the ice man and he would give us little broken-off pieces for us to suck. The kind of ice box where even in the winter if we were to be treated by ice cream, I would be dispatched to run down to Alaska Grocery on the corner right after supper, to get a pint brick of Neapolitan for dessert.
By now, the Sonny Boy was ready.
The amount sufficient to stick to my ribs until lunch was meted out into my bowl. The frozen and exposed cream had melted enough to be poured onto the irregular mounds of mush so as to make rivers and lakes separating the hills and valleys of the contour of swollen cracked multi-grains. A little brown sugar added character, color, and contentment. Careful stirring could elicit experiments in the hydraulics of bursting dams and flooded porridge planes.
The little glass of Sun-Rype B.C. apple juice with the big words "Fortified with Vitamin C" blaring on the can's blue wrapper was simply the conjunction of marketing, nutrition and government policy. Canada grew no oranges. Apples are notoriously low in vitamin C. So fortifying Canadian apple juice with ascorbic acid fought off scurvy in kids and balance of trade problems for Canada.
A piece of brown bread toast smeared with that awful white oleo-margarine*, a spoonful of raspberry jam from the Empress Jam tin, a little skim milk in a little glass, a Jap orange . . . all the accompaniments to round out the complexity of Sonny Boy cereal.
The radio guy was still droning. The overheated formula bottle had cooled enough to quiet the baby sister. Dad was off and on his way. My egg-salad sandwich lunch was packed. I was bundled up for the frigid trek to school.
The little kitchen could be cleaned up a little later.
Now, it was my mother's moment of refuge to sit for a few minutes at the piano in the front room. She would flip through the hymnal and find some ode to the new day.
The Refectory Manager
*The dairy farmers of Alberta had enough political clout to prohibit the sale of yellow-colored margarine in the Province of Alberta. There was however, a little packet of beta-carotene that was included in the package and one could "color" the margarine on their own if they insisted.
Labels: Alberta, Calgary, childhood, kitchen, Short story
posted by The Refectory Manager | 7:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home