Family Secrets
Every family has them. Often in the South, we dress them up and display them on the front porch for the entire civilized world to see. I’m talking about family secrets. Not serious ones like being married to your first cousin or robbing a bank but the silly ones involved cooking or learning to drive a straight shift.
Yesterday was my brother Bob’s birthday. I’m not sharing his age, but he was a good pitcher on our high school baseball team as a sophomore when I was a senior. Also, next year he must take his first RMD from his IRA.
I got to thinking about some of our own family secrets which have been exposed over the years.
When we were in the MYF at Leighton Methodist Church in the sixties, each spring break (back then it was known as AEA) our youth leaders would take us to Panama City Beach for the week. In the days before seat belts, we would pack about 6 in a station wagon or van and head south.
On this particular trip, Bob kept pestering some of the girls, so they decided to get back at him. At a pit stop near Birmingham, they bought a box of Chiclets gum and another box of Feenamint Laxative Gum. They swapped out the Chiclet gum and put the laxative gum in the Chiclet gum box. Naturally, Bob wanted some gum.
They gladly offered him a couple of pieces of Feenamint which looked just like the Chiclets. He chewed it and somewhere near Montgomery; the laxative took over or kicked in. Brother Burl Oliver was our minister, and he was “gracious” enough to find service stations, rest areas and bushes for my baby brother.
Burl had new sermon material about “movements” and “greediness.”
My wife’s family had an old family secret involving their Thanksgiving turkey. One Thanksgiving, Susan’s brother, Little Johnny, was in charge of cooking and bringing the turkey to Susan’s house. As they were unloading the car, the turkey was left unattended. Susan’s dog, Blackie, was a coy dog meaning it had some coyote in its bloodline.
When they came back outside, Blackie was caught red-handed running across the front yard with the turkey in her jaws. Johnny took off in pursuit and finally retrieved the bird. Luckily, it was wrapped in aluminum foil so the Thanksgiving feast went off without a hitch. The story gets bigger and better and is retold annually after all these years.
This has probably happened to most families: when we were young, we boiled and dyed Easter eggs for the Sunday afternoon Easter egg hunt. The younger kids stayed in the house while the teenagers and adults hid eggs. The “engineer type” in the group kept up with how many eggs were hidden. Unfortunately, they didn’t chart where the eggs were located.
Hiding 48 eggs and only finding 44 of them wasn’t that big of a problem, UNTIL the “lost eggs” were found about 3 weeks later in the edge of the garden or under the wood pile on the carport. Another word of warning: never run over a “ripe “lost Easter egg with a push mower.
Mix boiled eggs and hotter spring days and the smell is a combination of sulfur and sticking your head down Uncle Claude’s outhouse on Blackground Mountain.
Now you know the real reason we went to plastic eggs.
You have to be old and country to remember the ritual of “sitting up with the dead.” In those days, the body of the deceased was brought back to the family home, and the open casket was often placed in the living room for viewing.
In early 1961, my grandfather, Joseph Clarence Bradford had died, and his body was brought back to our house. Clarence had a large number of brothers who took turns sitting up with him. We only had a 2-bedroom house, so my brother and I shared one bed while our sister had a small bed in the corner of the same room.
I can remember staring at the ceiling, scared to death (no pun intended.) Every little sound sent us hiding under the covers. If a strange foot touched yours under the covers, knowing Paw Paw was resting in peace on the other side of the thin walls, your bladder control was tested.
Other family secrets are too numerous to go into great detail. We all remember taping Christmas cards on the dining room door facing and can remember exactly where all our pets were buried. We can recall the first time we were able to jump up and touch the afore mentioned door facing.
Or the family secrets about home haircuts that made your head appear as though a Nubian goat had been grazing on it. We spent more money on caps to cover up the mistakes than was saved on one-dollar haircuts.
Do any families have unusual food quirks? One of Susan’s closest friends’ family puts gravy on cantaloupes. My brother-in ‘law’s mother would save him some uncooked dressing on Thanksgiving.
How about these family food secrets? A friend eats her dessert first, then moves on to the entrees. One girl wouldn’t eat any food on her plate if the food was touching. A former coworker would eat each helping of food then go on to the next. In other words, all the peas, then the taters, then the tomatoes and finally the fried chicken.
Now, many of the family secrets are exposed.
Oh yeah, happy belated birthday to my favorite brother.
Enjoy your Chiclets.