Home Beckons

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I thought of my great-Aunt Belle the other day while frying Spam. She spent all of her long life in the northeastern hills of Pennsylvania busily cooking, gardening, teaching, living. Starting when I was about six and continuing for the next seven years, I made an almost daily trek the half-mile to her house, sometimes on foot through the woods, now and then on horseback through the fields, or most often pedaling my Western Flyer out the rough dirt road.

Together, Aunt Belle and I baked cookies, picked corn, weeded carrots, made Christmas presents, fed calves, and cleaned cupboards. Most of our conversations slid lightly from cats to cows, from school plays to picnics, from ice skating to the weather. At times, we grew more serious, welcoming Alaska and Hawaii into the family, wishing John Glenn bon voyage, worrying about what Fidel might do to us, wondering about Martin’s dream speech, and joining Walter to say good-bye to JFK.

Like most farm wives, my aunt knew how to save a penny in all that she did. The work was ever present – darning socks, patching jeans, hanging out wash, growing a large garden, canning fruits and vegetables, picking berries, plucking chickens, hacking up home-grown beef, skinning rabbits and squirrels, cleaning fish, making do. In some ways, she stretched a penny beyond recognition. I especially remember eyeing our chocolate chip cookies set out to cool on the counter. My recurring challenge? Find the one with more than three chocolate chips! She economized at dinnertime too. Her meals were often a conglomeration of the previous several nights’ meals, kind of mystery casseroles. Like the Spam, they were tasty, but better not to ask what was in them or how old the ingredients were!

As I opened the Spam can recently and picked up a knife, I smiled to myself, thinking of Aunt Belle and her subtle influences on my life so many years later. With three sons and a hungry husband, our Spam slices grew in number over the years from seven to eight to nine to ten, until that little block of meat yielded eleven very thin slices to feed my family of five. I rationed the slices; three for Gary, two each for the boys and me. The funny thing is that it just never occurred to me to buy two cans! Aunt Belle would understand.

She’d understand about the refrigerator too. We bought a new one earlier this year, so when I called Tyler in California, I mentioned the new purchase. “Does it have a light in it?” he immediately asked. His question puzzled me for a minute until I realized he was teasing. Our old refrigerator light burned out about fifteen years ago, and I never replaced it. Did you know that if you put your eyes level with each shelf and squint you can see pretty well all the way to the back without a light?

Today, I’m making chocolate chip cookies. The recipe calls for a twelve ounce bag of chips, but as always, I’ll ignore old Toll House and side more closely with my aunt’s count. Tonight, when it’s cookie time, I’ll just try to find the ones with more than five chips before Gary gets to them. Now, about that missing light in the oven…

Missing my Aunt Belle.