The tale I am about to tell, happened in a time long forgotten, an age in which life and its lessons were simple rather than complex.
It was a warm summer’s evening in 1973 when I, as a wee lad, was playing stickball on Longfellow drive with my friends, it was getting on in the day and we all knew that soon we would be “called” home to dinner. The pace was picking up in anticipation of our game being cut short. There was no such thing as cell phones back then and the act of calling was simply that. Mothers throughout the neighborhood would step out on the porch and yell their children’s names when it was time to come home. Every house in our blue collar neighborhood had at least three children if not more so there was a lot of shouting going on between 5:00 and 6:30pm. Poor Mrs. Dugan had seven kids and she just about made herself hoarse each night with the litany of names she shouted. If you as a kid were out of earshot inevitably a sibling, friend, or neighbor would let you know that “your Ma is calling.” And off you’d run so as not to be late for dinner. Being late was a bad thing and when you were it was accompanied by a harsh lecture of how you had disrespected your Ma and that you were a selfish little brat in that you made everyone wait to start the meal.
Better to avoid that all together and be on time, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.
I had just hit a slashing single to left and hustled to first base,(the telephone pole in front of the Martin’s house) when the first call came. My friend Curtis had let the ball get by and this allowed me to advance a runner home. Cat calls were made and laughter at Curt’s error. The whole street echoed with “You Suck.” And “Where’s your skirt?”
“It was a bad Hop!”
“With all the Hopscotch you play with the other girls that should have been easy.”
“Carrie, Jimmy, Allen!” my Ma’s voiced boomed across the neighborhood and I heard my brother and sister in the distance reply “coming”. From the sound of their voices I could tell they were a few streets over. I asked my best friend Glen to take my spot on base and said I’d be back after dinner. Curt, angry and embarrassed over the teasing said:” what? You have to go now? Why doesn’t your family eat at normal times like everyone else?” In kid language this meant my family wasn’t normal thus we were “less than”. Those were fighting words for sure and I couldn’t let him get away with it, if I did then all the other kids would have thought I was weak and start picking on me too.
My temper rose and was tempted to go on the attack right there and then, but I knew that wouldn’t work out to my benefit. Like I said, being late for dinner was a bad thing and I had all summer to “Get him Back” as we were wont to say. I did have to save some face though so I looked over at my mouthy friend and said:
“I have to go Curt, but don’t worry I’ll be back and be sure to come find you and your dress soon.”
So with the sound of “oohs” and laughter from the other kids at the burn ringing in my ears I started to race home. Cutting through yards and jumping fences I made it to our small house in no time at all. Whisking through the back door into the kitchen I saw our small table was already being set by my brother Jim and my Sister was helping get plates ready.
“what are we havin?” I asked. I was pretty famished having missed lunch earlier, and sat down in my regular seat.
“Meatloaf” Ma said “And you need to go wash your hands before dinner”
“Ahhh c’mon, I wasn’t doing anything dirty”
“Go wash up you look like you’ve been rolling in the gutter all day and change your shirt while you’re at it.”
Of course she was right, my jeans were covered in dust and my white tee shirt had a smear of unidentifiable grime across the chest that I had picked up somewhere playing outside. For a kid of eight demands like washing up seemed to be “stupid grown up rules” which were created only to make life miserable, and served no other logical purpose.
Grousing under my breath I headed for the bathroom.
After changing and washing just my hands, though my face needed a good scrubbing as well, I made my way back to the kitchen where I was quickly recruited to set out glasses and help get drinks. Somehow amidst this swirling activity my mother found a face cloth and managed to wipe my face clean, even as I tried to dodge and get away. There was a definite method to the madness of getting dinner on in the cramped quarters of our tiny kitchen and everyone played their part no matter how small. Everyone that is except my father, who only came in once everything was all set up and ready to go.
With my stomach growling we finally all sat down.
Now my father always sat at the head of the table and my Ma at the other end. The kids had no assigned seats but we pretty much made up our own arrangements. Carrie sat mid table across from Jim and I who were situated to my father’s right or Ma’s left however you prefer to look at it. She got the extra room because she was “the oldest”, because she was a girl, and because we couldn’t fight her for the seat. “You didn’t hit girls period”.
The meatloaf was already on the table along with the large bowl of obligatory potatoes which was a part of almost every meal I ate from age two to thirteen. And then, while I mentally tasted the steaming plate of greasy meat like substance before me, Ma with a quick flourish of her hand thumped a large bowl of peas on the table and sat down.
I was crushed, and a sense of doom flooded over me as I anticipated having to endure the cruel torture of consuming this most hated of vegetables. You see Peas no matter how they were prepared or hidden in some concoction simply made me wretch. The very smell of them made me shiver and combined with their taste and texture I knew I was in for a tough battle. There was no getting around eating them either, for the rule in my house was you ate what was on the table.
My head began to swim as I watched a large dab of butter melt into the green mass before me.
Ma started filling plates and passing them around the table while talking about her day with my Da. I cannot recall what they were discussing because my eyes were completely focused upon the enemy in that bowl, the one who had time and time again defeated me, leaving my sorry self, planted at the table till the wee hours of the morn while I stubbornly refused to submit. Oh yes! I viewed the consumption of peas in no less a light than the struggle of liberty against tyranny, freedom versus slavery, or good against evil. (I was a bit dramatic back then).
So it came to my plate, with a quick look and a small wink in my direction Ma scooped up half a spoon of the green bastards and sent it on down to me. God bless her! She had given me the least of anyone knowing my aversion and was trying to be sweet. I gave her a smile at the gesture and began quickly eating the meatloaf in huge chunks.
I gobbled everything in my hunger and even managed to stomach the majority of the peas through a variety of tactics. You could swallow them whole one by one, shovel a bunch in, close your eyes, chomp down and experience the gooey paste and try and get them down before you puked. Or you could try to hide them in the potatoes but no matter what tactic or strategy one used every bite, was followed by a dry heave and large gulps of tap water so as to wash the taste out of your mouth.
It was a monumental struggle, one which would make Homer’s Iliad pale in comparison and after what seemed a lifetime I had the enemy down to but seven. They lay there on the corner of my plate, staring up at me defiantly tiny green eyeballs filled with poison and puss. With that nasty thought, my inner strength failed and I knew I couldn’t go on. The seven peas had won.
“Clean your plate boy” my father’s voice commanded.
“I’m full and can’t eat another bite, can I be excused Ma?”
“No eat those peas then you can go.”
“But Ma I ate everything else, the guys are waitin’ on me.”
I heard my Da sigh heavily in annoyance as he said; “What did I just tell you? Clean your plate! We don’t waste food in this house ever! I don’t work hard every day so you can throw my money away in the garbage. A Vietnamese kid can eat for a week on those seven peas boy so you should be thankful for what you got”
This was a bit of a lie on his part because as far as I could tell my father hadn’t been working all that much the past few months, and as to working hard I had yet to see an example of it to date. And his line about someone living off those nasty green balls for a week, well even as a child, I knew that was a stretch. Perhaps it was this lie which emboldened me to dig my heels in and take this contest of wills a step further. Or maybe it was my fear of what those seven little green Martian parts were going to do to my insides if I ate them and so I pressed on to the utter surprise and shock of my siblings.
Figuring that the poor Viet Minh bastard needed them more than me, I pushed the plate towards my Da and said:
“Pack em up.”
There was a blinding flash of white light as I felt the back of my Father’s hand strike my left eye, sending me ass over teakettle onto the floor. My brother and sister both gasped and then began giggling at my foolishness. I lay there for a moment looking up at the ceiling, legs dangling over the upturned chair listening to their muffled mirth. My eye began to sting and water, and I knew that I was going to have a mark on my face. “Well that was stupid Al what did you expect would happen?” I thought. It seemed a lifetime laying there letting the thoughts race through my wee head, though in reality my time on the floor was but a second or two.
I did not cry, or wail, for I knew deep down I had crossed the line and it wouldn’t do any good. Best thing for it was to get up and say nothing, no point in pushing the old man further with any more wise ass remarks. So that is what I did, I stood up pulled the chair back into place, sat down and ate those seven damned peas like I was starving Ethiopian on a CARE package. When I was finished I looked my father directly in his blue eyes with my good one and waited for his assent to leave the table. No emotion, no fear, I was ready for whatever may come at any moment. It was up to him to determine the punishment for my impertinence, so I waited.
Finally he nodded to me and I returned the gesture and rose quickly, it could have been worse, much worse and I thanked God silently for blessing me with his mercy as I left the house to find my friends to resume our earlier game. And as I walked along the pain in my eye beginning to subside I replayed the event in my mind and smiled. “I had guts” or so I thought at the time and that was something. Then with an evil smirk on my face I decided not to go back and play stickball after all, but rather go find Curtis and show him exactly how “gutsy” I was.
Cheers
Allen R Butler
