(UPDATED December 23, 2020)
We have steak for breakfast once a year at our house. After much agonizing, it will be just Irene and I eating steak on Christmas morning. We had planned to have six of us around the table, but the closer we got to Christmas the more uneasy Irene and I became.
We’re both in our early 80’s and why risk catching something as potentially lethal as COVID-19? We’d like to be around for Christmas 2021. Even though there will just be the two of us this time, we will have something to talk about. Irene doesn’t know it yet, but we are about to be rich. Wait until I read her the first few sentences of an email I got today:
“We the U.S. Bank Ohio are here to Notify you about the latest development regards your abandoned fund worth US$650.000.00 in our Bank. You were given a huge bill in order to receive this fund which we didn’t hear from you again since then. Now, we are offering a Special BONUS to help all our customers that are having Outstanding funds in our Bank due to the situation of things now.”
Someone who can write like that should be working for one of the network evening newscasts.
Merry Christmas.
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We have steak for breakfast once a year at our house. It’s a Christmas morning tradition traced back to my grandfather, William Alva McCoy, who farmed land near Colfax, Indiana. Farm animals don’t have holidays and neither do farmers. I’m guessing having steak for breakfast on Christmas was a treat on a day when cows still had to be milked and fed along with other chores, including feeding the chickens and gathering their eggs.
In recent years our son Jack has bought the steak and cooked it. Also on the long dining room table Christmas morning, there are sausages, bacon, pancakes, maple syrup, home-made biscuits, two jams, an egg dish or two (usually one of them has potatoes mixed in), juice, coffee and glasses full or half full of Bloody Marys or Mimosas. To state the obvious, there are no medical doctors or nutritionists in the family, and if there were we wouldn’t invite them to join us.
After breakfast comes the unwrapping of gifts, by those still awake. This in turn is followed by “did you save the receipts? It looks a little small.” Or “I like it. It’s nice, but you gave me the exact same sweater last year.” Or, my favorite, “Gee, what is it?”
Almost always Christmas is not a one or two-day affair for one of us. Irene has always been an early shopper and stashes presents here and there around the house. Along about February or March, while doing something in a closet, she will find a gift, wrapped and with someone’s name on it. She then contacts the lucky person, suggesting they stop by to pick it up.
Another family tradition I grew up with was oyster stew on Christmas Eve. Where my folks got oysters is one of the mysteries of my youth. My hometown, Frankfort, Indiana, was nowhere near a decent body of water, let alone one that had oysters.
But that yearly bowl of oyster stew proved that Mom and Dad loved me. At the time I didn’t like oysters, and they only put one of those slippery devils in my bowl. We don’t do oyster stew these days. In normal times, Jack and his family have been our hosts on Christmas Eve, serving lobster bisque.
Next Friday there will be six of us at Christmas breakfast instead of the usual 12. We will be wearing masks and sitting far apart when not at the table, but the menu will be basically the same. Here’s hoping Christmas 2021 has a much different look and feel with more of us around the breakfast table, waiting for someone to pass the steak.
Merry Christmas.
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In Praise Of Pie
This senior citizen thinks he’s solved the problem of what to give younger people when a gift is in order: I bake them an apple pie.
Two young couples who live next to us in Rockville Centre have recently been given apple pies and, I’m happy to report, returned the pie plates. One of the couples had just had twin boys, their first babies. After my wife Irene bought two onesies, I got busy peeling apples and measuring flour.
The second couple already had twin boys (could it be the Rockville Centre water?), and they got a pie because they refused to let us help pay for a strong new metal fence on their property which replaced a rotting wooden one on ours.
One sturdy fence for one apple pie is a heck of a deal. Feeling a smidgen guilty, I took over a loaf of homemade bread a few days before handing the pie over the fence. (Have I mentioned that the fence is strong and sturdy?)
I started making pies back in 1998 when, having worn out by welcome with yet another employer, I had lots of spare time. This transplanted son of Indiana bought “The Hoosier Cookbook,” a volume that was in my mom’s kitchen, and found two simple recipes for both the crust and the filling.
As an octogenarian—what a long word to denote “old”—I haven’t a clue what inexpensive gift to buy for grandkids or neighbors, so I bake. Most of the time it’s an apple pie or bread. Baking eliminates worrying about what size sweater a kid takes or the colors they like or investing in some social media apparatus you know nothing about. I’ll admit I’m pleased when we invite grandkids over and they ask, “Are you going to make an apple pie?”
Giving a pie or bread to an adult is a clear sign that you went to some trouble to show your appreciation and didn’t run to the liquor store and ended up guessing whether the recipients prefer red or white wine.
Baking a pie or bread from scratch really isn’t that big a deal. Outside of those two items, my talents in the kitchen are limited to omelets, pancakes, meatloaf, chicken cutlets and roasts. I could live to be 150 and never unravel the secret of making gravy.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t occasionally give yourself a gift. I recently had a birthday and baked myself an apple pie. Not wishing to be vulgar, we put a single candle in it. A few slices were left over and the grandkids took them home. The two younger ones love to start their day with apple pie for breakfast. Good for them.
I’m counting on them to remember how much they liked the pies when I’m really, really old and my chin needs wiping.
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(First published November 2020 in Hope, the CAW Anthology/Winter 2020, a book of poetry, short stories, essays and plays. CAW is an acronym for Calling All Writers.)
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