When I was a child, age in single digits, my Grandmother
(paternal) would frequently drive from her home in Los Angeles to visit
us. Her days off were Tuesday and
Wednesday. She worked as a
hostess/cashier for the Fred Harvey Company.
For those of you born after 1955, the Fred Harvey Company was a
hospitality concern. That is a phrase
rarely heard these days, probably because civilization has decayed into an
uncivilized state where the notion of hospitality has disappeared, but the
hospitality industry was made up of hotels and restaurants. The Fred Harvey
Company made its mark on American history by providing railroad hotels and
restaurants along the passenger lines of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe. My grandmother, Lula Fifield (I
know, Fifield is not my family name… another story for another time) worked at
the Harvey House Restaurant situated in the Union Station passenger depot in
downtown Los Angeles (yet more stories for other times). None of this history
has anything to do with the subject matter at hand but as this looks to be a
rather short narrative, I thought I’d fill space with something I find
infinitely fascinating, my story.
As it happens, I am the only child of an only child (my
father, in case you’re having trouble keeping up) and as you might expect, I
was fawned over; spoiled might be a more accurate application of language. As my maternal grandmother had some forty-odd
grandchildren spread between Kansas, Colorado and California, and I fell
somewhere within the anonymity of the younger half of that menagerie, I knew in
which direction to turn for affectionate dotage.
It was during my younger years, before starting school, that
I was able to work this status of favorite person in the whole world to my best
advantage. Now I’m not trying to paint
myself as a greedy little bastard, but every child is somewhat mercenary in
nature. It was our practice during her
visits to patronize the College Grove Shopping Center (many more stories from
my college years are set in this locale, but first I have to work up the
courage to share… violence is sometimes hard to describe to a genteel audience)
for toy shopping and lunch. I loved
Grandma.
One of my favorite haunts (and therefore, my Grandma’s) was
J.J. Newberry’s Department Store. Newberry’s
was a five and ten cent store, or more commonly, a five and dime. No one ever referred to them as nickel and
dime because that phrase is pejorative; go figure. If you are too young to remember, five and
dimes abounded. Every little town had
one and any large city had a plethora. One would believe, logically, that
anything within offered for sale would be priced at either five cents or (wait for it…) ten cents; a child’s
dream! Never finding the reason, I did learn that the name was as misnomer and
very few (very few!) of the items I
would be interested in were priced below a dollar. But I digress. Newberry’s was the Cadillac of five and
dimes. It had three features ideally
suited to the mercantile needs of the five-year-old: a large toy department; a
cafeteria style restaurant; and a lunch counter with full soda-fountain
accoutrements.
Grandma would arrive at our house in the late morning. We would then travel to College Grove; mother
didn’t drive so she welcomed the rare opportunity to shun the daily household
chores. And as the outings were financed
by Grandma, mom turned a blind eye to the extravagant excess laid at the feet
of her son. Dad of course was at work
and it was tacitly agreed that no reason existed to burden him with details of
the day’s outing. The rigor was quite simple.
We would begin with lunch in the upstairs cafeteria. Laid before the puckish masses was a
cornucopia of tantalizing entrees and side dishes; turkey, roast beef, fried
chicken, soups, stews and salads of all description. I opted for spaghetti (c’mon, I was five years old!). But our lunch never included any
selections from the lavish desert offerings.
If you haven’t guessed why by now, I’m sure you will figure it out
later.
After lunch (my mother
could drink more coffee that a dromedary camel could horde water… let’s go
already!!!) we would ride the escalator to the lower level and take a
stroll through dreamland. Newberry’s toy
department was four aisles deep and extended well over my head. The contract was simple; I feigned familial
fealty and Grandma would reward the faithful.
I had a pecuniary limit of five dollars, pre-tax. Grandma was always rather silent on the
subject of hereditary history but I suspected she was somehow a member of the
Claus Clan.
I’m sure that upon returning to Los Angeles my grandmother
would brag ad nauseum to her crones
of the skill with which her golden grandchild examined every offering that
Mattel, Marx and Hasbro had convinced Newberry’s to stock on its shelves. Time stood still for me. I recall that mother often excused herself to
the ladies room to relieve the pressure on her bladder from that fifth cup of
coffee.
Once all of the options had been considered and
reconsidered, the latest addition to my collection of militaria, plastic firearms
(these were the days before political correctness) or to-scale motor vehicles
was paid for (Grandma had a BankAmericard, forerunner to today’s VISA, oooh!)
we set our course for the lunch counter and the frozen treats there offered; the coup de gras as it were.
Now remember, I was all of five years old at this time and
reading was still a blossoming skill set for me. But any company that planned its geography in
a way that juxtaposed the toy department and the soda fountain was savvy enough
to post pictures of the ice cream offerings on the wall behind the lunch
counter. Every visit, I would point to
the picture representing what was obviously the largest of their offerings, the
three scoop banana split. I had no other
criteria to fill than it contained the greatest volume of ice cream. My mother
would immediately counter, “You don’t need
that, it’s too much ice cream for you.”
In a rare show of intergenerational collaboration, Grandma would add,
“You wouldn’t like it anyway.” Blocked
again!
I am going to interrupt the flow of this narrative for a
moment to explore an aspect of the darker side of parental practice;
incontrovertible logic. I’m sure every
parent uses this tool at some time and it is cruelty at its worst, “You don’t
need that.” or more fatal, “Do you really
need that?” Huh? When did need enter into the discussion or
anything a five year old wants? There is
no capacity for reasoning through cost/benefit for a kid! “I want it! I desire it! I lust after
it! It was endorsed by Bugs Bunny!” That is all the motivation needed. How can you expect a self-centered,
mal-formed ego to understand need? Yet
time and time again, the parent, in an attempt to teach temperance for worldly
possessions (and keep the household solvent) lays down the logical trump card,
“Do you really need that? Really?”
The child of course has no adequate response.
And in my case, cursed with naturally squinty eyes, the sad pout never
worked. Children know in their hearts true happiness is not measured in scoops
of ice cream. Once again, I settled for
the kid size hot-fudge sundae.
But finally, the day came, seated at the counter, atop the
swiveling stool (ingenious!) I again asked for the banana split. And once again my mother parried, “You don’t
need that!” Unexpectedly, my grandmother
replied, “Aw, Rosemary, let him have one.
He won’t like it and he’ll get over it.”
Grandma loved me… or so I thought.
After what seemed a lifetime of anticipation, the jerk (I’m
not being derisive here for you youngsters, that was the position title of
those employed to make fountain treats, soda jerks) set before me a glorious
concoction of dairy and confectionary delight.
‘‘Three scoops of ice cream!
And what was all this other stuff?”
I went exploring. “Hey, this
scoop is strawberry, I don’t like
strawberry… it’s the flavor found in Neapolitan ice cream that gets thrown out
after the vanilla and chocolate are gone.
And this yellow gooey stuff.
Yuck! It’s pineapple sauce. Who would put pineapple sauce on strawberry
ice cream?” Moving on, “Vanilla, that’s
good. But every time I try to spoon some
up, it slides into that awful pineapple sauce and that’s getting mixed up with
the chocolate sauce.” My stomach was starting to recoil making it hard to
swallow.
Okay, I’ll move on to the scoop of chocolate ice cream. It is insulated from the pink and yellow
effluent at the other end of the boat (that’s what you call a banana split
dish; a boat) by the vanilla. But what is this white stuff blanketing my
chocolate? It’s marshmallow cream.
White, flavorless, sweet, “It’s diluting the chocolate. It is ruining the food of the gods!” The whipped cream is running all over the
place… the ice cream is melting into a mélange
of colorless, flavorless goo. And the banana, it’s hard to cut with a
spoon. Fruit and goo were flying
everywhere, “I don’t like this; it’s sticky!”
Dutifully, my mother grabbed me off the swiveling stool and
marched me to the ladies room to recover her son from under the patina of milk,
sugar and chocolate sauce. This was too
big a job for spit on a hanky! I looked back to see Grandma settling the bill
with the soda jerk. They seemed to be
laughing at some shared joke.
***
This week’s punch line: “No, but he’s a dead ringer for
his brother!”
No comments:
Post a Comment