One For Mother's Day

[billroper]

So many, many years ago, before the Interstate highway system was completed in Southern Illinois, my family -- Mom, Dad, me, my sister, and my brother -- would hop in the car and head down from Scott A.F.B. to visit my paternal grandparents on a farm near Carrier Mills. This meant that we passed through a wide variety of little tiny towns in the south end of the state and we tried many different routes to find a good one.

There wasn't one. It was a maze of twisty, tiny two-lane roads, all alike.

The vast majority of the routes would eventually lead us through Carbondale where my dad (and much later I) went to college at Southern Illinois University. On Illinois 13, there was the Family Fun Drive-In Restaurant. My mom really liked this place, possibly because we were finally far enough south to be able to find a BBQ pork sandwich with the cole slaw piled on top of the meat in the Southern style. (That's easier to find now that barbecue has become a staple in most towns.)

We kids hated the place. I'm not exactly sure I remember why. It's possible that it was simply because it wasn't McDonald's. And the result of this was that the vast majority of the meals that we ate in Carbondale while traveling were consumed in the car sitting outside of the tiny original-style McDonald's, as opposed to the Family Fun Drive-In which had food my mom liked and indoor seating.

I'm sorry, Mom.

Comments

[samwinolj.livejournal.com]

My father is an expert fisherman and excellent cook. Back in the '60s, the Great Lakes were stocked with Coho and Chinook salmon to cope with an invasion of alewives and lamprey that had demolished the native fish population.

The salmon grew fat and delicious while gorging on the invaders, delighting anglers in general and my dad in particular. Dad brought back salmon so fresh that there was still muscle action when it hit the pan and cooked it with the sensibilities of a connoisseur.

We kids hated it. To our palates, the fish stick represented the highest expression of piscatorial cuisine. The pink, foreign-tasting slop Dad attempted to pass off on us was choked down coated in liberal quantities of ketchup and accompanied by a side order of complaints and bad humor.

It is my karma that, while I now love salmon, I had to go all the way to Alaska and pay a king's ransom to get salmon so fresh, and cooked so well, as the free stuff I rejected as an ignorant child.

[it-aint-easy.livejournal.com]

If it's any consolation to you, I doubt that that was the worst consternation that you caused your mom.

Feel better now? ;{)}