Written 2015-03-08

The Early Years of Mom and Dad’s Marriage

It is a beautiful Sunday morning. Frank and I just finished breakfast and now I am relaxing on the porch, watching the dogs in the yard. Of course, one of them will probably blow it and start to bark at the neighbors’ dogs. Then it will be back inside for all of us.

Sundays were always family time. I got to thinking again about some of the stories Mom and Dad would tell us when we were young. It was easy to see where our sense of humor came from. I swear that so many of the things which happened to us could have been scenes straight from a sit-com on television.

Several of these stories are from the early days of our parents’ marriage. Times were tough, with my Dad just being back from the war in Europe. He told us that once they had bought some oranges and were going home on the streetcar. Now you need to remember that oranges were somewhat of a luxury item back in the 1940’s, not available all year round like they are now. The bag broke and oranges went rolling up and down under the seats on the streetcar. Being Pittsburgh with the hilly streets, the oranges did a lot of rolling before Mom and Dad were able to gather them up again. We kids would laugh, getting a mental image of our parents looking like cartoon figures, diving under the seats to grab oranges going in all directions. Maybe it wasn’t quite that comical at the time, but my father always got a big laugh from telling the story.

Another one which they told was about the amount of jelly in donuts back then. Dad would recount how they would buy two donuts, bring them home and put the excess jelly in a jar to use on toast for the next morning. Then they would enjoy the donuts with more than enough jelly to satisfy them. Each time I buy jelly donuts now, I wonder if once again, I was getting a donut with an almost empty hole in the middle. It has been a long time since I dripped the jelly from a donut down the front of me.

My all-time favorite story, involving food and the early days of my parents’ lives together, is when Mom took Dad back to Richeyville, Pennsylvania to meet her relatives. Dad’s folks were of Scotch-Irish descent, where most meals were plain meat and potatoes. Mom was first generation Hungarian-American. Her parents and grandparents had immigrated to this country in the early 1900’s, to find a better life. Richeyville was the typical company coal mining town. People had very little but food was always something which was to be shared. The women prided themselves with their cooking and baking skills. And believe me, the food was always delicious.

Mom introduced Dad to her family at the first house. Their hosts insisted that he eat – and eat – and eat. And he did. Then it was onto the second house, and as the song “Henry the Eighth” goes, “second verse, same as the first.” Dad ate some but not as much. After this stop, it was onto the third and another layout of pastries. Dad politely declined, which probably brought an elbow from my mother to his ribs and a quick whisper to “EAT!” Dad obliged and made sure he did so at every home after that. It may not have been much but he ate and complimented the women. Lesson learned – pace yourself, eat something at every home and enjoy.