“A pretty pass the world’s coming to if any man thinks it’s a step up in the world to leave a good farm and go to town.” -Almonzo’s mother, in Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder1
In 1965 - around the time my parents decided to get married, his future mother-in-law pulled my dad aside and said to him, “Sharon will break your heart when you watch how hard she tries to clean the house but don’t get upset with her, she just can’t do it.”
Sharon - my mother - grew up in Houston, Texas. Her mother Marjorie was an artist and art teacher, so even though Marjorie’s mother, Berchion, grew up on a farm in Iowa, surely versed in the practical ways of farm and kitchen, she didn’t pass her knowledge onto my Grandmother Marjorie, or if she tried, it certainly didn’t take. Marjorie, whose work as an artist included abstract and experimental art, was also a world traveler in retirement. In her travels she collected art and late in life she decorated her home in what we now call “maximalist bohemian style” but back then it was just funky - with a mish-mash of macramé lamp shades, Barcelona chairs and an Eames dinette set, and a plethora of authentic art, sculptures and carpets from her travels. She was a career woman before it was cool or common. She didn’t need to work, but being a stay-at-home mom would’ve akin to torture for her. I don’t think she ever enjoyed motherhood, she just endured it. As my mom puts it, “It’s just what people did then: had kids.” All this to say that she didn’t spend much time in the kitchen.
My grandparents hired black women to cook and clean for their family when it was still common to do so. These women’s skills and cooking were probably the most nutritious my mother would have encountered as a child, but needless to say, my mom and aunt didn’t learn to cook from them, so there were no kitchen and garden skills to pass on to my sister or myself. And there it is: the great big GAP of food knowledge unbestowed upon us. This gap seems to be ubiquitous in the generation of folks known as Generation X, the “Latchkey Kids” generation – those of us who went home to an empty house after school, and let ourselves in with our own key. But this was not a bad thing. Certainly we learned self reliance, although probably not in the way Emerson would’ve hoped. By 1986, most of us had some version of this: we would throw a frozen pizza pocket in the microwave for a snack, watch afterschool specials and half-hour comedies until a parent (or parents if you were lucky) walked through the door a few hours later.
“GenXrs” are also the generation whose mothers left the house in droves to join the working class. This is not a judgement upon them – housewivery should be a choice, not a life sentence – but the loss of a consistent parent at home compounded the loss of food knowledge and kitchen skills (not) being passed on to the next generation. While many of us latchkey kids grew up without learning to cook, shop for nutritious foods, or stock a pantry, more importantly (and over the course of several generations prior to ours) our ancestors’ recipes and ways of preparing foods were lost, and by extension, we did not learn how to truly nurture and care for ourselves and our families with proper and healthy food.
My mother, who was single by the time I was two, did occasionally try her hand in the kitchen. While she was and is an amazing artist in many other ways, that creativity didn’t extend into the kitchen. We tended to have a la carte meals where she would cook one thing regularly in a big way and leave it in the fridge until it ran out. Admittedly, while my sister was game for just about anything, I was a picky eater and didn’t make it easy on my mom. Once, she learned how to make refried beans. Bean and cheese burritos would become the dinner in our house for what felt like weeks on end. “What’s for dinner?” I’d ask. “Refried bean burritos!” Unfortunately, I hated refried beans.
Another time she went on a chicken-teriyaki-with-sesame-seeds-on-a-skewer-kick, which was very fancy for her. I’ll admit it tasted good, but there’s only so much chicken a girl can eat, and at some point I rebelled against the nightly offering of teriyaki chicken. Always, deviled eggs could be made in a pinch.
I survived with a steady stream of cinnamon toast on Roman Meal bread (bread that was considered “healthy”) and cereal. We had a pantry with a cache of Top Ramen that I, at some point, learned to make for myself, and I knew how to make sandwiches. I could do PB&J and egg salad, and at both of my parents’ houses, a tuna concoction could be scrounged for sandwiches that consisted of: a can of tuna, some mayo, chopped red onions, and raisins. My parents formulated this somewhere in their lives together, on one of their travels. I loved it and I still make it to this day (my husband likes it too, although he – who comes from a completely different background and really knows how to put flavors together – likes to add a little mustard, chopped dill pickles, peppercinis if we happen to have them, and salt and pepper to the mix… he really showed me how to kick it up a notch).
Mom always had a jar of pickled herring on the top shelf of the fridge she would often ask me if I wanted a bite of it. No thank you. I wasn’t nearly so adventurous then. The staple at my dad’s house was Planter’s Peanuts. He’d pour out a handful of peanuts, tip his head back and pour them in his mouth, munching loudly on the entire handful at once.
My mom’s fridge was sparse. We ate fruit occasionally. Bananas were always around and I liked peaches. There was a black plum tree in our backyard that in the summer produced delicious, juicy plums. I remember my sister and I standing by the tree eating plums while pink juice ran down our arms. Produce in general though, did not seem to make a consistent appearance in our house. I remember a single, omnipresent, Red Delicious apple in one of the refrigerator produce drawers. It seemed more like a decoration or an affectation – like evidence for guests if they happened to open our fridge (“See? We eat fruit!”) I genuinely didn’t know I was supposed to eat it but I’m sure my mom bought it with that in mind. I pulled it out once to check it out. It occurred to me to try it. Mealy, mushy, yuck. I placed it back on the shelf with the bite in it. I didn’t eat apples for years after that. I’m pretty sure the current buffet of apple choices we now have are a reaction to the texture of Red Delicious.
I don’t remember eating vegetables much. My dad married my stepmom when I was about 6, and my sister and I split our time between mom and dad’s houses. I’m sure I was exposed to the occasional vegetable as my stepmom was better known for getting something on the table for supper in the evenings. I’m sure there was a few broccoli trees I was required to eat before I downed my milk and slurped up my spaghetti with meat sauce. But to be honest, I don’t remember much more than spaghetti and the occasional meatloaf and mashed potatoes at our dinner table. Before Linda came along, Dad fed us a subsistence diet of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, Bib’s Burgers ( a local hamburger joint), Kentucky Fried Chicken and fried egg sandwiches, which he really loved to make - he always asked us with lots of cadence in his voice, with a real lilt at the question mark (“How about some FRIED EGG sandwiches?”), and I remember him cooking the eggs with great concentration and care so that they didn’t burn. I think he really enjoyed nourishing us with food, he just didn’t know much about cooking.
My maternal grandmother’s pre-nuptial warning to my father wasn’t complete. She didn’t mention my mother’s lack of kitchen skills, and he most likely only learned the few things once he was forced to make food for himself during college. I’m sure there was some shocking moment shortly after he and my mom were married when they realized, “Umm… who’s going to cook?”
Dad too, was a product of urbanization. His mother was a stay-at-home mom for the most part, and like many women in her generation who raised kids in the 1940s and 50s, she relied on canned and store-bought goods in addition to whatever she cooked from scratch. She was probably the first generation in our family to not grow up on or near a farm. Her parents (my great-grandparents) had moved to California from the Midwest, where they had indeed hailed from farm families, but came out west in search of something else. My great Grandfather, Walter Errol, had a j-o-b and he and his wife, Adda Genevie, bought a house in Pomona, California with a lot of fruit and citrus trees, and probably a garden. And while they both most likely grew up on farms back in Illinois, they did not pursue farming once they moved to southern California with their three daughters - my paternal grandmother and her two sisters.
My dad grew up knowing his grandparents. He was a typical teenager in the 1950s and probably expected to marry someone just like his mom – someone who’d stay home with the kids and make three square meals. But he married my mom. Poor guy. Occasionally he would make us Tuna Noodle Casserole, which I think was a recipe of his mother’s (I suspect she took it from the back of a Campbell’s soup can, but never mind, it was delicious). The casserole included canned tuna, egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, sour cream and peas all tossed together somehow and baked, with the top sprinkled with crunched up sour cream and onion potato chips. I’m sure it was haute cuisine in the 1950s. It was practically gourmet in the 1980s at my dad’s house. Casseroles like this were a complete meal and probably one of the most nurturing foods I ate as a child. Probably not actually nutritious by modern standards, but nurturing nonetheless.
(continued in Part 2)
While I’m aware that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s writing is problematic in the way she has written about Native Americans, her books were written in the 1930s-1950s and were very popular with Generation X, so I try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. When problematic sentences arose in her books as I read them to my young son, I would either skip it, or tell him how or why that way of thinking and speaking is not ok, depending on the context. The conversation between the young man and his parents, mainly his father, in the last chapter of Farmer Boy, includes astute observations foretelling the future consequences of leaving farm life to work for others or even oneself in other industries. I was struck and impressed by her foresight – in a children’s book – of the possibilities that may come, and have come, as a result of industry and “progress.”