My grandmothers were completely different. One of the biggest separations between them was financial, though neither of them would ever have admitted it. Meme, who was my mother’ s mom, lived on a fixed income in an apartment in Atlanta. She was happy, carefree, and committed to enjoying every second of her retirement. My Grandma, who was my father’s mother, made her home in a simple brick ranch home in Dunwoody sitting on a multi-million dollar piece of property and was committed to complaining and being miserable throughout my memory.
Meme baked casseroles with Durkee’s Onions, and Grandma made bologna sandwiches that she put on the Styrofoam plates that they packed raw meat on in the meat department in grocery stores. I was seven years old when I came to this realization. I was helping her cook when I went to throw away the used white meat tray after dumping the hamburger meat in the pan when she hollered at me to stop. She snatched it out of my hands, ripped the cellophane off, and threw it in the sink in the soapy water along with the rest of the dishes that needed washing. That was when I put it all together and recognized the familiarity of those pink stained plates that I always ate my lunch on. The woman could have bought and sold most of the stores in Dunwoody at the time, but we ate on recycled blood stained Styrofoam. Some people would say that it was because she lived through the Great Depression, but my Meme lived through it too and we ate on regular plates at her house. She even had cable.
My Grandma is the only southern woman I have ever known that did not bake casseroles when someone died. She went to the store and bought a Honey Baked Ham (or sent me to do it). I suppose it was because she felt that the other women in the community would contribute the carbs, so it was her duty to throw in the protein. Fortunately, no one ever asked us to bring plates.
When I went to a funeral with my grandmother, I would pack the ham in a white Styrofoam cooler and wedge it in the floorboard between my feet. She wore her brown sweater knit hat regardless of the temperature, along with her brown polyester pants. She would click her tongue as we drove past all of the homes in Dunwoody telling me the stories of the way they used to be, the people that used to live there, while she claimed it made her sick to see all the change. When we got to the Sandy Springs Funeral home, tears would sprout from her eyes where none had been before, and after a time visiting the family, I would transfer the ham to their car. I never remember us going to any other funeral home, or going to anyone’s house with her before or after. The transfer of the ham was the biggest event of the afternoon and we were home by supper. Supper at my grandmother’s house consisted of not eating there, but going out to eat. We had a rotation of restaurants that we would go to including Hickory House, Pizza Hut, Morrison’s Cafeteria, and sometimes Sizzler or Red Lobster. We ate sandwiches at her house when we were there for lunch, and the only time I remember her cooking was on holidays. The beautiful spread that she was able to cook then was a miracle to me when she went without practice all year long. Her macaroni and cheese was the most amazing thing ever . I luxuriated at its presence at every holiday dinner. She would sit it right in front of me on two macramé pot holders. It was a gorgeous site of juices bubbling beneath a thick blanket of cheese, golden flecks of cheddar sticking to the sides of the clear pyrex dish with elbow macaroni in a tight pattern clinging to the side. A rich, thick white goo was the best part, a hidden layer of mysterious goodness below the melted golden cheese. (I have tried to mimic this recipe hundreds of time in my adulthood, never realizing what the mystery layer was until someone told me it was eggs. All that time I used four eggs, never coming close to that thick texture. She must have used a dozen or more.)
Complete opposite picture on the other side of the family. Funerals were an event that would go on for days, and road trips were likely to be involved.
My Meme was from North Carolina, and so was my Grandfather Earl, her husband that died before I was born. They met at a drugstore back when drugstores used to serve food. Sometimes it was the best food in a town. Hamburgers and chilidogs piled high and at least a daily “meat and three” gracing the menu each day.
He was a “soda jerk,” serving the special drinks with flavored sugar syrups and root beer floats sure to clog each and every artery. The problem that I have imagining this picture is that I never remember seeing Meme eat a hamburger or hotdog, so I am guessing it must have been a set-up and a friend brought her in there or that she was partaking in the vegetable offerings of the day. Regardless, they fell in love over the drugstore countertop. Him with his little paper hat and teen bravado and her with her face demure and glowing with love as she sipped the rootbeer float he made her.
My grandparents along with my mom and her siblings were like middle class gypsies who moved all over North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia whenever my grandfather tired of his current sales routes or they tired of him. But whenever there was a death in the family, it didn’t matter all the places that they lived during my mother’s childhood, we would end up in Benson, North Carolina. It was their home base.
My earliest memory was a white and red checked tablecloth that whipped in a fall wind while my Aunt Gladys and Meme scrambled to tape it down so they could serve the food at a family reunion. I am guessing that I was probably around four at the time, so even though it seemed like there were a thousand people there I am guessing there was probably around a hundred. (I remember the food more than I remember the people.) Golden fried chicken like jagged mountains peeking over deep white bowls, aluminum pans of steaming hot vinegar tinged bar-b-que and an assembly line of casseroles with a bookend of desserts. (I guess this says something about me that food is a lead character in my memories). Aunt Gladys wore her blue and white ruffled apron and went around shooing flies off the food while we all grabbed a plate.
One thing that we never had a shortage of on my mom’s side of the family was food, people, and unfortunately, funerals. We had a family reunion each year, but sometimes it didn’t seem needed because we had already retreated to Benson two or three times for a funeral. My Grandfather Earl’s dad created quite the gene pool. He outlived two of his wives, was married three times and had seven children with his first two wives and eight with his last wife. So our family defines us in “sets.”
My mom would introduce me, because there was no way to keep track otherwise.
“Molly, this is Jonny and Nancy, they are in the second set.”
Or, “This is your Aunt Christine. She is in the third set with us.”
The sets get mangled and confusing when you added cousins with multiple kids to the mix. It got even more confusing when some of the cousins from the different sets got married. Good thing we had casseroles to break the ice.
“Hi, I’m Molly, I am in the third set. What’s your name?”
“I’m Shasda. My mom is in the second set and my dad is in the first.”
“Um, Ok. Would you like some casserole?”
“What kind is it?”
“Who knows, but it has Durkee’s Onions and cheese on top.”
“Ok, sure…”
The early reunions were in Aunt Gladys and Uncle Carl’s front yard, but there got to be too many people, so we started having them at Banner’s Chapel Church in Benson. When there was a funeral though, we would all go to Aunt Bea’s. Aunt Bea had a little white house that was on a manicured block smack dab in the middle of town. Their yard was about half of the block complete with bee hives that my Uncle Robert sold the honey from and a giant barn complete with enough antiques and treasures to keep bored kids busy for hours.
The house was comprised of two tiny bedrooms, a den, a kitchen, a dining room and a formal living or “sitting room.” I am not sure whose idea it was that Aunt Bea’s house was always the house that we gathered at, but it was even though it was the smallest. The card tables of casseroles would snake through every room with barely enough space to wedge your body through a doorway. But we gathered there anyway, spilling out in the carport and onto the porch. No one ever invited anyone or made an announcement; we all just knew to go there before and after the funeral. My Meme’s funeral was no exception.
Meme had five children, and all of them were alive when she died. The only reason that we knew something had happened to her was that one of her friends had called saying that she missed their bridge game. I never knew Meme to miss a bridge game. Apparently, neither did my mother, because she left work and drove to Meme’s apartment so fast that it wasn’t until the next day that we realized she left her purse at work. Mom walked into Meme’s bedroom and said she was curled up on her side in her pink nightgown as if she was sound asleep. She wasn’t.
After two of my aunts and one of my uncles flew down from Alaska, we all met my other uncle along with everyone else in Benson at Aunt Bea’s house.
I was standing behind my Aunt Tricia with my paper plate in my hand winding around the tables stacked with food that made a caterpillar pattern throughout the house. That was when it hit me. No Durkee’s onions. Not a single solitary casserole had the bland onion dusted cardboard across the top. Just cheese. Something I had grown to hate I craved suddenly like I never craved anything before. As I looked across the spread of tables, I realized the sea of people, along with the sea of food was never going to be the same. Soon, more people would pass away and take their signature recipes with them. Aunt Christine’s Chicken and Dumplings would be gone, the lingering scent of Aunt Perline’s cigarettes would fade, Uncle Carl’s hushpuppies and fresh caught fish wouldn’t be cooking in the carport anymore, and soon others would disappear one by one.
Aunt Bea died before I took my last fishing trip with Uncle Carl and Aunt Gladys. I guess it was fitting that her funeral was the last one where we lined up through her house piling up our plates. A For Sale sign was up in front of her little white house the next time I went back to visit Aunt Gladys.
The food at Hickory House or Red Lobster is still pretty much the same when I decide to stop in there with my son. But my words seem to fall short when I try to describe to him the overflow of food and family at Aunt Bea’s house in Benson. I can also never duplicate the recipes, no matter how much effort goes into it, or how many cans of Durkee’s Onions I go through.