I REMEMBER...my sister, onions, turkey and cooking drama

my younger sister, Sharon, and her playful ways she would display her displeasure about me making simple, innocent, constructive suggestions about her kitchen habits.

The three times I recall of note are:

1- the time she and I were helping our Mom unload the groceries from the car. I had already brought in the onions and potatoes and Sharon (about two years old - I was about six) was putting them away in the bottom cupboard next to the refrigerator. On my second trip into the house I didn't see any potatoes or onions out so I asked her where she put them. She pointed at the cabinet and when I looked inside - as the poem says - the cupboard was bare. It is conceivable that she thought she heard a disparaging word (because the clouds were not cloudy all day) from me. Bereft of the proper words to cleverly hide the truth that she had just neatly poked them through a hole in the cupboard wall, dropping all the potatoes and onions to an impossible-to-get-to crawl space under the house, she just sunk her four teeth [two on top and two on the bottom, all in the front like a deranged beaver] into my shoulder blade and hung on until Mom heard my screaming and saved me. When a turtle does that you have to cut their head off to get them unhooked, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. It was just a suggestion.

2-We both survived and got a little older. We still had combined kitchen duties, possibly one of God's tests where what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. It was Thanksgiving. We didn't have much money, so we were thankful for the turkey. Sharon was thankful for having an underachiever for a brother, so she could look really good compared to her sterling self. I was particularly thankful for the fact that I was the oldest child (by four years) and significantly bigger than my sterling sister.

Not being clever enough to avoid cleverly disguised, seemingly perfect set-ups (sibling harrassment opportunities), I came upon my sister, basting the family turkey, perched precariously on the open knee-high oven door in our 50's, bright turquoise, far-too-small, kitchen.

There was just enough room to squeeze behind her to pass through the kitchen. My sister had commandeered the opportunity to baste the turkey to a perfect golden brown and Mom had relegated me to taking the potato peels out to the trash. In retrospect, I probably could have gone around the kitchen, but the what-could-possibly-go-wrong temptation to casually, ever-so-lovingly, brush past her, took control of my body. As I squeezed behind her (I am absolutely confident I mumbled "excuse me") my "I am peeved with you showing me up to Mom all the time" knee reflexes must have jerked involuntarily and given her the the ever-so-slight shot to the back as I passed by.

This was 50 years ago. I was twelve and she was an evil, evil (did I say evil yet) eight years old. I have this painfully vivid memory of her involuntary Sarah Bernhart [Quote from Wikipedia: "Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt's life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, described her as a notorious liar) acting skills kicking in. As I gave her the quite innocent knee-to-the-back love tap, she instinctively screamed loudly, fell backwards, flinging the turkey, the roasting pan, drippings, etc. across the floor, skidding to a greasy stop at my Mom's feet. No amount of protest on my part could properly explain the huge injustice I received as my clever little sister, writhed on the floor, in the turkey bastings, crying and screaming that I had viciously kicked her in the back. You are probably thinking, geez, it has been fifty years; get over it. You weren't there to see the Mona Lisa smile creep across her face as I was dragged off to the dungeons to be flogged. Note: We ate the turkey anyway. I ate mine standing up.

3. Somehow, we managed to bury the hatchet (just not in each other) and we lived on to another day later that year to combine our fine-tuned culinary skills to make a birthday cake for our Mom, while she took a nap. After all, Sharon had mastered pancakes and I had beaucoup (dj. Many; much: beaucoup money. n. pl. beau·coups also boo·coos or boo·koos. An abundance; a lot.) merit badges for cooking over an inverted coffee can in the wilderness.

We had the cake mix, we had a two part angel-food cake pan, but obviously, had no clear recipe to follow. We were practically valedictorian scholars, and so, boldly moved forth to surprise Mom with a homemade cake. Wrong mix. Wrong pan. No sense of time. After the pan suffered in the oven for about twenty minutes with the only heat coming from just the oven light-bulb, we realized our error. It was quite obvious what we had to do. If a person only had so much time to go from point A to point B and you had gone too slowly in the beginning - the obvious solution would be to go faster with the remaining time you had left, so you would arrive at point B at the right time. The same principal could surely be applied to cooking. Not noticing that half the batter had leaked out of the two-part pan onto the old style, non-self-cleaning oven bottom, we cranked the heat up to broil, to make up for lost time and proceded into the family room to watch "American Bandstand" - with forever young, Dick Clark.

Boy did Mom truly get a cake surprise for her birthday. This was before smoke detectors. I am still not sure if that was good or bad. When charred-cake black smoke
finally filled the house (except where we were in the lower-level family room with the sliding wood door closed) all Hell broke loose with Mom screaming for us to get out of the house, as it was on fire.

It, of course, wasn't. Just the cake - permanently baked and embedded into the pocked, porcelain interior of that poor oven -was a tad over done. I thought for sure my co-cook and I would share the blame on that one, but as I was the oldest (with a fire safety merit badge, no less) and the one that originated the cooking dilemma math formula, once again, I remember bearing the brunt of the responsibility.

My sister and I have lived long enough to fondly remember these childhood traumas with a bit of humor (and much Merlot). Sharon is one of my best friends now and may have slightly different, but deranged, versions of these stories. However, since this my blog, she will just have to start her own, and post her own version, won't she?

I REMEMBER...the Flaming Marshmallow

...having a minor altercation with my sister, Sharon, when I was about twelve and she was about nine. It involves a flaming marshmallow.

But first......being the first born child, with all the inherent rights instilled in that position, I always had a tough time convincing my little sister of the level of reverence and respect that was due me. Maybe, after 50 years, I am beginning to see inklings that she might be coming around. She treats me very well.

In our youth (many light years ago) my little sister, Sharon, had this misconceived notion that she was also in charge and had equal, if not even greater, rights within the family. I fully believed that Mom loved me best. After all, I was the first child, first boy, only boy and my character was overflowing with admirable qualities [such as: I could make the perfectly believable sound of an alien spaceship taking off and landing without taking an extra breath and I had many merit badges in Boy Scouts for cooking on top of a coffee can, etc.]. Sharon also fully believed that Mom loved her best. After all, she was the girl that Mom "really" wanted, someone of the female persuasion Mom could confide in - in ways that boys and men would never appreciate or even know. She was smarter, prettier, cuter and always, without exception, willing to cheerfully help Mom with any project without resistance. Disgusting.

Whereas, my sister probably had some relatively decent qualities, there was an inherent evil that I just could not get my Mom to acknowledge. It was bad enough that Sharon was practically perfect in every way; she was still compelled to accent my occasional slips off the pedestal. I would be engaged in one of my Mom's dreaded "Death by Lecture" sessions for some totally misrepresented indiscretion when my sister would cheerfully (in a Shirley Temple kind of way) "just happen" to skip into the room and announce stuff like "Hi Mommy, I just wanted to tell you that I love you very much and that I just vacuumed the whole house, put my straight A's schoolwork on the refrigerator next to my award-winning artwork, fed Bobby's dog because he forgot to again....and wanted to see if there was anything else I could do to make your life easier, because you know I love you very much!"

Already in trouble for something (that is why I was getting the lecture), it did not enhance my innocence when I would uncontrollably lunge forward to wrap my hands around the neck of the cheerful little bluebird that was, once again, pointing out why Mom should love her best.

Mom couldn't see the tiniest of Mona Lisa smiles on Sharon's face as she skipped out of the room, knowing she had firmly placed yet another brick in the wall separating the good child from the bad child. Perhaps, if my Mom hadn't been busy physically restraining my thrashing, foaming-at-the-mouth, struggle to get to my sister, she could have noticed.

So what about the flaming marshmallow? This was perhaps my crowning moment in my endeavor to somehow "get even" with my sister. We had all gone camping in Yosemite National Park, back in the day, when they still had the Firefall - [this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but is a cool memory before environmental regulations - you should have been there, but then you had, of course, you would be old or dead, if you had really seen it - so click on the link for the next best thing].

We were enjoying (for a few fleeting moments) the traditional - go camping and roast marshmallows over the crackling fire. My sister always toasted her marshmallow perfectly - a delicious golden brown glow, spread perfectly over the entire morsel. I hated that.

My marshmallows were more like crusty little charcoal briquettes. I employed the young testosterone technique of roasting by jamming the entire marshmallow-on-a- stick deep into the coals, covering it in its entirety with hot ash and enjoying the ensuing moment when it would burst into flames.

Unfortunately, my sister Sharon picked that moment to, once again, point out to my Mom the difference between her perfectly golden creation and Bobby's "burning-black-thing-from-Hell-on-a-stick". My Mom wasn't fast enough to grab me this time when I leaped over the fire with my flaming sugar-bomb on a stick in front of me. I was a Lancer on a mission with the famous Alfred, Lord Tennyson's epic Charge of the Light Brigade.

That was the last straw. Seeing motive, intent, opportunity, and total disregard for the reprisal I would surely receive later, reflected in my blazing eyes, my sister jumped up [dropping her perfect gold marshmallow into the fire - a small side benefit, I relish to this day] and ran screaming into the dark forest.

Knowing I probably wouldn't catch her, and not being clear on what I would actually do if I did, I whipped my roasting stick in her direction out of frustration. Not planned, but ever so grateful for the result, the still flaming marshmallow slipped from the stick and flew through the darkness and stuck perfectly to the back of my sister's head.

A small hairless spot from the smoldering, melted sugar remained for quite awhile, before the hair grew back on Sharon's head. The endorphins [ The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress, supposedly due to the influence of endorphins.....allowing humans to feel a sense of power and control over themselves...Wikipedia] released from the ecstasy of finally seeing Sharon get her just desserts ["Marshmallows Suzette"] allowed me to endure the resulting pain of the beating and lecture-until-you bleed-from-your-eyes that followed.

Even now, when I am having a down day, I can play that perfect moment mind-video again in my brain...with slow-mo and color...and it never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Epilogue: In the truest sense of Men-Mars/Women-Venus thinking, I have retold that story over and over, many times over the years. Men and boys think it is absolutely hilarious and beg me to retell it. Oddly, I have yet to find a woman that thinks the tale is funny. Mostly, they focus on why I couldn't take direction from my sister and just learn how to properly toast marshmallows and confront my inadequacies and anger-management issues.

After about 40 years, I am sure my sister has not let go of the memory. I fear she is gearing up for some kind of Ninja reprisal. She recently told me she was on vacation at an exclusive resort in Mexico, but I have included photo proof, that it was indeed a Ninja Training Camp for Women Harboring Issues From Their Childhood. I never would have been able to hit that target on the back of her head if she had employed a tree-top, zip-line escape.

I REMEMBER...Sharon and the face cream

…treating my baby sister, Sharon, to her first exotic spa treatment. Well, not exactly. I do remember my mom telling me the story, which will have to be close enough. No one else was there to dispute the story. My mom is no longer with us, and my sister was about 1 year old and that was about 58 years ago, so we will have to go with this version.

If Sharon was about one, that would make me about four or five, as I was either three or four years older depending upon which half of the year we are talking about. The fact that I possibly, perhaps, may have harbored some unresolved issues about being eliminated as the only child and relegated to the status of just the only boy, may have some slight bearing on the story, but I only choose to remember the “caring big brother versions” of all family tales….flaming marshmallows while camping will be another story..banana peels in the toilet will not.

I have four children so I know this next statement to be true. When your kids are too quiet, something is probably wrong. As my mom told it, she was doing laundry, ironing and such and noticed that I wasn’t hanging around getting underfoot, as apparently was my custom. This was early 50’s, small town, Oklahoma. It would have not been uncommon for me to leave the house early and disappear for the day. Not that bad things probably didn’t happen back in the day, but the public just didn’t hear about it much. This was before TV (another story). I could ride bikes with my buddies, play ball, dig in the ditch across the street (yet another story about snakes coming soon), play “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” with my friends and as long as I came home as soon as the street light came on, I was good to go.

Anyway, none of those things were happening. I was in the house and my mom knew it. My sister was still in a crib, so she was in the house too. My mom slowly became aware of a soft “cooing” sound from the rear of the house. As she approached the master bedroom, she heard the “cooing” sound more distinctly as “oooooh and ahhhhh”. Apparently, knowing that I could come to terms with any sibling rivalry issues, by just showing the love to my sister, there I was mimicking what I thought I had seen my mom do….kind of.

I had found the large jar of Vaseline, but the wrong end of the baby. I had successfully plastered my sister’s head with about a half-jar of sticky petroleum jelly. Her eyes were totally glued shut. Her small amount of hair was matted with globs of glop. Should there be a hue and cry from readers regarding what a terrible thing this might have appeared to be for a small baby…I must point out that she was absolutely loving it.

I am sure that 58 years later, this experience is probably not on her Facebook page (nor mine). She is now a confirmed worldwide adventurist, hiking mountain trails in Peru, ocean sailing, whitewater kayaking, etc. I suspect that she is strangely comforted, when crawling on her stomach in the dark caves of Costa Rica, and her head and face become matted with exotic bat guano, she has odd, but warm recollections of those halcyon days in the crib having her head slathered in Petroleum Jelly. Perhaps only when buried in the mud baths of Calistoga, with only her lips protruding from the volcanic ooze just far enough to reach the straw and little sippy cup of ice water, does she vaguely recall a similar comforting experience, a long, long time ago. If she is strangely concerned, I plead innocent. If she smiles, I will take all the credit.

There is an earlier story of me, BS (before Sharon), plastering my bedroom window sills shut in a similar fashion, but not with petroleum jelly. Sharon is lucky I matured into a more socially acceptable plaster artist.

I REMEMBER...My Earliest Memory 3 1/2

....my earliest memory I was about 3 1/2 years old living in McCalister, Oklahoma. My mom was at the hospital giving birth to my sister. My grandmother, Clara Whitlock, was staying home with me, as I had a cold.

She gave me a big spoon full of Sorghum Molasses every day as a home remedy. I loved that stuff and would sneak an extra swig if it was left on the lower shelves of the refrigerator.

I remember going to the hospital to bring my sister home in a 1950 Ford. I sat in the back seat and my sister, Sharon Kay Whitlock (before we were adopted and changed our last name to Welton), was on a pillow on my lap.

This was before baby seats and seat belts. Everybody lived.