Can I Lick the Yolk Off My Plate

When I was a kid my mother was “off duty” on Saturday mornings and my father, who us kids did not see much on the weekdays due to his long work commute, was in charge of us.  Back in the “olden days” of the 60’s and 70’s Saturdays were not the day parents drove their kids to various sports or arts activities, for me and my sisters it was the day that my Dad made us breakfast before we got in the car and went to do his errands with him before we were conscripted into child labor.

The breakfast was almost always the same thing.  A fried egg on toast cut into a tic-tac-toe board pattern.  It is still one of my favorite things to eat.  The little toast squares soaking up the runny yellow yolk, paired with one perfect bite of not crispy fried egg.  Today since I don’t eat toast often I am wishing that it were lady like to pick up my fried egg plate and lick the yolk, which lays languishing on it.  I have tried using a sliced tomato as my toast replacement and although it is a tasty is does not have the same absorbent qualities and plenty of delicious yolk goes to waste

The errands were almost always the same thing.  First we had to go to the liquor store to cash a check and sometimes buy liquor.  See, it was the days before ATM’s and 24 hour banking.  We almost always went to New Canaan Liquors for this chore since our town of Wilton was dry and New Canaan had more liquor stores per person than any other town.  Just for the record, New Canaan also had Silver Hill a really fancy dry-out place that movie stars used to come to when they had visited one too many of New Canaan’s 142 liquor stores.

The big woman who owned New Canaan liquors was a good marketer.  She always gave any kids that came in the store lollypops so we would beg our father to go back there to cash his check.  Liquor store loyalty started early in our family.

Once we were at the liquor store it was only steps to my father’s second most popular errand, a visit to Belcher’s the lawn mower and chain saw store.  Belcher’s was fine with us kids too, because they also sold bikes so we always got to sit on the newest Schwinn bikes as my father discussed the sharpening of one blade or another.

After Belcher’s we drove through the car wash and then back to Wilton to one of the two hardware stores in our town.  Hardware stores back then were like a cross between a small Home Depot and a down market William Sonoma because they sold everything from replacement screen to lobster pots.  There was always something fun to play with there while my father bought the needed supplies for us to work on the house as our afternoon activity.

The errands ended with a visit to the Village Market, Wilton’s grocery store that was way ahead of Whole Foods in the “If we prepare it, you will pay through the nose, but you will love it” way of selling food.

After the fun of errand time we knew we would have to pay by doing the chores my father had on his list for the afternoon.  Our most constant task was mowing and raking the grass as well as raking the leaves, but scraping paint off the 200 year old clapboards or crawling up on the roof to clean out the gutters was often included in the child labor department.  Although we did complain we never seemed to opt out of those Saturdays.

As mundane as those days sound it was what we lived for as kids.  Time with my Dad, the same food, the same errands, the same chores, but lots of time for him to tell us stories about his childhood and tell us the exciting things that were happening at work.  Oh how I miss mundane.