coffee memories

I called my mom one night last week and it happened to be on a Bunco night which she was hosting in her home. I thought that she wouldn't want to talk but she seemed eager to let her friend take her place at the table so that she could chat with me. I think she has grown weary of Bunco. She has been in this same Bunco club almost as long as I can remember. Most of the original members are long gone. My mother herself has threatened to leave the club for the past ten or fifteen years. Her threats have fallen on deaf ears (my sisters and mine) since we know that as long as her fingers can curl around the dice and her arm is strong enough to pick them up that she will continue to play Bunco. With ringing bells and whooping ladies in the background we talked for nearly half an hour. I asked her what she was going to serve for refreshments. "Already served it." she said. "What was it?" I asked. "Chicken salad sandwiches and homemade sweet pickles" she told me.

Well, Sherman, set the wayback machine to 1961. I am walking the several blocks home from school. When I open my front door the air is fragrant with the aroma of coffee and chicken salad. Earlier that day my mother has hosted one of the the several women's groups that she belongs to. There are leftover chicken salad sandwiches for me to eat. And joy of joys, there is an open carton of half and half in the refrigerator. I stand at the open fridge door and sneak a gulp of the rich liquid directly from the carton. I have always had a fondness for real butter, real whipped cream and half and half. My parents both drank their coffee black, so only when my mother hosted one of these events did we have half and half in the house. Over the next few days the carton would be mysteriously drained.

My mom made this chicken salad by boiling chicken and then taking all the tender meat from the bones and grinding it up in her metal grinder that attached to the kitchen table with a big screw. She also made ham salad this way. The pickles or whatever else went in the salad were put into the grinder also and spurted out the little holes into a bowl on the table. I do believe she still has this grinder and still uses it to this day.

Fast foward to 1968. I come home from school to the same delightful chicken salad smell. My mother is hosting Bunco. She needs a substitute for someone who is not able to make it that evening. I am recruited. I almost felt like a full-time member throughout high school for I subbed many times and not just when my mother was hosting. But later that evening the coffee smells would waft up and combine with the chicken salad. I didn't even drink coffee. I think I just associate those smells with my mom being vibrate and happy and entertaining. I have always liked being in the midst of entertaining - kind of hovering on the sidelines. Viewing without actually participating very much.



Setting the wayback even further, I recall sitting with my grandma at Woolworth's lunch counter. She would order coffee and she knew to order cream even though she didn't use it. She ordered it because it was her treat to me. I would drink it from the little glass cream server that lunch counters used back in those days. I loved the miniature glass bottle almost as much as I loved the cream it contained. I found one of these little bottles at a garage sale a few years back and I just had to own it. This morning I served myself coffee with cream . I used my Buffalo China cup which very well may have been the same brand of China that my Grandma was served coffee in so many years ago. Today I poured my half and half into my coffee cup instead of drinking it straight from the bottle.