“So what’s for dinner?” It was the battle cry Mom fielded about a thousand times every day. And Mom Math was the same back on Flamingo Street as it is now. Ask a question 10 times and moms will say it has been asked a thousand.
No matter what menu our Mom gave, we peppered her with follow-up questions: “Do we have to eat all our vegetables to eat dessert?” “What kind of dessert are we having?” Or “Why doesn’t spinach make us strong like Popeye?” There was only one dinner that didn’t need multiple additional questions. Soup. And the question was, “When will it be ready?”
During those seven magical years we spent growing up on Flamingo Street, there was nothing us kids enjoyed more for dinner than Mom’s homemade vegetable soup and the accompanying peanut butter honey sandwich. Except maybe banana splits for dinner, but then again Mom never let us have those. Dad did, but never Mom.
Special note to all my young readers out there: next time your parents say you can’t have a banana split before dinner because it will ruin your appetite, simply reply, “A banana split will not ruin my dinner if the banana split is dinner.” Just don’t tell them the quip came from the old guy in the paper.
But I digress. Although a tasty alternative to any dinner, or any meal for that matter, this story isn’t about banana splits. This story is about Mom’s homemade vegetable soup and peanut butter honey sandwiches.
Mom’s vegetable soup was the best on all of Flamingo due to swamp water. I kid you not. Our house sat on top of a hill with a backyard of emerald grass that sloped down and disappeared into the near edge of a swamp. The swimming lake above fed the wetlands below. Whenever heavy rains fell anywhere near our neighborhood or the Duke of Gloucester (one street over), the lake overflowed into the swamp causing it to flood our backyard and Dad’s garden.
When the waters receded, an inch of black silt was left behind covering the ground. Dad spent hours working the smelly silt into the soil — said it was the best free fertilizer he had ever found.
That’s with exception of elephant poo, of course, but that wasn’t free. The circus man on stilts made Dad pay “through the nose” for it. Though I never really saw Dad pulling money out of his nose, he said every time it was really painful.
With the free swamp fertilizer, Dad was able to grow any vegetable in his garden, giving Mom an endless supply of fresh ingredients for her soup in swamp water.
After spending all morning cleaning and chopping, she dumped everything into a huge pot on the stove where it bubbled in the brown liquid all day. We all thought it was swamp water, but we were not really sure. When asked about it, Mom just shook her head and smiled.
After hours of bubbling, soup was served, accompanied by the world’s second best peanut butter honey sandwiches. The lunch ladies at Mount Olive Elementary School made the best.
Both Mom and the lunch ladies made the sandwiches identically. They used white Sunbeam bread, and creamy Peter Pan peanut butter was spread over every inch of one slice. The other slice of bread was covered so thick with honey that it bled all the way through. Finally both haves were forever joined, making the lunch ladies’ and Mom’s sandwiches identical with but one exception. At school I didn’t have to share half of mine with Twin Brother Mark, making the lunch ladies’ sandwiches the best.
While writing this column, I could actually taste Mom’s soup and those peanut butter honey sandwiches sticking to the roof of my mouth. When finished, I ventured out to our small vegetable garden and picked everything that was ready, filling a large wicker basket. When The Wife got home, I let her read this story and asked, “If you’ll make the soup, I’ll make the peanut butter honey sandwiches.”
The wife looked at the wicker basket full of vegetables, turned to me and asked, “So let me get this straight. After working eight hours, you want me to clean, cut, and then cook vegetables for soup that will be ready hours from now?” She smiled, gave me a kiss and said, “I’ll show you how I make soup. Let’s go out to the new Vietnamese restaurant. They have some of the best soup in town.”
I heard it was extremely popular with wait times of over an hour. Must be some really good soup. Guess they found a source of brown swamp water just like my mom did. I brought a couple of my peanut butter honey sandwiches just in case they ran out.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
