mayonnaise

What is it about mayonnaise? Maybe the slight lemony tang. Maybe the creaminess. IDK, but I like mayonnaise. Okay, what the hell, I love mayonnaise, it's what I most like about French-fried potatoes, the bowl of mayonnaise to scrape each stick through. Some people like catsup on their French-fries, mayonnaise for me.

When I was growing up we never had mayonnaise. We had "salad dressing" that looked exactly like mayonnaise, that Mama put on my sandwiches for lunch at Cove School, and I thought was the same thing until I had my first taste of Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise and never went back.

Seems to me the brand we had was Kraft's. Kraft's salad dressing, in the same shape glass jar as the Hellmann's mayonnaise we buy now that's in a plastic jar. Why did Mama buy salad dressing? IDK, maybe it was cheaper. I know it was always out and probably should have been in the ice box, before we had a refrigerator.

Those were lean Times. It was The Depression for us, with years that, Mama told me years later, my father was making two dollars a week. That would have been the late nineteen-thirties or early forties when he was working at the ice plant that was - - well, I've explained this here more than once, if you'd paid attention then I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself - - you know where the Downtown Post Office is? The street that goes alongside on the north side of the post office building is Mercer Avenue. Mercer Avenue extends a couple blocks to the west, across W. Beach Drive, and becomes just a dirt trail, a grassed-over trail.

Down that road and at the Bay, and to the left, south I guess, there was an ice plant when I was a little boy. This was more than eighty years ago, before The War. I remember standing up on the floor of the back seat of our 1935 Chevrolet (just like the above 1935 Chevrolet Master Deluxe Coach, "coach" was what they called their two-door sedan model), right behind Mama as she drove us there to collect my father after work, or to take him his sandwich for noon meal. I remember us driving up and stopping and him walking toward the car, cockily smoking a cigarette.

So, there was that, and then it was The War for us, World War Two with everything rationed, you had ration stamps, ration books to get practically everything. A gas sticker on the car windshield, there was a B, but ours was an A, your classification for rationed gasoline, and probably car tires as well. Ration stamps for meat, eggs, butter, which disappeared altogether and the world shifted from butter to oleo so the troops could be fed decently.

Oleomargarine, some called it margarine, we called it oleo. At first you bought a huge lump of white something like lard, set it out to warm and soften, poured a deep reddish-orange powder on top of it, and then started mixing. Right now, the first chore I remember having around the house was mixing the orange powder with the oleo until it looked like butter. And that was what we ate on toast.

At some point, I've told this before too, you should have been listening, or reading and retaining, it must have been late 1942 or early 1943, the military draft situation got about to my father's age, which by then he would have been 31, 32, and he arranged to go into the U S Maritime Service as an officer, the Merchant Marine. He'd served at sea with them earlier, after high school and while he and my mother were courting, he worked as an AB in the engine room of the U S hopper dredge Benyaurd,

so he applied to return to sea with the maritime service. Anyway, the family drove over to Mobile, this was in our new 1942 Chevrolet, for my father to interview and sign his contract. While we were there, we ate lunch at the downtown cafeteria. I don't think it was Morrisons, I think it was Laritz, which before Morrisons was also the name of the cafeteria in Pensacola when I rode the bus over to see the orthodontist Dr Bell for my braces. Anyway, that day at the cafeteria in Mobile, Alabama, I had a warm, yeasty Parker House roll, with a pat of butter on a little square of wax paper. It was the first butter I'd seen in forever, and I shouted "REAL BUTTER!!" I don't know if I really remember, or just hearing Mama tell about it for years after.

Now I've lost my antecedent, so I have to stop and see where I was going with this.

Oh yes, mayonnaise. So we never had mayonnaise at our house unless Mama's youngest sister, Mildred, whom we called DeeDee, was visiting from Pensacola and made mayonnaise. All I remember is her dripping oil into a bowl of egg whites while she whipped it vigorously.

Why is Bubba writing about food? Well, my annual doctor appointment is coming up, it was changed from nine-forty-five on Wednesday August 3 to nine-forty-five on Monday August 1, and I still have a couple of pounds to lose so he won't chide me for gaining weight. Once a doctor scolds me for being overweight, I change doctors, and I like this doctor fine. Anyway, I'll blog afterward how I did, because my success depends on whether I reward myself with an oversize over-thick prime ribeye steak for noon dinner after my doctors appointment.

There's an image of the 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan. Ours was dark blue. My parents had the 1935 Chevrolet seven years and traded it in for the new 1942 right after Pearl Harbor. We had the 1942 six years and traded it in for the new 1948 Dodge. We thought six and seven years was old for a car, yet my car, still shiny and cold air conditioning, runs like a top at sixteen going on seventeen years.

It's my lifetime car and it gets really good, loving care.