Father's Day

I have an image of my father wearing a blue and white canvas pin-stripe apron over his clothes that my mother gave him (with good reason), standing over the barbecue in our backyard alternately spraying charcoal fluid (with big effect) on the briquettes and a few moments later spraying, using his thumb as a spray cap, a large bottle of Canada Dry Soda Water filled (and refilled) with water from the hose onto the resulting flames from the barbecue that were threatening to ruin his perfect barbecued ribs.  They were perfect which is sort of surprising since my father couldn’t really cook at all.  Scrambled eggs and burnt bacon is about all I remember from his repertoire except for the night he exploded a can of baked beans since he’d decided it was okay to heat them in the can (unopened) which he’d placed in a large pot of boiling water and, I think, forgotten about them.  Tip:  don’t try that at home.

But his barbecued pork ribs were perfect.  The secret was the sauce.  The secret was that he marinated them religiously overnight (turning them constantly).  The secret was that he cooked them perfectly albeit with a strange method that involved alternately kicking the fire up to high temperatures and then knocking it down.  It was a method that I still remember and it was before we knew that charcoal fluid is truly bad for you so don’t try that at home either.

One of the few food memories I do have of my dad is his trying to make the perfect fried egg. He had supposedly been a cook at the start of WWII. But military mess food then was powdered eggs, ersatz coffee, canned and mystery C-rations covered in “chocolate.”

My sister and I were 7 and 5 respectively when he decided to show us he could cook breakfast in our newly renovated “modern” (for 1962) kitchen. He braved the spattering bacon and fired up a separate frying pan for the eggs. He put a pat of butter in to melt and was explaining about the difference between fried, sunny side up and over easy, boiled, poached and scrambled eggs. 

Any line or short order cook will tell you that working the breakfast rush is a particularly miserable gig because every egg order is a “custom” order. Every diner has a personal relationship with his eggs, given his childhood experience. “Scrambled” can mean “scrambled wet” or “ scrambled dry.” “Lightly beaten” can mean where threads of the whites show in the yellow. “Sunnyside up” might mean with a set, cooked skin on top gained by putting the pan in a broiler or salamander for the last 5 seconds. But "over easy" always means: “no popping the yolk.”

Some men BBQ ribs. Others grill hearty steaks or shrimp with an array of specialty South American hot sauces. My dad, however, does not. He holds myriad talents, but cooking is not one of them. Or, so I was led to believe.

Since I was old enough to ask for dinner, my dad has continually told my brother and me that he can’t cook. "Lizzie!" he'd yell to my mom, "Quick! The kids need some food!" His panic palpable and contagious. Before long, we’d all be yelling for our mom’s swift and seemingly effortless intervention. Initially, she tried to tell him to make it himself, but each time he would make it so poorly - too much butter, too little jam, toast with too burned edges - that we decided we would never ask him to make anything again. Even the simplest jobs would go awry. "Oops!" he'd exclaim with questionable enthusiasm from the kitchen. "I've charcoaled the popcorn again!"

Realizing his efforts would cause more cleanup than help, my generous mom (who admittedly loves to pamper those whom she loves) began a routine of breakfast in bed that she’d never be able to get out of. Once my mom spoils you, there’s no going back. “Lizzie!” he’d call out from their room, desperate for more attention. It became an addiction, this attention. It was like crack. “WMC?”

We came to understand “WMC” to be an acronym for “Where’s my coffee?”

At six years old, I sat down after Sunday morning cartoons and wrote my very first story.  The illustrations were nothing to speak of, but the premise went something like this:

Bugs Bunny becomes a priest and takes over my parish church, Good Shepherd. 

Unexpectedly, he looks very sharp in a vestment.  He delivers a sermon that lasts only one minute long, and then Mass is over.  From the pulpit, a carrot is loudly, unabashedly chewed.  Before we all genuflect and skedaddle, one young lady is called forth from the congregation (myself, of course.)  And in an exercise of Divine intervention, Bugs makes an exception for me, little two-more-years-till-communion me, and lets me taste the sacramental wafer.  The end.

I gave the story to my father, a British Catholic in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, and he loved it.  At a time when he mainly intimidated me (his accent, his suits and cigars, his bowls of spicy radishes) I found in his appreciation of this story a common thread for the two of us to hang onto.