The bottle didn't do, it really didn't! A gun, an old car and some rust.... recipe five.

This one is actually out of sync chronologically, it is about several incidents that happened before my Grandma Thelma died that have since came to mind.  I have made an index and have tried to stay in a forward motion but since it is not that far off I have decided to physically digress, this time, instead of just getting off subject.... 

The first incident I can not actually remember but it might go along way to explaining Bubbles and Bug.  My dad and mom have recounted it to me so many times I feel that I can remember it but alas I can not.  My dad was an avid hunter and trapper as a young man.  He always had a hound and at one time we owned more than 22 at one time.  He was a man that used a gun and kept one in the house always.  There was a big change in his behavioral manners in regards to guns though and this is why.  I was about 18 months old, at most 2, but my dad swears I was 18 months and since we moved around so much it is fairly easy to mark time by which house we happened to be living in at the time of any given incident.  He says I was 18 months, so 18 months I was, maybe.  He was looking in his closet for his 45 smith and Wesson one day and could not find it.  He asked my mom and she had not seen it, he looked and looked to no avail.  He for no real reason asked me if I knew where it was never dreaming it would and that I would answer him.  I like Bubbles, Cubbie and Yogie walked and talked really early, I digress, sorry.  I looked up at him and answered, "yes"  He said "where is it?" in excitement and cold fear.  I pointed outside and he said, "show me where?"  I toddled out across the yard into a small field behind the house where there was an old abandoned car.  I went over and crawled into it with my momma and daddy fast on my heels.  There laying on the front seat of that old car was that 45, it had spots of rust on it, my daddy's guns never had rust on them, the gun had been there awhile.  He grabbed the gun up and sure enough it was loaded, he had never not had it loaded at the time, my daddy recollected about 3 weeks.  My momma went crazy mad,  she had a lot to say about a loaded gun and her baby.  My dad in his fear knew what that loaded gun could have produced and praise God for the outcome that they had been blessed with.  He never again brought a loaded gun into our home.  He always unloaded them just outside of the house before he crossed the threshold. 

The second memory I am going to relate had to do with Red, and I do remember this one.  We were going over Skalkahoe pass we were on our way to visit Grandma Gladys, she live aways away.  It is a really high pass and our old car was chugging up the pass,  and for no reason at all, all of a sudden all of us normally boisterous kids were docile and nodding off.  Red was crying and mad at his bottle he actually threw it down and he never once threw his bottle away.  He was about 16 months old it was just before Sister was to be born, it was actually a last trip to see the Grandparents before the birth.  Dad looked back and noticed that our behavior was more than not normal.  We couldn't really wake up, he called to us but he could not answer him.  It was the middle of winter and the snow was a good two feet deep.  He stopped the car along the road side took the two of us in the back, Silver and me, and Red who by now was drowsy as well and threw us into the snowbank.  It was cold but it took us a little while to really come to.  Silver who was the littlest, he was a premie and was only actually eleven months older than Red so they were both about the same size,  Silver had had a twin that had died.  People would often asked if they were twins, my dad with his dry sense of humor, would always say, "this one is but this one isn't" and laugh when people looked at him like he was nuts.  Anyway I came to in a short time,  the cold had done it's work the two boys took a little longer, Silver last.  We soon began to cry in the cold snow.  Dad was under the car trying to see what the matter was while momma was trying to get us warm with a blanket.  The car had gotten carbon monoxide in to it from the tail pipe and the deep snow. We were again bless by the Grace of God to have made it through.  Red never touched another bottle in his life, he was sure that that bottle had made him sick and he would have none of it.  Good thing to, we soon got a new sister that really did need a bottle.  I was three and a half at the time and it is as clear in my mind as if it would have happened yesterday.  The car was an old black and white Buick,  it always looked like black and white saddle shoes to me.  I have a photos that was taken a month or so later of the four of us kids with mom and dad in front of that old car. 

I don't know that either one of these memories really bring to mind, in and of themselves a recipe memory, other than possible the formula mom would mix up for the bottle, back then there was not formula you made your own, however I don't think any of you would really want or need it anyway.  I do recall that about that same time my mom did make a recipe that didn't help out like it was meant to.  My dad was sick one day, and my dad almost never got sick.  He never missed work, he actually  only ever missed 11 days of work in his whole working career, and those were the 11 days he was in the hospital and then at home after his first heart attack. Again, my daddy was sick.  My mom asked him if he wanted milquetoast.  He said, "yes he would, he might be able to keep it down"  My momma proudly made it up and brought it to him.  He took one bite and spit it out in disgust.  He said, "what is that?"  She said, "milquetoast."  He said, "That is not milquetoast and he didn't want it."  My mom let him have his way but she was sure it was milquetoast.  The problem was that Grandma Thelma and Grandma Gladys did not call the same thing milquetoast. 

Grandma Thelma's Milquetoast

Two slices of darkly toasted buttered bread broken up in to pieces in a bowl.
Combine:
1 cup of warm milk
1 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 pat of butter

melt together until warm and pour over toast, serve warm.


Grandma Glady's Milquetoast

two slices of day old bread toasted lightly dry

Combine:
1 cup of milk
Salt and pepper to taste
1 poached egg

warm milk, salt and pepper pour over dry toast and put the poached egg on top.  Serve hot.

I am not sure that I could have handled such a vastly different milquetoast if I was abed with a sick tummy myself.   I do believe they are entirely different concepts, maybe just as different as the two ladies who made them.