Peaches and Wieners

By Gwynne Hunt

When I was young, I was really poor. The question begs of course, how poor were you? I traded punch lines with a lot of people of over the years. “I was so poor we rode cockroaches to school’, or ‘I was so poor, blah blah blah”

Although I think most people would agree that poverty sucks, I have to admit that growing up poor gave me some of the best laughs of my life. Driving down for up north with my two sisters once, eight kids crammed in the back seat of the car and the three of us jammed together in the front we were stressed broke and ready to explode. Nobody wore seat belts so don’t even question the eight kids in the back seat, trust me, they were there. Screaming, fighting and begging for a pit stop, we were trying to ignore them because a storm was coming and we didn’t have windshield wipers. We had to get to Quesnel before the rain. Of course, that didn’t happen and the rain poured down on the old Buick and we had to pull over to the side of the road.

I looked at my sisters and cried, “We can’t sit here in the dark with 8 screaming children’

My oldest sister who lucky for us was a flashback to a better time whipped up her skirt and tore off her garter belt. For those of you not into S&M it is one of those elasticy things with snaps on it to hold up your nylons. We ripped the belt in half and attached the elastic bits to the windshield wipers and then while I sat contented and dry in the middle my two sisters pulled the belt part on either side. . one, two-like rowers as we went down the road with windshield wipers slapping the rain away. Even the kids in the back seat quit howling because we were laughing so hard.

Car maintenance is never a big priority when you are trying to keep food on the table Most of our road trips were an adventure in surviving without money from the time our little Volkswagen shot ten foot flames out the back to my hiding in the gym after school so nobody would know I belonged to the guy out in the parking lot with the Studebaker that blew black smoke. I know my dad loved me and meant well but I would rather walk, as they say. Every time he went around the corner in the old bullet nosed car, the passenger door flew open. If I was lucky I clung to the dashboard but there were times I swung out the door clinging to the panel hoping nobody on the sidewalk knew they had just been clipped by a classmate.

Another time I lost my brakes coming down a steep hill and my 3 year old son squealed excitedly as we bounced through a field trying to stop the racing red vehicle. A chain link fence finally ended our made ride and my son, who at three knew all the lines to the best commercials said, “You asked for it, you got it . . Toyota”

My mom always ‘made do’ with whatever she could find to feed us and most of the time we ate all right. There was one Christmas dinner when we ate can spaghetti for our feast. I’m not sure if we laughed a lot over that but I know we didn’t cry. That is just the way it was. My dad made jokes about the turkey getting away and that was it. Can spaghetti seemed to feature big during my growing up years. I remember the first time I puked from drinking too much as a teenage it was can spaghetti. I was more embarrassed about the stomach contents on the floor then the fact that I had thrown up I front of my friends. They all recognized the orange mass for what it was and I had to make jokes about why that was all I had for dinner. Ha, ha, the turkey got away. Poor diet is a huge part of poverty. To this day though, my comfort foods are things like can brown beans, peanut butter, can sardines and onions; not however, can spaghetti.

When I was fourteen the situation seemed worse than it had ever been. Maybe I just was more cognizant and could see how poor we were or maybe it was a very bad year. We had no money to heat the house so my dad cut up old tires and we burned rubber all winter. Instead of hiding in the gym because of black burning smoke I had to run by my house on the way home from school and double back after my friends left me on the corner, agreeing with them that it was disgusting how the people who lived in that dump were polluting the air. I know I wasn’t laughing on the outside with friends but safe in the house with my mom and dad, my sister and her new husband we made a lot of jokes about burning rubber. I came home one afternoon from school and everyone was sitting around the table playing rummy and smoking. They always had money for cigarettes of course but they discussion was that we had only two dollars until the welfare cheque arrived the next day. My sister pulled a potato out of the cupboards with roots at least eight feet long winding around down to the floor. After that amused us for a while my sister’s husband said he was a pretty good shopper and took the last two dollars we owned and went to the store.

He came back an hour later as he had been giving a lot of thought to buying the best that he could with the meager amount that he had. He came in quite excited and told us he was going to make a Hawaiian feast. We all retired to the living room and threw the rabbit ears around for a bit so we could get some wavy lines on the television. We only had one chair so dad sat in it like Archie bunker, mom went to lie down and my sister and I sat on the cold wood floor.

It was, as they say a cold bleak winter day. We could hear the brother-in-law whistling in the kitchen and the longer it too for his Hawaiian feast the hungrier we got. Finally he called us to the table and with flourish and pride announced Hawaiian surprise.

The surprise was that nobody could swallow the wieners he had cooked in peach juice without gagging. After a couple of attempts my dad said, this is not edible and we all looked down at the floor, tummy’s grumbling, trying not to be sad that we had nothing else to eat in the house, not a piece of bread or a bit of cereal. I know my dad felt awful because not only were we going to go to bed hungry but there was nothing for me to eat before school the next day. We had already decided I would come home at lunch when there would be groceries in the house and skip an afternoon of tummy growls and starvation.

My mom came out from the bedroom from her nap and looked at the gloopy mess in the middle of the table and said, “oh for goodness sakes what on earth made you think that wieners boiled in peaches would be an exotic delight:

My sister’s husband just shrugged and said he could eat them. At least he said, They slide own easy ‘cause the juice is kind of like motor oil’

Mom grabbed the plate of wieners and ordered us to search the cupboards for an onion or celery or something. We did find some opinions and while mom fried that up with some bacon grease left in the frying pan my sister and I stood at the sink and carefully washed everyone of the 11 her-her husband had eaten one and a couple had the ends circumcised but otherwise they were intact just zippering and peach soaked.

I remember giggling with my sister as we washed out wieners and as they say, “it was the worst of times and it was the best of times”