Happy One Day in Three (Project 10)

Happy One Day in Three (Project 10)

One of the anomalies of growing up as a child of a fireman was that every third day, Pop was not home for dinner.  You see, as a fireman, he was on 24, then off 48 hours.  This could mean that we actually had hamburgers for dinner.  My father didn't like hamburgers, so when he was at home, Mom would never make hamburgers.  She still had to serve ground beef, so it was either spaghetti with meat sauce, or meatballs with kidney beans.

Whenever she served meatballs, we could pretend the meatballs were hamburgers.  This usually meant we put a couple of meatballs between two slices of bread and added whatever condiments you enjoyed on a hamburger.  In those years, I only liked mustard on my burgers, so that's what I'd have.  But this little compromise was less than satisfying on two fronts.  A meatball was baked (after being browned?), I think, in any case they were dry, dry, dry.  That's just not the same as a greasy burger, accompanied by potatoes that were not baked or mashed (more on this later).  Further, since Mom prepared the meatballs with kidney beans, you were expected to eat some of them, a disagreeable requirement indeed.

I formed the habit of making ground beef into sandwiches so firmly, that I later began eating spaghetti sandwiches.  Yes, I'd put a mound of spaghetti and meat sauce between two slices of bread and eat it.  This might explain why, when I discovered the Atkins Diet (no carbs, just protein), it performed so well for me.  Once I got off the bread, pasta and sugar, the pounds just melted away.  I remember losing twenty-five pounds the first time I went on Atkins.  I eventually had to quit that diet because I would have no energy at all when I had been deprived of sugar and carbs for more than four weeks.    

But back to those happy nights when Pop was not home for dinner.  We could have hamburgers made with Worcestershire sauce added to keep them moist, and--best of all--they were fried in a pan.  This all took place before there was even a McDonald's in our town.  As I recall it, that McDonald's opened the summer between my 7th and 8th grease years.  So our only chance for hamburgers was when Pop's work day fell on something other than Friday, because Friday had to be meatless for all us Catholics in those years.

I'm sure it was nice for Mom, even when it fell on Friday.  She was known to just make us scrambled eggs for supper on some Fridays.  Had to be an easy meal for her to make, since all suppers with Pop had to include potatoes (baked or mashed) and one of a very short list of vegetables--the aforementioned kidney beans, lima beans, peas and green beans.  Pop did not like broccoli, cauliflower, squash, including zucchini, and others that had never even occurred to us in those days as well, I'm sure.  So we got broccoli and cauliflower at times with our burgers.

Ah, but there was a down side to all this.  Mom loved liver and onions, and Pop didn't.  Consequently, there were a number of those suppers without Pop where Mom got to serve her favorite dish--no matter what the kids thought of liver--she loved it.  

I almost saved this one for another time, but the fireman's schedule produced another classic expression that survived even beyond his retirement after thirty years in the Chicago Fire Department--that was "Pop had a fire last night."  This was offered as an explanation for the occasional times my father had a short fuse.  If it was on the day after his working day in the rotation, he might or might not have slept, depending on whether or not there were a lot of calls.  "Pop had a fire last night" covered any time you got a serious bawling out over a minor offense of some kind.

Another useful expression took on greater meaning for us.  "Wait 'til your Father gets home" could be a long, seemingly interminable wait for your punishment for some offense or other--meaning part of the pain was the extended wait until your punishment actually took place.  I shudder just thinking about it.

Ah well, most of the time, being extra happy one day in three was a darn good thing.  Beats some weeks I can remember after I had grown up.