As My Dad Tells It #2 in the series

A Spoonful of Sugar?



Due to my grandparents separation, my dad and his 2 sisters lived with their grandparents. Because Aunt Thelma still lived at home, my grandmother had to live in an apartment close by. Dad's grandparents (Mim & Pip as he called them) where loving, but also strict. There where rules to follow. However, Dad broke a few along the way.

This is one of those times.

(Dad at about 9 or 10. Isn't he cute?)

Dad grew up during the Depression. His grandparents had a garden, a small orchard, pigs and chickens. My great grandfather was experimenting with worms (but that's another story).
My great grandmother made her own cough syrup and one of the ingredients was rock candy. Rock candy is sugar crystals that form on a string. Mim kept the rock candy strings hanging in her sewing closet. After all, out of sight, out of mind right? That is until Pip tells the children where it's hidden.

On Wednesday nights, Mim and other women got together to play cards. While Mim was away, Pip and the children would play. Pip would either make fudge, pretzels (though only once..something about to much salt) or homemade potato chips. They always cleaned up their mess.

One particular Wednesday, my dad had been sneaking into the sewing closet and helping himself to the rock candy. After Mim had left, Pip and the children gathered in the kitchen to make potato chips. Needless to say, the smell of the lard melting in the pot made my dad sick to his stomach. So sick in fact, instead of helping, he went to bed. Upon Mim's return, she found that dad was sick in bed.

Dad could hear Mim scolding Pip for giving the children to much food before bed. Mim then went upstairs to check on dad. She left his forehead for fever, but noticed that dad kept holding his stomach. She asked him why his stomach hurt. Dad confessed that he had been sneaking into the sewing closet and helping himself tot the rock candy. Guess she figured that he was suffering enough and just let him ride out his stomach ache, because she left him and went down stairs to talk to Pip about what dad had done. Pip then confessed that he had been the one who told the children where the candy was.

It was a lesson well learned, as dad never again had rock candy except in cough medicine as needed for a cold.