Happy Memorial Days

Van, Texas November 15, 1940
The draft begins.

Memorial Day weekend in Austin is almost always very hot and sunny. This year was no exception and it was a miserable 100 plus degrees with crazy hot high winds. Every time I start to believe in global warming, I stop and remember that I live in Texas. I am thankful that we have a beautiful Lake Austin nearby and lots of air conditioning to keep us cool. This holiday marks the beginning of summer in Texas!

It's easy to forget what this day is all about. With the last of our World War II survivors in their 90's, a sense of nostalgia has taken over the United States. Numerous television programs tell the stories of young men who left small towns as innocent high school students and returned as war heroes. Some would never return. When I look at the photos of 18-year old boys in Army uniforms, and realize that they volunteered to go, I am still in awe. Luckily all seven Tunnell boys made it back. Their stories wouldn't be shared until they were very old men, and some never spoke of the war. Imagine first-hand tales from Guadalcanal, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, D-Day.....

The Tunnell brothers--home, safe and sound.

We watched old World War II movies on TMC, and remembered the fathers and uncles who left tiny, rural Texas towns and simple country lives, to fight for their country in what were truly foreign places.  The world as these young Texas men and women knew it was a much smaller place. Unlike today, the word "foreign" was defined as a place you would probably never visit in your lifetime, where people spoke a language you would never probably understand.  All they wanted was to get back home to America and spend time with their families once again.

As a child, Memorial Day meant that school was over and summer vacation had finally arrived. No more hot, steamy, days trying to study and sit still in unairconditioned classrooms wearing cotton dresses, socks and shoes. No more walking to and from school in the heat of the day--we all walked back then to the local neighborhood school. When the end of the day school bell rang, the local streets were flooded with tired children rushing home to go play. I guess it never occurred to our parents to drive us! There were no daily car lines dispensing and picking up kids. I honestly don't remember what we did when it rained--perhaps it never did! Like most families, we only had one car. We were just an average middle-class family in a new neighborhood enjoying our little house with three bedrooms and one bathroom, living the good life--lol.

Come the end of May in Texas, school children were instantly rewarded with three full months of play--can you even imagine that? We were free to play to our heart's desire until the Tuesday after Labor Day! Yards were filled with kids sprinting in and out of lawn sprinklers getting soaked, friends constantly had sleep overs throughout the neighborhood, and we occasionally earned trips to the local pool or lake. Best of all-- we could wear shorts and flip flops all summer long.

In our new neighborhood there was a small creek nearby, so we could fish for crawdads (catch & release--no one would ever have eaten one!) and get muddy to our heart's desire. We all rode our bikes til dusk, or until the sound of our mother's voices from back doors calling us to "supper" pierced the evening air. You never missed the supper call! We were usually starving by then anyway. Fans kept us cooler moving the hot air around, until one happy summer day day a big ole window unit arrived. You can't imagine how exciting it was to direct vents of cold air at your face and sit in a room that was actually chilly. We had to fill the unit with water occasionally, and it was truly huge. But no one cared back then if you had a giant metal unit sticking out your side window. They were happy for you! As much as we loved our air conditioned house, especially at night, during the day it didn't seem to matter that our Texas summer days were sizzling hot. We were happy to be outside all day long. When we were thirsty there was always a jug of iced tea of lemonade in the fridge to cool us off--sweetened with Texas made Imperial pure cane sugar. 

The holiday weekend was the start of great backyard barbecues with deviled eggs, cold potato salad, fresh Big Boy tomatoes and cucumbers grown in my mother or grandmother's gardens, and dessert of huge slices of watermelon or occasionally, hand-cranked homemade ice cream. Home movies from those years show lots of wild kids chasing one another around the yard or hanging upside down on the metal swing set. My very skinny mother was usually busy in the background, dressed in her cool, cotton dress, either picking tomatoes or bringing more food from the kitchen to the picnic table. I have no memories of her ever actually eating any of it though--probably why she was so bone-skinny.

Like all of our neighbors, our backyard on Algerita Street had a wooden picnic table with two short benches that barely held my three brothers, our parents and me. We also had those crazy colored hot metal chairs and double gliders to sit on (whoever thought up that idea should be forced to sit on one on an August afternoon) and a wooden porch swing, which managed not to break, despite our challenging high swings. Funny thing is I don't remember the mosquitoes, fire ants, chiggers, or the smothering heat of summer. I remember fighting my brothers for the last piece of corn or chicken. I remember cold iced tea served in those colorful aluminum glasses. I remember running barefoot through the yard trying to avoid stickers, catching fire flies in one of my mother's canning jar with holes punched in the top. I remember switches if we were bad, sprinklers spitting out much needed water in the evenings to the thirsty St. Augustine grass, tall beds of Canna lilies and the pink flowers of our beautiful Mimosa tree. Guess I just remember being a kid.

My favorite summer memory will always be the year my Uncle Ernest brought us a Wham-O Slip'n Slide. Also a veteran, he slipped in and out of our lives as he tried to overcome the mental toll of D-Day with the bottle. He drifted in and out of jobs, drank his way through the bars of Fort Worth, and never married. My mother was always happy though when he showed up sober for a real visit. More than once she tried to save him from his destructive ways through the Bible and Jesus. She was convinced that all he needed was to go to church and become a Christian to put the past behind him. He would have none of that until he was in his 60's and alone. When my grandmother died, he moved in with parents, until he died years later of cancer. Despite his alcoholism and inability to emotionally recover from his time served as a WWII army solder, he always seemed happy when he was around his older sister.  And somehow, I suppose with my mother's guidance, he managed to stop drinking. Uncle Ernest was probably my father's best friend and was much loved by all the nieces and nephews who visited often. Seemed he had finally came home from the war.

We spent hours in the hot summer sun enjoying that water treat. None of us cared that it occasionally really hurt when you hit the hard ground running. It was wet and cool, and we were the only kids in the neighborhood who had one. Trust me it wasn't a picture-perfect, but Memorial Day as a child was a holiday with my family in our backyard, where we were safe, happy, and in my memory, will be forever young. Who would want to remember bug bites, switches, and stickers instead of that!

Wham-O Slip'n Slide c. 1961.

Sorry-no food photos this time. But do try my friend Jill's Mexi-Corn Grits at your next BBQ. We all had seconds this Memorial Day. Good food, good friends and ugh--2 good lbs. on the scale!

Jill's Mexicorn Grits

serves 8-10

4 cups milk

½ cup butter, divided

1 cup quick cooking grits

2 eggs

1 can Mexi-corn, drained

1 can chopped green chillies

1 cup shredded Mexican blend cheese

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon white pepper

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

In a large saucepan, bring milk and ½ the butter to boil.  Slowly stir in grits.  Reduce heat, cook and stir for 5 to 7 minutes. (Biggest mistake one can make is to cook on high and the milk burns and sticks to the pan. Then you have to start over.) 

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs.  Stir a small amount of hot grits into the eggs. Return all to pan, stirring constantly.  Add remaining butter to  hot grits.  Add the corn, the chilies, the cheese, salt, and pepper.  Transfer to a greased 2 quart baking dish. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Bake uncovered, at 350 for 40 minutes…..a little longer if dish is made ahead and refrigerated uncooked.

Enjoy!