Month: February 2013

It’s All About the Snacks.

~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

In our family, Super Bowl Sunday was never about the football… unless the Bears or later the Skins were playing… and really, how often does that happen in one’s lifetime?? 

No. Super Bowl Sunday was always about the food. The snacks. All the stuff you got to eat on that day on any other day would have been considered indulgent and gluttonous. On this day, everything was allowable.

I think it must have been about 1987. I can’t remember if we had friends coming or it was just family – either way it would be a party and I had been cooking (junk) food for days. That afternoon I was finishing up the Chex Party Mix (this was before you bought it in a bag and actually made it from scratch).  Joy was “helping” me. We mixed the three different kinds of Chex cereals, the peanuts and then poured the buttery mixture over it and put it in the oven.  The M&M’s would be added later. So messy, so fun!! She was at the “helping” stage most children go through at about three or four and she was relishing the role. I remember Fletcher one Thanksgiving when he was about the same age wanting to help. He pulled a chair over to the kitchen sink where I was preparing the turkey to put in the oven. He watched for a while before he put voice to the question, “What is that?”  “THIS,” I proclaimed proudly of the 20 pound foul sprawled in my sink, “is the turkey!!”  “It looks like some kind of dead animal,” he said with mild alarm in his three year old voice. Well, when you put it that way. . .  but I digress.

Joy was helping me with the Chex Mix for the Super Bowl party and carrying on a running dialogue – mostly with herself.“I just love the Super Bowl. I have always loved the Super Bowl. I think Super Bowl parties are the best parties ever. Don’t you love the Super Bowl? When can we have the snacks? What time will the Super Bowl start?  How much longer is that? Is this YOUR  favorite party? Don’t you just love Chex Mix? Can I have some Chex Mix now? Well, how much longer till the Super Bowl starts? Shall I ask the kids if they are ready for the Super Bowl?  Can I fix my bowl of Chex Mix now and just hold it till it’s time for the Super Bowl to start? What shall I wear to the Super Bowl? What are you going to wear to the Super Bowl? How much longer, now?” And so it went…. for most of the afternoon. She was so excited for it all to begin. The other kids begged me to make her stop, but she was not to be shushed  “She doesn’t even LIKE to watch football!” they complained.  “She hates Sunday afternoons when that’s all we do. Why is this so different?”  Who knew? 

Finally it was time. She spread out her blanket on the floor. She brought pillows from her bed. She put on her “special party pajamas”.  She brought in her favorite doll to enjoy the festivities. She straightened her blanket. She fluffed her pillows. And she oh-so-carefully carried her bowl of Chex Mix into the living room and sat on her blanket. We turned on the television. The announcers were talking, the fans were screaming, aaaand the kick-off.  Joy was shocked – almost beyond words. She jumped to her little feet, whipped around with her hands on her hips and in  the most accusing and disparaging tone I have ever heard in a three year old she  said to me, “THIS LOOKS JUST LIKE FOOTBALL!!” 

Whatever she had thought a Super Bowl party meant, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that it was about football. 

I just looooove Super Bowl parties!!
Is it time for the Super Bowl Party Yet?

And now Joy has helpers of her own.

Groundhog Day and Other Important Holidays

~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

It’s an odd holiday, really. No one takes the day off work; there are no special foods associated with the day; though a movie was made in its honor and the news media usually covers it to some degree, it doesn’t really rank up there as one of our favorite celebrations. No gifts are exchanged to mark the occasion and when all is said and done, it’s just sort of lame. Except in my family.

February 2 was always a big day in the Fletcher family. My parents were married on Groundhog Day. At the time, no one really made a big to-do of the wedding. They simply got in a car and drove to the next county to a justice of the peace and said their vows. My mother’s sister Violet went with them as did my dad’s brother Buck. Buck and Vie later married each other, but that’s another story and one which I do not know much about. I don’t think my parents “eloped” . . .  they just didn’t make much of a fuss about the wedding part of it. As Anna from Downton Abbey says, “I’d rather have the right man than the right wedding.” I can so imagine those words coming from my mother’s mouth. So on February 2, 1924, they were married. 

wedding announcement
I wonder about the story behind this wedding announcement sent by mother’s parents to their friends and family. Were they disappointed not to have been included in their daughter’s wedding or had they agreed with her “no-nonsense” approach to such things?
Ray & Hazel Fletcher – married Feb. 2, 1924. We know this picture was taken in 1924 because that year was written on the back. We assume it was taken on their wedding day because Dad is wearing a suit and no one remembers ever seeing him in a suit – ever.

However, an anniversary, though important to the couple, does not usually become a “family holiday”. But wait. . . there’s more. The winter of 1925 was a very stormy one with several big blizzards. The young couple were 30 miles from the nearest doctor and had only a wagon and horses for transportation. When a break in the weather came, Dad loaded his pregnant wife in the wagon and took her to her parents who lived near the doctor, and she stayed with them until Don was born. And  on their first wedding anniversary, Feb. 2, 1925,  my mother gave birth to their first child: it was Groundhog Day.

 The next 25 years would bring the Great Depression, a World War, and many other hardships to this farm family. They would lose their farm and livelihood and struggle to feed their five children and, along with their neighbors and friends, fight to keep body and soul together. They would send that first born son off to fight in Germany and agonize through the days and months when he was listed as Missing in Action and then finally begin to put their lives back together again when he was liberated from a German POW camp and eventually sent home. Life began to return to “normal” and they dared to once again believe in a future. Don married a local girl, their oldest daughter Lila Rae completed nursing school in the big city, married a “foreigner” as my father labeled him (a Democrat and a Catholic), but all in all, things were looking up!  They were even expecting their first grandchild.

Jolene was born on a bleak winter’s day and became the first of the next generation of Fletchers. She was born on her grandparent’s Silver Wedding Anniversary and her father’s 24th birthday. The date was February 2, 1949:  Groundhog Day.

53665-dadmomandgrandpabarns
Hazel Fletcher with her son Don, granddaughter Jolene and father, Charles Barnes

And that’s how Groundhog day became a holiday in the Fletcher family: with special foods, special traditions, and special significance. And if anyone outside the family ever wondered why the Fletchers made so much of a non-holiday that centered around a rodent named Punxsutawney  Phil, they never said. 

Epilogue:
After I wrote this piece I learned that this Groundhog celebration has continued in the Fletcher family into succeeding generations.  Jolene’s granddaughter was also born on Feb.  2 … in 2007.  Long live Punxsutawney Phil.