Back when my momma's kitchen was still painted avocado green and mushroom hung on the wall.
Mushrooms almost just like these that I found on Saturday.
What's so special about mushrooms is how when I was a kid, they bonded me and my bother together one afternoon.....literally. You see I have two big brothers who are 6 and 8 years older than me. They were typical brothers who like to tease little sisters except my middle brother, Greg, did more than tease...he liked to torture. I even have a bald spot on my head to this day as proof! lol.
So with all this in mind, my momma very rarely ever left me at home with just Greg babysitting me. But there were a few rare exceptions when she did and the "mushroom incident" was one of them.
We lived in a very small town with a local grocery store that everyone shopped at....long before Super Walmart. The owners were family friends and all of their kids grew up with us...that kind of thing. If your mom was in the store, you could call and Ms Brenda would announce over the intercom, "So and So , you have a phone call", and your mom would zip her little buggy over to the checkout line and answer the phone. Everybody knew everybody back in those days and this was loooong before cell phones so once your mom had left, if you suddenly needed to talk to her about something, Pennington's Grocery was about the only way to catch her if you were lucky.
Well on this particular day, my mom, for some reason I have still yet to figure out, left me at home alone with my brother. Not only that, she left us STRICT instructions about calling her while she was shopping. "Do not call me at that store for any reason! Unless someone is bleeding, I better not get paged over the intercom!! Do you understand?!" So with that, off she went down the road leaving me there with Greg rubbing his hands together already plotting what all he was gonna do to me while she was gone.
After about 30 minutes of torture, I tell Greg, "I'm calling MOM and telling on you!". Now this is where the mushroom incident takes place. We had a yellow rotary dial wall phone in the kitchen and right next to it hung my momma's mushrooms. So I call Penningtons Grocery, Ms Brenda answers and I ask for my mom and she pages her "Ilona, phone call from Stephanie". Now while I'm waiting for my mom to come to the phone, Greg throws something at me and knocks the mushrooms off the wall and we watch in slow motion as they hit the floor and break in two. This happens just as my very annoyed mom comes to the phone and asks me what the emergency is...cuz in her words, "There BETTER be an emergency since you called me when I told you not to."
Well, now we were in a pickle. Bigger things were at stake than just getting Greg in trouble because now I knew I would be in trouble since something had gotten broken. So, I quickly stuttered, "Uh...could you bring us home a treat?" Well, THAT didn't go over well. But it got me off the phone without many questions asked and it gave me and Greg about 30 minutes to "fix" the problem.
So, five minutes after tying to kill each other, we were now partners in crime. We got out the super glue and began our work. We pieced it back together and hung in back on the wall with the hopes it wouldn't get noticed. The best part of the entire thing was the feeling I had being on "the other side" with my brother. Usually he was always plotting against me. This time he was plotting with me. It was nice. :)
I think we would have pulled the whole thing off if we hadn't made two crucial mistakes.
Mistake #1... You gotta let stuff dry completely before you hang them on the wall. There is a sliding effect that takes place if you don't. And being that my momma spent a lot of time on that phone (before the days of cordless), she checked out that little corner of the kitchen on a regular basis and noticed the "remodeled" mushrooms pretty quickly.
And mistake #2 .... the fact that we were laying there all sweet in the living room watching Saturday morning cartoons, not tormenting each other was kind of a dead giveaway something was up.
Live and learn I guess. lol.
It was a great memory. One that me and my brother always laughed about together as we got older. He passed away almost 8 years ago and I'm so thankful that I can't see a mushroom without thinking about him.
Precious memories.
Stephanie:)
"You will miss what matters most in life if you are only ever looking for the spectacular"
Oh I have a similiar story! My Mom kept these wooden ducks (there were ducks EVERYWHERE) on the coffe table. She left for choir practice one day and we began our normal knock-down-drag-out routine. Somehow the duck lost his head and we scrambled to super glue it back on while she was gone. We dared each other to say a word. Years later we had glued that head on more than once as it was often the victim in our childhood wars. We stumbled upon our Mama reattaching the head one day only to learn that she herself had originally broken it long before it met the doom from our capers. Good memory. I loved reading your story too.
ReplyDeletelol, that reminds me of just about every time my brother was left to babysit me. Pure torture. Thank God we grew out of that!
ReplyDeleteI still think of you as that little girl you describe so well.
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing back a memory of our lives that will always be special.
If we were good while Momma or Maw maw was at the store we got one of those little containers of Brown's Velvet ice cream with the little wooden spoon.
Funny how one memory leads to another.
And Cousin Greg.....
he never called me by my name, just "cuz"..... and I cannot think of him without getting a smile on my face....
Please tell Cousin Marvin and Aunt Ilona hello for me....
and thank you for keeping those small town, family memories alive.
Cousin Gayle
i'm glad that you have that memory friend.
ReplyDeletexxO
We had mushrooms too, growing up in our kitchen.
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