#19 Gramps

There's something you should know about me: when I was younger I hated peanut butter. I thought it was plebian. I wanted luncheon meats and fruit roll-ups, not PB&J and Fudge Rounds.

The first time I remember meeting my grandfather (on my dad's side) I was probably seven or eight. We were at his house in the backyard. I was sitting on his lap. He had just eaten a peanut butter and banana sandwich (oh, how little I knew of food then!) and I said, "Your breath smells." Seriously, those are the first words I remember saying to him.

There are many other stories I can tell you about my gramps and food.

He loved peach ice cream. He would keep it in the freezer, forget about, let it get fuzzy. He loved peaches period.

He made the best fried chicken.

We would come over and throw out his moldy cheese, and then later we'd see him salvaging it, scraping the mold off.

We would got to buffets for dinner and at the end of the meal, he'd stand up, reach into his back pocket and pull out a Ziploc bag. He'd fill it up with all the food he hadn't eaten. We were mortified.

I hated eating dinner at my grandparents' house because I felt like that is where food went to die (at my house, it was just in purgatory). Questionable food from questionable brands cooked in very questionable ways. It felt like a scene out of Better Off Dead, where a green gelatinous mass, speckled with raisins, would crawl off my plate like Jabba the Hut.

Now all those memories--maybe they're not the best, but they're sweet in the rosy, soft glow of the past.