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Mother says be careful

Don't stay out too long

Don't do things you shouldn't

Miss me when I'm gone -- Joe Walsh

I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, riding my bike home down our street one evening. It was late in the fall, not quite winter yet. The air was crisp, and the wind was making my nose run as I rode along. I had been at a friend’s house a couple of streets over, playing after school, and I was supposed to be home by dinner, which was usually around 6:15 or so. I wasn’t late yet, but it was going to be close. Thinking of that, I sped up my pedaling a bit.

Even though it was early evening, it was already dark out. I could see the light coming out of neighbors’ windows as I went down the street. They were probably already sitting down to eat, some of them. I sped up a bit more. Most of the houses had porch lights on already, and they twinkled in my eyes. The same wind that had caused my nose to run was making my eyes water a little bit, as well. It was cool out, almost cold. I zipped my windbreaker all the way up under my chin, and leaned way down into the handlebars; not so much to reduce wind resistance as to try and stay out of it altogether, or at least as much as I could.

“I wonder what’s for dinner?” I thought. “Am I late?”

As I leaned in even further and pedaled through the big curve around the Gibson’s house on the corner, three houses down from my own, I suddenly, instantly knew. Dinner was halupki; and yes, I was late. Dammit!

My mom only made halupki every once in awhile; but when she did, you could smell it halfway down the street. Halupki is cabbage rolls, basically. Pigs in a blanket. My mother would brown ground pork and beef and onions and seasoning in bacon drippings in a heavy skillet, and steam a head of cabbage in water and tomato juice in a large stock pot. Then she would peel off the cabbage leaves and stuff them with the meat mixture, and put a couple dozen of the rolls back into the pot with more bacon drippings and onions and tomatoes, and a bunch of sauerkraut. Then she would let it all cook together for awhile. My mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother, was born in Austria-Hungary but was ethnic Czech, and my modern-ish 1960s mom would occasionally revert back to her roots and cook up a huge pot of this Eastern European soul food for us for dinner. She almost always did this in the fall or winter, which is when I suspect she got most nostalgic for the home of her youth (western Pennsylvania.)

Usually, I’m not that big a fan of cabbage or it’s derivatives. Broccoli, cauliflower, crap like that -- you can keep it. I have not yet evolved to the point I can eat something that smells (to me) like garbage, no matter how good it might be for me.

But, given that, I liked halupki all right. They way my mom made it, it was just good; I can't explain it. And I don’t know how it evolved, but in our family it was the custom to scoop a couple of those cabbage rolls out of the big aluminum pot with a ladle, along with some tomato-cabbage juice and a clump of sauerkraut, and then dump it all on top of a mound of mashed potatos you’d arranged on your plate previously. Mmmmmm. . . Czech comfort food. 'Gut bombs', my father called them, meanwhile piling three or four on his plate.

It was a good idea to not have much on one’s agenda for the rest of the evening after a dinner like that. One wasn’t going to be very ambulatory. About as ambitious as I normally got was to sprawl out on the olive green shag carpet in our den, in front of the big Magnavox console TV set. I would get a few hours of recovery time there, before having to go upstairs and take a bath and go to bed; and eventually go to sleep. . . sometimes to horrendous dreams.

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Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers.

Here, and not here.


Inca F.P.

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