Train wreck

It's hard to imagine Thanksgiving without dredging up a memory of Dick during the holidays. Having four of us running around our house in Des Moines must've been truly chaotic. I remember the days around Thanksgiving with everyone home for school break, probably a time before Ron and Dick were in college. Ruthie would make the big meal and with Grammie and Gramp up from the farm, we all sat at the kid's card table with our ambrosia salad, mounds of mashed potatoes, oyster dressing and the turkey. I don't think Ruthie could ever make enough mashed potatoes to suit everyone. Ever.

There was one holiday meal in particular when I about 5 or 6 when I was feeling sick. I couldn't eat my dinner, I felt so lousy. Remember how, if you didn't finish, you were made to sit there until you did? (And Dicky was famous for marathon sessions at the table when he refused to eat a particular dish.)

Anyway, I sat, unhappily with a plate full of food. I knew I was close to throwing up, but the chaos of the meal didn't seem to allow for anyone to notice that I truly was not well. Dick, famous for doing gross things at the table, was either squeezing mashed potatoes out between his teeth or showing train wrecks of all manner of combined goop. He had come back to the table to "help" me eat. It worked, but not in the manner he expected - I threw up what I'd been forced to eat all over the uncleared table, nearly reaching his end. I do remember feeling relief. Dick was visibly distressed - not realizing his antics actually helped me - he only saw the horrible mess he'd caused me to unload on the table before us. Did he help clean up? Not a chance - I only recall him zipping out the side door into the living room just as Ruthie came in to see where I was at with my dinner.

Geez, I would like to think that I didn't tell on him.

Donuts

Tonight at Thanksgiving dinner, Dave brought up the subject of the new wave in "deep-fried" turkey - a practice that is astounding considering how dangerous it is to submerge a 20 lb cold, raw object into a vat of boiling oil. In one's kitchen, mind you.

This reminded me of Dicky and his brainstorms - which almost always occurred when our parents were out - and were usually somewhere in the stupid to dangerous spectrum. This particular time he decided to make homemade donuts for us. He took a full-sized crisco can and set it on the gas burner on the stove until the crisco was liquified, and we tossed in blobs of dough, spooned them out when crisped and shook them in a bag of sugar and cinnamon. Fresh, hot donuts covered in a sweet cinnamon mix - an absolutely awesome taste sensation. But think about the fact that there were three kids standing around a crisco can of boiling hot oil on gas stove! I recall the near disasters - spewing oil as a doughball plunged into the hot liquid to name just one. Thankfully, nothing happened!

Dicky was like that, he had great ideas that captured a kid's imagination. But even his dumb ones did too. It seems that he could convince us to do nearly anything, his self-assurance transcended logic - for me, anyway. They were funny and sweet, and make for great stories now. But his best ideas stuck with me. For instance, I still to this day go outside in a snowstorm and gather a bowl full of fresh snow to make ice cream, like he taught me to do years ago. We'd add cream, or evaporated milk (which was surprisingly good!), vanilla extract, sugar and viola! A concoction that tasted just like homemade vanilla ice cream. Unbelievable.