“Good food,” agreed Gramp, wiping his mouth and reaching for the local wine that Aunt Gussie made from native grapes. (Remember when the law said no drinking?) Gramp and Mama and myself were very happy to tuck in and eat. Crossing America in 1919 (and today, for a matter of fact) is unkind to a stomach. If I write here of all the good food we found, don't think we ate well on the trip. I don't record all the hand-hammered sandwiches, the fried chicken of the deadly South, the iron rolls, the rusty hamburgers, the tired and limping greens, the river-bog soups, the rancid pork sides, the hot dogs stuffed with mystery, the cabbage steamed to death in heat, the plaster of Paris pies, the sand-tasting cakes, the rubber doughnuts, the battery-acid coffee, the blue milk, the fried eggs that were pure little-chick murder, and the scrambled and omeletted horrors—all the things that crossing America brings to our stomachs.
Better forget all this and come back to dinner at Aunt Gussie's that night. The hunter's boiled dinner was something: garbanzo or chick-peas, chunks of real hickory-smoked bacon (not the machine-aged stuff of today), chorizo sausages and garlic sausages, lean beef, sliced cabbage, tomato that had lived delightfully in sin with garlic, and the white meat of chicken.
It was really a great thing. The soup was chervil Gertrude, made with Cooked cucumber and chervil run through strainers and boiled with butter, scallions, cream, some sorrel leaves, and just a hint of red pimientos.
Then came American apple pie, baked with a few cloves (not too many), the native jack cheese, made at home and stored in the spring house, and coffee served in man-sized cups that hold a pint (you can still pick them up in old shops). Aunt Gussie said it was cowboy coffee, and that' just about the best coffee in America. I must admit I don't know how cowboys make coffee, but if anyone docs—the old style with a pot in the embers—I' be glad to hear from him.
The next morning we had just a few snacks of bacon and eggs and some croustade de porc Gertrude a wonderful pork pie. Sandor took me out to see the horses and tried to get me in the right position to get my brains kicked out. He was a real delightful child. We played Indians and I tied him to the stake in the barnyard. Is it my fault that he fell into the manure pit?
Lunch was a salad of herbs dressed in lime juice, some good bors-d'oeuvre, and I remember lots of currant jelly over something. All pretty native to the country and built up by Aunt Gussie's Paris days.
After lunch Sandor and I played “ hanging in a mining camp.” I had him two feet off the ground before he screamed. He showed me where the hay was stored, and I almost fell into the teeth of the hayrack. The score stood pretty even at five o'clock. At that hour we went to see the new well they were digging, and my shirt tail got “ caught” in the steam pump, but they stopped it in rime. Ten minutes later Sandor was swimming for his life in the sump hole. The deadly wars of children are never fully written about. Sandor had the real Hungarian touch—he did it all with a charming smile.
I think everything would have been fine if Aunt Gussie had not tried to kind of rub Gramp's nose in it. We were sitting after dinner, relaxing and digesting, when Aunt Gussie said, “And to think I owe it all to being a cordon bleu.”
Gramp did not react. He closed his eyes and put on his rigid smile.
Aunt Gussie said, “There I was, a green young widow, alone in Paris and tired of the art galleries and of visiting Marcel in his cork-lined room (Proust, the great French writer, in case any literary critic reads this), but that ugly little building was there on the dirty street with the magic words, reading…”
“Do not flush while train is in station,” Gramp said.
“Cordon Bleu,” Aunt Gussie went on, as if she hadn' heard Gramp, and Mama put an elbow into Gramp's ribs, as a hint not to get vulgar.
I think that really tore it. Gramp had been willing to forgive and eat, but Aunt Gussie never could let it lay. “There are, of course, gourmets, people who know good food; but only a cordon bleu is the true expert. The rest…” We heard the wind in the cottonwood trees, the horses at the drinking tank, a duck talking love, the late birds under the roof. “The rest,” said Aunt Gussie, “they are, how shall I say it? They are amateurs.”
“— — — —,” said Gramp, forgetting to run his words together. “I think I need some sleep if we're to pull out early tomorrow,”
There were fond good-byes in the morning. Mama and Aunt Gussie weeping, and Sandor and myself kissing goodbye—he got a good grip on my ear with his teeth, but I blacked his eye by butting his cheek with the top of my head.
After that, we waved, the car started, and we went off down the dusty road, Gramp was feeling good and smiling. Mama couldn't figure it out until Gramp said, “We've added something new to our art show.”
Our art show was our windshield. In the habit of those days, we pasted onto it hotel labels, slogans, witty sayings, and trade-marks. Stickers reading “Hi, Chickens,” “Here Comes the Inspector,” “Hotel Tjaden, Running Water in Season.” “Real Steak Dinners—All You Can Eat, Thirty Cents,” “Drink Enduro, Be a Man Again.”
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