Friday, October 26, 2007

Memories

I'm writing an essay about old foods that are popular with new names. It's such a kick to crawl inside my memories and play around a bit.

My grandpa—my mother's father—was a mushroom hunter. Morels, mostly. He brought home sacks of Morels like a pirate might bring home bags of gold. He cleaned them and cooked them and froze them in Wonder Bread wrappers. When I get inside that memory, I can smell the hot butter on the stove, the cigarette smoke in the air, and the musk of my grandfather mixed with the smell of gasoline and loose leaf tobacco.

It's strange that I remember the Wonder Bread wrappers so clearly, with their yellow and red and blue spots. Most of the wrapper was white, but there were clear spaces where you could see the Morels peeking through. Spongy promises of good things to come.

Yep. I loves me a good memory.

6 comments:

hg said...

I'm right inside that memory with you. The smells, the sights. Nice remembering. Nice work.

And, I also have vivid memories of wonderbread wrapper. Weird, because we didn't eat wonder bread at my house and I can't remember the wrapper on the bread we did buy!

Carrie Wilson Link said...

Ditto Holly, complete with the non memory of the bread we did buy, and the full memory of the Wonder Bread wrapper!

kario said...

Ugh - I recall Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip sandwiches with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving! Just thinking about it makes me wonder how much of the leftover preservatives and glue they used in those things still reside in my gut. I would have preferred morels!

'Scuse me while I go eat a bowl of oatmeal to scour out my colon...

Suzy said...

There was a Wonder Bread Factory a few streets down from where I lived and HUGE billboards of the white plastice bag with the balloons, and always the smell of fresh dough..
Thanks for the memories...

Love.
Suzy

Deb Shucka said...

Love, love, love how you can put me in a place complete with smells and tastes in so few words!

Jess said...

Yeah, we definitely did not eat Wonder Bread, but I remember too. Hmm.

I'm hungry, gonna go get some morels now. Mmmm.