Green Eggs, Hold the Ham

I don't have anything of my own to post this week, so I am sharing something with you written by a far better writer than myself. I love this story so much, cause it perfectly captures my mother's strange sense of humor, and her subtle cynicism which make her such a treat! Here's to my mom's blogging debut. Enjoy!

(the following material is protected under U.S. copywrite laws-2008)

"Green Eggs, Hold the Ham" by Terri Ivey

When I was a child, we moved constantly. In the first grade, I went to three different schools.

One place we lived was Morrow, Ga. We lived on a long dirt road and had tons of adventures there. Some good, some not so good…..

There were blackberry bushes, plum trees, and wild strawberries all over the place. We could just go out and pick blackberries and strawberries and when mama was in a good mood (not drinking) she would make wonderful treats for us.

My favorite was when she would take the freshly washed berries and put them in little bowls and pour cold milk over them and sprinkle sugar on the top and send us out to eat them on the porch in the warm sunshine.. I haven’t tasted anything that good since the last time she made that for us.

During that time we met a wonderful family that we became best friends with.

There were six kids in their family and five in ours. They had three girls and three boys and we had 4 boys and me in our family. I loved having the three girls to play with because even the oldest sister would play ‘house’ with us and teach us how to be glamorous with our pretend make-up. Back then there were strict rules about little girls and make-up and such things. Real make-up on girls under the age of 16 was practically a crime.

The family didn’t have a car so we would take them places they needed to go and we were together a lot. It was so much fun. It’s against the law to pack that many people in a car these days.

The dad was in prison and the mom, Ms. H. was taking care of the six kids by herself.

They received food from the Welfare Office. Back then there was no such thing as the Food Stamp Program. You took what you got and appreciated it. (most of the time)

Anyway, in their packages of food, they received powered eggs in cans. I know this sounds gross, but it is true.

The powder was green and you mixed water with it and cooked it like scrambled eggs.

The finished product did not look, smell, or taste anything even remotely close to what one would think of as “eggs”.

The family hated the canned eggs, so every month Ms. H. would take those cans out and make the kids crawl way up under the house and bury them. Some of the houses back then were built up on stacked stones and you could see all the way up under there. Their house was one such house so they had to be careful and bury everything really deep.

This was necessary Ms. H. told us because the “Welfare Lady” came to their house every month to bring the food and if she saw all of the cans of eggs she would say they were wasteful and she might cut back on the other things they liked in order to make them eat the eggs.

Back then as now the ‘welfare people’ struck fear into the hearts of everyone far and wide.

When mama found out about the cans of eggs being buried, she made my brothers go and start digging them up. She believed it was her mission in life to insure that every can of eggs was eaten.

Finding the eggs was not at all difficult since the kids had been burying the cans for years. They pretended to be pirates burying “Treasure”. Every place my brothers dug produced a can or several cans. There were literally hundreds of cans buried under their house.

Mama said we were going to use the eggs because it was wrong to waste good food. She grew up during the Depression and she taught us that wasting food was a sin.

This entire incident turned out to be an experience that scarred me and my brothers for life. We believe it was the reason none of us were ever very good at finding Easter Eggs.

We were always looking for silver cans with the words :
U.S.Govt. Dept. of Agriculture Surplus Powdered Eggs printed on the side.

Much to our surprise, the powder turned out to be waterproof. When you tried to mix the powder with water, it just sat there defying every attempt at stirring. It would ‘pouf ‘up into the air if the spoon went near the bowl. To see what I mean, run water into a bowl and dump baby powder in and try to mix it.

The powder was green and had the smell of sulfur. As soon as the mixture started cooking, the disgusting odor permeated the entire house. Even after it was cooked it was still green and smelled horrible.

Try to imagine being surrounded by heaps of hot, green, rotting eggs and then being told that you had to eat them. People say if you get hungry enough you’ll eat anything. My brothers and I never did get that hungry.

Mama was convinced that our neighbor burying all that ‘food’ was an answer to a prayer.

My brothers were doing some praying of their own trying to figure out a way we could get rid of the horrible green eggs. They soon came up with the idea to bury some of the cans under our house after they dug them up from Ms. H’s house.

They knew this was a dangerous plan to carryout because mama did have a ‘slight’ problem with alcohol and it tended to change her personality a ‘tiny’ bit’. It was not usually a good idea to deceive her.

So my brothers would dutifully go to Ms. H.’s house usually weekly and dig up cans of eggs and hide half of them in the woods and bring the rest into the house. Later when they considered it safe, they would get the ones they hid in the woods and bury them under our house.

When mama noticed that the cans were not piling up as quickly as they were at first, thankfully she assumed we were eating the eggs while she was at work and she was very happy, (the entire population of the state of Texas could not have eaten all the eggs they dug up.)

One day Mr. H. got out of prison and came home, soon after that they stopped getting the welfare food.

We later moved away and no longer had to worry about mama finding the cans my brothers had buried.

I have often wondered if anyone ever found the “stash” of canned green eggs buried under those houses on that old dirt road.

I’m also wondering if Dr. Seuss ever hit hard times in Georgia in the 1960’s ???????