I just hate holiday dinners with the family. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, any excuse for all the old faces to gather to chew on food and each other.
My children, of course, are fine. They know to eat what’s on their plates. We don’t threaten them with anything terrible if they don’t eat their vegetables. You don’t want vegetables? Fine. That means you’re full so you won’t have dessert. All of a sudden those green beans don’t look so bad.
What I hate are the backseat chefs, or whatever you call them. It never fails. My wife is making gravy with evaporated milk when her mother wanders up.
“You’re using a whole can of evaporated milk to make gravy? When we were growing up we were so poor we could only use half a can of evaporated milk and finished it off with water.”
“You had evaporated milk in a can?” my aunt counters. “We were so poor when we were young we only used water in our gravy.”
“You had gravy?” my mother-in-law’s aunt from a second marriage interjects. “My family was so poor we didn’t even have a stove. We stuck the chicken on a dead tree branch and held it over the fireplace. All the drippings sizzled on the logs.”
“You had logs?” Uncle Billy sits up at the table and waves his arms toward the women. Frankly, I don’t remember what side of the family he’s on. He just appeared one Sunday with someone, and they called him Uncle Billy. “We were so poor we had to burn dried cow patties. The smell was awful, but the chicken tasted mighty good. Better than that stuff wrapped up in plastic you get from the grocery store today.”
“You had cows?” Grandpa Grady grabs Billy’s arm and yanks it down. I don’t think Grandpa Grady likes Billy very much. “We didn’t even have cows. Only rich people had cows back in the good old days. We just had goats. And you try to start a fire with goat pellets!”
“I remember one year when we didn’t have any animals at all on the farm.” Grady’s sister Bertha meanders into the kitchen and sticks her nose in the saucepan where the gravy is simmering. She sniffs. “I hope that ain’t giblet gravy. I hate giblet gravy. That stuff gives me gas. You want to have a hard time cooking a family dinner? Try digging parsnips and carrots out of the ground and boil them in the bath water left over from Saturday night.”
“One Sunday we just ate dirt.” Billy brings along this woman who calls herself Ticey. I don’t know if Ticey is Billy’s wife, sister, cousin or girlfriend. No one dares ask. “We were from Oklahoma. That’s all we had. Dirt has a lot of good stuff, iron, minerals. And you thanked the Good Lord you had dirt to eat. Once in a while it rained so we got a treat. Mud pies.”
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, great grandma Donner comes in from the bathroom hitching up her drawers.
“That’s nothing. You should hear the story about Uncle Jim and his family going through this mountain pass one winter.”

Bobby couldn’t believe his luck. His father was actually taking him to the drive-in movies to see Ben-Hur. All his classmates saw it in the walk-in theaters and raved about the sea battle and the chariot race. It showed this one guy scraping the skin off his leg trying to get his chains off. And a lot of guys fall off their chariots and get run over by the horses. This was great stuff.
Bobby didn’t go to many movies since he turned twelve the price went up. The drive-in, on the other hand, were only a dollar a carload. They used to go to the drive-in all the time when Bobby’s brothers lived at home. Five people and only one dollar. His mother didn’t feel like going anywhere anymore. When Ben-Hur came to the local drive-in, Bobby tried to talk his father into taking him. It would be 50 cents per person, dangerously close to what the walk-in theater charged.
“For God’s sake, Grady! Take the damn boy to see the boy to see the damn movie! I’m tired of listening to all his whining!”
So there they sat in their car in the darkness and waited for the screen to go black and the music to come up. By the time Ben-Hur’s boyhood Roman friend came home and tried to talk him into giving him the names of Jewish dissidents, Bobby’s father dropped off asleep, his head flung back against the seat and his mouth wide open. The snoring was deafening. When the soldiers broke through the front door to take Ben-Hur away for throwing a rock at a general, Bobby’s dad fell into the steering wheel, setting off the horn. A group of men charged the car.
“We spent a whole dollar to see this movie! We want to hear it too! Wake him up!
“Mommy said never to wake daddy up,” Bobby whimpered. “She said he would get mad.”
“Well, I don’t give damn if he gets mad or not!” one big man yelled as he jerked open the car door.
Bobby’s father fell out face first into the gravel. The car horn stopped, and the snoring was muffled. The men went back to their cars. Bobby had a tough time concentrating on the rest of the movie. He even missed the part when the guy scraped the skin off his ankle on the boat, because Bobby kept looking at this father lying on the ground. The snoring stopped but if Bobby looked closely he could still see his body go up and down as he breathed. Mom would definitely be upset if he came home with daddy dead. He was supposed to mow the lawn the next morning. Bobby couldn’t keep up with the chariot race. He thought Ben-Hur had the white horses and the Roman the black, but he didn’t know for sure.
By the time Jesus rose from the grave and Ben-Hur decided he didn’t hate anybody anymore, Bobby’s father coughed and snorted, sitting up abruptly on the gravel and then crawling back into his car.
“Ain’t this damn movie over yet?”
“Yes, Daddy. It’s over.”
“It’s about time. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.”

Why are you late?
My mother said that almost every time I walked in the door. Sometimes I was down the street at a friend’s house. His family had the first television on the block. Mickey Mouse Club came on at 4 p.m., and was an hour long. The first half was singing, dancing and acting silly. It was all right. I was too young to appreciate fully Annette Funicello at that time. When I was older she became Annette Full of Jello and much more fascinating. The second half was a serial. My favorite was Spin and Marty, two boys at a summer camp. Spin was a city street kid, and Marty was a naïve rich kid. At first they didn’t like each other, but by the third season they were buddies. As soon as the final song–“MIC, see you real soon, KEY, Why? Because we love you”—finished I was supposed to be out the door and headed home. In the winter the sky was getting dark at that time of time. Everyone knew if you were caught outside after dark, something terrible was going to happen.
The only situation worse was to be out of the house in the dark and dark clouds rumbled with thunder and lightning. My brother was bringing me home from the movies one time. He always resented having to pick me up places. It cut into his cruising time up and down the main drag of downtown. On the average I’d have to wait about thirty minutes on the street outside the theater. When I decided to start walking home, he became even madder I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
“Why are you late? Didn’t you see the clouds in the sky? Didn’t you realize it was about to rain?” my mother said with a particularly angry exasperation.
Yes, I knew it was about to rain. I knew she was going to be hysterical, but there wasn’t much I could do about it since my brother continued to scour Main Street for a girl desperate enough to go out with him. Of course, I would never get away with saying that so I instead went into my sniveling little coward role and whined, “I’m sorry.” I suspected she gave up her tirade because she didn’t want to listen to me whimper. On the other hand, my brother jutted his chin up and out as he walked right past Mother without acknowledging her.
As a child I seriously debated with myself whether I wished to bother to try to date when I was a teen-ager. The appeal of the young ladies hardly seemed worth the inquisition. If my brother came in after ten o’clock, she would greet him at the front door with her hands on her hips. She knew the movie downtown never let out after nine o’clock. You could drive a young lady home anywhere in town and still be home by ten.
“Why are you late?”
He tried to ignore as was his custom, but she blocked his path. Squinting she pushed her nose into his face.
“Let me smell your breath.”
“Aww, Mom.” He took a quick step to the left and escaped into the next room.
“Are you having sex with that girl? You better not get her pregnant!”
That imperative statement contained two major ironies. One, my brother did start coming in staggering from too many beers, and when he did Mother just stood there giggling, finding the way he lost his balance and fell on the sofa to be quaintly enchanting.
However, Father was not amused at all. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re scaring the hell out of your little brother!”
The other irony was that by the time he finally got a woman pregnant I was married and had impregnated my wife, and I was six years younger than he was.
The fear of being on the receiving end of the withering question “Why are you late?” tended to make any situation worse. One year for Halloween my mother took me downtown to a five and dime so I could buy a mask for the school festival. She sat out in the car while I was supposed to rush in to pick out the mask. I stood in front of the table and froze. Not only did it infuriate Mother for me to be late, she also blew up if I spent too much money on foolish things such as Halloween masks. I saw ones I liked but they were too expensive. Dithering for too long a moment, I finally decided on the cheapest thing I could find. By the time I paid for it and ran out to the car, it was too late—Mother’s face was crimson.
“Why are you late? How hard was it to pick out a simple mask? Now I have a splitting headache!”
Well, that took the thrill out of Halloween, and it was the last one before entering junior high school. Once you’re in junior high you’re too big to wear silly Halloween masks.
I soon found out the reason Mother had such a short fuse. She had cancer and died before I entered high school. All dread of the scoldings went out the window. After a while I kind of missed them. It wasn’t any fun staying out after midnight on a date because Father went to bed at 9 o’clock every night and didn’t know when I came in or even that I had gone out in the first place. In fact, I was usually home by ten o’clock anyway. After all, the movie was over by 9:30. We could make the drag a couple of times to see who else was out that night, drop by the local drive-in for a quick soda and still be home in time to make Mother happy, if Mother had been there.
I am now older than my mother was when she died. I’m still home by ten o’clock. I never had to stand by the front door demanding why my children were late coming home. My son hardly ever went to movies unless it was Star Wars, and my daughter always dated guys who had earlier curfews than she did.
With luck I have a few more years. Boring people like me usually live a long time. It’s too strenuous to do anything exciting. But I do know that when my life is up and I finally am reunited with my loved ones in heaven, my mother will be standing at the Pearly Gates with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her lips.
“Why are you late?”

Every so often I think of my first date when I was 14 years old. I don’ know why, but I felt some social obligation to start dating that early. Even today I can imagine someone reading this and thinking, “Fourteen? Why so late?”
It was around Christmas and my school’s National Junior Honor Society was having a party at this private club’s lodge across the Red River from my home in Gainesville, Texas. That meant we were going out of state into the woods of Oklahoma. Only God knew the exact location of this place.
To be honest, I thought it was the best way to get close to this girl who went to the same church as I did. You see, I thought we would be more likely to get home if God knew it was two good church kids under his guidance. More than that, I had an awful crush on her. She was a year ahead of me in school, had a sweet smile, was smart and never said anything bad about anyone. She was perfect. Freud would add that she looked like my mother, but I think that’s a creepy observation so I’m just going to move on from there with no further comment.
My mother couldn’t drive me to pick up the girl so she asked my uncle to do it. Big mistake. He laughed too loud and tended to spit out the car window and sometimes the spittle landed in the back seat.
He decided to walk to the girl’s front door and wait in her living room with me until my date emerged. Her father sat on the sofa watching television.
“And there’s her big ol’ fat daddy!” My uncle laughed, very much amused by his own humor.
He took us to the school where all the couples were put into the backseats of cars driven by chaperones and/or parents. We ended up in the backseat of a car driven by the banker’s wife. It was a tight fit because the banker’s son was the star of the football team. His date was also a high school freshman, like my date. The girls knew each other and chatted all the way from Texas to Oklahoma.
The private club’s lodge looked like an abandoned house in the woods. The main room was not much bigger than my living room. We sat with another couple—the girl also knew my date and the guy also played football. He wasn’t a star like the banker’s son but still did some fancy footwork on the field. He sat slouched in a chair staring at nothing and stood every so often when the girl wanted to dance.
Neither my date nor I danced because, after all, we were good church kids. I thought this would be my chance to show what a brilliant conversationalist I was.
From time to time she’d crinkle her cute little brow and ask, “Is that a joke? I never know when you’re not being serious.”
When all four of us were together I tried to make a joke about what the adults were saying in the other room.
“Why do you care?” the football player’s date pointedly asked.
After that I imitated the football player, slouched in my chair and stared straight ahead. At one point the adults told us to line up for refreshments. As a gentleman I asked my date if she would like for me to bring her something so she wouldn’t have to stand in line. She said yes.
It was only after that I noticed all the other girls were in line and there sat my date waiting to be served, with a sweet smile on her face.
The party eventually ended, proving that there was indeed a God. On the way home, however, my faith in the church and all things sacred was put to another test. The banker’s wife, once she crossed the Red River into Texas, took a turn off down a road I had never been on before. It was dark with lots of trees on each side of the road. Then I heard this murmuring which bordered on moaning. And slurping sounds. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the other couple had merged into a squirming monolithic dark romantic mass.
I don’t think this was the banker’s son’s first date.
Somewhat emboldened by the example he was giving, I raised my right arm up and put it across the back of the seat. That was the extent of my courage, however, because I didn’t lower my arm around my date’s shoulder. After all, she was a good church girl and was perfect.
I glanced over at my date, and she still had that sweet smile on her face, pretending nothing unusual was going on. After all, she was perfect.
Within minutes my arm began to hurt, but the back seat was so tight I couldn’t return my arm to its original position. It was stuck on the back of the seat until the banker’s wife had given her son enough whoopee time with his date and returned to the main road where I saw the lights of civilization again. This detour through hell was almost over.
The banker’s wife first dropped my date off at her house. I said I hope she had a nice time, and she replied she did. At least she got to talk to two of her girlfriends part of the time.
I felt relief when the banker’s wife finally pulled into my driveway. I thanked her for the nice time and said good night to the football player and his date who giggled, “Bye.” He only grunted. Thank goodness that was over. I got ready for bed and slipped in only to find my mother there.
“Well, how did it go?” Her eyes twinkled.
I told her what my uncle had said. She replied it sounded just like something he would say. I told her we had a nice time listening to the music while the others danced. Honestly I can’t remember if I confided in her about the ride home. There are certain things you don’t share with your mother.
“And how did your date enjoy the evening?”
I put on a nice sweet smile.
“Oh, she was perfect.”
Perfect.
Perfect.
Perfect.